The Realms Thereunder

CHAPTER TWELVE
Quick Blood
1

Before . .

. “I don’t understand,” said Freya. “What should we be looking at?”

“A vast underground lake, nearly big enough to be called a sea-its surface completely smooth and still, for no creature stirs it, nor the slightest breeze moves across it. But not this-this dark emptiness!”

Swi?gar took several steps forward and descended down a sand-and-stone slope, which ended after several feet in a flat, black, dry, cracked mud floor. “It’s gone. The Sl?pismere is gone!” he exclaimed in a harsh whisper.

“What does that mean?” Freya asked.

“It means that the hidden world is already feeling the affect of evil spreading in this land,” Swi?gar answered. “They have already started claiming victories-decay has set in. This is why our task is of such import.”

“What’s that?” asked Daniel, pointing along the dry bank. There was some sort of wall that extended into the empty lake. They walked over and investigated.

“It is a pier,” said Ecgbryt as their torches revealed it more in detail. On the far end, several wide, flat-bottomed boats dangled lengthways from a chain that was still attached to a metal pillar. Swi?gar gave one of them a push and it gave a couple tragicomic swings before scraping to a halt.

“Well, let’s get started,” said Ecgbryt. “We must go on if we are to keep the pace.”

Walking along the dry lake bed was much easier than picking their way along the rocky tunnels now above them. The ground was basically flat, sloping gently downwards.

“Did I ever tell you,” said Ecgbryt, “of the fight we had with the Danes off the Isle of Wight? A glorious battle! I arrived in one of the nine new ships built in the Northman’s fashion that ?lfred ordered built, along with many of the Frisian warriors that fought with us on that occasion. Have I ever told you about the fearsome Frisians? Are they still as famed in this day as they were in ours? I remember a ballad about them that starts thus . . .”

Ecgbryt recited his ballad and then continued his long monologue about his battle and almost every ballad he knew relating to it. It soothed them all to listen, and Ecgbryt to talk. When he stopped they took a break to rest, and that’s when Daniel, moving away from the torchlight to relieve himself, noticed a light shining up ahead.

“Does anybody else see that?” he asked.

“I think that it’s on top of something,” Freya said. “I think that there’s a hill up ahead.”

They had been walking an upward slope after having journeyed quite a long way down into the dry lake bed. “No, not a hill,” Ecgbryt said. “Not a hill exactly-it’s an island!”