The King's Might: A Legend of Averdan

Part Seven, Chapter Four

Author's Note--

Sorry I left you guys on your lonesomes for so long! My publishing date is nearing, and I'm currently involved in a horrible flurry of activity. Trying to get back into this as I can.

Love,

EFR

FOUR

In Which Things End

Jalith entered the cave.

He did not know why he had to do it, only that it was the way, and he had to follow it. When the light from the outside was lost he followed the trickling of the little stream. It wound down and down, down and down and down, down into darkness older and crueller than any he had ever known.

He had opened a gate somehow, or Alair had opened it. The hefenta-stohl. What was it Machertani had said, so long ago?

Perhaps I'll take his heart. It's innocent enough. And my, how full of love it is!

Jalith did not know if it had been a sacrifice, or an accident, or simply the way things had to be. He knew he would grieve for it for a long time, perhaps for the rest of his life.

But now--but now.

He followed the stream.

He plucked the comb from his hair--the old warrior's comb, the malat ma'a of his father. It glowed sullenly in the dark, as if unwilling to give up its secrets. In its low red light the corridors and twisting tunnels he followed seemed arched, and the deeper he got the more certain he was they were man-made. The doorways had markings on them, scratches he knew were no longer decipherable in any language known to man.

This deep place, this ancient dark-ridden hell, was a place of the Earth, of hefenta. He named it, without knowing how or why.

Mourninghall.

The stream, unchangable, trickled onward. Jalith was almost running now.

Mourninghall!

All shall fade, in Mourninghall.

Once this had been a bright place, a place of learning and power. He did not know how it had come to be underground--an avalanche, maybe, or perhaps the Sedat had hidden it away here deep under the earth simply to do it.

He imagined Machertani here, learning her arts in the service of the earth. He imagined bones grinding, flesh rending, tendons tearing. He remembered her red lips, their pressure and need against his own.

He understood her at last, perhaps, the Norchladil sorceress. He felt her cold presence in these halls, her darkness in their darkness. He imagined her going slowly mad here--realizing how easy it would be, in the dark silence, to think a few children's lives an acceptable bartering chip for light, breeze. An end to this endless maddening maze.

He did not know how long he had been running when he came at last to a door. It was the only door he had seen so far, and it was made of ivory, or something very like it. The scene carved into it was a hunting scene, figures softened by age and wear into near anonymity. There were horses, trees, men on the horses whose faces were now little more than indentations.

In the entire scene, in fact, only two of the figures were still clear. Two men, at the forefront of the party--Jalith knew who they were without having to look. Two brothers, raising their spears together in the kill. Telhir and Anmar. The great kings of the North.

Beneath them, where an animal should have been waiting for slaughter, was an empty slot pierced with holes. Jalith fit his comb into them, pushing down until he heard a click, and the lost animal on the comb's head was reunited with its destiny as prey--for, in context with the frieze, it was now obviously neither bear nor dragon, but a white hind.