The Forge in the Forest (38 page)

Elof nodded. "I have trodden it, crossed a narrow stretch of it. Evil is that memory! But never did I dream of passing
beneath it
…" Indeed he hardly dared imagine it, the glaciers that scoured the earth in their advance, the ice-sheet that enshrouded tall mountains and left only their summits protruding, stark and bare as fleshless skulls; that incalculable, implacable weight of Ice, crushing, malevolent, hung now only a few feet above his head, held at bay only by the flawed and transient works of men…

The works of men
. A sudden suspicion grew in him, a revelation brighter than this pool of light in the grim dark, a shock of understanding, coming so close upon the other that it gripped him and shook him hard. He knew now what else Kermorvan had seen: only dimly could he conceive all that it must mean to him, warrior lord, prince in exile, last of a dispossessed line of kings. Even in Elof, of no lineage that he knew, awareness of where he stood awoke great awe, smoldering anger, deep regret, and a wild coursing wonder. In Kermorvan he read all of these, and more. The warrior quivered as if a storm raged within him, and yet his face was calm, transcendent, uplifted. That also Elof understood. Kermorvan stood where he stood, and not even death could snatch this moment from him. His voice resounded in bright music against the ancient stones.

"Aye, my friends. Elof knows. Do you? Do you guess whither we have come? These are the underground ways at this land's heart, lost home of our folk, lost realm of my line. We tread where no man has trodden since the flight of Korentyn a thousand years past. We walk in all that remains of the City by the Waters, the vaults and
cellars
and storehouses of Kermorvan the City, the mighty Catacombs of Morvan. And out of time, beyond hope, a lord of Morvan sets foot in these vaults once again. I have come
back
!"

He stepped stiff-legged down the rubble, staring around him as if afraid it was a vision he saw, that might melt away at any moment. When he came to the nearest pillar he pressed his hands against it, savoring the solidity of the stone. And he rested his head against it, and closed his eyes, and spoke no word for a long time.

Roc too gazed about him a while, and cocked his head approvingly. "So this is home! Or what's left of it. Solid bit of work, is this, to hold up with such a dead weight atop it! And it has a fine feeling about it, for all the dark and the chill. If this is the cellars, the city must've been a grand place." He rummaged in his pack. "High time we had a bite, to celebrate! Hard bread, smoked flesh, dried fruit and a swallow of wine. Fit for a king! And I feel like one, coming back here!"

Elof glanced at him in surprise. "You say
back
, as Kermorvan did. Yet neither of you has ever been here, any more than I."

"Ah, but we have! In spirit, like. These are the Lost Lands, that were snatched away from us, and that we never thought anyone could see anymore. I can just remember when I was a little lad, marveling at all the old tales of it: to set foot here, that's a marvel rarer yet. Don't you feel any of that? You're one of the old northerners by your looks, after all; this was where your folks sprang from, too."

"I have felt something here," Elof admitted. "But not that." Roc passed his handfuls of food, and while they ate, sitting with their backs to a pillar, Elof told him of his vision. Roc nodded vigorously, his shaggy red hair flopping over his face: he knew Elof well enough not to undervalue his feelings.

"That would be of the last years, maybe," he mused. "When there was mayhem and panic and even bare-faced treason, by all accounts; Kermorvan could tell you more. That face you describe might belong in such a time. The ending was noble enough, aye, but the last throes were savage. They gave Kerbryhaine that bad beginning, come back to haunt it now. Still, it's the nobility that lasted here, I reckon."

Elof nodded. "It is noble, true enough. But it is dead, and a place of great danger for us still." He stared up in dismay. "How will I ever gather enough of this dim glow to light us out of here? It would take a day in itself!"

A plump finger jabbed him in the ribs. "No need for that, boy! Leave it to the Elder Folk to flog their wits for you, as usual! Though I'll admit that the builders of this place were not unpractical, either, in keeping a good store of these ready to hand!" And she dangled before them two long handles of rough stoneware, topped by cages of light metal, and from a bag she tipped lumps of some grayish substance. "What we should have looked for in the first place! Pitch and tow and sweet resin, and many other substances too, I've no doubt. The city folk might have cleared their cellars when they fled, but they'd not bother taking their torches with them!"

