The Hidden Realm: Book 04 - Ennodius (21 page)

“If the dragon cannot enter here, then why are the doors forced open?” Elerian asked Ascilius in a puzzled voice.

The sight of the broken doors and the lack of any activity or light in the passageway had already drained away much of Ascilius’s earlier confidence. His craggy features mirrored the bewilderment and apprehension that now troubled his mind.

“It is as if someone came through here with a ram,” muttered Ascilius to himself. “I wonder if the Goblins we saw leaving Calenus have somehow got past Eboria and have entered the city ahead of us.”

With Elerian at his side, Ascilius looked briefly into each room they passed, but without exception, they were all devoid of life, and the goods they contained had all been ransacked and plundered. Many of the rooms showed signs of fierce struggles, for there were broken weapons strewn about, and most of the furnishings were smashed.

“I can see why there were no bodies in the larger halls and passageways,” observed Elerian grimly, “for Eboria likely consumed them all, but there are no bodies here either despite the battles that must have taken place in some of the rooms. Did everyone escape to the other levels of the city?” he asked Ascilius, trying to cast a more hopeful light on the mystery.

“More likely, they were carried off,” said Ascilius, who took a darker view of the destruction they had witnessed thus far. “If there are Goblins in the city, they will have enslaved or eaten every Dwarf they got their claws on. It is also clear to me that these shops have all been plundered, which also points to Goblins having entered the city. See, this was a forge room,” he said to Elerian, pointing with his left hand into a room on the left side of the passageway. Inside the room, Elerian saw a brick furnace standing against one of the walls. Various metal working implements were scattered about on the stone floor next to the forge, along with bars of iron and copper.

“There should be ingots of silver and gold here as well as these base metals,” continued Ascilius, “for this was a shop where lights were made. Someone carried all the precious metals away.”

Entering the room, he walked to the far side where a wooden door hung by one hinge. After a cautious look through the doorway, Ascilius stepped into the next room, which was littered with brackets of all sorts that must have been intended to hold mage lights. Ornate fixtures of iron, brass, and copper were scattered about, but nowhere did Elerian see any made of silver or gold.

In the far wall, the door that led out of the room was gone. The large window set in the wall to the right of the entryway was broken. Only small pieces of jagged glass remained in the wooden frame.

“The passageway in the front is one of the main streets of the city,” said Ascilius to Elerian as he walked over to the empty doorframe. After a quick look around, he stepped outside of the shop and suddenly brightened his mage light. Looking over Ascilius’s head, Elerian saw that they were standing in a vaulted tunnel at least forty feet wide. Every inch of exposed stone was polished, its surface gleaming like glass in the rays of Ascilius’s mage light.

The arched ceiling was about thirty feet high at the highest point of the arch. Great brackets of wrought iron hung there, but all their lights were extinguished. A street about twenty feet wide ran down the center of the passageway. On both sides of the underground street were raised sidewalks about ten feet wide. At regular intervals, near the street side edges of the sidewalks, rose pillars of stone carved into the shape of tree trunks, their twisting branches reaching up to the ceiling and spreading across it. Whenever Ascilius moved slightly, his mage light cast shadows among their stone leaves, causing the branches to appear to move. Elerian found the sight both unsettling and eerie, for the stone boughs reminded him of the great arms of an Ondredon preparing to reach down and snatch up some unwary passerby.

On both sides of the underground street, workshops with signs still hung over the doorways fronted the wide sidewalks. Many of them had large windows cut into their walls, although few of them had any glass left in them. Most of the shops had second floors with smaller windows and balconies, but the upper windows were all also mostly broken. Elerian thought the darkened openings resembled empty, staring eyes.

Against the outer walls of the shops were carved stone benches where, in happier times, the residents of the city must have taken their ease. The destruction that had taken place in the shops had also spilled outside, for the sidewalks were littered with debris. Smashed wagons and white bones littered the polished stone of the street. Because the bones were large, Elerian guessed that they had belonged to the ponies that had drawn the wagons.

“They were eaten on the spot instead of being carried away,” thought Elerian bleakly to himself.

Ascilius took in the damage with a grim look on his face.

