The Eight Walls of Rogar: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Series! (The Lost Kingdoms of Laotswend Trilogy--Book One) (3 page)

The dirt beneath his feet soon turned to soup, making his perch even more precarious.  Several times he slipped, and once he even fell, cutting his elbow on a sharp rock.  He wasn’t far from the top of the hill.  If he could only make it another twenty feet or so he’d be safe.

Darkness fell as he labored.  Lightning flashed across the sky with dazzling violence.  The wind picked up strength, buffeting him from one side to the other, driving the cold rain into him in waves, stinging his skin and stealing his sight.  Andaris forced his legs on, willing himself upward.

And then somehow he was standing atop the hill, eyes darting this way and that, searching for shelter.  He had never experienced a storm like this in the lowlands, a storm so intense and furious.  He had seen dark clouds around the peaks before, but had not guessed it would be like this.
  Can’t last,
he thought.

As if to prove him wrong, the rain began to fall even harder. 
Ice!
he realized.  Desperate to escape the cruel needles, Andaris ran as swiftly as his legs would take him, and very nearly collided with the craggy face of a cliff.  He scuttled along the base of the cliff to his right, skidding to a halt scant inches from the edge of a sheer drop.

Shaken and breathing hard, he turned back around, and there, just a few feet in front of him, was the entrance to a cave.  The opening was a flat circle of black about as tall and wide as he was, a yawning mouth inset with jagged stone teeth.  He hesitated, despite the hail, wary about walking into that empty dark.

Could be an animal in there
, he thought. 
A wolf…or even a bear.
  Just then, a marble-sized chunk of ice hit the ground at his feet.  He took a step back, and suddenly they were falling all around, jumping like popped corn in a pan.

Andaris made a dash for the opening, stumbling as one of the ice marbles struck him on the shoulder.  His hand went reflexively to the spot, fingers probing past the tear in his shirt to the cold scales beneath.  If not for the armor it would have drawn blood, he was sure.  What if it had hit him on the head?  What then?

Thinking it better not to find out, he hastened into the entrance.  When he reached the far wall, he cowered against it, but still wasn’t safe.  Thunder shook the cave as hail battered the rock against which he was pressed.  A flash of lightning revealed an adjoining chamber.

Surrendering fully to his fear, he stood and rushed into it, guided by the continued flashes, going from chamber to chamber, ever deeper into the earth.  In time, he could no longer see the flashes, and the thunder became nothing more than a muffled drumming.  Standing there, trying to catch his breath, he realized he was completely spent, inexplicably so—more exhausted than the exertion and even emotional strain could account for, more exhausted than he’d been his entire life.

Moments later, he was surprised and somewhat unnerved to discover that he could no longer remain upright.  He needed rest...and he needed it now.  Struggling in vain against the sudden fatigue, he slid down the wall to the cold stone of the floor, wrapped his arms around his body, and fell into unnatural deep sleep—becoming swept away, almost immediately, by a disturbingly vivid dream.

* * *

Andaris flew over jagged mountain peaks and thick pinewood forest, over green hills and sparkling streams, swooping low, then catching an updraft and sailing high, reveling in his freedom, in the fresh air and sunshine on his feathers.

Around and around he went, spiraling ever higher into the crisp blue of the sky.  He was the hawk he’d seen the day before, the one that had given him the evil eye as he’d stood poised on the border of Fingar.  Home, he thought.  I’m going home. 

Soon the forest began to thin and the first farmhouses began to appear, nestled here and there amidst the rolling green hills, with their square fields of wheat and corn, small stands of oak trees, and little blue ponds.  That’s Uncle Del’s place, he thought, recognizing the broken-down wagon in front of the house, vegetable gardens along the sides, and new barn in the back that, just last week, he and his brothers had helped to build.

Soaring past his uncle’s place, he saw Fairhaven appear on the horizon, shining like a jewel in the morning light.  Anxious to see his family again, he wheeled north towards his parents’ house, passing over the shingled rooftop of the inn, then the stables, the blacksmith’s shop, and the general store.  He saw Mrs. Greenwich and her three voluptuous daughters walking towards the temple, all wearing their finest dresses—fair heads held high, backs straight, noses up.

Andaris chuckled at the commotion in their wake, at the men gesturing and smiling, at the women whispering behind their hands, at the wives nudging their husbands in the ribs.  How he as a hawk could chuckle he did not know, nor did he, at the present, care.  He saw Mr. Brody and his son driving their team of Mindarian studhorses out of town, and Old Man Tucker hobbling along with his cane, leering at everyone and everything.  Yes, Fairhaven was exactly as he’d left it, exactly as it should be.

