2018-01-08
399
Shaken but giddy, we wandered on into many-pillared galleries, backlit by troughs and fountains of incandescent lava that flowed like sluggish water. The heat of it was such that to approach made us mindful of the burning we had only narrowly escaped, and by unspoken agreement we stayed well clear of the stuff. It made soft sounds as it ran, belching and bubbling in the main, but also an unnerving glassy crackling where it touched the edges of its containers, and there darkened to silvery black.
“A strangeness, even for this place,” said Gudrun, brushing her fingers across one of the stone pillars. “There’s a resting power here. Not merely in the drawing up of the mountain’s boiling blood, which is not wholly natural. There are forces bound and balanced in these pillars, as if they might be set loose by design.”
“A new trap?” said Brandgar.
“If so, it’s meant to catch half the Dragon’s Anvil when it goes,” said Gudrun. “Crale won’t be shielding us from that with his bottom.”
“Is it a present danger to us?” I asked.
“Most likely,” said Gudrun.
“I welcome every new course at this feast,” said Brandgar. “Come! We were meant to be climbing!”
Up, then, via spiral staircases wide enough for an Ajja longship to slide down, assuming its sails were properly furled. Into more silent galleries we passed, with molten rock to light our way, until we emerged at last beneath a high ceiling set with shiny black panes of glass. Elsewhere they might have been windows lighting a glorious temple or a rich villa, but here they were just a deadness in the stones. A cool breeze blew through this place, and Mikah sniffed the air.
“We’re close now,” they said. “Perhaps not yet at the summit, but that’s the scent of the outside.”
This chamber was fifty yards long and half as wide, with a small door on the far side. Curiously enough, there was no obvious passage I could see suited for a dragon. Before the door stood a polished obsidian statue just taller than Brandgar. The manlike figure bore the head of an owl, with its eyes closed, and in place of folded wings it had a fan of arms, five per side, jutting from its upper back. This is a common shape for a barrow-vardr, a tomb guardian the Ajja like to carve on those intermittent occasions when they manage to retrieve enough of a dead hero for a burial ceremony. I was not surprised when the lids of its eyes slowly rose, and it regarded us with orbs like fractured rubies.
“Here have I stood since the coming of the master,” spoke the statue, “waiting to put you in your grave then stand as its ornament, King-on-the-Waves.”
“The latter would be a courtesy but the former will never happen,” said Brandgar, cheerfully setting his wrapped spear down. “Let us fight if we must though I will lose my temper if you have another song to sing us.”
“Black, my skin will turn all harm,” said the statue. “Silver skin forfeits the charm.”
“Verse is nearly as bad,” growled Brandgar. He sprinted at the statue and hurled himself at its midsection, in the manner of a wrestler. I sighed inwardly at this, but you have seen that Brandgar was one part forethought steeped in a thousand parts hasty action, and he was never happier than when he was testing the strength of a foe by offering it his skull for crushing. The ten arms of the barrow-vardr spread in an instant, and the two opponents grappled only briefly before Brandgar was hurled twenty feet backwards, narrowly missing Gudrun. He landed very loudly.
Mikah moved to the attack then with short curved blades, and I swallowed my misgivings and backed them with my own daggers. Sparks flew from every touch of Mikah’s knives against the thing’s skin, and the air was filled with a mad whirl of obsidian arms and dodging thieves. Mikah were faster than I, so I let them stay closer and keep the thing’s attention. I lunged at it from behind, again and again, until one of the arms slapped me so hard I saw constellations of stars dancing across my vision. I stumbled away with more speed than grace, and a moment later Mikah broke off the fight as well, vaulting clear. Past them charged Brandgar, shouting something brave and unintelligible. A few seconds later he was flying across the chamber again.
Gudrun took over then, chanting and waving her hands. She threw vials and wooden tubes at the barrow-vardr, and green fire erupted on its arms and head. Then came a series of silver flashes, and a great ear-stinging boom, and the thing vanished in an eruption of smoke and force that cracked the stones beneath its feet and sent chips of rock singing through the air, cutting my face. Coughing, wincing, I peered into the smoke and was gravely disappointed, though perhaps not surprised, to see the thing still standing there quite unaltered. Gudrun swore. Then Brandgar found his feet again and ran headlong into the smoke. There was a ringing metallic thump. He exited the haze on his customary trajectory.
