Darkness and cold shock my senses.
I open my eyes and at first see nothing but white bubbles bursting before my vision. Movement draws my attention. I turn toward it and spy the lorst stone affixed to Hael’s helmet flashing wildly. Several feet under water, Hael grips the side of the boulder. Only the tremendous strength in her arms keeps her from being dragged down into the lake depths.
A stone hand latches hold of her leg. When Hael turns her head, angling her lorst downward, I see to whom that hand belongs. It’s a woman. Slender. Older. Mostly bald save for a few white hairs floating about her face. Fine lines wrinkle her cheeks, surround her eyes and mouth, but those lines are etched in skin as hard as stone. Though her mouth is open wide, no air bubbles escape. She’s not breathing. Neither is she drowning. She stares up from the abyss, and her eyes are the only thing about her not stone. They are bright with madness.
I don’t have time to think. Hael won’t last long, not with her armor weighing her down. I move my arms and legs, propel myself forward. Most trolde do not fair well in water; their solid bones tend to sink. But my mother taught me how to swim when I was young, and I’ve enough human blood to make me more buoyant than my fellow troldefolk.
I reach Hael and the stone woman. I cannot draw my sword under water, so I simply grab the woman’s arm. She shifts her mad gaze from Hael to me. Darkness swirls in the depths of her pale eyes. I recognize that darkness—the raog poison which has stolen her sanity. I know the pain of it, the agony she suffers. I would offer my sympathy were she not actively trying to murder my friend.
I take hold of her forearm with both hands. It’s slender, almost delicate, but solid stone all the way through. Summoning all my strength, I bend, twist and finally . . . break. The limb snaps in half, hand and wrist still attached to Hael’s leg. The rest of the woman’s body sinks down beyond the glow of the lorst light. I catch one final glimpse of her mad eyes flashing up at me just before she disappears.
Then I kick as hard as I can for the surface. Hael still holds tight to the rock. She’s not pulling herself up. Is she too weak from her struggle? Does she not have air left in her lungs? She’s going to lose her hold, sink as fast as the stone woman if I don’t act fast.
My lungs burn with a desperate need for air. I ignore them, push myself closer to Hael, using her lorst light to guide my hands as I seek the straps of her breastplate. I must pull it off, lighten her load. I must—
Something grabs me by the back of my shirt.
The next moment, I’m yanked to the surface of the lake, gasping in a painfully glorious lungful of air. “There, Big King!” Toz’s voice growls in my ear. “I’ve got you.” My great troll captain flings me onto the rock beside him. I lie where I land, only just able to gasp, “Hael!”
I needn’t have worried. Toz leans into the water, grips Hael under her shoulders, and hauls her up next, dropping her beside me. I roll to make room.
“Have a care, brother!” Sul yelps when I nearly knock him into the lake. He grabs me with his good hand, and I grip him by the shoulder.
“I’m glad you’re alive, Sul.” The words rush foolishly from my lips even as I struggle for another gasp of air.
“I’m glad I’m alive too, Vor. If nothing else, just to witness that feat of kingly prowess you just performed. Gods above! Did you really snap the woman’s arm in two? You’re a mighty beast, brother mine.”
The relief in my heart is so real, so raw. I squeeze his shoulder again, and he manages a ghastly grin before turning from me. His brow puckers. His smile disappears into a grimace. Cradling his broken arm against his stomach, he inches across the rock. “Hael?” He leans over my captain’s body, pushes wet strands of hair out of her face. “Take a breath, will you? Come on, I need to hear you—”
Her body convulses. A sudden gush of water fountains from her lungs, splashing Sul in the face. He curses but doesn’t draw back. Instead, using his one good arm, he rolls her onto her side, patting her back until she’s finished heaving. When she’s through, he helps her sit upright. Not once does he stop touching her, his good hand moving from her shoulder to her arm to her back.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Shaking water from my eyes, I turn from them and peer over the edge of the rock. Lur is close, still in the craft she shared with Toz and holding my empty boat by a line. Grir and Wrag are on their way to us, paddling hard. I raise a hand to let them know we’re all right. They nod but don’t slow their progress.
