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De Loungville didn’t hesitate. ‘Von Darkmoor, you act as sergeant for a while. Jadow, you’re his corporal. All of you pay attention to whatever Nakor and Hatonis have to say.
‘This is what you’re going to do. I’m waiting here for Calis. I don’t want to try to mark the passages we take in case more of those Pantathians come this way. Leave me one torch and I’ll wait here until I decide the Captain’s not coming back.’ There was a note of urgency and worry in his voice Erik had never heard before. He wondered if he would have noticed it had he been able to see de Loungville’s face.
‘Then I’ll catch up with you,’ continued de Loungville.
‘Now, here’s what you do. When you reach the surface, get across the grasslands as best you can, and to the coast. Acquire horses or steal a boat, but somehow get back to the City of the Serpent River. Trenchard’s Revenge is there or she’s been sunk, for Nicholas gave orders that at least one ship would remain for us. Hatonis and his men will know the best route.’
Hatonis, from the rear, spoke loudly enough for his voice to carry just to the front of the line. ‘There’s an old trade route, overland from Ispar to the City of the Serpent River, through Maharta. It is rarely used anymore, but it should be passable on horseback.’
De Loungville took a deep breath and said, ‘All right, light a torch and get out of here.’
The man who had been harboring the torches lit a spark and soon the flame was going. Erik found he had to squint, which surprised him, given how far back down the line the light was. He turned and saw de Loungville; the sergeant had his usual mask of determination in place. Erik decided he wouldn’t have noticed the sound of worry if he had been looking at the man.
Without saying anything, Erik reached out and quickly placed his hand on de Loungville’s arm, gave a quick squeeze, and released it, the only gesture he could make without saying something.
The sergeant looked at him, giving him only a brief nod of acknowledgment, before Erik moved down the tunnel. Greylock reached the junction of the tunnels, peered both ways, then motioned for the men to follow to the left. Erik reached the junction and as he started to turn the corner, he fought down the urge to look back to where de Loungville waited.
If only the Captain were here, he said to himself silently. Where could Calis be?
Calis held close to the wall as he stared in wide-eyed amazement. He and his father had spoken many times of what it would be like to confront their unusual heritage, a legacy of ancient magic, warped by the skill of Macros the Black, and used to bring to his human father the powers incarnate of the legendary Valheru.
Tomas had wooed and won the hand of Aglaranna, the Queen of the Elves, and had fathered Calis, impossible fruit of a union unique in history. Calis was young by the reckoning of the elven people, little more than a half century old. By human consideration, he was a man of middle years, and by any measure, he had more than a dozen lifetimes’ experience in watching the pain and madness of the creatures who lived on this world.
But nothing had prepared him to deal with the consequences of what he had chosen to investigate.
Elves possessed the ability to navigate by the dimmest light of the night, a single moon, or distant stars, but even dwarves were incapable of seeing in the utter blackness of underground tunnels. Yet they had other senses, and Calis, unlike his elven cousins, had traveled with dwarves enough in his youth to have learned some of their tricks: the sound of air moving, faint echoes upon the passage walls, counting turns and remembering distances. It was said that once upon a path, no dwarf could ever fail to retrace his steps. Calis possessed the same knack.
After leaving the company, he had moved back down to the vast gallery, the circular central hall of this city within a mountain. For that was what he was certain it had been, once in ancient days, a city beneath the mountains, as Roo had supposed. But the youth from Ravensburg had no idea what sort of city.
From what he had studied with Tathar and the other Spellweavers of Elvandar, Calis had suspected from the first that this was a city of elven construction rather than dwarven. But the elves who had built this place were as unlike Calis’s people as they were unlike any other mortal race. Those elves had existed as slaves to the Valheru, and only by command of their ancient masters could such a place have come to be built by elven hands.
Once he had reached the gallery, Calis was convinced the sound he had heard had been nothing more than a distant rockfall. There were no signs of pursuit; still, he moved downward to make sure, passing the strange split in the tunnels that had called to him so strangely.
