Old and buried, forgotten, dreamed of, lost and
desired, treasures taunted the eyes of visionaries, the rare few peeking out
over the lost civilizations of Winter in search of something more. In elder days, not long gone, there were
creatures of power, magicians and entities greedy and creative. Lost now, uplifted to whatever cycle old Sol
had set turning through the sky, and in their absence the promise of what they
left behind glittered.
The
often lost Trumpeter sloshed through a warm pool of crystalline water, golden
leaves bobbing in his wake, a few catching on his coarse woolen coat. This strange bathhouse meandered through an
artificial grotto whose walls were all gold scales and whose floor and basin
were of one continuous piece of ivory.
Either magic was the cause or he trudged across a carved tusk so large
that its mere implication made the lone man hunch over for fear of what loomed
above his imagination. Despite all fear
he travelled on, alone, because he had found the way down.
At
that first hall, where the hideous sanguine fresco stretched at a slant, up and
down, he had chosen to ascend. This
place had its own madness and he could read his own kind.
Not
long after a maze of stairs presented itself and there he had found the
marks. Along the walls or set on the
floor chalky scratches showed sign of where the two men had come before. Perhaps it was some old inkling left
unmolested by the Regalom which tipped his mind in this direction, following
messages from the forgotten past.
Initially
he had left in search of Jaal but it was curiosity which carried him down the
polished stairs and through echoing chambers set with ghostly jewels. A treasure of treasures beaconed from the
depths.
He
rose up out of the water, leaving the pristine bath fouled by the red dust of
Nysul. Through an ovoid portal he
entered a dune sea of gold coins. Here
the jagged obsidian walls glinted in the torchlight.
Annoyed
by the endless treasures he set out at a run, kicking up riches, his clothes
sopping. Kingdoms could be bought and
sold for what rested here, but the musician felt his prize to be more nebulous,
too sublime for gold, rarer than diamond.
After
a few more displays of its wealth the underground calmed its opulence and opened
up more interesting quarters. Jutting
off from the halls were bare rooms with fake windows, useless like the eyes of
blind cave fish.
That
was one thing the Trumpeter had discovered about the grand vault: it wasn’t
natural. That wasn’t to say that
monsters and strange magics abounded, though they did, it was instead the
realization that the very structure of the labyrinth was unreal.
No
human mind or intelligence designed this place.
It was sculpted by the phenomenal pen of drastic, unearthly trauma. If Jaal’s story was true, and the old High
King went to his peace through the sudden loosing of terrible magics, then what
set the halls and designed the rooms was nothing less than linger shockwaves of
a mad and polychromatic sorcery.
The
hall he walked turned into a dead end, a fused plug of petrified bodies
clogging further transit. At the base a
half concealed chalk scratch showed.
Perhaps, he wondered, the place continued to change.
Tracing
his path back was proof enough. The cavernous
golden bath was now a small fountain room, coins choking the recycled
waters. No exit remained.
At
least there was no lack of choices. More
rooms and halls lay in almost every direction.
Ramps down, stairs up, the corners choked with diamonds, the lintels
thick with gold dust.
Picking
a new path he took out a chalk stone and marked his way, if not for his use
then for the dungeon’s amusement.
Besides, he was happy to realize that all that ivory was merely the
result of a fickle magic than proof of a titanic beast.
So
his paths went for hours, often stopping, requiring backtracking and
choice. He found a series of true
windows opening into darkness and saw a huge space beyond. In there he thought of stars but knew the
flickers to be blue lamp light, combustion provided by some strange oil or
energy, illuminating structures in the abyss like a lost city which never was.
Crashing
with excitement through a set of double doors a silent court gasped open. Ringed with stone seats, a central structure
took the place of a stage for this hemispherical chamber.
By
the jagged angles of the ceiling and the ascending court of audience benches,
this was some kind of music hall. But
instead of a stage the central point blossomed up with geometric abstractions,
like the shrine to an alien god.
Courted
by opal statues, wreathed in brass polished fine, the center of the shrine held
a large, diamond shaped opening. This
chute went down into the dark and from it a slight movement of wind whispered
at regular intervals.
Looking
back up to the far wall the Trumpeter spied huge circular orifices set there,
like ears ready to catch whatever music this contraption allowed. He was about to venture down the shaft when
it spoke.
What
came out was a voice beyond words. The
noise was so tremendous that it sent the musician reeling, half-deafened.
The
air listened and twisted, the huge words speaking reality. He had heard this voice before. In fact, its howl had brought him this way.
Out
of nothing came a shimmering notion and the Trumpeter watched eagerly for what
could be joy but was almost certainly terror.
