37

Pillars of Agrothas

I think we’re making progress!” Margrave said cheerfully.

Eryn conjured another light-globe with her left hand and anchored it to one of the four corner posts of the barge. Each of the mystics present had taken turns igniting the lights and staggered the times of their conjuration lest all of them failed at once and they be forced to endure the darkness. Satisfied that the globe would both remain aglow and at the upper end of the post, she responded quietly. “Yes, I believe we are, Master Margrave.”

“In er day,” Cephas said with pride, “the Dwarven Road bright as er was. Light filled the whole road so as men might comfort take in their sight. Alas, such days er no more.”

Eryn peered over the edge of the barge to the waters around them. She and most of her companions had lost all concept of the passage of the hours, but the dwarf, fortunately, proved to be an admirable timekeeper. By his reckoning they had traveled through the night of the world above and were well into the morning of the second day since entering the Khagun-Mas.

To Eryn, it seemed like an eternity.

The channel had narrowed somewhat since they first entered the gaping maw that swallowed them two evenings before. It twisted in its course considerably through what Cephas had called the Slot Crags, a channel of rough white-tipped water. It banked up against the sharply curving walls that suddenly appeared out of the darkness before them by the dim light of their glowing magical illuminations. Eryn remained outwardly calm though she was terrified by the thought that they were being swallowed by some great beast. Soon enough, however, the passage widened again and the surface smoothed out considerably, although their speed did not diminish. The black waters around them moved as swiftly as the barge they carried, so it was often difficult for her to gauge their movement except for those occasions when the flow of the river brought them close enough to the rock face for their dim globes to illuminate it. At those times, Eryn could see that their speed was often frightening—faster than anything she had feared to experience.

Dangerous as it seemed, she slowly learned to trust the river. Initially, the roar of a waterfall cascading down the walls of the river had unnerved her, but as Cephas explained, their cascade was deliberate; a safety measure put in place by dwarves now centuries gone so that should the flow of the Dwarven Road be interrupted for any reason along its path, the lower portions would continue to flow to their destination. They were called Continuance Falls and Eryn soon became accustomed to the occasional cascade, finding comfort in its marking their progress. The waters, after their initial turbulent beginning, had unexpectedly slowed nearly to a standstill in one large cavern where the dim outlines of an underground town hovered at the edge of their vision. Its dark windows and portals seemed to look back at Eryn like the dry sockets of a long dead skull. Cephas called it Gateport and only shook his head sadly in response to her questions about its fate.

The current then picked up once more, driving them into a narrow slot between the walls, constricting the water and causing its speed to increase precipitously. Lucian feared for a time that the rush would capsize them at the first turn, but to their considerable amazement, no turn was forthcoming.

“The Medras Chute,” Cephas intoned as the barge beneath them groaned ominously. The walls flew by. “Fast as an arrow and true as er is! One hundred and eight miles from Gateport to the Pillars of Agrothas er is. We make the time in just more than three hours and a half sure thanks to chutes like this!”

Eryn could only assume the dwarf had been right about the time. Now past the chute and with another two hours before they reached the Pillars of Agrothas, they were deep under the mountains and certainly well past exhaustion. The river widened again and slowed to a more docile rate. Three more of the Continuance Falls were passed without incident. Caelith had finally succumbed to fatigue and lay sleeping soundly, his head pillowed by his own bedroll. Lucian, too, lay curled up next to the pile of supplies on the center of the barge. Even Margrave had stopped his incessant chatter and lay snoring softly, with Anji curled up tightly on herself in the crook of his arm.

Caelith had assigned the first watch to Eryn, Cephas, and Jorgan. She knew his reasoning; between her and the dwarf, Jorgan could be watched. So she kept busy with the illumination globes and tried not to think of how very much stone there was hanging over her head.

Across the waters, their globes dimly illuminated the outlines of another dwarven city, carved out of the cavern wall on the farther shore. The angular lines of the dwarven architecture cast shifting, stark shadows from the lights on the barge. At the water’s edge, Eryn could make out docks and the gaping maw of giant warehouses. The city buildings rose in concourses up from the shoreline, extending past the limits of their vision toward the unseen cavern wall high overhead. As they drifted past, Eryn could see that the huge city jutted out into the waters on a peninsula, its farthest tip crowned by a graceful tower of carved onyx. It looked like a great underground ship.

“Kunjung Het er is.” Cephas nodded, then sniffed. “Here be the road from Westwall Basin joining with us. Confluence er is. Yon city be its port. Songs, food, and rest for weary travelers; alas er is no more.”

“Should we stop there for the night?” Eryn asked, gazing at the columns and walls barely discernible from the blackness.