“I believe we might take this thing at its word that we can do nothing against it while its substance is black,” said Mikah. “How do we turn its skin silver?”
“Perhaps we could splash it with quicksilver,” said Gudrun. “If we only had some. Or coat it with hot running iron and polish it to a gleam, given a suitable furnace, five blacksmiths, and most of a day to work.”
“I packed none of those things,” muttered Mikah. Little intelligent discourse took place for the next few minutes, as the invulnerable statue chased us in turns around the chamber, occasionally enduring some fresh fire or explosion conjured by Gudrun without missing a step. She also tried to infuse it with the silvery light by which we had made our way up the darker parts of the mountain, but the substance of the barrow-vardr drank even this spell without effect. Soon we were all scorched and cut and thinking of simpler times, when all we’d had to worry about was burning to death in dancing fires.
“Crale! Lend me your sling!” shouted Mikah, who were badly beset and attempting not to plunge into a trough of lava as they skipped and scurried from ten clutching hands. I made a competent handoff of the weapon and a nestled stone, and was neither swatted nor burned for my trouble. Mikah found just enough space to wind up and let fly—not at the barrow-vardr, but at the ceiling. The stone hit one of the panes of black glass with a flat crack, but either it was too strong to break or Mikah’s angle of attack was not to their advantage.
I admit that I didn’t grasp Mikah’s intent, but Gudrun redressed my deficiency. “I see what you’re on about,” she shouted. “Guard yourselves!”
She gave us no time to speculate on her meaning. She readied another one of her alarming magical gimmicks and hurled it at the ceiling, where it burst in fire and smoke. The blast shattered not only the glass pane Mikah had aimed for, but all those near it, so that it rained sharp fragments everywhere. I tucked in my head and legs and did a creditable impersonation of a turtle. When the tinkling and shattering came to an end, I glanced up and saw that the sundering of the blackened windows had let in diffuse shafts of cold light, swirling with smoke. Mikah had been right; we were indeed close to open sky, and in the hours we had spent making our way through the heart of the Anvil the moons had also risen, shedding the red reflection of sunset in favor of silvery-white luster. This light fell on the statue, and Brandgar wasted no time in testing its effect.
Now when he tackled the barrow-vardr it yielded like an opponent of ordinary flesh. The king’s strength bore it to the stones, and though it flailed for leverage with its vast collection of hands, Brandgar struck its head thrice with his joined fists, blows that made me wince in overgenerous sympathy with our foe. Imagine a noise like an anvil repeatedly dropped on a side of beef. When these had sufficiently dampened the thing’s resistance, Brandgar heaved it onto his shoulders, then flung it into the nearest fountain of molten rock, where it flamed and thrashed and quickly sank from our sight.
“I shall have to look elsewhere for a suitable watch upon my crypt.” Brandgar retrieved the wrapped spear he had once more refused to employ and wiped away smears of blood from several cuts on his neck and forehead. “Presuming I am fated to fill one.”
The small door swung open for us as we approached, and we were all so battle-drunk and blasted that we made a great show of returning the courtesy with bows and salutes. The room beyond was equal in length to the chamber of the barrow-vardr, but it was all one great staircase, rising gently to a portal that was notable for its simplicity. This was no door, but merely a passage in stone, and through it we could see more moonlight and stars. The chamber was bitterly cold, and drifting in flurries across the stairs were clouds of scattered snow that came from and passed into thin air.
“Hold a moment,” said Gudrun, kneeling to examine a plaque set into the floor. I peered over her shoulder and saw more Kandric script:
Here and last cross the serpent-touched snow
In each flake the sting of many asps
To touch skin once brings life’s unmaking
“To be stymied by snow in the heart of a fire-mountain,” I said, shuddering at the thought of death from something as small as a grain of salt brushing naked skin. “That would be a poor end.”