The struggle came to life before their
eyes. Where the liquid blue ran the
statues animated, clanging down from the wall in search of the living. Golden beast and golden soldier joined
together in this cause, their metal joints screaming with each impossible
movement.
Without
a thought the Fencer smacked the first knight’s spear away and carved its head
from its shoulders. Still more came,
animating fluid drooling from their bassinet helms and pocked eyes. Even as the swordsman struck one down the
stuff within leaked into another, joining the fray.
They
ran then. Jaal was first, being the most
sensible, with the Fencer next. Only
when the swordsman turned to flee the lost battle did Hnah notice their plight,
her mind half-lost in another world.
Racing
against the fluid the walls came alive at their passing. A chorus of gold followed without words, all
seeking the death of those who would trespass in Nysul’s domain.
Crashing
back into the throne room Jaal was the first to the exit but reeled at the
threshold. Beyond swarmed jellied
horrors watching with many eyes. A mass
of tendrils reached gibbering before the man threw the door shut on them.
“How
did the throne become righted?” asked Hnah but the men didn’t hear her or
notice that the chair stood upon its dais once more. Theirs was the horror of the trapped.
“Might
we slip by that horde?” considered Jaal.
“That
army more like,” fumed the Fencer. “And
no.”
“Helpful,”
smirked the actor with his long mouth.
“I’m
not the one who slunk off in the dark,” spat the Fencer, growing increasingly
angry.
“I
told you my reasons,” replied Jaal, meeting the man’s anger.
A
strange liquid clang called them back from the edge of violence. The sound had the quality of steel dropped
into a shallow basin of water, tiny, eloquent in the way it told of their
coming doom.
“Only
one way then,” said the Fencer, who went to the huge sealed portal behind the
throne.
As
he thought, the enormous bulkhead was locked by a huge and potent
mechanism. Sprawled across its surface a
huge ice lion commanded the door. Its
paws played with the lock, which showed an annoying array of circular rings
punched with various nonsensical characters.
Rage
sparked as he drove Dhala up to the
hilt in the metal. The iron screamed
with cold and the lion surface trembled but the whole thing held. It was far thicker than the meter or so of
blade and there was no time to hack the thing to pieces.
“Careful,”
said the girl on the throne. “You may
damage its workings.”
“Only
doors which open work,” replied the Fencer as he freed his weapon.
From
the hall came the close sounds of metal-shod feet and the clicking whir of
golden serpents. The burnished army
rounded the corner, the figures on the walls joining the ranks of the
unstoppable horde.
They
were trapped. On one side a mass of
staring horrors waited, from another a marched an invincible army, while the
last was sealed, like so much hope and wonder and horror and nightmare in the
cloistered badlands of Nysul. No wonder
no caravans traded with this place. It
was a maze with only death as the solution.
Laughing
at the black end the Fencer raced to meet the golden warriors at the
threshold. There was nothing left to do
but play the full extent of his memories.
Besides, reasoned his tempest heart, he might just destroy every last
one of the automatons.
The
first rank shredded at the touch of his weapon.
Coils and streamers of metal flew about.
More crushed in after, swordsman and spearmen, flail-users and axe-men,
all reaching, swinging, lunging after the living man.
The
Fencer used their numbers against them, tangling each other with their chains
and poles, twisting their weapons together with a parry and then cleaving half
a score with one easy swing of the blade.
Chiming with golden cries the air took on a strange smell.
That
odd reek which greeted their passage down was now realized by all the living
present. Alkaline and sharp, it was like
holding a copper coin in the mouth, only here one couldn’t spit it out.
“Was
the fifth family the Darkuja or the Blessennel?” asked Hnah, whose loud voice
managed to find the swordsman through the conflict. If there was an answer he didn’t hear it.
Joyously
he waded into the golden horde and made a wreck of such treasure. Through heart-seeking blades and the crush of
armor he wove like a stream between rocks.
Where he passed the automatons fell apart into the wreckage of some
ancient battlefield, the result of their long years of frozen war. Yet the Fencer was imperfect, he only
half-remembered, and through sheer numbers he began to feel the prick and sting
of the inevitable.
Eight
spears sought his heart and though he parted seven around him the eighth grazed
against his thigh. Eager to gain
advantage more of the armored things charged but found only ruin at Dhala’s edge.
Amongst
the play of dead metal and his own blood the Fencer retreated and ventured a
glance behind him. Jaal and Hnah toiled
at the door, at the puzzle mechanism of rings at the right edge of the giant
disk.
Just
in time he turned back to the golden horde.
A flail whipped around his sword and cut itself to pieces. Annoyed, the Fencer impaled the offending
knight’s head. Another empty shell hit
the floor showering blue ice.
