Chapter 7 #3
“With the exception of his anima, he’s entirely Artifice.
The light is from a spark within his core, generated through the combination of a variety of metals and a lodestone to create what the Artificers call ‘fulmen’, and the spark is amplified by a series of Serissan quartz lenses.
Or, in other words, he carries a tiny seed of lightning and he magnifies it. ” I smiled fondly at the golem.
Wroth’s gaze was a heavy weight on me, but his expression gave away nothing of his true thoughts.
“Come,” was all he said, and we all followed. For hours.
And hours.
And hours.
We walked down the straight hall for what felt like leagues, and yet there were no doors, no windows, no change beyond the occasional crater in a wall or a starburst of smashed stones in the floor or a tapestry reduced to dusty shreds and warp threads.
The same long hall, never ending, never changing.
And when it did finally end, it emptied into an even wider cavern of natural, glimmering stone.
No door, no markings. Nothing to indicate the how or why a fortress hallway should even be there in the first place.
There was an eeriness to it, a nonsensical liminality; as though I had opened my closet door and found an entire world on the other side. It was something that should not be.
Talos walked ahead, shining his light throughout the cavern.
It glittered off the crystal clear, pointed stalactites dripping down from above like icicles.
My legs ached like I had walked the length of the River Nicla several times; I held back a cry of pain as I rose on my tiptoes, stretching my aching feet and wishing I could stop to bandage the blister on my left heel.
Beneath me, the smooth, translucent, pale blue stone was worn with the passage of many feet.
Marrion also took a moment to sit and rest her feet, hissing in pain as she picked at the clotted wounds on her palm.
I started as Wroth walked close enough to nearly brush my arm with his, stopping within inches of me.
“You will have the map,” he said, apropos of nothing.
We hadn’t spoken a single word in the last two hours, all of us focused on simply making it through the dusty, neverending hall; I’d almost forgotten my request, alarmed by the growing sensation that we were walking the same length of tunnel over and over again, never to reach an ending. “Your golem will memorize it as well.”
I looked up at him, surprised by the mildness of his acquiescence. “Thank you, Lord Wroth.”
“Did you notice the impact points in the tunnel?” he asked, his lips curling into a sort of cruel smile. “The section of floor that looked like a meteor had fallen into it?”
I nodded mutely, my nerves tingling, because I’d noticed it three times by my count, which seemed more than a little strange.
“We passed it five times.”
I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. “You mean I wasn’t…imagining things.”
“No.” Wroth sounded almost cheerful, which was pure madness. “We were following our own scents for much of that journey. Circling around and around and around until it finally decided to spit us out.”
I wasn’t sure whether to cry, scream, or laugh until blessed insanity took me.
You are here for Anto and Letti. This is no time to break, girl.
“So, you have been in the Below for…oh, half a day at most, and already you have seen what it can do. You shall have the map, now that you understand that the map means next to nothing.” He lifted a massive hand, pointing to one of his eyes with a glittering black claw.
“Sight. Sound. Taste. Scent. Those are what you must rely on here. Those senses alone are your true map.”
Marrion cleared her throat as she stood, her palm bleeding freely again. “Uncle, I believe this is the Chamber of Song. North…then northwest…and we shall find the first bastion.”
“Yes, we’ve reached it.” He grinned at me, all teeth and malice. “Pray to the ancestors that we do not hear their music.”
I scowled back at him. Damned vampire, trying to frighten me when I was already close to crawling out of my own skin.
“Oh, grizzle and grumble at me all you like, fel Arron,” he said, sauntering further into the cavern. “You had the chance to stay above in the light.”
I watched as Marrion knelt, once again sketching instructions on the floor in her own blood.
“Ah, one thing...” I followed him, extremely careful not to interrupt her drawing. “If we were stuck in that hall for half a day, what happens if the knights and supplies get stuck for longer?”
Wroth lifted the massive slabs of his shoulders in a shrug. “It should let them go eventually.”
“‘Should’ is not as reassuring a word as you think it is,” I grumbled, and Wroth gave me a knowing look. “And yes, I’m aware I’m grumbling. You did just give me permission to do it all I like, did you not?”
This time, I was quite sure the spark of amusement in his eyes was my imagination.
We followed Marrion’s directions, moving north through the cavern that was, to all appearances, simply a cavern. Lovely in a strange, translucent way, like being surrounded by clouds made of glass, but not particularly daunting.
Talos hurried me along, one arm at my back, a guardian herding me.
I would be lying if I said this cavern didn’t draw my attention; the stone was just ever so slightly different from moonstone and quartz.
It was possible it possessed some qualities that would be useful in Artifice; certainly the Masters in the Argent Collegium would be pleased for a sample.
But there were no loose stones here, not so much as a pebble. The entire cavern might well have been sculpted from a single piece of gossamer crystal.
