Dragondoom

CHAPTER 31

Late Fall, Early Winter, 3E1602

[The Present]

Thork moaned, trying to say something, yet words would not come. His throat was dry and his heart pounding. The swaying Châkian before him slowly stepped to an unheard rhythm, gyring, turning as she danced, the silken veils about her swirling with her movements, her slender hands plucking and dropping the gossamer webs to the polished stone floor. Thork strove to turn his face away, for such a thing could not be until the vows were spoken, until the stones were exchanged, until Elwydd’s blessing was asked for and received; yet he could not, for it was as if he were paralyzed, unable to move, utterly entranced by the lissome female before him, something familiar in her exquisite motion as she stepped to the cadence of the dance. And the innermost veil covering her features was at last reached, and whirling and swaying and stepping in barefoot grace, she swept the diaphanous concealment away from her alabaster face and copper-red hair and emeraldine eyes-Elyn!

“Elyn!” Thork started up from the dream, his eyes wide. “Elyn.”

Beside him, limp and unmoving, lay Elyn of Jord. Her face white, her flesh chill.

Thork looked about, sighting tapestries hanging on distant chamber walls, their patterns vivid in the amber light. Groaning, the Dwarf stood, nearly swooning with the effort, holding onto the wall for support until the blackness encroaching upon the edges of his vision ebbed away. When his sight steadied, Thork limped across the wide stone floor to the far wall, and reaching up, grasped the tapestry with both hands and yanked down one of the wide panels of heavy fabric. Dragging it after, back to Elyn’s still figure he hobbled, cramps knotting the muscles in his calves. Flinging the tapestry down beside her and straightening it out, Thork managed to roll her limp form onto the cloth and toward the center, and then he covered her and himself with the surplus, pulling it atop the two of them.

Working in haste, Thork stripped Elyn’s winter cloak and clothing from her, including her boots, his eyes darting everywhere but at her nakedness; and he began vigorously rubbing her arms and hands and legs and feet, all the while unknowingly muttering underneath his breath, “Do not die, my Queen of Summer, do not die.”

Feverishly he worked, and long, fighting to hold onto the edge of awareness, for he was utterly spent, and a vortex of black unconsciousness sucked at the fringes of his mind, threatening to engulf him; even so, he chafed her limbs briskly, yet Elyn did not respond, and he rubbed harder, expending the last dregs of energy left unto him, and in the end, Dwarven endurance notwithstanding, Thork collapsed, his mind falling down into the spinning darkness within.

When next Thork came to, perspiration runnelled beneath his clothing, sweat slickened his face: in his winter gear he was literally roasting beneath the heavy tapestry. With a start he realized that he was being held by someone: it was Elyn, asleep, unclothed, snuggled tight against him, her arm across his chest, her breathing deep and regular, her face flush with warmth. Quickly, Thork turned away, his countenance reddening, the elusive memory of a half-forgotten dream dancing at the edges of his awareness. Ineffectually, Thork attempted to disengage her arm, preparing to slide out from under the tapestry, for in spite of his weakness, he was embarrassed; yet she moaned and clasped him harder to keep him from leaving, and he did not have the strength to continue. Thork did manage to remove his own cloak and winter jacket, ere lapsing once more into unconsciousness.

Hours later, again Thork awakened. No longer did Elyn press up against him, and when he turned to see her, she too was conscious, and had moved to the limit of the tapestry away from him.

Their eyes met. . and glanced away, avoiding contact.

Groaning, Thork rolled over, turning his back to her. Stiffly, he clambered to his hands and knees and crawled out from under the cloth of the tapestry. He felt as if he had been beaten by a thousand hammers, and he was a long time in gaining his feet. Even then he tottered, threatening to collapse again. . yet he did not. And muttering something about seeing just where in Hèl they had gotten to, Prince Thork stumbled off in search of a host within this Mountain dwelling.

When Thork returned, Elyn was sitting with her back to the stone wall, the tapestry wrapped about her naked body, her eyes lost in musing thought, gently smiling in an abstracted way. And as the Dwarf stepped nigh, the Princess looked up, her eyes lit with an inner secret, her face wreathed with a mysterious emotion dancing at the upturned corners of her mouth.