“Eboria most certainly caused the destruction in the streets and the front rooms of the workshops, for she can easily fit through the larger tunnels in front of the shops, but she could not possibly have reached into the back rooms,” he said to Elerian. “If Goblins raided the secondary rooms as I suspect, then they may still be in the city. We are ill equipped to deal with them since we have only our bare hands to defend ourselves, so stay close and make as little noise as possible,” he whispered to Elerian before dimming his mage light again. The small light maintained its position above his head, lighting his way as he suddenly dashed across the street, plunging through an open doorway on the far side. Elerian followed close on his heels.

The shop they entered appeared to have been a weapons shop. It was ransacked, but Elerian found a long knife and a sword for himself in the debris on the floor. Ascilius eagerly availed himself of an ax, swishing it through the air with his right hand as if eager to start cleaving Goblin skulls. They both also found reinforced leather tunics that were a fair fit.

Once they were armed, Ascilius led the way into the forge room in the back. Hardly sparing a glance at the room, he walked across it and out through the back door into the service tunnel at the rear of the shop. As Elerian, who was behind Ascilius, passed the shattered door that hung from the doorframe, something odd about it caught his eye. Stopping short, he lit his own mage light and then bent down to examine the surface of the door. The faint rays of his light clearly showed deep, parallel scratches as wide as his little finger in the surface of the thick oak panels.

“Ascilius, come look,” Elerian called softly to the Dwarf. “The gashes on this door look like they were made by the claws of a large animal.”

A MYSTERY

Ascilius, who had turned to his left after passing through the doorframe, was already a score of feet away. At the sound of Elerian’s voice, he impatiently turned around and returned to the entryway, certain that Elerian was mistaken about what he saw.

“The only animal down here is the dragon,” he muttered to himself, but when he stooped and examined the door panels, he had to admit to himself that the long, deep furrows in the wood did indeed resemble the marks of claws wielded by some mighty paw.

“They do look like claw marks, but I cannot guess what sort of creature made them,” agreed Ascilius at last, wondering to himself what on earth had occurred in his city.

“First, the possibility of Goblins and now some large, unknown creature,” he thought to himself in confusion. “Nothing in my own experiences or in the histories of my race offers any explanation for what has happened here.”

“The marks were certainly not made by Goblins,” he said aloud to Elerian. “Maybe there are Trolls in the city,” he speculated in a perplexed voice. Unconsciously, he began to tug at his beard with his right hand as he tried to fathom the mystery before him.

“Let us go on,” he said at last to Elerian, “keeping our eyes and ears open. The creature or creatures that made these marks may still be lurking about.”

They resumed their explorations, walking through miles of dark tunnels and peering into innumerable, silent, empty rooms with only the mage lights that floated like minute yellow sparks above their heads to light their way. It was tense, nerve-racking work, for even though they were safe from Eboria, they did not know what else might leap out at them from the darkness that rose up like a wall at the edge of the dim pool of light cast by their mage lights.

Throughout their explorations, Elerian remained confident of their direction, for even with his eyes closed, he always had a sense of where north, south, east, and west were, but the individual tunnels they travelled quickly became a blur in his mind. He doubted that he could have retraced their exact route on his own. Ascilius, on the other hand, in spite of the darkness and an absence of many years, seemed to know exactly where he was going, for he led the way without faltering once. Occasionally during their long and discouraging search, he cautiously called out in a soft but penetrating voice meant to reach any Dwarf who might be in hiding, but he never received any answer.

They might have walked for hours or days for all that Elerian could tell. Away from the friendly light of the sun, moon, and stars; he had no way to mark the passage of time in this dark, deserted city. When Ascilius entered yet another room and looked around, he began to wonder if they would ever stop their futile search of this level of the city.

“The door leading to the front of the shop and the door leading into the alley are still sound,” said Ascilius unexpectedly in a discouraged voice “We may as well barricade them as well as we can and stop to rest here for a while.”

Without waiting for Elerian to answer, he closed the heavy wooden door leading into the front of the shop. The lock was damaged, but the crossbar brackets set in the wall on either side of the door were still intact. Ascilius was able to bar the door from the inside with a stout crossbar of oak that he found among the debris on the floor.

“It may not do us much good to bar the doors,” thought Elerian to himself as he examined the shattered remnants of the original crossbar for the back door which lay on the floor near the entranceway, shattered by some powerful, unknown force. As Elerian closed the door, he noticed more claw marks on the outside surface of the door, but he said nothing to Ascilius.

