Chapter 25
Valtar
Perhaps there was a time when I was afraid of the dark. I do not remember it. Nor do I remember the person I was when I still felt such fear, or any fear for that matter. I gave it up long ago.
Living as I did with the Magjor Tribe, learning their ways, their language, I am better equipped than most to handle this particular challenge.
In fact, I doubt it will prove much of a challenge at all.
I descend rapidly, and yes, the passage is narrow and awkward for my frame.
But as I learned with the air shafts, anywhere a full-grown dwarf may fit, so can I with a little effort.
I don’t even care when the scintil light goes out abruptly.
Yes, it’s startling—I would have thought the magic feeding that little orb would last for hours yet.
I lit it myself, after all. But dwarves notoriously hate magic, and no doubt set numerous anti-spellcraft runes in the walls of these shafts, some of which have lasted even into this age.
It doesn’t matter. While I do not see in the dark like a dragon, the dragon’s blood pumped into my veins gives me an awareness and sensitivity beyond that of mere men.
I am no more than mildly inconvenienced.
At first the carved-out tunnel offers a fairly easy descent, broad and shallow enough that a dwarf with a handcart might progress back and forth with little difficulty.
After a while, the heat begins to increase.
But even that is hardly concerning. My blood runs with fire, hot enough to enable me to ride on the back of a dragon and not burn.
What do I care for a little sweat on my brow?
As I continue to descend, however, the heat intensifies.
Slowly, slowly, so that at first I do not realize what is happening.
Then, abruptly, a curse bursts from my lips, and I stagger and fall against the wall.
But I cannot lean there for support; it is too searing hot.
I pull away quickly, standing hunched in that too-small space, breathing with difficulty.
There’s too little air down here. Too little air, too much heat.
I feel as though my very bones are beginning to melt.
But it’s neither the lack of air nor the heat that is the real problem.
No. It’s the pressure. That hideous weight above and below and on all sides.
I am but a tiny insect, a mere spark of life—hardly worth the energy of my own existence.
That weight, that vastness, that stone—it is so much older than I, so much greater.
It can and it will crush me, and who will even notice when I am gone?
I am too insignificant for even the cry of defiance squeezing from my tortured lungs.
So insignificant, I might as well never have existed at all.
But wait…what is this madness? The panicked ravings of a lunatic.
But I am no lunatic; I am cold, hard reason.
I am the edge of the knife, death made incarnate.
What do I care about such paltry matters as existence?
What is existence anyway? A mere thread to be cut at the whim of greater powers.
Nothing of importance. Nothing that should concern me.
I stagger forward another few paces, jaw clenched with resolve.
But that pressure, that damned pressure…
it’s too much, too great. How long have I been down here?
How long have I been buried alive? The walls close in.
I cannot see them—there is only darkness absolute.
There is only weight and crushing stone.
There is only the surety of my end. Gods, I cannot even remember why I am here.
There is no reason, can be no reason. Reason has no place in this dark, in this heat.
Only…
Only I cannot give in, because…
“Arun.”
His name falls from my lips like a lump of burning coal, searing my tongue with its passing.
I came here for Arun. For my brother, tortured and maimed almost beyond recognition.
But still alive. Still alive, still holding on to that thread of existence with a tenacity that defies the foulest of all gods or demons.
A bright spark in the darkness, a shining soul that would light the way for even a heart so blackened and blind as mine.
Arun. I must go on for Arun. I must finish what I set out to do, and that is…
that is…I can’t remember. The heat is too much, driving all thought from my brain.
I can do nothing but hold on to Arun, Arun, Arun.
My brother’s name beats in time with my faltering heart, driving me on one horrible step after the other.
Until I am no longer walking but crawling on my belly, pushing myself forward, my face pressed into jagged stone, the weight of the whole mountain on my shoulders.
I will save you, Arun. I will save you. I will…
I will…
I…
I stop. I cannot go on, cannot move at all. It’s too tight, too close. There is no moving forward and, I suspect, no going back either. The walls press in on either side, wedging me in place. My panicked heart leaps to my throat, threatening to escape my body entirely.
This is it then. I’m done for. Caught in this trap of stone and lies and pressure and heat. Caught here until my pulsing veins burst from sheer terror. Which is a preferable death to the slow one of parched starvation which awaits me otherwise.
Or perhaps…
Perhaps I need not wait for either end. I have my knife.
With a turn of my wrist, I can slide it from its secret place up my sleeve.
If I can angle it just so and slice the artery at my throat, I’ll bleed out in moments, spared the long torture.
I can do it. I twist my body, wrenching my shoulder, but it’s enough—just enough.
The blade slides into my hand, and I grip the hilt like it’s my best friend in the world. My best…my only…
I think maybe we’re friends.