“Nay, lass,” Cephas said, shaking his head sadly as he settled down, resting his head against a pot and adjusting his blindfold. “Tragedy were there as ever er was. Spirits find no rest in Kunjung Het. Best we travel on; leave the dead to their woes.”

A city of the dead, Eryn thought. She believed she had seen such a place in her dreams. The dwarven ruin slid past them quickly as two rivers joined around the black polished tower, quickly carrying them once more into the dark tunnels.

For another half-hour she tried to keep her mind focused on their progress, but she knew she was tired and could feel herself falling into reverie. She pictured the abandoned Kunjung Het as though it were bathed in sunlight. There was an elliptical garden, now overgrown and wild in the center of the city surrounded by beautiful buildings. A curious little figure ran frantically along the bright curve of the streets, perhaps looking for the other dwellers and wondering where they had gone. Then the vision vanished and she knew again that the city was not alive and in the light; it was a tomb for its past rightly buried deep underground with its dead.

She shivered once more.

Silently, a cloak slipped about her shoulders; she turned quickly, startled.

Jorgan raised his hands as he stepped cautiously back. “You were cold—I thought the cloak might help.”

She gazed into his eyes and saw only pain.

Jorgan looked away from her, his gaze seeming to search for anything other than Eryn to fix on. “It’s—it’s these caverns—the stones seem to pull the warmth right from the bones.”

“Don’t they,” Eryn said, smiling, “although I don’t think I’d care to say so in front of the dwarf.”

“No,” the Inquisitas replied rather self-consciously. “I suppose not. Well . . .”

Jorgan turned from her and stepped carefully toward the edge of the barge.

Eryn drew the cloak in closer around her. She considered Jorgan. What did they know of him, really? He was the first son of Galen—acknowledged by everyone including Jorgan—and had been reared among the Pir monks under the care of his mother. His manners were abrupt, even for the Pir, but so far as she knew he had never deliberately led them wrong. In all their long and rambling conversations on the road, he had never shown her anything of his heart, his life, or his soul beyond his unshakable and abiding faith in Vasska and the Pir. He was a mystery. But then so was his brother. She knew what little Caelith had revealed of himself to her beyond the armor of a warrior’s life had cost him dearly, because it was a gentle place in his soul. It was something those who are most capable in battle can ill afford to reveal. She had guarded that gentle place with her own heart and it had been broken in return. Why had he left? Why didn’t he at least offer her an explanation now? She grimaced and realized how neither brother liked to explain himself to anyone. Long ago she had learned to turn the key that held Caelith’s secrets. Would knowing Jorgan’s secrets help her? Would Jorgan trust her here in this strange place enough to reveal his inner workings? The siblings were alike and yet vastly different. One brother found strength in his faith, the other in his sword arm, and both were willing to reveal little else—two sides of the same blessing coin.

Eryn shook off her thoughts and took a step toward Jorgan. “I should have said thank you for the cloak.”

He turned his head slightly in her direction. “It is not necessary.”

“Perhaps.” Eryn smiled gently. “But I thank you nevertheless.”

Jorgan, his back still to Eryn, crossed his arms and continued to stare out into the darkness.

“What are you thinking?” she asked quietly, stepping up to stand beside him. She held still, wondering if he would answer.

His eyes remained fixed on the darkness. She waited patiently for his response.

At last, he drew in a deep breath. “We are blind, all of us, you know. We think we see where we are going and that we somehow determine our own fate—but it’s not true. We are set adrift like this barge and float down our destiny. We struggle, we toil, we learn, but after it all we just ride out our fate to its end—a fate determined by the dragon-gods from before our births and played out to our final breath.”

“Are you playing out your fate, Jorgan?” Eryn asked evenly.

Jorgan shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the river continuing to push them deeper under the mountain. “No more than anyone else. No more than you.”

Eryn shook her head. “I don’t believe that the gods would be so cruel as to give us our will in life and leave us without any hope of changing our fates. Why struggle at all?”

“Because the struggle is the point,” Jorgan said firmly, his voice carefully controlled. “The struggle is ordained by the dragon-gods. My struggle—everyone’s struggle—is ordained by the gods, who foresee our ends to their purposes; not ours.”

“Then was it the will of your dragon-gods that your father became the first of the mystics?” Eryn asked quietly. “Was it the will of Vasska that left you without a father or a brother down all those years?”

Jorgan shook his head. “You do not understand—”

“Then help me to understand,” Eryn responded quickly.

“My father,” Jorgan began, his voice heavy with emotion, “abandoned my mother and me to pursue a blasphemous and sinful study that has brought nothing but pain and degradation to all those who have pursued it and blinded them to the truth of the Pir and the doctrines of Vasska. He destroyed my mother’s heart and robbed me of a home I might have had . . .”

