Destan
Citizen of Val Hor
Chapter Eight
Baden sat within Selûne’s shrine and thought of where he had been, what he had done. He thought of his father and mother, Banidon and Runwan, both dead now. He thought of Axemarch, his clan no longer. He remembered the young dwarf Bardo, Tamil’s brother, who had been killed within the mines beneath his now-abandoned dwarven halls. He thought of Poridel Poriden; in his mind, Baden could still see the elderly man impaled and dripping upon a Cyricist death-stake.
Baden turned his thoughts from those he had seen die to those he had killed. Such memories were easier for him; anger had always come more quickly than grief. Ippizicus, the ape-demon, destroyed by the banks of the Bluehorn. Ral, a blue-skinned fiend, stretched dead upon the flagstones within a Sorrow Elfking’s tomb. Baphtemet, his once-flawless, ebony face caved inward from the mace of Kellus Varn. And, more recently, Buk’lokik, the cave troll that had sought to make Axemarch his home, sundered from navel to neck by his own axe.
What business has a dwarf fighting such creatures?
Ilvar, his spirit-companion, was uncharacteristically silent.
Baden sighed. He was unaccustomed to reflection. Perhaps because he rarely had the time. For months he had been traveling within the lands of men. His skin had been tanned by the sun, something no self-respecting dwarf would endure for long. He had undergone many changes since departing his homeland beneath the Foggun Maw. He was unsure whether they were for the better.
A voice broke his reverie. “What do you do?”
Baden looked toward Pandios. The Basilican was well-built and strong, but he did not possess a dwarf’s constitution. The Imperial’s skin was loose and pale. He was dying. A slow death, to hunger. It was unfitting.
“Praying.”
Baden pulled his helm toward him and laid Borbidan’s axe atop it. The stone priests of his people taught that Moradin required no shrine, no altar. It was said the Forge Father could always hear the words of the faithful. Baden wondered whether the Moon Goddess could intercept his prayers, prevent them from ascending to the High Forge. Baden was, after all, within a Selûnite chapel.
In the end, Baden supposed, it mattered little. He too was hungry, and weak, and praying caused him to forget such things if only for a short while.
“Moradin, my God,” Baden intoned, head bowed, “I have strayed from your teachings. I have strayed from your sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters. I left your home in the mountains when I should have remained. I ask your forgiveness. I ask…”
Baden frowned. These things never came easy to him. “I ask that you hear these words and…well, dammit, do something.”
Pandios chuckled. The sound was dry and weak. “You…you had me going until the end. A fine priest, you would make.”
Baden scowled, found himself smiling as well. He leaned back on his haunches. “Stone benches. That is what I remember most about worship under the mountain. I love stone, mind you, as much or more than the next dwarf. But them granite pews were hard on me backside.”
“And cold, I would imagine.”
“Ah, well,” Baden grinned, “as to that – let’s say I wouldn’t know. I got as many whiskers on me ass as I do on me chin.”
Pandios doubled over, laughing the laugh of a condemned man. He leaned back, after a while, his cheeks wet with mirth. “You are a good dwarf.”
Baden shared a look with the Imperial before turning his gaze toward the far side of the causeway. They were there, at the shoreline, beneath the shadow of the massive cathedral rising behind them. They had been there, morning and night, since Baden and Pandios fought one another before the crowd. Six elves, armored and ready to give battle. Moonies. Most likely one or more were priests. Baden thought he and Pandios could wait another day – for what? – before hunger forced them to march down that causeway to their deaths. Almost any end would be better than starving.
Baden grabbed his helm and stood. He walked to the edge of the open-air shrine, bent, and filled the helmet with water. The day was dark, and would soon grow darker. The choppy waters of Mead Lake mirrored the roiling sky in both color and hue. Baden made his way across the stones and collapsed next to Pandios. “Drink.”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Interesting. Drink.”
Pandios accepted the inverted helm and lifted it to his face. He sipped, coughed, and tried to drink again. The helmet fell from his hands, clattered on the ground, and water spread outward like blood. “Sorry, Baden. I…I said I wasn’t thirsty. You should-”
Baden hissed for silence. The dwarf stared at the widening pool of water, lips pursed and hidden beneath his beard. It drips. Baden scurried forward on hands and knees like a child. It drips!
“What?” Pandios rolled forward, knelt beside the dwarf. “What is it?”
“The floor. There is a hollow space beneath.”