“What happened, Big King?” Toz asks, looming over the three of us. His big frame dominates the space. “What was down there?”
I shudder. “I . . . I think it was someone who . . .” The words don’t want to come. I force them out. “I think it was someone who had attempted va-jor.”
“Va-jor?” Toz scratches the back of his big hard head. “What the hells is va-jor?”
Hael, however, sits up straighter, turning sharply to meet my gaze. “Do you mean to say . . .?” A shudder ripples from the top of her head all the way down her spine. She wraps her arms around her middle. “Do you mean the dead down there aren’t really dead?”
“Oh, they’re dead all right,” Sul says darkly. “I got an eyeful when I was washed out of the riverway. It’s like Dugorim all over again.”
I know Sul and Hael remember as vividly as I the aftermath of horror we’d seen in that town on the edge of my kingdom. But this is different. This is something more, something worse. Raog poison turns the mind to violence and self-destruction. The woman in the lake was certainly poisoned. But she was also encased in stone. Stone which kept her alive, or semi-alive, even underwater. Long after she should have died and been freed from her madness.
“My King,” Hael says suddenly, her voice ragged. I turn to her. She motions with one hand. I touch the lower half of my face only to realize that, in my haste to remove my helmet before diving into the lake, I had also dislodged my mask. I’m breathing the unfiltered air of Hoknath even now.
“It’s all right,” Sul says, catching my eye. “The poison has already dissipated. Otherwise, I’d be rabid as a woggha myself by now.”
I study my brother’s face, searching for signs of the raog. While his eyes are a bit hollow and sunken with pain, he doesn’t look poisoned. His gaze is sharp and clear as ever.
“We need to get you back,” Hael says. Her own mask is knocked askew and can’t be doing her much good anymore. She pushes it back into place and, after a momentary struggle, manages to get to her feet. “We need to get you both to Madame Ar as quickly as possible.”
“I won’t argue with that,” my brother says.
I rise, brace my feet, and turn toward the hanging city. There’s something out there, something . . . I can’t quite describe it. Like a pulse. Deep down in my gut. A vibration, low, guttural. As though the city itself utters an agonized moan.
I narrow my eyes, searching out the lowest point of the nearest stalactite. That is the site of the Low Temple of Zoughat. I’ve worshipped there when visiting Hoknath on royal progress. It’s half-submerged in the lake now due to flooding, but I’m certain—absolutely certain, though with no reason I can articulate—that I will find the answers I seek there. The pulse emanates from that point.
“You go,” I say, without looking at the others. “Hael, take Sul, Grir, Wrag, and Lur. Toz, you’re with me.”
“What are you intending, my King?” Hael demands.
I set my jaw. “We do not yet know the full extent of the damage in Hoknath. We must venture into the city, find out what we can.”
“You and Toz? Alone? In that raog-filled ruin? Quite probably crawling with cave devils?” Sul snorts. He’s managed to get to his feet and sways heavily, holding his broken arm against his chest. “That sounds like a winning strategy to me. Wish I’d thought of it myself.”
“I’m not leaving you, Vor,” Hael growls. “Where you go, I go.”
I catch my captain’s eye. Her loyalty truly is unmatched in all the Under Realm. How could I have doubted her? How could I have pushed her away all this time? I wish I could say something to her now, let her know that I’ve forgiven her failures, that indeed, there was nothing to forgive all along. Now is not the time, however.
“Fine,” I say brusquely instead. “Hael, you’re with me. The rest of you, get the prince back to Mythanar as fast as you can.”
Sul studies me closely. When I finally turn and meet his gaze, his face is oddly contemplative. “That pulse . . .” He lets the words trail away a moment before finally finishing with, “You hear it too, don’t you?”
I nod.
“It’s been singing in the stones and the water since I got here. I heard it best while I was unconscious. I felt it trying to . . . to pull me in.”