“But the magic chose him,” Eryn said. “He didn’t ask for it.”

“That is my very point,” Jorgan said calmly in return. “That was his fate, every bit ordained and foreknown by the dragon-gods. My sufferings—my pain—all have been passed to me through the fate of that terrible, cursed man and it is my destiny to balance that out; to endure its shame and to pursue my own destiny in the service of the dragon-gods that I might blot out the shame of my father and undo with my own destiny that which my father has wrought in his.”

“Your gods, I think, ask that you carry too great a burden,” Eryn said quietly. “I’ve listened to everything you’ve said along the way—about your mother, your father, Tragget, and your destiny. I know you see wrong in your past, but the wrong isn’t your doing. You shoulder the weight of everyone else’s sins as though you alone were responsible for them. What if you left it behind—forgave your father and looked for a new destiny of your own?”

“Are you a woman of faith?” Jorgan said sharply, turning to face her.

“I don’t—well, I believe in the Deep Magic. I believe it is up to me to choose my life.”

“Then from what you tell me, your faith is in your own ability, the strength to change the course of your destiny through the force of your will,” Jorgan said, his gaze fixed intently on Eryn’s eyes. “To presume to change our fates is to take onto ourselves the very power of the gods. What arrogance! Look!”

He grasped her shoulders and turned her to face outward once more. The barge had drifted toward the near wall with the current. Now, towering above them from below the level of the water stood rank after rank of carved colossi: mammoth figures of dwarves whose heads vanished into the darkness beyond the reach of their dim light. About each were deeply engraved figures which shifted as their light moved past them.

“Here are the dwarf kings of the Khagun-Mas!” Jorgan said, his powerful grip pressing into Eryn’s shoulders. “Here is what is left of them and their gods! They believed themselves lords over their own fate and worshipped such gods as pleased them! Where are they now, the great builders of the Dwarven Road?”

Jorgan pulled her shoulders backward into him. She could feel his breath on her cheek as he pressed his face against her hair. “Would I change my fate? I am tired of living with the pain of my own existence! If I could, I would choose the life of a tender word, a quiet place, and a moment of rest. I would choose a passionate embrace and the hot blood of ecstasy—or for nothing more than a simple cottage in a land that had never known war.”

His mouth slid closer to her ear. “But I cannot, for that is not my destiny.”

He released her and moved slowly to the corner of the barge.

It was some time before Eryn thought to move from where she stood.

 

I sit cross-legged at the edge of the barge, the river carrying us flowing over the stage below. The lamps of the theater are dimmed and I can see nothing more of the stage than what is illuminated by the globe of light directly overhead.

The young girl Anji stands on the opposite side of the barge smiling at me. Everyone else in my party is also on the barge, but their voices are faint and distant, their bodies transparent. They take no notice of me or the girl. It is as though they were ghosts from another place and a different time.

The girl speaks. “You are still sad, Caelith Arvad?”

“That is a strange way to start a conversation, Anji,” I say ruefully.

“Nevertheless, you are still sad,” the girl replies.

“I don’t know where all this is leading; what it all means,” I answer her from across the barge. “We struggle—we die—and for what? Some legend that may not even be true. I’m not even sure I care anymore.”

Anji looks up and around her at the darkness and says, “Sometimes, when I think the road is too hard or too long I have to remember that all roads lead somewhere—else why would someone have made them? I mean, there may be more roads beyond, but they go somewhere, too, don’t they?”

I smile at the thought. “Yes, I suppose they do.”

Anji lowers her head for a moment, biting at her lip as she considered. “People join us on our travels, Margrave and me. Sometimes they only walk for a day or so and sometimes they stay with us for months and months; but they always leave us sometime and the road keeps going on, and so do we. People come and go but the road goes on. Every hello had a good-bye to follow it, but we just don’t know when and we don’t get to choose. Is it that way with you?”

My eyes squeeze tight against the pain. “I’ve said a lot of good-byes lately, Anji—and it wasn’t their choice to leave.”

“No?” She frowns. “But they’re just on another road, Caelith, traveling same as you and I. Trust me, I’ve seen enough of the road to know.”

“Trust you?” I ask sadly, shaking my head. “How can I trust anyone?”

“Well,” Anji answers with a bright smile. “If not me, you can trust yourself! There’s always another road, Caelith Arvad; all we have to do is find it.”

I smile. “How come you only talk to me?”

“That’s funny!” Anji giggles. “I talk to everyone when I have something they want to hear.”

BOOK OF CAELITH BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME IX, FOLIO 1, LEAF 74

“Caelith! Wake up!”