“Hai!” barked Thork, bearing a silver dipper. “I have found water to drink, but no food. Too, I have found the Wizards’ map, Princess, and if a stranger thing exists, I have not heard of its telling.”

Thork pointed. “There it be, my Lady, the Wizards’ map.”

Elyn, now fully dressed, stood beside Thork upon a high catwalk encircling a great round chamber, a chamber some one hundred feet across, and perhaps just as high. Before them was a huge sphere, fifty feet or so in diameter, held in chamber center, midway between floor and ceiling, by a mighty metal shaft running from the deck below to the roof above. A large amber light affixed to the distant wall shone inward upon the great globe, illuminating one side only, the other half of the sphere darkened by its own shadow. Upon the surface of the huge ball, they could see what surely was intended to be a map: mountains, rivers, oceans, forests, deserts, wastelands, and the like, were all clearly marked. Surrounding the globe was a curious scaffolding, plainly used to clamber all about the sphere and view portions of the face of the globe. And as Elyn and Thork stared at this thing of the Wizards, they discovered that it was slowly turning, creeping rightward, driven by gearing in the floor fixed to the metal shaft, the axis not quite vertical, slightly tilted. Too, it appeared that the amber light in the wall was on some kind of a geared track as well, but its motion, if any, was not noted.

“Let’s have a closer look, Thork,” whispered Elyn, as if reluctant to speak aloud in the presence of such a thing of wonder.

The catwalk connected to the scaffolding via several handrailed spans, and they chose one which led them to the lighted half of the sphere. As they crossed, the detail scribed on the globe became evident.

“Hola!” exclaimed Thork. “Up there: that be the Rimmen Mountains, and above that be the Grimwall.”

Up the scaffolding they climbed-Thork moving slowly, gingerly, for he was yet sore from his blizzard ordeal-till they were level with the area noted.

“This is surely Mithgar that is detailed hereupon,” said Elyn, “but why would they scribe it on a great round ball?”

“Who knows the ways of Mages?” growled Thork, his eyes scanning the surface. “Only a Wizard would take something flat and scribe it on a globe.” The Dwarf moved rightward. “Hola! Look!”-he pointed with a stubby finger-“There be a soft glint shining out from here. .”-his eyes swept across the surface-“. . and there, too. What make you of these lights?”

Elyn shaded one of the glints from the amber beacon on the wall behind. “ ’Tis not a reflection, Thork, for in the shade the sparkle is brighter than ever. It seems to come from within.”

Thork, too, examined the glimmer closely. “Another Wizard’s puzzle,” he grunted in bafflement.

“Look not at the glint, Thork,” advised Elyn, “but instead tell me what part of Mithgar you judge it to be in.”

Now Thork looked at the map surrounding the silvery spark, and after but a moment: “I deem it is the Wolfwood whence comes this glister.”

“Aye, me too,” agreed Elyn. “If not the Wolfwood, then certainly close to it. Let us see what these other sparks tell us.”

Thork sidled off to the right as Elyn made her way upward through the scaffolding, his eyes roughly following the track of their journey, she climbing up to a different glow.

“Look!” Thork exclaimed, his finger pointing at a bright cluster of sparkles within a scribed mountain range just now turning into view, crossing the boundary between shadow and light. “Hai! I deem that these be gathered within Black Mountain itself. They must mark the places where Wizards dwell.”

“Or the Wizards themselves,” called down Elyn. “The one in the Wolfwood marks the Wolfmage.”

“If that be so, if each glint marks a Wizard, then this Mountain be filled with them.” Thork stroked his beard in deep thought.

Elyn climbed up the curved surface. “Thork, to me! There are dark lights as well as those of silver. Here, up north. . ”

Stiffly, Thork climbed up to where Elyn studied a portion of the huge spherical map. There, in the Barrens north and east of Gron, a great dark blot pulsed, ebon light beating forth.

“Mayhap dark spots like this one show where evil dwells, vile Mages.-Modru!” Elyn’s own words hissed in dread at her naming of the Evil One.

“If ye be right”-Thork clambered down the side of the sphere-“and I do not doubt it for a moment, then, hearking back to the words of the Wolfmage, Andrak’s dark spot must be this one down here.” Thork’s finger pointed to a black flickering just to the north of the bright silver sparkles marking the Wizardholt of Xian.

