death's knight 17

 

Chapter 17

 

“The way to the underworld is just a hole, we keep it in a locked room,” said Alcitha. “I can’t see the bottom; we have rope, but...”

“We just walked it, last time,” said Kaz. “Show me.”

Alcitha led her and her party to a room, just large enough to accommodate a hole in the ground, some eight feet in diameter.

“Just walk forward, dear one,” said Alethos, in Kaz’s thoughts. Kaz walked forward trustingly, heedless of the horrified cries of those behind her, convinced she was walking to certain and needless death.

“Trust our lord,” said Rynn.

 

“Now do you see why I am so happy to embrace Trógling?” said Alethos. “They accept without fear.”

“Truly, I can comprehend your embracing of such loyal followers,” said Solos, only able to see what was happening in another temple for Alethos showing him.

 

Kaz walked onto the thin air of the hole, and found herself rotated around the rim so that she was now standing upright in a long, dark tunnel.  She was joined in short order by Rynn, then Phaedros, Thyella, and Hraazaz.

Kaz sounded the walls; they appeared to be limestone with the odd quartz intrusion. Mostly safe, she assessed, then gave a deprecating wry smile. Wholly safe; they belonged to Alethos.

The small group walked silently along the tunnel, the three with darksense ahead, and Phaedros glowing faintly to help himself and Thyella.  Hraazaz stopped, suddenly.

“What is happening to the tunnel?” she asked. “It’s.... spongy. Like mould, I cannot find a way ahead.”

“You have a greater range than I do,” said Kaz. “Rynn, let us scout.”

“It’s not even spongy,” said Rynn, presently.

“It’s as if our darksense was being.... swallowed,” said Kaz.

“What are you talking about? The tunnel continues,” said Thyella.

“No, it doesn’t, it ends in something so strange that I don’t have words to describe it,” said Kaz. “Spongy is not enough, nor liquid, the closest I can get is like a mouldy rice pudding with a crust on top.”

“Well, I’m going on,” said Thyella.

“No, you aren’t,” said Kaz, seizing the goddess’s cloak. “Harkon will never forgive me if I let his wife plunge into trouble, like some idiot weather deity.”

“I am a weather deity,” said Thyella.

“Yes, but you’re also Harkon’s wife, and he expects better of you,” said Kaz. “Well, I shall put my trust in Alethos and if it is safe, I will come back.”

“Dearest, it is a portal,you can cross it safely,” said Alethos. Kaz blinked.

“Oh!” she said. “I am told it is a portal. Fine, stay in close order and we do this together.”

Kaz had to admit that nothing felt different to her body in walking through the portal, only that she felt she was walking blindly through something which sounded different to the way it felt, even though to her eyes there was no difference, something she found very disorienting, and was aware Rynn and Hraazaz felt as well.

And then the corridor opened into a huge cavern with crystals that rang musically to Kaz’s senses, and waiting before a gigantic pillared hall was Alethos.

Kaz ran to the arms of her beloved. He swung her round in his embrace, then set her down to kiss her.

Kaz surrendered herself to this salute gladly, and Alethos was enchanted; here, in his own territory, his love for Kaz was even more intense than on the outer world, as if their being was closer...

He winced in pain from tiny lightning bolts and a sore shin.

 

“Selen! Alethos is aroused!” Daze cried out in real horror. “What was that prophecy? ‘When Death seeks love, beware of the goddess who will grow from it.’ We may have to move fast... oh, it was but passing. I sense some discomfort.”

Selen sniggered.

“Doubtless the other side have their prophecies too, and he moved in on someone like the celestial virgin and got a knee to the cods,” she said.

“Truth,” said Daze. “That obscure prophecy that there would be the sign that the virgin was no more could have made him think Thyella was a possible bride, and that it was her virginity which was no more, not that she was dead.”

“What a lot she’s missing!” cooed Selen. “But it was a false alarm; make me feel good. Even if he finds someone, even a major god’s child will take a few years to be born, grow up, and become a threat, since it is surely his offspring, a daughter, who will be the goddess meant in the prophecy.”

 

As the whole air seemed suffused with the tensions between Alethos and Kaz, Rynn bit her lip, and went and kicked him on the shin.

“Stop them, it isn’t time!” she said. This prompted Thyella to use a few discharges of lightning to bring Alethos back to himself. He stepped back, still breathing heavily. Rynn knelt.

“You can’t!” she said, tears in her eyes. “I had to stop you!”