He
was by the throne now, strangely righted despite the earlier battle. Leaping upon its seat he laughed while
carving through attacker after attacker.
When the moment was right and he was surrounded he stepped upon the
backing and the whole thing fell.
The
crunch of gold was satisfying as the mighty chair fell upon the surrounding
things. Hnah protested as some of the
warriors now threatened them with attention, but the Fencer had ears only for
joy at his own death. In a way it would
absolve him of his demon and the endless quest for the Answer to the Riddle of
Winter. It was, after all, his treasure,
one which possessed him as much as any other.
Then
the side door melted and from its glowing remnants a strange horde of grasping,
looking appendages entered without proper deference to the man on the
throne. Eyes swam along the limbs and
where they looked the air rippled with rays of pink, violet and scarlet.
The
Fencer couldn’t help but watch with a smile.
This world was insane, not just this place. Winter’s cold was a protection, a barrier
separating the icebound surface from hells driven by such engines as these
sprawling things before him. All their
looking and prodding was meaningless lead to just one fate: death.
He
had been fighting automatically and with realization stopped. In that moment of silence, of giving up, a
voice arrived.
“It’s
open!” shouted a man with a throat trained for the stage.
Looking
out from his tangled warfare the Fencer saw this to be true. On silent hinges the huge vault lay
open. Not completely, the two
meter-thick door showing a tiny waning sliver of space. Jaal was quickly and industriously shutting
it.
The
Fencer leaped from the toppled throne and a flurry of blades and bludgeons tore
at his feet, which landed bloody and heavy on the mural-set floor. Stumbling after he just barely managed to fall
to safety as the metal lid swung shut with a deep and resonant clang.
From
his place on the cold floor, part of some trapezoidal room heaped with treasure,
the Fencer saw Hnah sprawled not far from him.
She shook her head as if in a daze.
“Oh
her,” said Jaal, following the swordsman’s gaze. “She wouldn’t let me shut the door. I thought you wouldn’t be coming, being too
enamored of your new friends.”
“I
was partially busy and partially dead,” sniffed the Fencer. “You threw her clear and were leaving me
behind.”
“Better
only one die than all,” reasoned the actor.
“I did call for you.”
Cold
and hot at the same time the Fencer’s anger built as he sat up.
“It’s
your fault we are here in such chaos as it is.”
“I
told you my reasons.” Jaal made a stern
and narrow face, lifting his chin defiantly.
“Lies,”
judged the Fencer. “There’s something
more personal at stake here.”
It
was infuriating to speak with the man.
From the Fencer’s simple, barbaric standpoint this fellow was a
consummate liar. From birth he had been
trained to not be himself, to wear masks, to play games of words. All things the southern swordsman loathed.
“True!”
Jaal answered and then let out a hurry of emotions, his mask breaking a
bit. “Also false. There is much at stake here, everything
really. What we find in these depths
might change the course of the badlands, remake them anew, but I am here to
find Denovin.”
“Who?”
“A
fellow Child of Nysul,” said the actor speaking of his ill-described conspiracy
of mask-wearers and assassins. “He
vanished amongst the caves after your descent, never to return. I believe he found something key and prime
amongst the moving elements of our land.
To find him is to find everything.”
The
Fencer continued his silence, now out of worry.
With his mind and past jumbled he feared his own actions. He had little patience for men of politics
and conspiracy. Perhaps he had found this
Denovin when in the great seal last, perhaps he was the cause of the man’s
absence.
Instead
of dwelling on this he took an accounting of their new room. It was a treasure place, with heaps of gold,
platinum, gemstones cut as coins, coins cut from petrified nobles, and jewelry
so copious that no other garment would be need if one were to be decked fully
in such glitter. Fat arches sustaining
the ceiling and led on into a darkness which contained moving lights. These turned out to be luminous scarabs which
toddled about, sorting treasure into piles according to some instinctual
aesthetic.
“You’re
hurt!”
Hnah
found her senses with an exclamation. It
was all he could do to let her see to his lacerations and gouges. Such was her concern that she didn’t seem to
notice that her own deep leg wound was bleeding again and when the Fencer
looked into her porcelain face it was almost panic that he saw, not
concern.
Now
the depths were furnished by uncaring riches.
Either of his new companions were after something else, some other
treasure in these vaults. The darkness
was all endless mystery and compounded danger.
Lost hours weighed upon the man and he thought he might rest for the
dangers to come.
Something
spoke, that voice from the depths, all tremor and reverberation. Whatever words it spoke, if it did, were lost
on ears as small as theirs.