He had moved deep within the well of darkness, and when at last he could hear only his own breath and the pounding of his heart in his ear, he turned back. But as he approached that odd junction where he had hesitated the first time he had passed, at the head of the company, he again paused, sensing something ancient and compelling deep within the tunnel that moved downward.
It was a foolish risk, yet it was impossible for Calis to resist. He knew he should ensure the others got free, but he had faith in the cunning of de Loungville and the skills of Nakor.
And now he knew what had called him. There was something ancient at the heart of this hall. And he looked upon it with fear and astonishment.
He had taken the tunnel moving downward, following it through another gallery, smaller than the grand gallery they had climbed, yet large enough to have served as a small town. High above, a faint light shone down, so far away that the noon sun was but a pinpoint, yet that entrance, at the summit of some high mountain, told him his instinct was correct.
This ancient place had once been home to a Valheru, much as the great cavern below the Mac Mordain Cadal, the ancient dwarven mines in the Grey Tower Mountains, had been home to Ashen-Shugar, the Ruler of the Eagles’ Reaches, the Valheru whose ancient spirit had come to possess his father and change his nature so profoundly.
Crossing a narrow stone bridge, he had come to a set of wooden doors large enough to admit a great dragon, and Calis knew that once they did, for the Dragon Lords kept their mighty mounts close at hand. In the door was a smaller portal, one used by servants in ages past.
He had moved a heavy iron handle, and to his surprise it opened a latch easily and without noise. The door had swung open on hinges recently well oiled, and Calis blinked his eyes as the sudden light threatened to blind him.
At the end of the long cavernous hall, a ledge overlooked a vast cavern ablaze with torchlight; and in the center of the cavern a village of mud huts, crude and without craft in their fashioning, was constructed around a series of cracks. Steam rose, heralding an underground source of heat, and at the center of the largest vent a heat shimmer danced in the air. As he had approached, Calis had been bewildered by the sudden rise in temperature. Where he had been feeling damp chill when he left the others, he was now sweating as much as he had been in the desert. The thermal vents showed that this Valheru hall was fashioned inside what had once been a volcano.
The air was pungent with the smell of decay and the stench of sulfur on the air. Calis felt his eyes burn at the sting of it as he looked down on the scene below.
Throughout the hall roamed serpent men, and at the center rear of the hall, on a high dais, a great throne rose against the wall. Upon that throne, where once sat a Dragon Lord, now sat one of their tribe, a creature of scales and claws, but its eyes were fixed upon space, for it was ages dead. The Pantathians nearest the motionless figure appeared to be priests, wearing vestments of green and black, and to the mummy of some ancient reptile king they paid homage.
Calis was no Spellweaver, but he felt the bite of magic in the air, and around the base of the throne he saw artifacts from eons past.
It was the presence of these items that caused him to suffer. He ached to march into the hall, brushing aside those creatures, and to mount those steps to the top of the dais, casting down this lesser creature, to take possession of the items of might that lay at its feet.
For Calis was certain these items were indeed relics of the Valheru. Never had his blood sung so, save once when his father had allowed him to hold the shield of white and gold he wore into battle.
Calis fought back such foolhardy urges and tried to make sense of the scene before him. It would be too easy to count this simply a Pantathian village, for there were too many strange things to account for; he wished Nakor was here – the little man’s ability to see things clearly would have been invaluable.
As it was. Calis attempted to memorize every detail before him, drinking in the conflicting images and trying to record them in his mind without passing judgment on their significance, so as not to neglect an important detail through an error in judgment.
After a half hour, several human prisoners were brought into the hall. Most had the vacant-eyed look of those in shock or under some sort of spell or the effect of drugs, but one woman struggled against her chains. The priests ranged themselves in a line across the lowest step on the dais, and the centermost spread his hands, holding in one an emerald-topped staff.
He spoke in a hissing language unlike anything Calis had heard in his travels, and motioned to guards to take the prisoners and move them to another place. Calis wished for his bow, that he might kill this priest; then he wondered where such a violent rage came from.
Then the priest motioned for the first prisoner to be brought before the throne, and two guards moved to carry out the command. A series of ritual passes of the staff was punctuated by guttural croaks and deep hisses, and the emerald at the top of the staff began to glow brightly.