Leaving the globe behind, it did not take them long to retrace Thork’s earlier steps-steps taken when he had first searched out the Wizardholt-for only a handful of chambers did they come to, none of which held food, and only one of which had a source of water-an ever-running stream pouring into a carven niche, the silver dipper now restored to the hook at its lip where Thork had first found it.

There were seven rooms in all: the entry chamber, the hall of the globe, and five additional rooms. But for wall hangings, two of these other chambers were empty; a third one was a privy; the fourth held several cots; and much to Elyn’s delight the fifth and final one was a bathing chamber, with pails for bearing water and a tub that could be heated from below, there being a fire chamber beneath with a chimney disappearing into the wall, as well as firewood stacked in a corner.

Except for the room containing the great sphere, each of the chambers had vivid tapestries hanging upon the walls, tapestries that showed great rivers, mountain ranges, deep forests, desolate deserts, icy wastes, roaring waterfalls-scenes of nature for the most part, undisturbed by the hand of living Folk, scenes apparently designed to put a mind at rest. Yet in one of the empty rooms a broad tapestry depicted a great battle, where, upon a long slope, two hosts were locked in deadly embrace, and across a blasted plain below, a chariot in the lead, a great, black Dragon flying above, a vast horde of Foul Folk marched toward the raging conflict; but in the foreground of the tapestry and dominating the scene, a wee figure conferred with a great large being. “Waeran and Utrun,” grunted Thork.

“I recognize the Wee One, Thork,” said Elyn. “We name their kind, ‘Waldana.’ But the great one. . I would say that it is a Giant, yet there is little in Jordian lore of them.”

“You have the right of it, my Lady,” responded Thork. “They are Utruni, also known as Stone Giants. They dwell deep within the earth, molding the land: building Mountains, shaping the living stone; able to split the very rock with their bare hands, and seal it behind without a mar as they pass through the stone below. And giants they be, if the Loremasters’ tales be true: fourteen to seventeen feet tall, when full grown. It is said that they have true gems as eyes-rubies, sapphires, emeralds, opals, diamonds, whatever-though by what light they perceive the world, I cannot say; yet it is told that they can see through the very rock itself.

“At times, there is a knelling deep within the living stone, and Châkka lore has it that the Utruni are signalling one another, striking out messages, much the same as we Châkka hammer-signal one another through the stone.

“Châkka lore also has it that at times they have aided Free Folk-eld King Durek, for one-and I do know that they were part of the Grand Alliance in the Great War.”

“Mayhap this tapestry depicts one of the battles of that time, Thork,” said Elyn, examining the border. “Look, Thork, here in the marge: a title.” Her voice took on a hushed tone: “Ai-oi, it is written in Valur!”

Thork looked. “Nay, Princess, it is scribed in my tongue: Châkur.” Thork’s finger traced out the runes as Elyn watched, yet his tracing did not follow the letters that her eye saw.

She in turn traced out what she perceived, The Battle of Hèl’s Crucible, and it followed not his own sight.

Yet they both concurred that when the letters were translated and spoken aloud in the Common Tongue, it was the same name.

“Wizards,” grunted Thork, saying nought else, and Elyn nodded in agreement.

Long they stood and looked at the battle scene, somehow knowing that what was depicted was a key moment in the Great War, yet neither knew enough about those cataclysmic events of sixteen centuries past to tell what circumstance was portrayed. At last Elyn turned aside and paced into the next chamber, leaving the tapestry and its mystery behind. And she came into a room that they had already explored.

“Surely there has to be more to it than this, Thork,” exclaimed Elyn, calling back to the Dwarf. “After all, there are tens, mayhap hundreds of glints on the great globe within, glints at the place of Black Mountain. And if these glints show where the Wizards be, then I ask you, where are they?”

The Dwarf followed after her. “This part is a haven, Princess: seven rooms set to shelter those in need. There is a hidden door somewhere, leading on inward, I deem,” he growled, waving a hand about. “Yet none that I can find. I think that the Mages give refuge to those who seek it, but guard their own inner secrets well. Hèl will freeze over ere we would find the other chambers within this holt.”

“But where be the kitchen, the pantry, for we must eat?” Elyn asked, making her way back toward the entry chamber. “Else this shelter will prove to be nought but a starving chamber.”