“He has enough to worry about at the moment,” thought Elerian to himself as he used a transformation spell to fashion a new crossbar from a heavy timber that he found lying on the floor. The spell loosened the bonds which held the oak in its present form, allowing Elerian to shape it with his long, clever fingers, as if it were now a piece of soft clay.

After dropping the new crossbar into its brackets, Elerian turned and examined the room around him. It was plainly illuminated to his night wise eyes by the faint rays of his mage light, which maintained a constant, fixed position above his head.

From the thick layer of undisturbed dust that lay over everything, Elerian guessed that he and Ascilius were the first living creatures to enter the room in quite some time. Overturned benches and chairs, broken pottery wheels, and shards of earthenware littered the floor. A stairs on his right led to a second floor.

 “Most shops had apartments above them where the owners could rest,” explained Ascilius to Elerian as he began to ascend the steps, his right hand on his ax, for there was no telling what they might find upstairs.

After he followed Ascilius up the stairs, Elerian found himself in a large, deserted room that faced the main street in front of the shop. It must have once been a sort of parlor, for there was overturned furniture strewn about on the floor.

Ascilius walked toward a doorway in the back of the room which stood open, revealing a hall with four doors. While Ascilius walked down the hall and cautiously opened each door, Elerian remained behind him, his right hand ready on his sword hilt. The first door on the left led into a bathroom. The other doors led a small kitchen and two rooms must have been bedrooms, judging from the remnants of the furniture they found lying on their floors. None of the rooms had windows.

“There is nothing here, good or bad,” said Ascilius in a discouraged voice after they had looked into the last room without finding anything of interest. “We may as well wash up and slake our thirst,” he said tiredly as he walked back up the hall and entered the first room on their right.

Elerian followed the Dwarf and watched with interest as Ascilius opened a brass spigot set in one of the walls, sending a stream of cold, clear water gushing into a large polished stone basin that stood on a pedestal at the level of his waist. Side by side, they washed and then drank deeply of the water gushing from the faucet.

“I wish it was a basin full of beer instead of water,” said Ascilius as he dried his face on a towel that he found on the floor.

“I might manage a few mugs, if I can find some containers,” replied Elerian.

While Elerian hung blankets over the two large windows that faced the street, Ascilius lit a small red mage fire in the fireplace that was set into the wall opposite the stairs. The red flames set flickering shadows to dancing in the corners of the room and quickly warmed the air near the fireplace.

After emptying the contents of their packs in front of the fire, Elerian and Ascilius hung up their still damp clothes to dry on a makeshift clothesline, for between the rain of the last two days and the time they had spent in the river, everything they owned was thoroughly soaked. Wrapped in their cloaks, they sorted through their provisions. The smoked meat, fruit, and chestnuts they had taken from the way station were still edible, but they found that all of their flour and cheese had been ruined by the river.

 Ascilius cooked thick slices of ham and bacon in an iron frying pan that he found in the kitchen while Elerian toasted chestnuts on a grating he discovered lying on the floor. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire, they ate their warm meal, washing it down with beer that Elerian made in two mismatched mugs, also taken from the kitchen.

Ascilius had little to say as they ate. Elerian thought the Dwarf's face had taken on a haunted look. He had almost certainly known many of the Dwarves who had owned the shops they had searched, and the knowledge that they might all have perished was almost certainly weighing heavily on him. After they had eaten, Ascilius extinguished the fire. Righting an overturned couch, he wrapped himself in his now dry cloak and blankets, falling into an uneasy sleep on its torn pillows. His mage light still hovered over his head as he slept; illuminating his craggy, care worn features with a soft light.

“Poor fellow,” thought Elerian sympathetically to himself as he put on clothes that were now warm and dry. “It must have been a terrible shock for him to find things so different here in the city from what he first expected.”

Like Ascilius, Elerian was tired from the exertions of the day, but he was not sleepy in the least. After extinguishing his mage light, he walked up to the left window at the front of the room. Pulling back a corner of the blanket that masked the opening, he looked out at the street below. The darkness outside was complete, even to his eyes. Not a single sound came to his sharp ears, but it was easy to imagine some large, unknown creature prowling the dark streets and shops, looking for flesh to devour. Opening his third eye, Elerian saw only the dead black of lifeless stone. No shades prowled those dark streets before him, but he was not reassured.