Neither dwarf nor Basilican wasted a moment of time. Both were suddenly infused with energy. They paid no mind to the elves at the causeway, their world consisted only of the flat marble flagstones before them. Baden caressed the stones with a thick thumb, head tilted, eyes unfocused. He moved forward, repeated the touch.
“This stone. Right…here.” Baden dug his fingers into the narrow crease, breaking a nail off in the process and paying it little mind. He grunted. “Pandios, you whoreson, help me.”
The Basilican captain positioned himself opposite Baden, the loose stone between the two of them. One, two, three tugs. And it was free. Baden slid the slab to the side and looked into the darkness. Air, cool and fresh, wafted upward. He allowed his darkvision to adjust to the dimness below. A room, cramped, round, the floor ten feet below.
“My axe.”
Pandios leaned backward and handed Baden his axe with a grunt. “What do you see?”
“Nothing. Yet.”
Without another word, nor a second thought, Baden dropped into the darkness.
***
Near the end, when his stomach was so tight it burned, Baden did what he had never once done in all his years – he quit. It was too much. Too long without food, and him being forced to carry Pandios over his shoulder these past…what? Hours? Days? Baden leaned against the corridor’s wall and slid downward, Pandios crumpling silently onto the ground beside him.
The hole beneath the shrine had lead to a warren of catacombs, though none of the niches were filled with sarcophagi. It was empty of man and beast and spirit. The hallways were maddeningly haphazard. Baden, again for the first time in his life, had lost his sense of direction. Hunger – vibrant and painful – blurred his vision and drowned his mind.
There was always water. Too much of it. It dripped and oozed from the ceilings above. At times, Baden could hear the faint lapping of the Mead Lake above them. At other times, when they had descended steps upon steps upon steps, he felt he heard the very earth rumble and breathe. Turns and corners, dead-ends and switchbacks. One stairwell would lead upward for hundreds of steps and then, after cresting upon a landing for a mere ten feet, would descend once more into the bowels of the world. It was an affront to Baden’s engineering mind; there was no method to this madness.
Pandios had endured as long or longer than any man had a right to. But, after climbing yet another set of spiraling stone steps, the Basilican had simply collapsed. He could go no further. Baden hefted him onto his shoulder. It was not a decision made from heroism, nor loyalty. Such thoughts were for folk with their bellies full. Baden simply carried him because he did not want to die alone. And die, Baden knew, was what he would soon do.
- Awake, Baden. She comes.
Baden started awake, his darkvision swimming in blacks and whites before he forced himself to focus. He had evidently collapsed somewhere within a long stretch of corridor. He had no idea how long he had been walking its length, nor could he see the end. There were no doors – there never had been – and no turns. Nothing.
Save for a light in the distance. A glow. No. A glimmer. It grew in intensity. Or did it approach?
Baden glanced toward Pandios’ inert form. For all he knew, the Basilican was already dead. The blacks and whites of the hallway slowly turned gray, like dawn stealing upon the world. Baden dragged himself to his feet, slowly, painfully. He rested one shoulder against the wall, his axe on the stones beneath him, too heavy to hold let alone wield.
“You are embraced, Baden Dost, nil-thain.”
Baden squinted. After days of utter darkness, the faint glimmer seemed blinding to him. The voice was aloof, soft, feminine. It was cold and yet comforting, cruel and yet tender. He had never heard its like. He wept.
Baden felt out of his depth. "Why?"
"Because you asked."
Because I prayed. “Who…who are you?”
“You know.”
I know.
“We must go. Would you bring your friend?”
Baden tore his gaze from the shimmer to stare at Pandios. He looked up. “I would rather die than leave him.”
A chuckle, light and airy. “Your folk have always loved to speak of death. It is your way.”
Baden said nothing.
“Come, then. Bring him.”
Baden wiped his eyes and bent. It took minutes before he could lift Pandios onto his back. He held his axe, loosely, in one hand. As he walked forward the head of the weapon dragged upon the stones behind him. He marched, as his father had marched during the Battle of Caerhame. One step, then another. Forward, ever forward, toward the light, suffused by the light.
Water.
Baden stopped. He had no idea how long he had been following the glow. It was still before him, spinning above a placid pool. The corridor ended here. Stone steps lead downward into the black waters. Baden looked up. “I cannot swim.”
“I know.”
You know.
“Your friend can.”
Baden lowered one shoulder and let Pandios slide onto the ground beside him. “I think…I think he is dead.”
“He is not. Not yet. You are embraced, and your desires compel me. I have struck a bargain, and will answer my part.”