“Do you know what it is?”
He shakes his head. “But I have a guess.”
My chest tightens. “Does it mean someone is alive? The priestesses, perhaps.”
“I don’t think so. At least, not in the way you mean.”
Captain Toz protests my plan of action almost as vehemently as Hael. In the end, I agree to take him and Hael with me, leaving the rest to watch over Sul. They will wait for us at the channel entrance, under orders to head for home if we don’t return within the hour. They’re not to come looking for us. They’re to hasten to Mythanar and assemble a search party.
“Of course, sure, absolutely,” Sul says in tones that imply the opposite. When I growl at him to heed me, he raises his one good hand, protesting, “When do I ever not?”
Hael takes her place at the prow of our craft while Toz sits in the stern, his big arms powering each stroke of the paddle. I sit in the center, wishing I’d insisted on taking the other paddle. Instead, I can do nothing but serve as ballast, trying not to let my gaze be drawn back again and again to the images of death under the water. I can’t help it. There are so many of them, lost to the ultimate despair of raog. Broken and drowned in dark glassy reflection beneath their once-magnificent city. What had it been like for these people? To survive the initial stirring only to smell the poison filling the air? To hear the savage cries of their neighbors erupting in the streets just before the madness overtook their own minds and bodies? What would desperation drive them to do under such circumstances?
What would I do, had it been Mythanar and not Hoknath?
The deep moan of the city continues to sound on the edge of my awareness. The nearer we draw, the louder it grows. It ripples on the water, pulses out from the temple. I want to turn back. Something tells me I’m being drawn inexorably into a dark knowledge I will wish I’d never learned. But I cannot turn my back on Hoknath now. These people—both the dead and the undead in the water below—deserve to have their story known, however dark that story may be.
The lowest point of the temple is entirely submerged by floodwaters. Hael guides our craft to a balcony as though it were a pier. We secure our craft and climb over the rail. The door is open, and all is black as pitch inside. Like all temples devoted to the Deeper Dark, there are no windows, no lanterns, no brasiers, no light sources of any kind. To walk in the House of the Dark is to walk in Darkness. But we have our lorst stones. Though it feels sacrilegious to wear them into the temple, we are not here to worship. We step inside. The droning is more distinct than before, vibrating in the floor under our feet. Sometimes the pulse is so strong, it causes us to stumble and catch ourselves against the wall.
“What is this?” Toz wonders out loud. “It sounds like the umog vulug, the prayersong at the turn of grak-va.”
“This isn’t grak-va,” Hael says, her voice low. “This is deeper dark than grak-va.”
“What dark is deeper than grak-va?”
Neither Hael nor I answer. Hael leads the way, her footsteps slower than before but determined. We come to a crack in the wall. All three of us feel the intensity of the pulse issuing from within. This is it then. Beyond is the source. It’s strong and strangely . . . attractive.
I move to enter, but Hael holds up her hand. “Me first, my King,” she says. She’s not asking permission. With a sigh and a short nod, I step back. She ducks through, taking her lorst with her. It’s much darker without her light. Toz and I exchange uneasy glances. Then, drawing a breath, I bow my head and slip through the crack after her.
I emerge into a hall. I cannot see much, only that which the little sphere of light surrounding Hael illuminates. Otherwise, the darkness is impenetrable. I feel the largeness of the space, the high ceiling. My breath seems to echo as I hasten to Hael’s side. The drone is louder here. Deeper.
“There.” Hael points. I turn with her and just discern a flash of red. It’s there a moment then gone again. Another pulse comes, another flash. This time I see it: crystals. Seven, arranged in a circle. Urzul stones unless I’m much mistaken. And what is that in the center of the circle? That broken, awful shape . . .
The blood freezes in my veins.
“Morar-juk!” Toz’s voice growls as he steps in close behind us. “This must be the holiest place I’ve ever been.”