As Andaris neared the outskirts of his father’s land, however, he spotted something that wasn’t exactly as it should be.  Directly ahead, a thick column of smoke rose from behind a wooded hill.  Troubled by the sight, he tucked in his wings and went into a dive, pulling up just before he hit the tops of the trees—at which point the dream became a nightmare.  As he’d feared, it was his parent’s house that was on fire.

Grandfather Rocaren came stumbling out the front door, coughing and covered in soot, carrying Jorden over his left shoulder.  He laid Jorden on the ground beside Andaris’ father, who also appeared unconscious, and with a look of steely determination turned back towards the house.

Mother’s still inside! Andaris thought.

A wall of fire now blocked the front door, so his grandfather grabbed the hatchet from beside the woodpile, ran to the master bedroom window, and began breaking in the glass.

Andaris heard a ferocious shrieking from above, and the flapping of leathery wings, then felt a sudden blast of scorched air.  Everything around him burst into flames, at which point the scene shattered and fell away, a facade without supports.

But Andaris did not wake, for the dream was not yet done with him.  He now stood atop a high wall in front of a great stone keep, wearing a full suit of plated mail.  Staring through slits in his helm, he saw that he held an elegant looking longsword, its gently curving blade etched deep with strange symbols, all of which glowed red, pulsating with each beat of his heart.  He slashed the sword through the air, pleased with how natural the movement felt, with how well the ivory hilt fit into his hand.  Clearly, he had used it many times before.  It was like an extension of his arm, perfectly balanced and lighter than it appeared, as though made especially for him.

The time of reckoning draws near, the sword said into his mind.

I’m ready, Andaris told it, not at all surprised to be talking to it.  Why should he be surprised?  After all, it was a part of him and he was a part of it—man and sword irrevocably linked, their connection bordering on symbiotic. 

Andaris shivered and, with his free hand, pulled together his cloak.  So cold, he thought. 

Yes…cold, answered the sword.  The Lost One will soon be here.

The sky swirled apocalyptically, red as an open wound.  Flaxen-haired men in gleaming armor carrying long bows wrought of bone stood in the crenellations cut into the rampart.  Long spikes adorned with the severed heads of beasts protruded from the tops of the battlements, swaying in the stiff breeze, each more hideous than the last.

Andaris tensed as the enemy war horns warbled out a fervent succession of deep, soulful cries, then watched in horror as a dark horde flooded towards the wall, its ranks covering the charred landscape with grotesque, bestial shapes for as far as the eye could see.  All around him swords were drawn and arrows were nocked as, in high ringing tones, the trumpets on the wall blared forth their response.

Lost in Darkness

A
ndaris awoke feeling groggy and disconnected. 
What a dream,
he thought, slowly opening his eyes. 
Hmm.  Why’s it so dark in here?
  He blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust.  No change.  He opened them as wide as they would go, peering this way and that, and still…only blackness.  He came instantly alert. 
What’s happening?
Why can’t I--

Then it all came flooding back to him.  The hill.  The storm.  The cave.  Yes, of course.  He wasn’t blind.  He was in a cave.

But he had traveled so far in and had felt so chased, could he now remember his way back out? 
Just stay calm
, he told himself. 
Think.
  Had the sun risen yet?  There was no way to know.  He couldn’t hear the storm any more.  Perhaps if he waited long enough, it would become light enough to see.

A few more seconds with the silence and dark pressing in on him was all he needed to make up his mind.  There would be no waiting.  He had to get out—now.  Feeling stiff and sore after sleeping against the unyielding rock, he stood and, with a groan, reached back to rub his shoulder.  If he were to stand shirtless before a full-length mirror, he had no doubt he would see bruises covering the majority of his body, the largest being a lovely purple flower blossoming at the point of impact on his shoulder.

Would have been worse without the armor
, he thought again.  He had been embarrassed by the gift, and by his father’s insistence that it made him look gallant.  He certainly didn’t feel very gallant now.

Working hard to ignore the dread that had crept into his heart, Andaris concentrated on hugging the wall and taking slow, tentative steps through the darkness.  After some time of this, his efforts making him feel wholly dispirited, an idea occurred to him.  It was so obvious, he couldn’t believe he didn’t think of it sooner.

Coming to a stop, he dug through his pack until his fingers closed around a small metal box.  From the box, he pulled a rod of flint and a steel striker.  Scraping the striker against the rod, he showered the space ahead with bright yellow sparks—fireflies to light his way.  He grinned, feeling clever, for now he could see, after a fashion, and could hopefully distinguish where he was going from where he had been.