"True enough!" acknowledged Kermorvan, coming to join them. To their utter astonishment he laughed aloud, and hugged Ils so boisterously he swung her from the ground. "I should have thought of that myself! The more so, as the Catacombs were intended also as a refuge in time of war, with great store of all necessaries. Little did the builders foresee the coming of that enemy before whom no refuge stands!"

Elof chuckled. "You had much on your mind, just then…"

"True again," said Kermorvan wryly, slumping down beside Elof and accepting some food. "Even yet I am amazed! That the Catacombs endured I could never have dreamed, let alone that it was to them we had come. Your friend the Raven! I am torn between the urge to fall down and revere him, and to wring his neck!"

"And do I not know that urge!" said Elof with deep feeling, and they chuckled. Hemmed in by darkness as they had been, the promise of light made a vast difference to their mood. But when they had eaten and rested a few minutes, Kermorvan swiftly grew serious.

"These Catacombs…" he said quietly, glancing around him. "It is good, very good to have trodden here. To have sat at ease beneath the very citadel and strength of our enemy only adds spice to the drink! But let us not forget that is where we are. Great as it once was, it has become dark and perilous, and even I have neither wish nor cause to linger." He caught up one of the link-holders and thrust a torch onto the spike at its heart. "Let us see how well this burns, after a thousand years!"

Roc was already flicking the wheel of his tinderbox. A fragment of smoldering kindling laid upon the dust-grayed pitch sank and smoked a moment, then blossomed to a flare of bright orange fire that set the shadows capering and dimmed the pallid Icesheen to nothing. The other torch flared as easily in its flame, and that one Kermorvan took. "And when you feel able, Elof, do you capture a little of the torchfire, and give us one safeguard more. Now, let us be gone from here!"

At once, though, it became clear that this would be no easy task. For from this circular hall many ways opened, and they could not agree on which one they had entered by. But at length Kermorvan said, "Do not despair!" and lifted the torch he carried high, almost to the roof. The shadows raced across the stone and capered in the open ways, and he marked the way the flame fluttered. "There is still the flow of the air to follow. It leads us that way, I guess."

"Better than no guide at all!" said Roc cheerfully. "And at least we'll not be stubbing our toes so often now!"

So it proved; for in the bright warm light they passed quickly over the cold flagstones of the ways, past many doorways dark and mysterious. Glancing into some of these side chambers, they found many empty, and some still stacked with bales and boxes they did not stay to examine; in this chill dry air their wood had not decayed. But in others box and bale had been torn asunder and their remains and contents strewn violently about, sometimes right across the corridor, making a considerable obstacle.

"Surely we never passed this!" grumbled Roc, wading awkwardly through a mess of shriveled debris. "We are off our path!"

"If you know another way, take it!" Ils snapped, kicking the rubbish from her boots.

"The air is still with us," said Kermorvan calmly. "It should lead us to some way out, even if not the one by which we came."

"Aye!" retorted Roc, looking behind him into the blackness. "But how soon?"

To that Kermorvan made no reply. He was weary, as the sag of his shoulders betrayed, bone-achingly weary as they all were now that their flush of excitement had worn off, and sorely in need of sleep. Whether it was day or night now in the world above they had no way of knowing; the only hour they cared for was that of their escape from this unhappy place. Roc's tread grew leaden, his head bowed; Elof found his feet dragging, his heart chill. Only Ils, invigorated by being below ground, seemed to keep her strength, her wide eyes gleaming, her heavy boots skipping lightly over the flagstones with scarcely a sound. "Yet this is not my world," she muttered. "We live among soft light and even winds beneath the living stone. And if not those, then sooner harsh sun and bitter weather upon the stark surface than this lifeless shell. Here death alone reigns!" How truly she spoke they were soon to find out.