The young warrior sat up quickly and found himself suddenly disoriented. “What? What has happened? Is it time for my watch?”

Lucian’s face was grinning down at him, his face a strange pale green color. “No, old man, it is not time for your watch, but you’ve got to see this!”

“See what?” Caelith said, standing unsteadily on the deck of the barge.

“See that you can see!” Lucian smiled enigmatically.

“Of course I can see! The globes are—”

It was then Caelith noticed that the illumination globes at the corners of the barge were gone. He glanced up and smiled. “I’ve never seen the like!”

The ceiling, more than thirty feet above the river, shone down on them with a dim glow of its own. Long patches of moss radiated greenish flecks of cold light. Its illumination was faint, but for the first time, Caelith felt some sense of his surroundings and was comforted.

“It’s like the night sky underground,” Lucian said in awe.

“Aye,” Cephas said. “’Tis star moss. ’Twere cultivated by the Khagun. Means we be nearing the Agrothas.”

“The what?” Lucian asked.

“The Agrothas!” Margrave intoned. “The Starless Sea of Khagun-Mas! Deep below the roots of Mount Shandar, the gods took the blessed waters of their most precious tears and hid them from the sight of man. Held sacred by the dwarves of the Khagun, the waters of the Agrothas flowed at the whim of the dwarven kings and brought life to their cities. So important were its waters that each of the different clans of the dwarves lay claim to it by divine right and the Starless War was fought below the mountain for over a hundred years. Then, in the early days of the emperors of Rhamas, Imperator Mnarish the Second brought peace to the dwarven clans who had been at war for nearly a century. In gratitude, the clans of the Khagun built the Dwarven Road. The northbound road and the southbound road both passed through the same place only twice; at Calsandria and here, at Agrothas.”

“Margrave?”

“Yes, Master Lucian?”

“I am astonished,” the mystic said, beaming. “You have just said something completely useful!”

“Indeed?” Margrave sniffed. “Then may I suggest that you observe wonders that words cannot convey? Behold, the wonder that is the Agrothas!”

Docks appeared on either side of the cavern, carved buildings of dwarven design reaching back into the living stone. It was another port but this was somehow different. Some sort of mechanism was mounted on the ceiling above, fitted with rusted chains and hooks that ran down to capstans on the docks to either side. Caelith caught a glimpse of several small bays set back away from the current of the river sailing quickly past. Then, abruptly, the buildings ended, the cavern ended, but the barge and river sailed on.

Caelith crouched down, his eyes wide. Eryn cried out, quickly grabbing one of the corner posts on the barge and holding on to it for her life. Lucian and Jorgan also reached for one of the posts, their mouths slack with awe.

They saw the surface of the Starless Sea glittering beneath the soft glow of the star moss—two thousand feet below them. An immense stone aqueduct carried the river high above the sea below, bridging the gap from the cavern wall to a tunnel carved through one of several huge limestone columns that rose out of the sea to spread against the roof of the colossal underground space. The cavern was at least thirty miles in length, most of its entire expanse lit by the soft glow of the star moss, though they could not see the farthest end, for it lay completely in shadow.

“By the gods!” Caelith murmured. “The river flies!

The barge moved fast down the aqueduct, passing quickly through one of the columns, turning slightly and then emerging once more high above the sea. The river was accelerating, its noise against the sides of the barge and the stones of the aqueduct growing louder.

“These be the Pillars of Agrothas,” Cephas called out. “Lugjen be the port the far side er is. Be there soon as er is!”

“Why is it getting darker?” Lucian shouted.

“Star moss dying er is,” Cephas shouted. “Nay worry be.”

The dim shape of a tunnel flew past them; then they emerged into darkness. Caelith could still see the glow of the cavern behind them but could not make out where they were heading. “Lucian, we need some light again.”

“I’m still a bit tired, friend,” Lucian called back. “What about Eryn?”

“No, I’ve got it,” Caelith yelled. He held up his arm, then searched within himself for his connection to the magic.

“What is that sound?” Eryn cried out.

“What did you say?” Margrave shouted. “I can’t hear you for the noise!”

“It’s getting louder!” Eryn yelled. “Caelith?”

Caelith connected with the magic, concentrated—and the globe of light flared into existence.

“No!” he shouted.

He stared past the bow of the barge. The Dwarven Road had come to an abrupt end. A section of the aqueduct had fallen, the waters of the road cascading over the edge and down toward the distant sea now beyond the limits of his feeble light.

Eryn screamed.

Caelith turned toward her, trying to reach her, but it was too late.

The barge shot from the top of the broken aqueduct, tumbling downward with Caelith’s light into the darkness below.