And so on he went, moving through the caverns, spraying an almost steady stream of sparks before him.  Taking turn after turn, he walked down long corridors, in and out of echoing chambers filled with great spears of stone thrusting from the floors and ceilings.

At one point, he saw a series of small interconnected pools, the sides and bottoms of which were covered with luminescent moss.  In addition to the moss, many of the pools contained a peculiar assortment of luminescent fish, most no more than two or three inches long, eyeless minnows swimming this way and that, locked in some kind of ritualistic dance.  For a time, Andaris stood transfixed, watching the tracers of light dart back and forth through holes in the walls, their purpose unfathomable, twirling about one another with extraordinary speed and grace.

Perhaps they glow because they eat the moss,
he mused, a faint smile kissing his lips.  He knew eventually he must leave the pool behind, but felt extremely reticent to do so.  Here was life…and light—reminders of the outside world--a world he could only reach by cover of darkness.

To be sure, the green ambiance was pretty to look at, and…a real comfort to boot.  The trouble was, it was not even bright enough to navigate this room by, much less beyond.  Which meant, apart from aesthetics, it did him no good at all.  Staying here would just delay the inevitable.  No amount of wishful thinking would change that.  Besides, for all he knew, this was some creature’s watering hole. 
What else lives down here?
he wondered, looking around with concern.

The shadows shrank and stretched as he stepped away, as he sent the sparks arcing through the air, lending his surroundings an eerie, otherworldly quality. 
Flint won’t last forever,
he realized, his stomach twisting with fresh anxiety.  When he scraped it all away, what then?  It would be difficult not to panic, lost and alone in the endless night.

At first, even in the midst of such dire contemplations, he managed to keep his spirits up.
  Just around the next bend,
he kept telling himself. 
Not much farther.
  He was certain to find the way.  It was only a matter of time.

Hours later, however, after having traveled ever deeper into the buried recesses of the earth, Andaris’ doubts greatly intensified.  The caverns were immense—tunnels sprouting off of tunnels leading into chambers of varying shape and size, some no bigger than his bedroom back home, some hundreds of paces across.  Most of these chambers were riddled with openings, but now and again he would come to a dead end and have to turn around.

Trying to make sense of it all, he began carving arrow marks into the walls with his knife, finding the rock to be quite porous, crossing through the marks when he had to backtrack.  It was a good idea, which, once again, he couldn’t believe he didn’t think of sooner.  The pool would have made a good reference point.  He hadn’t refilled his waterskin, fearing that the pool was tainted.  Now he was beginning to regret that decision.  If his water did, in fact, run out, he’d much rather risk contamination than go without completely.

At the next intersection, he took a right.  He had heard that if you are lost in a maze, the best way to find your way is to keep taking right turns. 
Can’t make things any worse,
he decided.

But after he had taken a total of thirty-six right turns, he was just as lost as before.  He shook his head in disgust as he came to yet another intersection, wondering from what fountain of wisdom he had gleaned such infallible advice. 
Right turns indeed
, he thought. 
Whoever came up with that probably never even set foot in a maze.
  He sighed deeply and, because he didn’t know what else to do, took another right.

A couple of steps later, Andaris came to an abrupt halt.  He was scraping the flint, but nothing was happening.  He tried it again and again.  A few brief sparks highlighted his strained expression, and then, once more, he was engulfed in blackness.

“No,” he whispered.  “Please.”  Chest heaving, he shut his eyes, dropped his tools, and sat down.  Long minutes passed.  What was he going to do?  He was lost and alone—trapped.  He could die down here and no one would even know.  He clasped his hands together to stop them from trembling.  Normally, he was pretty good at keeping his emotions in check, thinking it unseemly to do otherwise, but now, sitting there in the dark, feeling very small and very frightened, the tears began to stream down his cheeks. 

He’d left without telling his family where he was really going, saying only that he was visiting his Uncle Del’s farm on the outskirts of town, knowing that the truth, particularly for his doting mother, would have been too upsetting.  He shook his head in disbelief. 
What have I done?
he thought.  It had all been a game to him.  Deep down, in his heart of hearts, he had known he would return.  He had just needed some time away from things, a few days, perhaps a week, to assert his independence.  He’d not considered he could actually get hurt…or even die.

What will they do if I don’t come home?
he wondered.  But he knew.  He could visualize it all too well—his mother’s kind face drawn with worry, his father and brothers out searching for him, combing the countryside for his tracks.  His father was a fine woodsman, able to follow the coldest of trails, but even he had his limits. 
What have I done?
Andaris thought again.