It’s certainly the darkest. But I cannot say it feels holy. “Stay close,” I growl and take a step forward. My hand and foot both collide with stone. I stop, drawing a short breath. Then, slowly, I angle my head to better direct my lorst light and see what it is I’ve struck.
It’s a man. A trolde man, seated cross-legged. Wide shoulders, heavily bowed. Head sunk to his breast. Only a few strands of white hair still cling to his bare scalp. He’s covered from head to toe in stone.
I stop short. It’s not as though I didn’t expect this. But expectation is not the same as seeing. I tilt my light to get a better sense of the man, of his features. The stone is too thick. It’s obscured all definition, leaving only a vague impression of who he used to be. I’ve seen men in grak-va before, at the lowest point of the holy cycle, when the faithful enter into deep meditation, becoming one with the stone of our birth. But this is something more. This is the holy state of which Umog Targ preaches, the oneness to which my stepmother aspires.
This is the true state of stone—the va-jor.
“Morar tor Grakanak!” Hael breathes beside me. I turn to her, see her gaze. She’s rapt with wonder. “It’s a miracle,” she says. “A miracle of the Dark.”
My stomach clenches. She’s wrong. It’s no miracle; it’s perversion. But I’m not about to enter into theological debate with her. A growl rumbling in my throat, I continue, making for the crystals on the far side of the chamber. Every few steps, I find another trolde just like the first one—deeply encased in stone.
How had they done this? I’ve heard Targ preach upon occasion but always dismissed him as a ranting madman. I’d never believed it possible to achieve true va-jor. But as I turn my head, my lorst light flickers across dozens upon dozens of indistinct figures. There may be a hundred worshippers here, or more. Did they gather to perform the ceremony when the poison first began to spread? Had they deemed this end better than violence?
I pick my way through the crowd. With every step I take, the crystals send out another pulse, rippling under my feet, through my bones, straight to my beating heart. Though their strength is fading, they still have enough power to draw me toward them, closer and closer. At last, I’m near enough to see that which lies in the center of the circle.
A body.
A woman.
She is not stone. Her skin is still soft, pliable. She did not enter into va-jor in her final moments. She died here. Bleeding out. Bleeding from numerous wounds.
They bound her. By the pulsing red light of the crystals, I see signs of her struggle, the abrasions at her wrists and ankles. She fought hard against whoever did this to her. But she fought in vain.
Gods above and below! She wasn’t very old. And beautiful. So beautiful. But of course, she was. Who would offer less than the most beautiful as a sacrifice to a god? Because that’s what she is. A sacrifice. Her body opened and bled dry. Her heart and other vital organs displayed on the crystals around her. Though she’s been dead for some time now, her face is still twisted in horror.
“What in the Deeper Dark is this?” Toz whispers at my shoulder.
Hael, on my other side, answers, “To enter va-jor requires sacrifice. But . . .” She turns to me, her eyes stricken.
“What, Hael?” I ask. I can barely speak around the bile in my throat. “What do you know?”
“It is the teaching of the Children of Arraog,” she whispers. “To enter va-jor requires a blood sacrifice. A willing blood sacrifice.”
The three of us survey the tortured remains within that circle. There is no chance this woman offered herself willingly.
I turn in place slowly, trying to see out into the dark hall, to get some sense of the scope of this space, of the number of worshippers gathered here. I think of the stone woman in the lake. She had not joined these people in their dark ceremony. It’s as though the pulse of va radiated beyond this chamber to catch others in its dark energy.
“The ceremony of va-jor is sacred,” Hael says, her voice tremulous. “It is meant to be salvation. For all.”
“This is not salvation.” I turn harshly upon her, my lips drawn back in a snarl. “This is profane. Those people out there, out in the water? They’re trapped. Still mad. Still suffering from raog, without even the relief of death.”
“If the sacrifice were performed correctly—”
I don’t wait to hear what else she will say. Turning from the desecrated body, I make my way back through the living statues. The only survivors of Hoknath’s ruin.
I feel as though I can see the ultimate fate of Mythanar unfolding before my mind’s eye.
