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“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”
The walls of the pipe hurtled past at breakneck speed. The rush of air matched the rush in Dun’s head: half primal fear, half exhilaration. Parts of the pipe were sheer drops, and the only thing he could feel was the thin cushion of air he was falling through. Parts of the pipe were only slightly sloping, but his momentum was so great he flew along these too. He could hear Padg shouting below him, and Tali’s voice closer above. He banged through a bumpy section of pipe and collected yet more bruises. He’d lost count of how many clicks he’d been falling. At least the insides of the pipe were relatively smooth. Dun just started to feel the expanding air beneath him through his air-sense, when he heard a thud and a groan beneath him: Padg touching down. When he shot out of the pipe himself, several clicks later, Padg had rolled out of the way. Before he could collect himself, he heard Tali’s yells barreling toward them.
Thump. Her landing was in a flurry of arms and legs, hers as well as Dun’s. There was a brief awkward silence as they collected themselves.
Padg spoke first, “Come on, out of the way, Myrch won’t be far behind.’”
When Myrch arrived thirty clicks later, he rolled out of the pipe, straight to standing, dusted himself down, and started walking the perimeter of the room.
“Nice trick,” Dun said.
“Yeah, nice,” Padg said. “Where exactly are we?”
“We are under the halls of the Stone King.”
“Leader of the Stone-folk?” Tali said.
“The very same,” Myrch said. “We can rest in this room for a while, the Stone-folk don’t know it’s here.”
This part of the world felt different. Dun could already feel with his air-sense that the volume of this room was much larger than the rooms they had grown up with. The roof was higher and the floors were polished, but oddly, not cold. Dun felt his way along the walls. Every face and corner he could feel was carved and in some way ornate. Nothing written, no definite pictures, but patterns, swirls, and embellishments everywhere. Abandoned now maybe, but once this room had been grand. Dun wondered if someone important lived here, or else the room had an imposing purpose. The room even smelled of stone.
They broke out pack rations, then fell ravenously on the less-than-appetizing dried food. They’d lost track of how long it was they’d now been awake. Myrch sat off to one side of the odd dusty-floored room, so the three friends huddled close together over a warm vent on the wall for comfort. No one spoke for a long time, and Padg found Dun nodding off onto his shoulder.
“Hey, friend,” he said as he nudged him. “Not quite time to sleep yet.”
“Uh? Oh, sorry.”
“You sleep,” Myrch said from across the room. “I’ll take first watch.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Padg said. “But we’ll both take watch. Dun and Tali can relieve us in half a span.”
“Okay,” Myrch said brusquely.
“We can go first if you like,” Tali said.
“No,” Padg said firmly. “You two are exhausted. Get some rest, I’ll be fine.”
Padg was right and in less than a hundred clicks Tali was breathing that steady, slowing breath of the sleeper, and Dun was making quiet vocal half-noises. That left Padg and Myrch in alert silence.
“What was this place?” Padg said.
“No one knows,” Myrch said distantly. “Not even the Stone-folk. They knew once, but no one comes here now.”
“I’m guessing an old palace or something.”
“Perhaps,” Myrch said.
Padg was determined to drill some information out of Myrch, no matter how reluctant he was to talk.
“This River-folk thing is bothering you, isn’t it?” Padg said.
“You’re rather chatty all of a sudden for the strong silent one,” Myrch replied.
“Humor me.”
“This is the point where I remind you that you’re in no position to make demands.”
“Humor me anyway,” Padg said firmly.
After a brief silence, Myrch said, “As it goes, yes, I am bothered. The River-folk don’t normally behave that way and out-of-character behavior concerns me.”
“Why?”
“The River-folk have been vagabonds for years. Feudal ones at that. They tend to fight among families and within families. There are alliances and blood wars going back centuries. Although they are a people with a great knowledge of the Dark, which could bring them great power, they choose instead to bicker internally. It’s somehow in their nature.”
“You suspect someone else is behind this?”
“Yes.” Myrch’s brief reply was strained.
“You know who it is, too,” Padg said.
“I have some theories.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“This ‘non-relationship’ we have is really starting to annoy me.”
“Grow up, Padg. Even if I trusted you, you are not equipped to deal with the knowledge. Besides, as I said, I don’t know anything for certain. Just theories.”
“And you’d not impart any of that to help our chances of success?”
“No. Your best chance of survival, bar none, is to stick with me.”
That closed the discussion, and they sat the rest of their watch out in silence. And silence it really was. Padg hadn’t realized quite how much noise there was back home, until now. Here there was none, just a foreboding stillness. Stone silence. To one end of the room was a large stone door, mostly shut and even when he stretched his air-sense to feel what was coming through the door crack. The answer was: very little. Whatever these cavernous rooms down below the Stone-folk used to be, they were all properly abandoned now. He waited out the rest of their watch meditating. That was something he’d learned in his hunter training, and thus far on their journey, he hadn’t had much chance. Resigned to getting no more out of Myrch, he sat out their turn quietly trying to meditate.