Baden stood, silent, drinking this in. He found it hard to concentrate, even to think. Below him, at his feet, Pandios stirred. The Basilican moaned, softly. Baden watched him open his eyes, saw the tears appear, the mask of awe. Baden imagined the same countenance had been on his own face when he first saw the glimmer. Perhaps it still was.
The shimmering veil began to fade, the voice with it, but still she spoke. “The exit is before you. Go, now. I will come again, when the time is right, and you shall grant me a boon as I have granted one to you.”
***
Baden lay upon his back on the shores of Mead Lake. Snow – glorious snow – drifted downward to land upon his face and chest. Pandios had returned with a handful of tubers and roots. These he placed within Baden’s open mouth, like a mother might her child. Both warriors ate, supine, quiet. It was an odd feeling – eating. Baden’s mouth had forgotten how to chew.
“I must return to my men.”
Baden stared at the sliver of a moon high overhead. He could not take his eyes from it. “You can come with me.”
“I cannot, as much as I might wish it. A deserter makes a poor husband and worse father. I would not curse my family with such.”
“I understand.” And he did.
Baden rolled onto one elbow. His strength, and that of Pandios’, had returned shortly after they had climbed, soaked and cold, from the lapping waters of the lake’s distant shore. Across the blackness, silhouetted in the moonlight, rose the cathedral. If Baden never saw it again, he would consider himself a blessed man.
Pandios eyed him. “Where do you go?”
“Val Hor. It is a great city in the northlands-”
“I know of it. Though I have never been there.” Pandios sat upright, clutching his knees, shivering. “Why?”
“I have friends…” And suddenly Baden recalled the faces of those he had left behind a day's ride north of the Sorrow Elf's tomb. John. Raylin. Kellus. The others. He found he missed them, could not explain it. They had begun something, he knew, something that must be seen through till the end. Whatever that may be.
“How long since you last saw them?”
“A lifetime.”
It was the last word either of them spoke to one another. Both men – nil-thain of Axemarch and captain of Apia – stared at the moon long into the night. It was a wondrous evening, a clear evening, an evening filled with mysteries. A Valusian night. There was nothing better.
But it ended, as all things do. And, with the dawn, Baden departed from that place, never to return. Words failed them both, and so no words were said.
Baden sat within Selûne’s shrine and thought of where he had been, what he had done. He thought of his father and mother, Banidon and Runwan, both dead now. He thought of Axemarch, his clan no longer. He remembered the young dwarf Bardo, Tamil’s brother, who had been killed within the mines beneath his now-abandoned dwarven halls. He thought of Poridel Poriden; in his mind, Baden could still see the elderly man impaled and dripping upon a Cyricist death-stake.
Baden turned his thoughts from those he had seen die to those he had killed. Such memories were easier for him; anger had always come more quickly than grief. Ippizicus, the ape-demon, destroyed by the banks of the Bluehorn. Ral, a blue-skinned fiend, stretched dead upon the flagstones within a Sorrow Elfking’s tomb. Baphtemet, his once-flawless, ebony face caved inward from the mace of Kellus Varn. And, more recently, Buk’lokik, the cave troll that had sought to make Axemarch his home, sundered from navel to neck by his own axe.
What business has a dwarf fighting such creatures?
Ilvar, his spirit-companion, was uncharacteristically silent.
Baden sighed. He was unaccustomed to reflection. Perhaps because he rarely had the time. For months he had been traveling within the lands of men. His skin had been tanned by the sun, something no self-respecting dwarf would endure for long. He had undergone many changes since departing his homeland beneath the Foggun Maw. He was unsure whether they were for the better.
A voice broke his reverie. “What do you do?”
Baden looked toward Pandios. The Basilican was well-built and strong, but he did not possess a dwarf’s constitution. The Imperial’s skin was loose and pale. He was dying. A slow death, to hunger. It was unfitting.
“Praying.”
Baden pulled his helm toward him and laid Borbidan’s axe atop it. The stone priests of his people taught that Moradin required no shrine, no altar. It was said the Forge Father could always hear the words of the faithful. Baden wondered whether the Moon Goddess could intercept his prayers, prevent them from ascending to the High Forge. Baden was, after all, within a Selûnite chapel.
In the end, Baden supposed, it mattered little. He too was hungry, and weak, and praying caused him to forget such things if only for a short while.
