‘Just tell us.’ The Baron sounded exasperated.
‘The Wych folk, the elves, that hid this stone in these tunnels, if that is what they did, must have been desperate to protect their secrets. Let us try and imagine what it must have been
like nearly eight hundred years ago. They had just been utterly defeated by the humans; thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of them had been killed or enslaved over the previous century. And
the humans were coming; maybe they were only days away. These ruins and the others on the coast were once called the City of Light. At its peak it had hundreds of tall white spires each connected
by elevated walkways over which were strung a series of delicate silver chains that held dozens of tiny silver crystals. These glittered by day or night and could be seen by sailors many miles from
shore – that was how the city got its name. But, even as the refugees fled here, the city was declining, many spires were in ruins and its population had shrunk to about half of what it had
been at its zenith. At this time the headland extended further into the sea and it had a wide shallow harbour. This would have been full of ships, each of them packed full of elves desperate to
flee and start a new life on distant shores. Imagine now that the ships had nearly all gone, that only a few were left, but still the refugees kept pouring in. What were they to do? Not everyone
would get a ship and what of the city’s many secrets and treasures? Some tribes resigned themselves to their fate and fled to the Aelthenwood, where they would eventually settle, but still
many more remained. Some terrible decisions needed to be made.’
Silence. Outside a thin sliver of moonlight broke through the mist and shone a sickly yellow on Ulian’s pale face.
‘It is not clear what exactly happened in these books, but by piecing the fragments of information that we have, comparing and cross-referencing them, I can only conclude that, though the
women and children were excluded, lots were drawn for the men to determine who would leave and who would remain. Those that remained were charged with protecting the treasures of the city.
Treasures that presumably included the very stone the Lady Baroness is now wearing.’
There were goblets of weak ale on the small, book-covered table. Ulian took a long draught for his dry throat and continued.
‘I discovered an account written by an elf called Senathion. It is in the ancient Elvish tongue, but I have managed to translate it, well most of it. I have transcribed it here. He held up
a scroll, written in his firm bold hand, and began to read:
‘The scouts have returned and they are barely two days distant. The city will burn, this much we know. There are not enough of us to even defend the citadel.
The last ships have left; at least I know my beloved Erethe is safe along with the child she carries, one I will never see. Dureke, our leader, has called a meeting – we will know our
fate when it is over.’
Ulian paused and looked at his attentive audience. The sea was calm, the ship barely moving. ‘He carries on after this meeting; he says:
‘We are charged to protect the artefacts of our people. The humans see these objects of gold, ones that our finest craftsmen have taken years to create, and
they hack out the gems and melt the gold into ingots, to present to their emperor, who by now must be sitting on a pile of them a mile high. We will not let this happen here.
‘Some of the catacombs will be guarded with traps and poison. For others there are creatures that can lie dormant for centuries, only waking when the doors are
breached. The
draigolitha [er, that is the dragonstones]
we will guard ourselves. We then asked Dureke how they would be guarded after we die? Then, finally, our doom was outlined to
us.
Dureke knows of a magic that will keep us forever vigilant, beyond death; we will trade our souls to do our duty for eternity. For that we have to take our own lives,
with a knife of silver after drinking a bitter brew Dureke will prepare for us. After death he will make us the guardians, commanders of ice and frost, eternal enemies of the humans. We can
be fooled, however – xhikon will hide living blood from us, the herb culestrak we will find repellent and the blue fire of Istraek will mark an enemy as friend – but what human
will know any of this?’
Ulian stopped reading. ‘Xhikon is dull iron; it is in that amulet the black priest gave to your Ladyship. I can only assume it is what they used to hide themselves and
steal the stone. I do not know of this herb or the fire. Anyway the elf’s account is nearly finished:
‘We have made our final prayers and shortly will descend below the earth one last time. I have written this for our people to remember our sacrifice and to
record the names of those who will still be watching long after the Empire of the humans has been cast to the four winds.’