Alethos raised her.

“Aye, you did, our good, brave, and loyal friend,” he said. “Thank you; I appreciate it more from a worshipper that you had the courage.  I also thank you, Thyella.”

“I... I feel quite weak,” said Kaz.

“I had not accounted for how things would magnify on my own territory,” said Alethos.

Thyella’s eyes widened.

“I wonder if Harkon would like to ride a stormcloud?” she mused.

“I’m sorry, Kaz; I’ll leave you to travel,” said Alethos. “But someone wanted to greet you.” He moved aside, and a little girl ran into Kaz’s arms.

“Oh, Miss Kaz! I am glad to see you!” she said.

“Why, Iphianira, I am glad to see you too,” said Kaz, suddenly choked. “Where are your parents?”

“They went away,” said Iphianira. “Da didn’t want to worship Alethos, nor anyone, and Ma thought she should be in a sky afterlife, and... well, if you don’t worship Alethos, you can’t really stay. But he was so kind to give us somewhere, so I wanted to stay, and... and I fought to do so. And child souls can be born again, so when you have a baby, can I be yours?”

“Of course, darling; but you will probably forget all about who you were.”

“I want to be with you and Alethos. I never knew my parents very well, anyway,” said Iphianira. “We were well off so I only saw them for an hour a day. I had servants the rest of the time.”

“I see,” said Kaz. “Then if child souls can be reborn if they wish, when I am ready, I will be honoured.”

“I don’t want to remember the years of being a ghost,” whispered Iphianira. “We died so frightened, running away from the mountain chasing us, and I think it hurt, and then we were trapped, frightened for ever, until you came and led us somewhere we could be safe, and... and not trapped in eternal fear. Those who left are ungrateful.”

“Was it many?” asked Kaz.

Iphianira considered.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I suppose some people are never satisfied.”

Kaz hid a smile, suspecting that the child quoted a nanny.

“I have to leave you, now; I have a job to do,” she said.

Iphianira nodded, gravely.

“Thank you for visiting. I will not keep you from duty,” she said. Kaz kissed her, and turned to her group of fellow travellers.

“Now let us look for Geryones,” she said. “I find I have a map in my head, a gift from Alethos.”

“Let us drink our fill here, where the water is good, and not start yet on our trail rations,” said Phaedros.

“A wise idea,” said Kaz. Indeed, they ate as well as drank, and rested, for though short, the journey had taken much energy as their heart’s power was used to make the portal work.  And Kaz reluctantly led them out, loath to be away from the sense of her love’s presence, where it infused the very stones.

 

 

The underworld was a strange place to those used to surface dwelling, some caves of rock, or crystal, and some beautiful caverns with spires and columns made of stalagmites and stalactites,  though there were places where crystal arching overhead held light refracting back and forth from fissures or from the sun’s passage past the gates of dusk and dawn, at utter west and utter east, and night’s rest between; but however it came, light was trapped long enough in the crystal to shine like a hazy sky, until the light was renewed daily. Under it, a kind of grass grew.

“My cousin, Lupeia, who was killed by the birth of the chaos monsters to the blue moon, is one of the grain goddesses, and presides over growing things like grass in the underworld,” said Thyella. “The Selenites call her Tristania.”

“Why they have to change names I do not know,” grumbled Kaz. “Is that a herd of geryones? They are huge!”

The three-headed cattle towered over the two trógling.

“Let me make some sweeter grass,” said Phaedros.  “When they come over, the three of us who are larger will hold one at a time for you to milk them, and then hold the bull to take some of his blood; one of us for each head.”

“The plainsfolk control their cattle by holding them by the nostrils,” said Thyella. “It is wise to do this before we must stampede them. They are noble beasts.”

Phaedros glowed brightly, and knelt to touch the sparse grass, tenderly speaking to it as it reached for his light. Rynn used her folding shovel to add and disperse dung left by the cattle, and Kaz fetched water from a pool, which showed signs of hoofs, suggesting it to be sweet water. The grass had stretched up but looked a little wan and spindly until the nutrients were washed into its roots, when it began to take on a lush, rich green.

“Oh, is that what it needs? I did not know,” said Phaedros.

“Nothing can grow without food and drink,” said Rynn.

“I can live on light for a while,” said Phaedros.

“Yes, dear one, but you are a demigod,” said Rynn. “The rest of us need more conventional sustenance.”