“We won’t be trying it on for fit,” said Gudrun. She gestured, and with a flash of silver light attempted the same trick I had seen in Underwing Hall, to move herself in the blink of an eye from one place to another. This time the spell went awry; with an answering flash of light she rebounded from some unseen barrier just before the stairs, and wound up on her back, coughing up pale wisps of steam.
“It seems we’re meant to do this on foot or not at all,” she groaned. “Here’s a second ploy, then. If the snow is mortal to this flesh, I’ll sing myself another.”
She made a low rumbling sound in her throat and gulped air with ominous croaks, and with each gulp her skin darkened and her face elongated, stretching until it assumed the wedge shape of a viper’s head. Her eyes grew, turning greenish gold while the pupils narrowed to dark vertical crescents. In a moment the transformation was complete; she flicked a narrow tongue past scaled lips and smiled.
“Serpent skin and serpent flesh to ward serpent bite,” she hissed. “And if it fails, I shall look very silly, and we can laugh long in the Fields of Swords and Roses.”
“In the Fields of Swords and Roses,” intoned Mikah and Brandgar.
But there would be no laughing there, at least not on this account, for wearing the flesh of a lizard Gudrun hopped up the stairs, clawed green hands held out for balance, through twenty paces of instant death, until she stood beside the doorway to the night, unharmed. She gave an exaggerated curtsy.
“And can you do the same for us?” shouted Mikah.
“The changing-gift is in the heart of the wizard,” she replied, “else I would have turned you all into toads sometime ago and carried you in my pack, loosing you only for good behavior.”
Mikah sighed and pulled on their gloves. They studied the waft and weft of the snow for some time, nodding and flexing their hips.
“Mikah,” I said, kenning their intentions, “this seems a bit much even for one of your slipperiness.”
“We’ve each come here with all the skills of lives long lived,” they said. “This is the test of those lives and skills, my friend.”
Mikah went up the steps, fully clothed, but still their face and neck and wrists were unprotected. I understand it must be hard to credit, but that is only because you never saw Mikah move, and any attempt to describe it with words must be a poor telling, even mine. Swaying and weaving, whirling at a speed that made them seem half ghost, they simply dodged between the falling snowflakes as you or I might step between other people walking slowly along a road. In less time than it takes for me to speak of it they had ascended the deadly twenty paces and stood safe beside Gudrun. They stretched idly, in the manner of a cat pretending it has always been at rest, and that no mad leap or scramble has just taken place.
“Well done!” said Brandgar. “This is embarrassing, Crale. Those two have raised the stakes, and I am not sure how to make a show to match theirs, let alone surpass it.”
“My concerns are more prosaic,” I said. “I have no powers or skills I can think of to get myself out of this room.”
“We would be poor friends to leave you here at the threshold,” said Brandgar. “And I fear it would disappoint our host. I have a notion to bear us both across; can you trust me, as I have trusted you, absolutely and without objection?”
“You needn’t use my affections as a lever, Brandgar,” said I, though truthfully, in the face of the serpent-touched snow, he rather did. “Anyway, I am famous among my friends for having never in my life behaved with any particular wisdom.”
“Be sure to make yourself small in my arms. Ho, Mikah!” Brandgar threw his wrapped spear up and over the snow, and Mikah caught it. Without taking any further measures to brace my resolve, Brandgar unclasped his cloak. Then he seized me, crushing me to his chest as if I were an errant child about to be borne away for punishment. Apprehending his intentions, I clung to him with my legs, tucked my head against his armored coat, and once again commended my spirit to whichever celestial power was on guard over the souls of fools that night. Brandgar spun his cloak over the pair of us like a tent, covering our arms and heads, blotting out my vision as well as his. Then, shouting some Ajja battle blather that was lost on me, he charged blindly up the steps. My world became a shuddering darkness, and I vow that I could hear the hiss and sizzle of the venomous snow as it met the cloak, as though it were angry at not being able to reach us. Then we bowled over Gudrun and Mikah, and wound up tangled in a heap, cloak and spear and laughing adventurers, safe and entirely bereft of dignity at the top of the steps. Save for a lingering smell in our clothes and gear, the power of the snow seemed to promptly evaporate outside the grasp of the sorcerous flurries.
We were all gloriously alive. The light of moon and stars drew us on.
