Sunset of Lantonne (18 page)

Therec’s gloves gave him a good grip on the dry wood, though he wished he had worn a far less bulky robe. As he began descending, the hem of the garment nearly tripped him up and got in the way of seeing where to put his feet. After three rungs, Therec stopped trying to see around his own clothing and forced himself to descend by feel, measuring the distance from one step to the next to guess where the one after might be.

After Therec had dropped well below the floor of where they had begun, he could see faint movement above him as Cinastin began his own descent. The king hesitated with each step down, but he was catching up to Therec.

The climb down seemed to take hours, though Therec had no true sense of time in the nearly absolute darkness, made worse as the spell he had cast faded away to nothing. What he knew was that his feet had not yet found solid ground, and that alone was his measure of time and distance. He could have gone ten feet or ten floors and could not be certain.

Easing his foot down toward the next rung, Therec felt the toe of his boot touch down on the crossbeam board and he put his weight onto it. Immediately, the rung tore away and his hands slipped, sending him tumbling backwards. With a crash, he hit the stone floor, no more than three or four feet below. The fall was not overly painful, but Therec could do nothing but stare up into the shaft in trembling fear of what could have happened.

“Ambassador?” called out the king softly. “I heard the wood snap. Are you alright?”

“I am fine, Your Majesty,” he answered, though his racing heart made him feel like a liar.

Slowing his breathing, Therec forced himself to calm. He managed to get the shaking in his limbs stopped before the king reached the bottom. Fear could be conquered, but was far easier to deal with when another did not know that you were afraid in the first place. He had no intention of concerning the king with his own weaknesses.

Therec brought forth another sphere of light, wishing he could save his strength for fighting his way through whatever had attacked the keep. Still, the spell was simple enough and he knew that he had plenty of fight left in him…and hoped the king did, too.

Looking about, Therec found the escape passage only went one direction, a straight shot off to his left. Thick dust swirled around his boots, making it even more difficult to see than it had been above.

“Should be about a hundred feet, then a door,” Cinastin said as he reached the floor and covered his face with part of his jacket to keep the dust out of his mouth and nose. “No invader would go to the dungeon first. That is our way out. The dungeon has three ways to the surface.”

Therec began down the new passage, trying to cover his own nose, but the dust seemed to get through even the thick sleeve of his robe, making his lungs itch. He bit down the urge to cough and kept moving on, hoping to be free of the place before either of them did anything to give away their position.

As they moved silently down the abandoned tunnel, Therec became aware of lines or scratches all along the stones on either side. He ignored them at first, but began to watch more carefully, initially thinking that something living in the tunnels might have made them. Soon, he realized that they were not scratches at all, but writing that had faded to nearly nothing.

“The builders left their artwork on the original stones all over the keep,” Cinastin whispered, motioning toward a section of the marks. “We never did find out what they meant, if anything. Most public-facing stones were ground down to hide the old writing.”

Therec stopped and brought his light closer to the markings on the right-hand wall. They were once quite intricate, carved into wide swaths of the wall with several feet between each section.

“Memorial for those lost in building the place,” he noted, tracing several of the faint lines of symbols with his gloved finger. “Eighteen slaves and thirty people died down here. Other parts give their names, though that is too faded to read. There is more than that, but I do not know the words.”

The king leaned close, staring at the point Therec had his finger positioned at. “Those are a language you have seen? The magisters spent decades trying to find meaning in them.”

“These are Turessian rune-words, Your Majesty. Old ones at that. Few of my people even read the old dialect anymore. I can only make out some of it and likely could not read much more if it were intact. The old language has been dead for more than a thousand years.”

The two stared at the symbols for several minutes, until Therec realized that he had no idea why his people would have ever been as far south as Lantonne. The council had long taught the clans that the northlands were their ancestral home and the lands not covered in snow were to be ignored.

“Who built this city, Your Majesty?” he asked, turning to face the boy.

“I have no idea,” the king admitted, shaking his head. “The magisters say it’s at least a thousand years old, but they’ve always said it appeared to be dwarven-built. The dwarves have no records of it, either. The envoys from their cities did say that it appears to have been built by the same architects as Altis, if that helps.”

Therec gave the rune-words another glance, wondering if he had stumbled upon something that the council would need to hear about. Even Turess had never ventured beyond the northern wastes in his conquest of their peoples’ neighbors, according to what Therec had learned as a child. To find any hint that their people had come so far south might rewrite their own histories.

“We will look into this more once the keep is secure,” Therec said firmly. He would hold the king to that, whether the boy agreed or not. “For now, I want to get outside and learn what is happening.” He began walking again and Cinastin followed behind, saying nothing.

They soon reached the end of the passage where the stone walls ended in a heavy wooden door that appeared very nearly as old and decayed as the ladder. Despite its age, the hinges looked nearly as new as those inside the keep’s rooms.

Touching the hinge, Therec studied it briefly and began to make out the faint feel of old magic. Whoever had built the passage had used an enchantment to ensure the hinges did not rust or break. Likely, something similar had been used on the door, but its more fragile materials had long since lost the enchantment. Therec had always heard that the faster a material decayed on its own, the faster magic would dissipate.