“Actually, after all that effort, I’m hungry,” said Phaedros, plaintively. Rynn silently passed him a spicy plainsman beef pasty, which they kept as trail rations, the pastry being water pastry so it lasted longer.

The geryones were wary, but not stupid; they came over towards the patch of sweet grass.

“Now all we have to do is milk them,” said Rynn. “I’ve milked goats.”

“I’ve never milked anything, but how hard can it be?” said Kaz.

She discovered the answer to this when hit in the eye by a spurt of milk.

“It isn’t as easy as it looks,” said Kaz, chagrined. “I’ll learn, though.”

They had brought bottles for milk and blood, with cantrips of unbreakability, and stasis spells on the stoppers.  The bull of the herd roared, steam coming out of all six nostrils.

“I don’t fancy grabbing that by the nostrils,” said Phaedros.

The bull roared again.

“Don’t be a big show-off,” said Kaz, marching up to the bull, which seemed uncertain what to do with this small creature. He pawed the ground, and put down his middle head, as if to charge, though the other heads were still warily looking out.

“Soap,” said Kaz, repeating it twice more. The bull reared, pawing the air, then came down, shaking all its heads to try to get rid of the taste. Kaz cast a numbing cantrip on its centre neck and a cutting cantrip, and tripped in to put her collecting jar underneath the flow of blood, skipping out sharply when it was full, before the soap dissipated, and healing the cut.

“Insane,” said Rynn.

“But it worked,” said Kaz.

“Dear one? I have word from Harkon. A diversion in the next hour or two would be desirable”

“How long are we from Tor’s stronghold?”

“The cattle are a little over an hour away. You’d take longer, but all you have to do is get them going.”

“Thyella? I have word to shift them in that direction about now,” said Kaz. “A bit of noise and lightning directly behind that direction and some zaps to the bull’s rump should do it.”

“On it,” said Thyella. A lightning bolt where Kaz indicated got the attention of the herd, and they started a lumbering run. A few more gathered them together, and a personal if small lightning bolt on the bull’s backside took the lumbering run into a stampede.

“Now what?” asked Phaedros.

“Now we go home,” said Kaz. “Nothing we can do with the herd now; if anything turns them, Harkon won’t get his diversion, but there you go.”

“Can’t we cheat, somehow?” said Rynn.

“I thought you Alethosi didn’t cheat?” said Thyella.

“We don’t – when it’s real cheating, which is to say, doing down someone else,” said Kaz. “In war, it’s just called increasing advantages. I suspect, sensing the terrain ahead, we already have one. Hraazaz, am I right in thinking they just funnelled into a valley?”

“Yes,” said Hraazaz. “It should take them exactly where they are going.”

 

oOoOo

 

Harkon and his party faced no trouble on their journey; a heavily armed band of Alethosi including a High Toróg and several members in iron was not the sort of group any outlaws would tangle with willingly; nor any normal patrol of toróg. 

The place where Mycota was wont to emerge was marked by the sacrifices left by largely female toróg, grateful for the gift of fungi in the open world, where their fruiting was stimulated by sunlight.

“Of course, the best fungi were sparked by the light of the blue moon; fungi like blue light,” said Zog. “Nowadays, in the fungus caverns, blue lamps are hung up, but the fungi never reach the size of those which grew beneath the Blue Moon.”

“Hopefully our endeavours will restore her,” said Harkon,

“My mother has understood now that her instinct at first to kill a trógling prophesied to bring change is not necessarily the correct response,” said Zog.

“Good,” said Harkon. “She’d come up against Alethos himself.”

“This, she understands, now,” said Zog.  “We all want to be rid of the curse, but I cannot see Tor willingly releasing Mycota to bring on the time of severing.”

“Which is why we are taking her by force,” said Harkon. “When is she due to arrive?”

“Just before sundown, to assist the beginning growth which will increase overnight and complete at dawn,” said Zog.

“Will we have time to gather some?” asked Protasion. “Kaz does wonderful things with mushrooms, even dried ones.”

“Maybe,” said Harkon. “Honestly! Haven’t you outgrown thinking with your belly, yet?”

“No,” said Protasion. “And Kaz does things with makarones and a white cheesy sauce with mushrooms and onions in that’s to die for, even without meat.”

“We did bring bags,” said Lelyn. “It’s as well to have extra provender when we can get it.”

“Why me?” asked Harkon. “Fine, we’ll see what happens; and we rest now. We need to let Mycota wake the fungi and rescue her after dawn has come.”