A ragged breath catches in my lungs. No. No, no, no, I cannot, I will not think of her. That’s the last thing I need down here in the dark. That’s the last thing I want.
But she’s here. Her voice, clear as new spring dawnlight, fills my head.
And with that voice, there comes a burst of illumination straight to the most sinister corners of my brain, and there, down in the very bowels of the mountain, buried under unfathomable weight of stone, my lungs crushed, my bones on the brink of pulverization…
I see her. I see her face, uptilted to mine. Bathed in moonlight.
I cannot breathe.
Valtar, she says.
The way she speaks my name…I always thought it such a harsh, unforgiving sound. The name of a monster. But not the way she says it. When she speaks my name in that spring-song voice of hers, it is like I am reborn. No longer the monster, no longer the villain, but the hero of the tale. Her hero.
I could learn to love the sound of that name when spoken in such tones.
But I cannot love. My heart—not this shuddering organ in my breast, but the soul of me, the vital part that made me once a living, feeling man—it died long ago.
Drowned out in the flood of crimson spilled from the veins of my victims over the last many years.
Not even Arun can claim my love anymore, only my focus, my drive to succeed at something despite Mhoryga, despite the power she wields over me.
If I loved my brother, perhaps I would have let him die long ago.
But I never could, not even when Arun begged me to.
I kept him alive by whatever means necessary, by whatever foul deed my goddess required.
And now…her death?
Is that to be the end of this sorry little tale?
No, for I will meet my end here and now. I will do as I purposed and slit my own throat. Let my body rot down here, alone and forgotten. Arun will be slain, of course. But it will be a quicker death than the slow agonies he’s suffered these last many years.
And her? She will die.
She will die.
She will die… for Mhoryga will never suffer her to live.
She will die, and this world will fall to fire and smoke-shrouded madness.
The springtime of life and renewal will never come again, blasted in eternal damnation.
She will die in pain. In horror. Her flesh seared, her heart devoured.
Her lungs raw with poisoned fumes and screaming.
Consuming flames the last sight those shining eyes of hers will ever behold.
These thoughts mill through my head, crushing, grinding. I realize my own teeth are grinding as well, hard enough to break stone.
“It will not be so,” I whisper. “It will not be so.”
I will not let it be so.
I will get out of here. I will endure and survive. I will return to her from this pit, and I—and no one else—will be the one to end her life. It is the last, the only gift I can give her.
I slip the blade back up my sleeve. Then, with a painful contortion of my body, I writhe my skeleton to the absolute limits of joint and muscle.
For a moment, I fear I will succeed only in breaking my own spine.
Then I feel it—a slight give. It’s enough to send a jolt of pure energy straight through my heart and into every limb.
With a scream that could topple mountains, I heave myself forward.
It feels like hours, like days, like an eternity of agonizing lives and deaths unending. Then my body moves.
I slip through the opening and slide. Down and down, as rocks tear into my flesh and dirt fills my throat, my nostrils, and blindness makes me sick with all-encompassing horror.
But I come to a stop at last and lie at the bottom of some dreadful incline.
Alive? Who knows. It’s hard to tell the difference down here in the dark, in the heat, in this bitter isolation.
I might as well be in hell. Hell is where I belong, after all, and it is to hell my soul is bound.
But…no. For in hell, I should not be able to conjure even the memory of her face.
And yet, there she is—hovering just on the edge of my awareness.
Her. Rosie. In all the guises I’ve known her.
The child screaming as her sleeve burned.
The woman yanking me from hiding and smashing her lips to mine.
The mourner weeping over the death of a stranger, the nurturer cradling a gremler kit in her hands.
And the fury, whirling straight for my throat with the edge of her blade.
Rosie. All her oddness and beauty and full-blooded life. She does not belong in this dark place. She does not belong in hell. So I must make it out of here again. I must carry these memories of her back to a place of air and light and life where they belong.
I start to turn, to crawl back up that dreadful incline, to face again that hideous squeeze, which so nearly claimed me once already.
Before I can well begin, however, something touches my senses.
At first, I’m too dulled to all thought or reason to recognize what it is, which sense is affected.
It might be sight, for my vision seems suddenly to bloom with reds and pinks and soft, shimmering whites.
It might be sound, for my ears are filled with a whispering breath of song.
But no—this is scent. An unexpected perfume, down here in a place where it could never belong.
Awakening my mind, my heart, my body to perceptions greater than I’ve ever known.
It’s so overwhelming, I cannot name it, cannot recall where I’ve smelled such glory before in my life.
It comes to me slowly, almost painfully.
A single word, short and simple, but carrying with it an entire world of meaning.
A grim smile twists my lips. By some miracle or accident…I have found the token.