This continued, the crying and self-deprecation until, like a sip of water to a man dying of thirst, his father’s words came back to him.  “When everything seems hopeless,” he had said in his deep, resonant voice, “remember that you have Rocaren blood.”  Andaris would never forget that night around the glowing embers of the campfire.  It had been just the two of them, and for the first time in his life his father had spoken to him like a man instead of a child.

He rubbed his eyes and took a steadying breath. 
Come on,
he thought. 
Pull yourself together.  Can’t just give up. 
Picturing his father’s face, so stoic and proud, he found the strength to open his eyes. 
I can be strong, too,
he thought, slowly getting to his feet.
  If I must.

With his left arm pressed against the wall and his right searching through the air, he began again.  Never in his life had he felt so helpless.  He could see no better than a blind man, and yet could swear the darkness was moving about him, full of unspent malevolence.

It’s only in my head
,
he told himself, once more coming to a stop.
But in the absence of his footfalls the silence wrapped around him, perfect and absolute.  He heard nothing.  He saw nothing—almost as if he had ceased to exist.

“Rocaren blood,” he said, voice sounding frail in his ears, like that of a stranger.  He repeated the statement over and over as he walked, clinging to it for courage.  Was this to be his fate?  To travel through the silence and dark until his legs gave out, to die without even a hand to hold for comfort?

The longer he spent in the caverns, the more unreal it all seemed to him.  At times, he wondered if he wasn’t actually asleep, at home in bed...and this was all just a bad dream. 
How long have I been in here?
he wondered
.
  It felt like days, though how could he know?  With the stars and sun hidden from him, he had no way to gauge the passage of time, no way to measure its movement beyond counting the seconds.

After many more hours of empty wandering, Andaris’ eyelids grew too heavy to hold open, so he curled into a tight ball on the ground and fell asleep.  When he woke, his hands were clutched so close to his chest that they had gone numb.  He was cold and weak, but it did not occur to him to eat.  Then, once again, he was shuffling along, only vaguely aware of where he was and what he was doing.  It would be so easy to give in to the darkness, to just lie down, close his eyes, and never open them again.

In the end, it was neither courage nor strength of will that prevented him from doing so.  Long after both had abandoned him, what kept him going was an unlikely mixture of boredom and habit.  You see, lying in the dark, waiting to die, turned out to be terribly dull.  He simply became used to putting one foot in front of the other.  There was nothing to do except walk, so he walked.

Shortly following his seventy-fourth right turn, Andaris stopped, rubbed his eyes, and gazed in wonder down the length of the corridor, his sluggish mind straining to believe what he was seeing.  “Is it real?” he whispered.

The corridor opened thirty or forty feet from where he stood into a cave with a low ceiling.  The floor of the cave glowed with a soft yellow light.  A draft of sweet-smelling air blew through the tunnel, awaking his senses like a slap across the face.

The way out!
He had found it at last.  Next thing he knew he was running.  He’d barely been able to stand, and now he was running.

Relief flooded through him as he approached the hole, as he came smiling and blinking into the glorious sunlight.  It occurred to him, as he emerged into the brilliance of a clear, sunny day, that the opening was different. 
No matter,
he thought, filling his lungs with fresh air. 
At least I’m out.

Moments later, though, while shading his watering eyes with his hand and squinting up at the mountains, Andaris frowned.  There, in the distance, set dramatically against the pale blue of the sky, were four snow-capped peaks.

Snow?
 
But just yesterday they were bare.  Could the storm have dropped so much
? 
No,
he decided. 
They even look different…steeper and more jagged.  But how’s that possible?

Turning back to the hole from which he had just emerged, he pursed his lips, trying to reason it out.  Set into the side of a grassy mound, the hole appeared to be nothing more than an oversized animal burrow.  If he had traveled underground from the cliff to here, then why couldn’t he see it?  As far as cliffs went, it was quite large.  It should have been visible for miles.  He’d reached the foothills before even entering the cave, and yet save for the distant peaks, could see only flat forest in every direction.  He couldn’t have gone that far.  Could he?

And what about the trees?
he wondered, really noticing them for the first time.  Fingar was a roughly equal mix of oak and pine, and now there wasn’t an oak in sight, and the pines were bigger around and had a bluish tint to their needles. 
What’s going on here?
he thought.

Determined to find some answers, Andaris spent what remained of the afternoon and most of the evening scouting through the forest around the opening.  By the time night settled across the land, he had given the entire area a thorough once over, but still hadn’t a clue as to where he was or what had happened.  He didn’t see how he could have traveled so far beneath the earth, though supposed he must have.  What other explanation was there?