Death magic surged in the room as one of the guards held the first prisoner’s head back, while another quickly struck with a long knife, cutting the head completely from the body. Calis held himself motionless, despite strong anger surging up within. The guard threw the head into a corner, and Calis followed its flight, watching as it landed with a wet thud among a pile of heads, some rotting, others now skulls, that sat behind the throne.
The two serpents holding the man’s body lifted it, carried it to a recessed chamber, and tossed it down out of sight. The screeches of hunger that answered caused Calis to swallow hard.
The woman who seemed unfazed by the drugs started screaming, and Calis felt his nerves grow taut. He clutched his sword hilt and ached to charge this den of monsters. One by one the drugged prisoners were slaughtered, their heads tossed to the pile after dark magics seized their life energy, and the bodies were fed to the Pantathian young.
The woman screamed continuously as she crouched on the floor, her terror outracing her fatigue. At last she remained alone before the priests. The priest with the emerald-topped staff motioned for the guards to take the woman next and they lifted her up, ripping her tunic free, so she stood naked in front of the priest, who ignored the warm sticky puddle he stepped in as he walked through the pooling blood of the victims.
Calis saw the priest motion the guards to hold the woman fast, and he saw them force her to lie back, holding her down while the priest began to make more motions with the staff and prod her with the butt end while singing in his alien tongue.
Calis felt his throat tighten. He had encountered the Pantathians’ evil sorcery before. They were able to use humans to create Pantathians who looked like humans. Calis had seen the results before and knew it was a powerful, black art being practiced below.
Calis was no student of magic, but he had some knowledge of it, and this next act was too vile for him to begin to understand. As the priest removed a long dagger from his robe and advanced upon the now shrieking woman, Calis looked away.
He judged himself too close to this place of dark magic for too long and moved backwards, slowly, into the gloom. A few paces up the passage, he turned, and hurried up the long tunnel. He quickly slipped through the door, closing it behind him, and paused a moment to let his senses start to adjust to the gloom.
As he paused, he considered what he had just seen. It was impossible to imagine what the Pantathians gained from the priest’s slow torture of a human woman. He had no doubt that eventually the priest would kill the woman, and her head would join the others on the pile as her body went to nourish the young.
He wished for a moment that Nakor had been along, for the strange little man who claimed not to believe in magic seemed to know more about it than just about anyone Calis had met. He might make some sense of how this ritual torture and slaughter tied into what he feared might be occurring with the Emerald Queen and the Valheru artifacts of power.
Calis hurried through the darkness.
Without conscious thought, he started counting steps and measuring distances with his hearing, and he hoped that he’d find his company where he had left it.
De Loungville almost leaped when Calis touched his arm. He spun around to hear a familiar voice ask, ‘Where is everyone else?’
‘Captain!’ de Loungville said. ‘I was about to say a brief prayer to Ruthia and a small testimonial to Lims-Kragma on your behalf, then get the hell out of here.
‘Now I can sit down and die of a burst heart!’
‘Sorry I startled you, but I couldn’t tell who it was here in the dark, and it smelled like you but I wanted to be sure.’
‘Smelled like me …?’
‘It’s been a while since you’ve had a bath, Bobby.’
‘You’re no bunch of roses either. Calis.’
‘Have you a torch?’
To answer, De Loungville struck steel to flint and set a hot spark into the treated cotton wadding wrapped on a stick. The flame started modestly but spread quickly, and by the time de Loungville held it up, they were bathed in a pool of light.
‘Call me mother, but you look a fright,’ said de Loungville. ‘What did you find down there?’
‘I’ll tell you when we’ve put some distance between us and it. Which way?’
‘We found a passage used by some serpent men, so I put Greylock in charge and sent the men in the other direction, to the left.’
‘Good: that should mean they’re on the surface by now. If we hurry, we can overtake them before they get too far down the hillside. We’re a lot higher up than when we came in the tunnel, Bobby.’
‘And a lot farther from where we want to be than we were when we started,’ responded de Loungville.
