8: THE UNDERROADS

(Kihrin’s story)

As soon as I set foot on the fourth stair, lights turned on in the vast room beyond. The chamber revealed looked as large as the D’Mon Blue Palace’s banquet room, which had previously taken top marks as the largest interior space I’d ever seen in my life.¹ Columns filled the room at regular intervals, leading down to a floor decorated with repeating black and white tiles. Several pillars sported cracks and visible damage, but the room didn’t seem to be in any danger of collapse. Toward the far side, dirt and silt had slowly invaded from corridors branching off, giant round tunnels leading into darkness. The invading dirt hadn’t done any harm other than covering the tile floor. Benches sat spaced around the room, but nothing else that might be considered furniture.

In the old days, there would have been more. There would have been magical constructions, enchanted wagons, people. Now, only dust and shadows remained.

“Come on.” I took the stairs two at a time and ran for the panel at the bottom. The controls to close the door again. Rol’amar might not be able to reach us inside the chamber, but the roaming dead the dragon animated most certainly could. I also didn’t know if the dragon would be able to smash his way inside, but I had hoped we could all hide before he noticed where we had gone.

The morgage ran inside, setting up a defensive line with the women and children in the center. Despite this gender-based protectiveness, the morgage woman with the green gem and Janel herself came through the door last.

“Shut it!” Janel yelled.

I hit the panel.

Nothing happened.

There was stunned silence.

I hit it again.

Gears grinding echoed through the room as the doors began to close.

Every living being in the room exhaled.

“What were you thinking?” Teraeth rounded on Janel immediately. “If you go running off every time you hear a fight—”

Janel reached out, grabbed Teraeth’s neckline, and jerked him down to her eye level.

I looked around, concerned with spectators. With the immediate danger of “undead dragon” passed, or at least literally out of sight, the morgage turned their attention to us.

Those stares were not universally friendly.

Morgage traditionally rewarded intruders into the Blight with death. I’d be hard-pressed to say whether they hated Quuros or vané more.²

“Shut. Up.” Janel growled at Teraeth through clenched teeth. “We’ll talk about what I did and why later, but right now, I need to be in charge, and you need to act like I’m in charge. Do you understand?” She tilted her head and raised her voice so it echoed through the hall. “Don’t be in such a hurry to be an old woman. I can think of better uses for that mouth.”

Teraeth was so stunned, he just stared at her. Then he started to make an angry reply. Started to, but then he too noticed the morgage giving us ugly looks. His eyes swept from side to side, taking in the scene, and then he knelt before Janel. “Please forgive me.” He bowed his head.

I could feel the pause in the air, the hesitation.

… and then the morgage stopped paying attention to us. They returned to treating their injured, assessing the casualties.

“What just happened?” I asked Thurvishar.

The wizard didn’t seem to understand any better than I did. “I’m not … I’m not sure. Except have you noticed this group seems to be matriarchal?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure the group I met the last time was too.” I eyed the leader, the one carrying the green gem. She had black skin with a silver-scaled stripe down her face. “Wait … you know, I think this is the same group. That’s the morgage woman I met in Kharas Gulgoth last time.”

“Extraordinary,” Thurvishar said.

I had a feeling our D’Lorus friend would have been hip deep in note-taking if only he’d had ink and paper with him.³

Several hulking morgage men made their way over to us, or rather, over to Janel. “The Dry Mother will see you,” one said in surprisingly good Guarem. “Just you.”

Janel laughed. “Do you think I was a boy yesterday? My husbands come with me.”

“Husb—” I started to say.

Teraeth stepped past me. “Just go with it.” He adapted fast after his bad start. Teraeth stepped before Janel, openly spinning a dagger. Getting into someone’s personal space as an intimidation technique was a language he spoke well. For some reason the size difference didn’t seem to matter so much.

A morgage man grunted, then shrugged, popping out the spines along his forearms. “Just one husband.”

Janel rolled her eyes. “And I say all of them. If another woman wants to contradict me, tell her to come to me and explain her reasons.”

Several more morgage stepped up. They had their weapons out: spears, javelins, and those spines on their arms. Poisoned spines, I reminded myself. Several morgage growled, nose tentacles twitching.

Janel stretched one shoulder, then the other, as if warming up for a fight. “Do you want to do this?” She asked the question rhetorically; clearly, she already knew the answer. Janel grinned, her expression almost shockingly feral.