“Moradin, my God,” Baden intoned, head bowed, “I have strayed from your teachings. I have strayed from your sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters. I left your home in the mountains when I should have remained. I ask your forgiveness. I ask…”
Baden frowned. These things never came easy to him. “I ask that you hear these words and…well, dammit, do something.”
Pandios chuckled. The sound was dry and weak. “You…you had me going until the end. A fine priest, you would make.”
Baden scowled, found himself smiling as well. He leaned back on his haunches. “Stone benches. That is what I remember most about worship under the mountain. I love stone, mind you, as much or more than the next dwarf. But them granite pews were hard on me backside.”
“And cold, I would imagine.”
“Ah, well,” Baden grinned, “as to that – let’s say I wouldn’t know. I got as many whiskers on me ass as I do on me chin.”
Pandios doubled over, laughing the laugh of a condemned man. He leaned back, after a while, his cheeks wet with mirth. “You are a good dwarf.”
Baden shared a look with the Imperial before turning his gaze toward the far side of the causeway. They were there, at the shoreline, beneath the shadow of the massive cathedral rising behind them. They had been there, morning and night, since Baden and Pandios fought one another before the crowd. Six elves, armored and ready to give battle. Moonies. Most likely one or more were priests. Baden thought he and Pandios could wait another day – for what? – before hunger forced them to march down that causeway to their deaths. Almost any end would be better than starving.
Baden grabbed his helm and stood. He walked to the edge of the open-air shrine, bent, and filled the helmet with water. The day was dark, and would soon grow darker. The choppy waters of Mead Lake mirrored the roiling sky in both color and hue. Baden made his way across the stones and collapsed next to Pandios. “Drink.”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Interesting. Drink.”
Pandios accepted the inverted helm and lifted it to his face. He sipped, coughed, and tried to drink again. The helmet fell from his hands, clattered on the ground, and water spread outward like blood. “Sorry, Baden. I…I said I wasn’t thirsty. You should-”
Baden hissed for silence. The dwarf stared at the widening pool of water, lips pursed and hidden beneath his beard. It drips. Baden scurried forward on hands and knees like a child. It drips!
“What?” Pandios rolled forward, knelt beside the dwarf. “What is it?”
“The floor. There is a hollow space beneath.”
Neither dwarf nor Basilican wasted a moment of time. Both were suddenly infused with energy. They paid no mind to the elves at the causeway, their world consisted only of the flat marble flagstones before them. Baden caressed the stones with a thick thumb, head tilted, eyes unfocused. He moved forward, repeated the touch.
“This stone. Right…here.” Baden dug his fingers into the narrow crease, breaking a nail off in the process and paying it little mind. He grunted. “Pandios, you whoreson, help me.”
The Basilican captain positioned himself opposite Baden, the loose stone between the two of them. One, two, three tugs. And it was free. Baden slid the slab to the side and looked into the darkness. Air, cool and fresh, wafted upward. He allowed his darkvision to adjust to the dimness below. A room, cramped, round, the floor ten feet below.
“My axe.”
Pandios leaned backward and handed Baden his axe with a grunt. “What do you see?”
“Nothing. Yet.”
Without another word, nor a second thought, Baden dropped into the darkness.
***
Near the end, when his stomach was so tight it burned, Baden did what he had never once done in all his years – he quit. It was too much. Too long without food, and him being forced to carry Pandios over his shoulder these past…what? Hours? Days? Baden leaned against the corridor’s wall and slid downward, Pandios crumpling silently onto the ground beside him.
The hole beneath the shrine had lead to a warren of catacombs, though none of the niches were filled with sarcophagi. It was empty of man and beast and spirit. The hallways were maddeningly haphazard. Baden, again for the first time in his life, had lost his sense of direction. Hunger – vibrant and painful – blurred his vision and drowned his mind.
There was always water. Too much of it. It dripped and oozed from the ceilings above. At times, Baden could hear the faint lapping of the Mead Lake above them. At other times, when they had descended steps upon steps upon steps, he felt he heard the very earth rumble and breathe. Turns and corners, dead-ends and switchbacks. One stairwell would lead upward for hundreds of steps and then, after cresting upon a landing for a mere ten feet, would descend once more into the bowels of the world. It was an affront to Baden’s engineering mind; there was no method to this madness.
Pandios had endured as long or longer than any man had a right to. But, after climbing yet another set of spiraling stone steps, the Basilican had simply collapsed. He could go no further. Baden hefted him onto his shoulder. It was not a decision made from heroism, nor loyalty. Such thoughts were for folk with their bellies full. Baden simply carried him because he did not want to die alone. And die, Baden knew, was what he would soon do.