Therec had to feel around the door as much as look until he found a heavy latch. He raised a finger to his lips to warn the king to remain silent and lifted the latch, finding the door remarkably easy to open. With a rush of fresher air, the hidden door opened into a well-lit tunnel that looked much more like the one Therec had seen down in the dungeons. He could not be certain, but he thought he might have passed this spot when checking on the prisoners.

“Head left and then up the stairs,” the king said so softly that Therec could barely hear him. “At the top, turn right and there will be a door to the guard-house.”

Nodding, Therec opened the door the rest of the way. As soon as he did, a pale-skinned hand slammed into the door, forcing him backwards. The hand’s fingers were torn and broken, with a layer of filth and dried blood clearly visible around the tips. Try as he might to push the door closed, the creature’s strength was far greater than his.

The door swung open silently as Therec backed away, allowing two vaguely humanoid creatures to step into the passage, blocking any escape by Therec or Cinastin. The creatures had skin so pale that Therec could see their bones through the flesh and scraps of clothing that looked to have rotted away years earlier clung to their bodies. Hissing angrily, the undead inched into the passage, sniffing like dogs the whole way.

“Ghouls,” Therec said over his shoulder. There was no point in hiding anymore. “Stay back and we will push past them. Do not let them bite or touch you!”

The ghouls focused on Therec, their whitened eyes narrowing in hatred.

Ghouls were something Therec had faced only a handful of times in his homeland. Made through the same magic as the animated ancestors that he was tasked with preserving, these were created from corpses long since decayed and left to fester. Any Turessian who made one, whether intentionally or by accident, would be killed without trial. They were horrid beast-like undead with a cunning that made them dangerous to even a Preserver.

The ghouls inched closer, keeping their bodies low to the ground as they moved, sniffing despite staring straight at Therec. They would try to get close enough that they could leap on him, tearing him apart before he could fight them off. Their tactics were simple, but effective from what he has seen in the past.

Therec stepped forward, trying to make it look as though he were going to run. The ghouls reacted immediately, snarling and bracing themselves to tackle him.

Raising his hands and letting the ball of light vanish, Therec called on the spirits of the dead for their aid. He felt the familiar wash of tingling through his body, and the ghoul on the left collapsed, the magic animating it severed. The other hissed and looked between Therec and its companion, as though contemplating whether it had found a victim that might be too much to handle.

With another snarl, the ghoul backed into the hall, using the door to shield itself from Therec. The creature would not go far, waiting for its chance to kill him. Unfortunately, the ghoul was smart enough to know a threat and would wait where he could not strike at it forever if it had to.

“When we go, you go right to get away from the ghoul and any others with it,” warned Therec over his shoulder. “I will attempt to stop the creature, but there may be more. I want you to run if I am overwhelmed.”

Therec began moving toward the door, stepping gingerly over the fallen ghoul. He could hear the remaining creature’s wheezing outside, but could not see it clearly to attack. The ghoul was smart enough to know how to set an ambush, which is one of many reasons Therec despised such creatures.

Bracing himself, Therec counted down several seconds, then ran at the open door. He dove sideways as he cleared the opening, feeling the claws of the ghoul brush against his robes before he landed hard on the stone floor. Nearby, he saw Cinastin move past him, getting himself well behind Therec and away from the ghoul.

The hallway ahead of Therec was empty aside from the ghoul, which had dropped back to all fours and backed off slightly out of some degree of fear. Past it, he could see dark pools of blood where there should have been guards. If he knew these creatures, Therec guessed that the ghouls had dragged the soldiers off somewhere to tear into them and eat their bones.

A cry behind Therec made him look back in surprise. The instant he did, the ghoul leapt on him, its filthy claws raking at his robes, trying to get at his flesh. He tried to summon another spell, but the ghoul’s fingers tore across his jaw. Disease and poisons in the creature’s fingers numbed his face abruptly, making speaking and even thinking nearly impossible. He could not form the spell to save himself, no matter how he tried, while still fighting to keep the ghoul off of himself.

Soon, Therec’s fighting began to subside as the toxins spread through scratches that slipped past his defenses. His limbs grew heavier with each break in his skin and, eventually, he could no longer lift them. Slumping weakly against the wall, he could only stare in panicked frustration at the ghoul’s broken teeth as the creature sat down in front of him, watching. It would wait until it was sure he could no longer resist before it would begin feeding.

With great effort, Therec turned to look for the king, hoping the scream had not been him. Unfortunately, the boy remained alongside the door into the hidden passage, held off the floor by another corpse that looked more like the ones that had attacked them upstairs, though far fresher. The zombie had been created from a very recently-killed man, who still wore the armor of a Lantonnian soldier. Likely, this was one of the missing guards from the dungeon.

Tightening its grip on the king, the zombie kept the boy still with one hand clamped over his mouth and the other arm pressed against the king’s chest to hold him up. Above the bloodied hand, Therec could see the boy’s wide eyes and could not help but think of his own son. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to save Cinastin, but he could not make his limbs move and any attempt to do so made his blood burn painfully.

“Thank you for bringing him down to me,” called out a man from the direction that Therec had meant to escape toward. “We meant to use the tunnel to come up, but you simplified things.”