Ulian put the scroll down. ‘He then names every elf who presumably took part in this ritual. There are over a hundred of them.’
‘It is ironic – don’t you think?’ said Haelward, ‘– that they took their own lives and were subjected to some unholy ritual so they could guard this stone for
ever, and the first bunch of humans that try to take it stroll in and out without so much as a second thought.’
‘But they knew what to do,’ said Ulian. ‘They have access to many elven writings and must have discovered it there somehow.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said Willem nervously, ‘but these guardians are awake now, and alert.’
‘But we have an amulet of dull iron and the stone they were guarding. It is obvious. I should go alone into this place as I am the only one guaranteed to be protected.’
Ceriana’s jaw was set firm, aware of the arguments that would follow.
‘I seem to recall,’ said Wulfthram, ‘when you first arrived in my home, you got lost walking from your rooms to the great hall. How then do you think you will fare in a
labyrinth?’
Her resolve was punctured immediately; she hated to admit it but he had a point.
‘I will go with you if no one else. I am your husband and could do no less.’
‘And I too,’ said Ulian. ‘The Wych folk used to put signs on their streets and temples so they could be navigated easily. When the wars started, they changed them into forms
and letters they thought humans would not understand. I, however, have deciphered a few and Cedric many more, I have written them all down here; after all, would it not be too fanciful to think
they may have done the same with the tunnels?’
‘Very well,’ Ceriana sighed. ‘So much for my moment of heroism. Anyway, we can’t go anywhere with this fog sitting around us. Can someone close the window, please? There
is something about it that unnerves me.’
Willem, who was nearest, complied. ‘I am sure the fog will be gone soon,’ he said.
But it wasn’t gone by the morning. As everyone was slowly stirring, Wulfthram opened the cabin door to find he could barely see the ship’s prow. It had got thicker if anything.
‘It’s a right one this, my Lord,’ said the ship’s captain, all wrapped up in a thick coat and gloves. ‘We get them now and then around the coast here, but this is
as thick as any I have seen before. Some of the boys are offering prayers to Hytha, hoping he will disperse it so we can get moving.’
But Hytha did not answer, at least not immediately. While the crew could spend the day scrubbing decks and attending to the forgotten jobs around the ship, the passengers could do little more
than huddle in their cloaks and stare gloomily at the enveloping white swirls as they reached out with their icy tendrils to brush their noses and ears. They could do little more than wait.
Morning became afternoon, and, just as Wulfthram decided to go below decks for some potage rustled up by the ship’s cook, he felt something pull at his hair and the hem of his cloak.
‘The wind!’ the captain called. ‘The wind is picking up! That will drive this fog away. Hytha has heard us, after all.’
And he was right. The breeze became stronger and, as he peered over at the sea, he realised, with difficulty at first but then with increasing conviction, that the stifling white blanket was
dispersing. Suddenly he had to cover his eyes as a shaft of pure sunlight broke through the miasma to illuminate the frowning grey sea.
‘To work, lads! Get the sails hoisted! We can be away in minutes,’ and then to Wulfthram: ‘We will be in Oxhagen by nightfall, my Lord.’
He was as good as his word. In no time at all the twin sails were catching the prevailing wind and the
Arnberg
was skipping lightly over the white foam, breaking through the last feeble
remnants of fog. Ceriana mounted the stern quarterdeck, peering to the port side with a sense of relief. Alys was with her and, as she shielded her eyes against the elements, she said to her
excitedly:
‘Look, the land, can you see?’
‘Yes, my Lady, and there is the ruined city.’
They were drawing closer and Ceriana could see the truth in Alys’s words. The sea, buoyed by wind and tide, was crashing against a rocky headland crowned with green, on top of which were
fragments of white stone, some of it approximating a wall, but a wall reduced to rubble rising never higher than a few feet. After Ulian’s description of the city she felt a little
disappointed that more didn’t remain. She expressed this to Alys.