“There be no kitchen for us, Princess,” responded the Dwarf, “only what you see. Mayhap the Wizards provide no food so that would-be steaders move on.”

“Garn, but I am ravenous,” grumbled Elyn. “Let us go to wherever you’ve stabled Wind and Digger and we’ll at least get some waybread to hold off starvation.”

“My Lady”-Thork turned to the Princess-“Wind and Digger are dead. They gave to their uttermost to save our lives, and in doing so, lost their own.”

Elyn felt as if she had the breath knocked from her, and sudden tears welled in her eyes. “. . My Wind?” Her voice broke. “Ah. . no. . no.” The Princess put her face in her hands and wept.

“The sudden blizzard was more than they could withstand”-Thork’s voice fell softly-“and it slew them by stealing their lives but a bit at a time. Yet they complained not, and gave their all. Surely Elwydd will look down upon this deed of theirs and take their spirits unto Her bosom.”

A time passed, but at last Thork began shrugging into his winter gear. “I will go the places where Wind and Digger fell, gather food and weaponry and return.”

“I am going with you”-Elyn began donning her own winter garb-“though in that snow, how we will ever find them, I do not know.”

“You forget, my Princess,” said Thork, pulling on his gloves, “you are with a Châk, and I can retrace any path I have trod, even a path first stepped out in a Hèl-sent storm in raging night.”

The one to guide, thought Elyn as they strode to the closed gate, though she said nought.

Long they searched for the way to open the portal, yet they found no lever, no trip, no stone to push, no handle to pull, no crank to turn. “Garn, Thork, try to remember how it opened in the first place,” urged Elyn. “Surely if you got us in, you can get us back out.”

“Princess”-Thork’s voice held a sharp edge to it-“I know not how I came into the Wizardholt. I don’t remember entering. All I seem to remember is my sire calling to me, yet that cannot be. I was spent, in mind as well as body.”

“Aye”-Elyn’s words were soft-“from lugging me about.”

The Princess slumped down to the floor, her back to the wall. “Rach! If I had only been conscious, then perhaps I could be of some help. As it is. .”

Frustrated, Thork slammed the butt of his fist against the iron portal. “By Adon!” he vented, “this door-”

— And at that moment the gate began to open outward, and through the widening crack could be seen bright sunshine upon the snow.

Elyn scrambled to her feet. “How did you do that?”

“I do not know for certain, my Lady,” answered Thork, “yet I have my suspicions.”

Elyn started through the gate, but Thork clutched her by the arm. “Hold. We must see that we can get back in ere we leave.”

They waited until the portal was full open, then stepped back into the depths of the chamber, and slowly the doors closed. When they were full shut, Thork stepped to the gate and softly said, “Adon.” Once again the iron doors swung wide.

Thork called to Elyn: “I will step outside. If the gate does not open for me, come to here and say ‘Adon,’ and let me back inside.”

Out stepped the Dwarf, the gates closing behind, and in a moment he was back in. In wonder, he ran his fingers across the carven iron portal. “By word alone does this gate open,” he breathed. “The only other that I know which does the same is the Dusken Door at the western end of mighty Kraggen-cor.”

“Word, winch, or lever, I care not,” said Elyn, “for if we do not go get some food, the next person to this sanctuary will find nought but our two skeletons: one chewing upon stone, the other admiring an iron door.”

Choking back laughter, Thork held out a hand to Elyn, bidding her to come forth; and the Princess took his grip in hers, and hand in hand the two of them stepped out into the bright sunlight and strode down the mountain.

And in a dark castle to the north an unseen nimbus about a silveron warhammer began to pulsate, but no one was there to perceive it.

Elyn knelt beside the frozen body of Wind, tears streaming down her face. Behind her stood Thork, the Dwarf’s unerring instinct having first led them to Digger, and then on to Wind, both mounts buried ’neath the snow. And they had dug down through the drifts and stripped the gear from the storm-killed beasts, preparing to take it back to the Wizardholt. Yet Elyn could not bear to leave the body of Wind behind, at the mercy of the elements, though she knew that she must.

Thork cleared his throat. “Princess, I would have you remember the tale of the Winter King and the Queen of Summer, and of the great noble beasts that protected her. Your Wind was like that, protecting her Queen; let her join the others within the ice, and perhaps one day if they truly rise again she will be with them, her great heart once more filled with life, her spirit dedicated to a noble cause.”