It was some hours later that the corridor again opened out before them, into the curved wall of a small hall shaped like the halfmoon. Three other ways joined it, but the airflow led them to the straight wall opposite and the great double gateway of steel bars set in it, most skillfully wrought and ornamented. But both outer and inner gates had long ago been twisted and half torn from their deep runners, leaving a gap through which even Kermorvan could pass without ducking. Ils sniffed the new air disdainfully. "Do you not smell it? A faint rankness in it, like an animal odor… It might be bats! And that would bode well, since they must live within reach of a way out."

"Can't be too soon for me!" grunted Roc.

Behind the gate lay a single corridor, wider than any so far, and as they held up their torches the walls seemed to spring to life around them. Carvings covered them from floor to ceiling, delicately detailed but vivid and forceful, figures in low relief of men, women, beasts familiar and strange, tall ships and high towers, wide lands and mysterious horizons. And every now and again, as they moved down the long walls, the strangest figures of all appeared, human in aspect but so eerie and vast, so idealized in their setting, that Elof knew he must be seeing images of the Powers.

"That is so!" said Kermorvan, gazing about him in delight. "This looks to be some private fane, or other place of reverence. For here are depicted tales from the early days of the world, before the coming of men or duergar or any living thing, when it was given over to the Elder Powers for its shaping, and then to the New for the coming of life. Then it was, say the tales, that the Elder Powers rebelled, refusing to hand over the custody of what they had shaped and grown to love, to be used and drastically changed by mere growing things, plants and beasts and men."

Roc snorted. "More fool they. A barren love, that, for a lifeless world; what was there in it worth their interest?"

"More than you might think!" Elof told him. "For there is beauty and order in the patterns of matter that does not live. Think of the slow change and flowering of crystals; might not a snowflake or spar or gemstone be to them as a flower to us? Or at the other extreme, might they not find beauty in the roaring energy of a volcano, the thunder and lightning of great storms, the ceaseless motion of the waves? We can, at times. Even the Ice can be fair, very fair." He looked at one tall image, of a woman, unclad, stately in her beauty, standing amid what seemed to be the waters of a waterfall, save that it hung above mountains, and its flow and billows were all of stars. Kermorvan looked at him and nodded somberly, sharing a memory of majesty and terror. He pointed to the frieze around the image, within which in archaic characters a name was set. Ils lowered her torch and spelled it out.

"T… A… OU… Taounehtar! Brr!" She tilted the torch away hastily. "There's beauty you may have, for my money, and well rid! Why put her on your walls? You neglect the best and greatest of the Elder Powers, the one who never rebelled, him we most revere."

"Ilmarinen," nodded Kermorvan. He lifted his torch, so that the flames spilled and smoked along the roof, and waved a hand at the wall opposite. From floor to ceiling a single vertical slab was set in it, graven with a single vast image. "He was neither forgotten nor neglected. See him there, much as your folk portray him, Ils."

Ils sniffed. "You make him too tall, like a long human, with huge shoulders and spindled legs, not fair and square proportions. And what is he hammering out on his anvil there?"

Elof peered down at the slab. "It is hard to tell… The image seems worn, or defaced…"

Kermorvan held his torch lower. "Mmmn. Yes, there are some gouges and chips out of the edge here, and many deep scratches. By the color of the stone beneath they were done more recently; certainly since the destruc-tion of Morvan. As if something had been clawing at the slab…"

"There's a keyhole here!" barked Roc. "This whole slab's a door!"

"And a solid one, for it has never been opened or broken," said Kermorvan thoughtfully.

Roc groaned. "That'd be safe to sleep behind, if we could only get it open… Elof, you're a sharp lad with locks—"

"Not ones a thousand years old!" protested Elof. "Time alone can weld metal, even without much corrosion. And how am I likely to succeed, when hostile hands have not?"

"Their approach was less subtle," Kermorvan said. "They would not have battered at the door thus if they knew anything of locks. So why not set your hand to it?"