“Even my mage sight cannot see through stone,” Elerian reminded himself. “Who knows what lurks inside the empty buildings around us. The dragon, too, might be abroad.”

Elerian thought it odd that they had not already seen Eboria prowling the main streets of the city, which were more than large enough to hold her enormous bulk. Had her threat been an empty one after all? Perhaps Ascilius was right to say that she was no longer a threat to them.

Elerian let the blanket fall. After righting one of the chairs, he relit his mage light and sat down. Calling his spell book to his right hand, he opened it, poring over the spells on ring making that he had recently added. As he read, the silence around him was complete, except for the slow steady breathing of Ascilius.

“There is something about these spells that I find both objectionable and dangerous, something that Dymiter never mentioned,” thought Elerian to himself after a while. “A ring fashioned with them would be able to command power from others, much as the ring of Torquatus does. I could never make such a ring. It would be inherently evil, and in time, I think it would inevitably lead anyone who wore it onto a dark path.”

Tiring of his studies, Elerian finally sent his book away. Thinking to amuse himself and to perfect his mastery of his new elemental spell at the same time, he entered the bathroom. After plugging the drain in the basin with a bit of cloth, he turned on the spigot, filling it almost to the brim. Raising his right hand, he cast a transformation spell at the water, but raised only a small ripple on the surface. Opening his magical third eye, Elerian saw that the water in the basin was dead black and lifeless. Passing his right hand through the dark liquid, he raised silver ripples on its surface.

“The water needs to be in motion in order to feed the spell,” thought Elerian to himself.

Unplugging the basin and turning on the spigot, he watched as the water in the washbowl turned a bright silver color, full of energy again. Raising his right hand, Elerian cast a second spell, watching as a small golden orb flew from his fingertips to strike the water in the basin. Closing his third eye, he saw the upper bodies of a pair of small, sleek otters emerge from the clear water flowing through the basin. As they reared up their heads to look at him with round clear, eyes, he attempted to touch one of them, but his fingers passed through the otter's small sleek head and came away wet.

“They have form and are able to move, but their substance is still water,” thought Elerian to himself. “Still, it may be a useful spell in the future. I can annoy Ascilius with it if nothing else.”

 
He caused the otters to swim through the water that filled the basin until he felt that he had perfected his mastery of the spell.

“Too bad I cannot get them over to Ascilius,” thought Elerian to himself, his gray eyes shining brightly as he imagined Ascilius’s reaction if the two elementals crawled beneath his clothes while he slept.

“Another time,” he thought to himself as he turned off the spigot. The two small elementals vanished as the water drained away from the basin. Leaving the bathroom, Elerian slept perhaps an hour in his chair before rising to prepare a meal. Lighting a mage fire in the fireplace, he set a double handful of chestnuts inside the flames to roast. In their one small pan, he began to cook slices of smoked bacon.

The tantalizing smell of frying bacon soon woke Ascilius. After the Dwarf dressed himself in his now dry clothes, he and Elerian ate in front of the fireplace, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“What is the plan for today?” Elerian asked Ascilius as they ate.

“I would like to spend one more day exploring the second level, although I no longer expect to find any of my people alive in this part of the city,” said Ascilius in a grim voice. “It is certain the dragon did not kill them, but perhaps the mysterious creature which left its claw marks on the doors may have had a hand in their disappearance. There may be Goblins and even Trolls in the city,” said Ascilius, absently tugging on his beard. “I really do not know what to think at this point.”

“Another day in this empty tomb,” thought Elerian to himself dispiritedly, but he said nothing to Ascilius.

As soon as they finished their breakfast, they packed their knapsacks. With tiny mage lights hovering over their heads, following them wherever they went, they left the shop, resuming their tense, nerve-racking exploration of Ennodius. Again, they followed the service roads in back of the shops where Eboria could not enter. Hands on their weapons, they searched room after room, gradually working their way to the center of the city.

Despite the need to guard against surprise attacks, Elerian eventually found that he was growing bored, never a good thing for Ascilius. Despite the seriousness of their situation, a predatory gleam gradually entered his clear gray eyes as he observed Ascilius’s overwrought state.