Elyn rose from the snow and slung her arms about Thork and wept, and after a while they shouldered the gear and slowly made their way through the snow and back up the slopes, back into the sanctuary of Black Mountain.

Two more days they spent within the Wizardholt, studying the great globe, assuming that the cluster of silvery sparkles marked where they were, and that the black gleam just to the north was Andrak’s holt. And they gauged how far they would have to travel by measuring the distances between other places, known places, along the surface of the sphere, thereby obtaining a scale. And they judged that they were some twenty-five miles or so from Andrak’s castle, twenty-five miles from the Kammerling. And often Elyn fingered the silveron nugget upon its leather thong, recalling the Wolfmage’s words, knowing that the protection it offered was tenuous at best. And so they spent two days planning, choosing which gear to take and which to leave behind, as well as speaking of strategy and tactics, though most things were left undecided, since much depended upon what they might find at the strongholt of their foe.

When he wasn’t planning, Thork spent time examining the walls of the seven rooms they had access to, using his Châk-trained senses in this stone-cut den. At last he spoke to Elyn: “If I were to have carved these chambers and wished to conceal a door leading into a deeper interior, then I know where I would have placed a secret portal.”

Elyn’s eyes sparkled. “Let us go look then, my Dwarven Warrior, and see the wonder of the Mages.”

“Nay, Princess,” responded Thork. “I would not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for if they wish to remain hidden, then I for one would let them be.”

Elyn was disappointed, yet she did not press the issue, though she did look closely at each of the walls, to no avail. Time and again, though, she and Thork did speculate upon why the Wizards were holed up within Black Mountain, and what they might be hiding from. . or waiting for. Yet their conversations yielded no more than they already knew, and so the mystery of the Mages remained just that: an unsolved enigma.

Just ere mid of night of the second day, Thork quietly rose up from his cot and donned his winter garb and stepped unto the gate. He spoke the name of the Allfather and trod out into the crystal dark. Long he stood, peering at the spangle above, his voice whispering unto Elwydd. For it was Year’s Long Night, and he repeated the great litany, the Starlight Invocation, unto the Giver of Life, his words in Châkur, the Dwarven tongue. And to the invocation he appended words of his own, but what he said is not recorded.

And when he turned and came back inside, there he found Elyn waiting at the open gate, wrapped in a blanket, her saber in hand, ready to ward him should trouble be afoot. Assured that he was alright, saying not a word, she padded back to her cot and fell again into sleep, while behind, Thork watched her go, his eyes filled with unfathomable emotions.

Thus passed two more days for the twain, days spent planning, resting, contemplating, regaining their energy, going through their belongings, abandoning that which was not absolutely necessary, or that which they could bring themselves to leave behind, lightening their loads, until at last it was time to press onward.

And early on the morn of the following day, Elyn and Thork restored the tapestry to its hooks along the wall-except for that first night and next morning, they had not again huddled together under its warmth, instead bunking down upon the cots provided in the chamber within-and after the wall hanging was replaced, they gathered up their gear and stepped to the iron gates, opening them with the name of the Allfather.

Angling downslope, around the shoulder of the mountain they went, aiming to the north, Andrak’s holt their goal.

Behind them, the carven iron gates swung to, closing off the seven chambers within, and the myriad unexplored rooms hidden beyond, concealing the Mages in deep sleep, a sleep that had lasted for sixteen centuries and would last millennia more, as the Magi made ready for the final confrontation, preparing for the prophesied apocalyptic War. And when and if the Wizards ever awakened, they would discover abandoned in the outer chambers two saddles, bridles and bits, saddlebags of grain, a small amount of warm-weather clothing sized to fit a Dwarf and a slender Human, and a Harlingar spear and a Dwarven warhammer leaning against a wall. And the Mages would nod sagely, and perhaps sadly, knowing the tale of the twain who temporarily gained refuge herein.

But that was yet to be, and in this time and place, the two now trudged northward and downward through the deep snow, seeking a dark castle and what lay within.

And in a dark room within that dark castle, an invisible aura about a silveron warhammer shouted out for any who had the power to perceive, that a champion, that two champions, were coming to claim the Kammerling.