The clicker-beetle that Padg had set at the start of the watch went off in a flurry of ticking, and he woke Dun with a shove of his foot. Wake up. Your turn, Dun. The beetle needs feeding.
Dun gently pushed Tali’s shoulder. “Our turn.”
She groaned and stretched herself. “Anything to eat?” she inquired.
“I’m sure I can rustle something up,” Dun said a little too cheerfully.
They sat and ate quietly until Dun unstopped his water flask with a “bung” noise.
“Wait,” Tali said.
“Eh?” Dun replied with flask halfway to his mouth.
“Here,” she said and took the flask from him. He heard a small dribble as she added something to the flask. “Try now,” she said.
Dun took a mouthful and an explosion of flavors took over his tongue: sweet and bitter, sour and dryly satisfying all at once.
“Wow,” was all he could manage afterward.
“There! We’re not just about smells and melting things!” There was a smile in her voice.
“What is it?” Dun asked.
“Well, that’s just it. We don’t really know. We scored it last big market from an odd trader chap. He didn’t speak much or say where he’d come from or anything, but we traded for loads of it. Now we’re just trying to work out what’s in it and what to do with it. For now, we’ve called it Sweet-water until one of the Elders thinks of a grander name for it.”
“Wow, no idea what it is, and you’re expecting me to drink it?”
“Yes,” Tali said feigning hurt. “We have checked it’s not poisonous.”
“Oh, good,” Dun said. “How did you do that?
“What do you think apprentices are for?” she said.
“It works great in the water.”
“Yeah. I thought it might be nice to bring along if we were out here a while.”
“You’re a bundle of surprises, aren’t you?” Dun said.
“You’ve barely scratched the surface.” She laughed.
They cleared up their packs, putting everything away carefully in case of a hasty exit. Then Tali said, “Shall we go on an explore of the corridor?”
Dun felt a twinge of guilt immediately. “We should stay here. We’re meant to be keeping guard.”
“Yeah, but we could do that from a little way away, couldn’t we? You can feel there’s no one here.”
That was certainly true. However far Dun could stretch his air-sense, there were just big volumes of still air. In the case of what was beyond the crack in the big stone door from their room, it was probably a big corridor of still air.
He was curious enough though and once the initial flush of guilt and responsibility had passed, there was something else. A foretelling feeling, of something that he couldn’t quite put a name to. An odd feeling, like waiting and beginning at the same time. He shook his head to clear it.
“Come on, Dun, you know you want to!” she hissed, giggling.
“All right, but not far and be quiet!” he hissed back.
The stone door was vast. A huge slab of stone worked to a beautiful, decorated surface. Running his hand over it, Dun could feel the fine-grained texture of the tools the mason had used: heavier here, lighter there, almost like the feel of handwriting on a tablet. When they pushed it, the door moved in a graceful arc, despite its weight. They felt the brief movement of air displaced by the door until the swirls passed and once more there was stillness. Ahead of them, they could feel the shape of a long corridor with a high ceiling.
“Glad you came now?” Tali said playfully.
“It’s massive.”
“They were busy folk, whoever they were.”
“I was assuming it was the Stone-folk,” Dun said, the certainty leaving his mind as he spoke.
“I’m thinking way older than the Stone-folk. Could have been anyone. Want to explore a bit?”
At Dun’s intake of breath, Tali said, “Come on. You want to be led astray, really. Relax a little.”
Dun sighed and headed out after Tali’s voice. “You check the river-side wall, I’ll check the far side,” she said cheerfully.
“Shh,” Dun said. “We don’t want to wake anyone.”
“Okay,” she hissed back.
They progressed down the huge stone passageway, feeling the walls as they went.
“What have you got?” Tali hissed, across the corridor.
“What you’d expect, I suppose,” Dun whispered back. “Huge stones making the wall up, very smooth, massive columns with a spiral twist in them. In between there are flat panels carved, feels like huge images of folk, kind of. I imagine they’d be leaders or important tribes-folk.”
“Odd,” Tali said. “Over here I’ve got very simple walls; all rough regular blocks; big pillars, but simple ones. And no carvings at all.”
Into the silence where Dun was mulling the implications, Tali spoke again, “You’d think both sides would match.”
“Perhaps they fancied doing the other side differently.”
“Yeah, but if they did don’t you think it would be just as grand? Different but grand?”
“I suppose so.”
“Don’t suppose, I think,” she said. Her voice was no longer a whisper as she got into her stride. “Think about what these people built. The level of skill in it. And whoever they were, they were bragging.”
Dun had to laugh at that.
“Well,” Tali said, laughing too, “they were. Feel the size of the place.”
She came over to the side of the corridor Dun was on. She took his hand and traced it across the wall until they found one of the relief carvings.
“Feel the craft that’s gone into it.”
Dun felt odd at being led by the hand. He was feeling a queasy sensation in his stomach.
“Now come over to this side.” She rushed across and screamed.