‘We’d better hurry. We have a long way to go.’ Softly Calis added, ‘And I fear not that much time to get there.’
• Chapter Twenty-One • Attrition
Erik ducked.
A shower of darts flew through the air and bounced off his shield as he tried to keep low to the ground. Since leaving the cavern and moving down through the hills to the grasslands, Nakor and Sho Pi had both claimed they were being observed.
When they had finally reached an area of broken rocks, islands of limestone, shale, and granite that broke up pools of tall grass, a sudden attack of the Gilani had greeted them. Six men died in the first assault, which was barely driven back by the heroic efforts of those in the forefront.
Greylock had quickly organized the defense, and the struggle had gone on for nearly a half day. Two more men had died as they retreated up the hillside, looking for this defensive position. Praji and Vaja had moved to the front, and were in council with Greylock as Erik approached.
‘I’ve got everyone situated as best I could, Owen. We’re taking a beating.’
‘I know,’ came the calm reply. He looked at Praji and said, ‘Any idea why they hit us?’
Praji shrugged. ‘We’re here and they’re Gilani. They don’t like anyone who isn’t Gilani, and we’re about to enter the grasslands. That’s their range and they’re trying to tell us to keep off.’
‘How’d the damn grass get so tall this time of year?’ asked Greylock.
Vaja said, ‘There are some that grow in the winter and others in the summer, and they are all mixed in down there, is my guess.’
Putting aside his frustration, Greylock asked, ‘Is there another way out of these mountains?’
Praji shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Even if I knew exactly where we were, I’ve never traveled this way. Few men from the Eastlands have.’ He looked around. ‘I’m guessing if we could get over the ridge’ – he pointed upward at the highest peaks of the mountains – ‘we might be able to make our way down to the Satpura River. Maybe make some rafts and get down to the coast near Chatisthan. Or we could move back up into the foothills, staying high enough so the Gilani don’t come after us, and could head south, see if we can find a way to the river Dee and follow that down to Ispar, but I don’t recommend that course.’
‘Why not?’
‘That would take us through the Great South Forest. Not a lot of people get through there alive. Rumor has it that’s where your Pantathians hole up, and it’s where tigers that talk like men live …’ When Greylock looked at him with disbelief written on his face, he quickly added. But that’s only rumor.’
A whizzing sound in the air warned them a scant second before another rain of darts pelted them. Erik tried to get his bulk below his shield. A shout and curse told him someone hadn’t covered up quickly enough as darts rained off shields and the surrounding rocks.
‘How bad are the wounded?’ asked Greylock.
‘The wounded aren’t too bad,’ answered Erik. ‘One of the men has a dart in the leg, but it’s down in the fleshy part of the calf – he can walk with help. A couple of broken arms, and Gregory of Tiburn dislocated his shoulder.’
Greylock said. ‘Well, we can’t outwait them here and find out how many of those damn darts they’re carrying.’ In frustration he added, ‘Hell, we don’t even know how many Gilani there are.’ The little men had swarmed over the front of the column, then vanished back into the grass when Calis’s company had turned out to be willing to stand and make a fight of it. Since then they had been launching random flights of darts.
Looking around, Greylock said, ‘Erik, try to get back to the rear and start the men heading back up toward the cavern. We’ll see if we can find another way down that won’t bring us back into this hornets’ nest.’
Erik crouched as he moved along and twice had to flatten himself against the rocks to avoid missiles. The darts were rude things, but cleverly fashioned. Long reeds, little more than heavy grass stalks, were tied together in tight bundles until they were as rigid as arrows, and fitted with tips of sharpened glass or stone. The tied reeds were surprisingly strong, and they rained down with enough impact that they could punch through any unarmored part of the body. Praji had mentioned that the Gilani used a throwing stick, called an atlatl, to propel them in a high arc over their victims’ heads, causing them to fall with great force. Erik would attest to their effectiveness.
He reached the end of the line and started the men moving back up once more. In less than ten minutes, Greylock, Praji, and Vaja came into view, the last of the forward element climbing upward.