As we passed a stalagmite taller than a man, I peered into its depths; it was fractured with hints of rainbows, the cloudiness within belied by shades of frost and rose, a hint of bruised violet like an angry summer sky.
And then I heard the sound. Just a snatch of music, carried away on the wind, but there was no wind in here. The air was still as the grave.
The faintest piping, the delicate tone of a string, fading into nothing.
A chorus of voices, rising from a whisper, my ears pricking up to hear more clearly.
I tilted my head, trying to catch another snatch of sound.
The ground vibrated under my feet, the beat of a drum transmitting itself through sensation, deep and stately—and there.
I heard them again, leaning closer to the crystal to press my ear to it…
“Fel Arron.”
I jumped, ripping my eyes from the stalagmite. Silence filled the sudden absence of music. I hadn’t heard Wroth approach; the Light only knew how long I’d stood here staring at it, waiting to hear another whisper of that unearthly song.
Wroth and Talos surrounded me, herding me forward.
I closed my eyes for a few steps, feeling like a failure.
Less than a day, and I’d already proved myself a danger to them all.
What good was I to the people of Lonmire if I couldn’t make it through a single cavern without being ensnared by Fae traps and trickery?
He had told me outright not to look into reflective surfaces; though I hadn’t seen myself in the stone, surely it qualified.
“I apologize,” I rasped. “I didn’t intend to be distracted.”
“You are not yet inured to this place.” Wroth’s gentle rumble was almost worse than anger.
“None of us pass through without a few moments of weakness. There is a reason my knights were all hand-chosen; all have been here before, and understand the dangers that lie unseen. You do not wish to lie in the stone with them forever, the choir of the undying.”
He gestured to a glossy patch of the cloud-like floor, unworn by footsteps.
Some dark shape marred the foggy inclusions of the stone, and I squinted.
For a long moment my eyes refused to make sense of it, and then my brain caught up: there was a body encased in the stone.
A man, curled on his side as though asleep, his eyes and mouth wide open.
“Oh,” I breathed, and looked down again at the floor just under my feet.
At the dark shapes curled like large commas several feet below the milky blue glass.
Wroth said nothing as I charged forward, steadfastly resolved on reaching the bastion, my jaw set and heart thumping in time to the muffled drums emanating from the stone-shrouded musicians.
The Chamber of Song narrowed to a passageway where the moonstone merged smoothly with plain, sparkling granite. There was, of all things, an iron-banded wooden door set in the passage, and a fresh blood sigil gleamed on it.
Wroth pushed it open, gently ushering me inside.
It was like the hall again, only a massive stonework room this time, its ceiling arched with a marble rib vault; my eyes went first to the fountain trickling out of the wall.
What had once been a woman’s face had been chiseled away, leaving only one eye and half her chin behind; the water pouring from her mouth was crystal clear, flooding into a half-circle pool.
Marrion sat on its rim, her hand gloved in blood and thrust in the water to her wrist. She exhaled, withdrawing her hand. “Clean,” she said distantly.
There was room enough here for all the wagons and mules, and space for the knights to spread out their bedrolls. If I hadn’t known we were underground, I would have thought this a ballroom from the keep of a lai family, but for the fountain and the more practical touches.
A ringed pit had been laid for a fire, and the walls glinted with bits of cold iron; I saw why they called it a ‘bastion’ now. There were only two doors, and both were heavily warded with strips of the iron.
It wasn’t until I turned, peering into the darkness at the far corners of the room, that the face above us suddenly seemed to leap into view. The face of a monstrosity, with flared, bat-like nostrils, horns spiraling from her scalp, a mouth stretched wide and lined with needle teeth.
I would have screamed, or shot at it, or likely both; instead Wroth grabbed me when I jerked, gripping my hand before I could unholster my pistol. He pulled me close, his other hand pressed firmly over my mouth.
“Do not scream in this place,” he said softly. “She is merely a statue. Look with your senses, fel Arron.”
I blinked, and Talos turned, his internal light flickering as it brightened.
It—she—was indeed a statue, carved from soft, pale stone.
She was ten feet tall, a vampiric fiend, her arms spread wide in benevolent welcome and her bare breasts thrust forward.
But the face atop the woman’s body…it was as hideous as the rest of her was artfully curved.
Her arms ended in clawed fingers, and while her thighs were round and smooth, her legs bent backwards at the knee, much like Wroth’s, terminating in the clawed feet of a harpy.
“Who is she?” I asked, my lips moving against his warm palm.
Wroth released me quickly, as though touching me pained him. “She is Liliach Daromir,” he said, giving the statue an unreadable look. “This is one of the few artifacts in the Below not created by the Fae, but by my own kind.”
I gazed up at the fiend, the Blood Empress herself.
This statue, hidden in interminable darkness, was possibly the only remaining representation of Liliach Daromir in Veladar.
I was now the only human being in all the land who could claim to have laid eyes on an idol of the last subjugator of humanity.
And I wondered if she was here as protection for their kind…or if they still revered her.