‘I think this is but the northern portion of the city; it continues for some distance along the coast and the ruins become more substantial the farther south we go. The part of it I
visited with Master Cedric was much more substantial than this.’
Ceriana continued to watch, despite the cold that was numbing her fingers and toes. Sometimes the ruins would disappear entirely for a distance, only for a cluster of ruined white towers, little
more than bases surrounded by tumbledown stone, to spring up like mushrooms from the ground. Gradually, though, the ruins grew more defined, just as Alys had said. The walls increased in height and
the towers became more recognisable as such. She became aware of the sun against the back of her neck and realised it was beginning to drop beneath the horizon. Her husband joined her with a
blanket, which he put over her shoulders.
‘If memory serves me right, just behind this rocky outcropping we have...’
He paused as the
Arnberg
swept past the high stones and bore eastward. There, as the shore grew closer than ever, she saw a series of towers hiding behind white walls perched on the cliff
top, the largest she had seen so far. South of them the cliff dropped substantially and she saw where it bottomed out a series of small sandy beaches; and, at the southern headland where it pushed
into the sea like a broken finger, she saw at last a group of huddled buildings clinging around a small harbour. One building had a tower and another, the largest there, was surrounded by a wall
with battlements.
‘Oxhagen,’ he finished, smiling.
The sun was dropping fast now, the lateen sails casting triangular shadows over the sea. But something odd was happening for the little harbour was suddenly becoming more and more difficult to
pick out, as if it was being covered in a ghostly shroud.
‘Well, what have we done to the Gods today?’ Wulfthram hissed under his breath.
It was unmistakeable now – not just Oxhagen but the elven towers – the very shoreline – were becoming indistinct. The fog was returning.
There were no oars on the
Arnberg
. It was a ship built for speed, after all, and as a result the captain was keen to weigh anchor again but Wulfthram was having none of it. After a brief
but futile protest, the captain assented. One of the sails was pulled down and the vessel approached close to the shore. Periodically, great dark shoulders of rock would loom out of the mist,
lowering and threatening, but the captain was skilful, the
Arnberg
never getting too close to danger. Up in the crow’s nest one of the more experienced sailors kept calling down,
instructing the captain as to the safe distance to keep from the shore, while another was dropping a line into the sea keeping track of the depth. In the mist the voices of the sailors were
amplified, echoing off the rock, hollow and ghostly. The waves, too, were the same; it sounded almost like they were in a watery cave with the briny splashing around their very ears.
Everyone was on deck, the slow progress of the
Arnberg
and the close proximity of the cliffs and the town they were destined for meant nervous tension was passing from person to person
like a virus. No one said a word; Ceriana clutched the port rail, her knuckles getting whiter by the minute.
Suddenly they all felt a sense of space as if the cliffs had crashed to the ocean floor. The man in the crow’s nest called out ‘Cove; keep the course steady ahead.’
The
Arnberg
continued forward. The cliffs might have disappeared but no one was fooled; everyone waited for them re-emerge to hover over them once more, but before that happened the man
called out again: ‘Ship! There is a ship in the cove!’
Ceriana squinted. The fog seemed to be affecting her breathing; she coughed slightly, putting her hand to her chest where she felt the amulet against her skin. So far it had worked; she had not
experienced anything untoward since she had put it on – no dragons, no transformations. For a second her thoughts flew to the sepulchral black priest who had given it to her, and then ahead
of her the mist cleared briefly but just enough to reinforce her belief in fate and the capriciousness of the Gods.
Only the outline of the other craft could be seen. It bobbed silently and impassively in the murk, –there was no movement on its decks, no lights, no flaming torches. As the
Arnberg
inched onward, the full length of the other vessel came into view, its prow at last becoming visible.
Its dragon-shaped prow.
Ceriana cried out as her heart flew into her throat.
Wulfthram heard her. ‘Is that...?’ he asked.
‘Yes. They are here.’