Erik looked after and saw no sign of pursuit. ‘They don’t seem anxious to come up here after us,’ he said.
Vaja said, ‘They’re not stupid. They’re little fellows. In an open fight we’d chew them up in less time than it takes to tell of it – but coming after us from tall grass, well, there’s no one who can fight out there better than the Gilani.’
Erik wouldn’t argue that. ‘What has made them so hostile?’
Praji looked back. ‘Usually, they simply don’t like strangers; they could be coming after us for the pure hell of it. Or maybe the Saaur are pushing them south and they’re just mad.’
Erik said, ‘But the Saaur who came after us couldn’t have mounted enough of a force to clear out these grass-dwellers. They’d need an army as big as the one mustering on the Vedra to do that.’
Vaja tapped Erik on the shoulder and pointed up the hill. Calis and de Loungville were hurrying downward to meet them.
When the Captain reached the men, Erik could see by more than one face in the company that many were relieved to see the Eagle of Krondor back among them. He retrieved his longbow from the man who held it for him and said, ‘Why are you climbing back up?’
Greylock quickly explained, and Calis said, ‘We can’t get over the mountains. There’s nothing like a pass up there I could see on the way down, and we can’t risk going back into the cavern to see if there is a way through.’ He thought it best not to tell anyone of what he had seen until he compared notes with Nakor.
Turning to de Loungville, he said, ‘Send Sho Pi and Jadow ahead. Tell them to find us a trail heading south. If we can move along the face of these mountains, then down behind these Gilani so we can then cut across to Maharta, we still may get through this without too much more damage.’
De Loungville nodded and went up the line to give the order to the men who would scout for them. ‘How’s our water?’ asked Calis.
‘We’re fine if we can find a source every day or two,’ answered Greylock. ‘We’ve got eight fewer men who need to drink than we did a couple of hours ago.’
Calis nodded. ‘Praji, what’s water like out there?’
‘Might as well be a desert,’ came the answer. ‘The Plain of Djams has some streams and water holes, but if you don’t know where they are you can wander by one, never see it through the grass, and die of thirst.’
‘Any birds you can follow?’
‘A few, but damn me if I know what they look like,’ admitted the old mercenary. ‘If we get far enough to the south, the foothills along the coast are kinder. Lots of springs, lakes, and creeks, from what I’ve been told.’
‘South it is,’ said Calis.
Ignoring his own fatigue, he hurried past the men in line so he could take over his position at the head of the column.
Erik trudged upward, trying to be equally stoic as his legs burned with fatigue. Each step up the slope took its toll, and he was more than grateful when Calis at last ordered a rest.
Erik waited with anticipation as the waterskin was passed his way, and drank deeply. They had passed a pool on the way down, so there was no reason to stint right now.
As he handed the skin back he looked out at the distant plain and something caught his eyes. ‘What’s that rippling movement in the distance?’ he asked no one in particular.
Praji heard him and came down to where he stood. Squinting, he said, ‘My eyes aren’t what they used to be.’ Turning to face up the slope, he called out, ‘Captain! You should take a look out there!’ He pointed at the horizon.
Calis stared for long minutes, then said, ‘Gods above! It’s the Saaur.’
‘But that’s impossible,’ said de Loungville. ‘For that many to be marching, this far south …’
‘There had to be a second army,’ finished Praji.
‘No wonder those bastards were so determined to keep us away from that entrance to the mountains,’ said Vaja.
Calis said, ‘They must have been using the lower portions of the cavern as a staging area. So that’s why our short friends in the grass are so out of sorts – they just got through having an army ride through their homes.’
De Loungville said, ‘They mean to hit Lanada from the rear!’
After another minute, in which most of the men commented or swore, Calis said, ‘No, they move southeast. They’re heading for Maharta.’
Praji said, ‘If the Raj has sent his war elephants to fight with the Priest-King’s army at Lanada, Maharta will be defended by the palace guards and mercenaries.’
De Loungville swore. ‘The bastards weren’t keen on having us serving them! They were just anxious to keep us from joining the other side.’ He almost spit.