- Awake, Baden. She comes.
Baden started awake, his darkvision swimming in blacks and whites before he forced himself to focus. He had evidently collapsed somewhere within a long stretch of corridor. He had no idea how long he had been walking its length, nor could he see the end. There were no doors – there never had been – and no turns. Nothing.
Save for a light in the distance. A glow. No. A glimmer. It grew in intensity. Or did it approach?
Baden glanced toward Pandios’ inert form. For all he knew, the Basilican was already dead. The blacks and whites of the hallway slowly turned gray, like dawn stealing upon the world. Baden dragged himself to his feet, slowly, painfully. He rested one shoulder against the wall, his axe on the stones beneath him, too heavy to hold let alone wield.
“You are embraced, Baden Dost, nil-thain.”
Baden squinted. After days of utter darkness, the faint glimmer seemed blinding to him. The voice was aloof, soft, feminine. It was cold and yet comforting, cruel and yet tender. He had never heard its like. He wept.
Baden felt out of his depth. "Why?"
"Because you asked."
Because I prayed. “Who…who are you?”
“You know.”
I know.
“We must go. Would you bring your friend?”
Baden tore his gaze from the shimmer to stare at Pandios. He looked up. “I would rather die than leave him.”
A chuckle, light and airy. “Your folk have always loved to speak of death. It is your way.”
Baden said nothing.
“Come, then. Bring him.”
Baden wiped his eyes and bent. It took minutes before he could lift Pandios onto his back. He held his axe, loosely, in one hand. As he walked forward the head of the weapon dragged upon the stones behind him. He marched, as his father had marched during the Battle of Caerhame. One step, then another. Forward, ever forward, toward the light, suffused by the light.
Water.
Baden stopped. He had no idea how long he had been following the glow. It was still before him, spinning above a placid pool. The corridor ended here. Stone steps lead downward into the black waters. Baden looked up. “I cannot swim.”
“I know.”
You know.
“Your friend can.”
Baden lowered one shoulder and let Pandios slide onto the ground beside him. “I think…I think he is dead.”
“He is not. Not yet. You are embraced, and your desires compel me. I have struck a bargain, and will answer my part.”
Baden stood, silent, drinking this in. He found it hard to concentrate, even to think. Below him, at his feet, Pandios stirred. The Basilican moaned, softly. Baden watched him open his eyes, saw the tears appear, the mask of awe. Baden imagined the same countenance had been on his own face when he first saw the glimmer. Perhaps it still was.
The shimmering veil began to fade, the voice with it, but still she spoke. “The exit is before you. Go, now. I will come again, when the time is right, and you shall grant me a boon as I have granted one to you.”
***
Baden lay upon his back on the shores of Mead Lake. Snow – glorious snow – drifted downward to land upon his face and chest. Pandios had returned with a handful of tubers and roots. These he placed within Baden’s open mouth, like a mother might her child. Both warriors ate, supine, quiet. It was an odd feeling – eating. Baden’s mouth had forgotten how to chew.
“I must return to my men.”
Baden stared at the sliver of a moon high overhead. He could not take his eyes from it. “You can come with me.”
“I cannot, as much as I might wish it. A deserter makes a poor husband and worse father. I would not curse my family with such.”
“I understand.” And he did.
Baden rolled onto one elbow. His strength, and that of Pandios’, had returned shortly after they had climbed, soaked and cold, from the lapping waters of the lake’s distant shore. Across the blackness, silhouetted in the moonlight, rose the cathedral. If Baden never saw it again, he would consider himself a blessed man.
Pandios eyed him. “Where do you go?”
“Val Hor. It is a great city in the northlands-”
“I know of it. Though I have never been there.” Pandios sat upright, clutching his knees, shivering. “Why?”
“I have friends…” And suddenly Baden recalled the faces of those he had left behind a day's ride north of the Sorrow Elf's tomb. John. Raylin. Kellus. The others. He found he missed them, could not explain it. They had begun something, he knew, something that must be seen through till the end. Whatever that may be.
“How long since you last saw them?”
“A lifetime.”
It was the last word either of them spoke to one another. Both men – nil-thain of Axemarch and captain of Apia – stared at the moon long into the night. It was a wondrous evening, a clear evening, an evening filled with mysteries. A Valusian night. There was nothing better.
But it ended, as all things do. And, with the dawn, Baden departed from that place, never to return. Words failed them both, and so no words were said.
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Can't wait for the next update.