She’d been raised in a culture that relished fighting. She wasn’t necessarily faking her enthusiasm. I suspected the same was true for the morgage; more giant men circled us. Not a single one stood shorter than seven feet tall.

“Great,” I muttered. At least I had a sword.

A woman’s voice rang out, saying something in the morgage tongue. The men reacted immediately, and they all sighed and began putting away their weapons.

“Fine,” one said grudgingly. “All your husbands.”

“You might just die an old woman yet.” Janel smiled. The morgage man grinned in response and ducked his head in what could be easily interpreted as a bow.

We followed Janel. I still carried a naked blade, but the morgage didn’t seem to think that unusual or, more importantly, rude.

The men escorted us to the woman with the green gem, which now sat nestled against her bosom. Up close, the gem sparkled yellow green, the color of new leaves or fresh grass. Chrysoberyl or peridot.

And it had to be a Cornerstone. She hadn’t had it with her the last time I’d encountered her; she’d have used it against Relos Var.⁴ Same black skin, same distinctive silver scaling down her face, and same spikes and spines where hair would have been on a human. This time she wore armor, small overlapping bronze plates reminiscent of fish or dragon scales.

She grinned as we approached. I wondered if the morgage considered the expression friendly.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve met a human leader who knows our ways,” she said as greeting. “I’m Bevrosa, formerly guardian of the dead city, now keeper of the Spring Stone, Wildheart.”

“Baelosh’s stone,” Thurvishar whispered to me.

The name sounded familiar, and then I remembered why. Emperor Simillion had stolen his star tear necklace from Baelosh’s hoard. I put a hand to my neck. In all the excitement, I hadn’t noticed the necklace missing. Our kidnappers had apparently decided they just couldn’t stand to let those priceless gems escape. Well enough. I put recovering it near the bottom of my to-do list.

“I’m Janel Theranon,” Janel answered. “We did not mean to intrude into your lands, but we have been abandoned here by vané who wish to ensure no one enacts the Ritual of Night.”

All talking in the hall stopped.

“Huh,” I whispered to Thurvishar. “I guess they all understand Guarem.”

Bevrosa’s smile faded. “You are the Eight’s children?” Her gaze examined us then and stopped on me.

I waved at her.

“I know you,” the morgage leader said to me. “You trespassed into the dead city.”

“Yeah, not by choice,” I responded. “Thanks for helping out with Relos Var. And, you know, not killing me.” Her people had tried to kill me. One even went so far as to put a spear through my leg. After the fact, though, I realized this particular morgage band seemed to think their sacred duty was to keep interlopers from poking around too close to Vol Karoth. No one had thought to tell them I was on the “okay list.”

Although, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I should never be on the okay list.

Bevrosa’s expression turned wary. “You … you should not be here. This is not safe.”

Janel cleared her throat. “We don’t intend to stay. We must return to the vané and make this right, but we have no supplies, and thus we need your aid. We realize you have little to spare, but I hope you understand our need.”

Bevrosa turned to the side and snarled something in her own language. The men scattered, presumably to gather what they could spare.

Bevrosa turned back to Janel. “It’s a bad time to be in the Blight.” She grinned. “Never is it a good time, but still … Warchild has awoken.” She pointed in my direction. “That one needs to leave. Now.”

I bit back on a protest. Leaving immediately fit all our plans. With the fighting over, I heard the droning again, but softer now, quieter. I hadn’t found myself walking in any particular direction without realizing it. It was an excellent sign.

Teraeth started to say something. I nudged him in the ribs and shook my head.

“Is that why you were moving south?” Janel asked. “Are you trying to leave the Blight?”

The morgage woman nodded. “The time of guarding has ended. No one who stayed near the holy city still breathes. We have taken our sons and our husbands and we’ll travel as far as we can, but soon the whole world will not be large enough to hide us if you cannot convince these weak vané to do their job.” She spat to the side in punctuation.

“We know,” Janel said. “But we’re going to make things right—”

The room changed. All existence slowed down, time itself stretching out like a drawn piece of wool thread spun fine. Sound blunted as if I’d ducked underwater. Except the droning sound I’d been hearing since I’d woken condensed, sharpened, became recognizable.

It was speech. It had always been speech.

Come back. Join me.

Vol Karoth appeared in the hall.