Chapter 38
The soft blue light of the stone lit the cavern ahead of them. Marley stopped, turning off the trail to an area shown to him earlier by Beryl. Assorted pools fed by the many streams meandering through the area invited weary feet to stop and refresh themselves before heading into the mountain’s heart or out to stride across the vale in the shade of the Wista-Nem. The small troupe sat down their packs now and took their ease.
Marley sighed. There was still one thing to take care of before they entered Oritek. He tugged at his beard as he contemplated how his friends would accept the Vort’s conditions for entry into their sacred home.
“Only those of Vort blood have traveled the places you are about to go. Even I could not have seen it had it not been for my Vort ancestors.”
“You are getting at something, Marley,” Chayse said with a yawn. “I have not known you to shilly-shally around.” Chayse pulled his boots off and rolled up his pant legs as he spoke. He sat on the edge of one of the pools, gingerly sticking his feet into the water. “Great Good Father’s Breath! That water has quite the tingle.”
“You will feel better for it, my young, impatient friend. But you are right,” he said, his gaze encompassing all of his companions. “I am going to need you each to allow yourselves to be blindfolded and lead through the realm of the Vort. For it is the only way that they will allow you passage.”
“Well, let us on with it,” Glyf said, jumping up from where she sat on the grass. “I feel the need for haste.”
Marley looked sharply at Glyf, but said nothing. Chayse quickly dried his feet with the edge of his cloak before pulling on his boots. “I’m thinking there is little choice here if I wish to leave the island.”
Thysl nodded, moving up next to Glyf, a look of resolute determination on his face.
Beryl and the two other guides offered lengths of soft cloth. “Stay seated for a moment, Master Chayse, while I tie this blindfold on you. I will be your guide through the streets of Oritek.” Beryl nodded at the two other guides. “Jora will guide Thysl and Gemma, Glyf. If that is acceptable to all.” The three consented, and within moments, were ready to begin their blindfolded journey.
The group followed deserted pathways, with guards stationed at intersecting cobbled trails, just to make sure none got lost. Marley was thankful that the trail they laid for them to follow was direct and well thought out. They all kept silent, concentrating on not tripping over their own or someone else’s feet or a raised cobblestone.
The guides, Gemma and Jora, lead the two dragonkin and Beryl, walked next to Chayse, leading him with a touch and a tug. Marley had walked the route the day before with the Tarkhyld. Now he brought up the rear of their little procession and used the time to commit the images of their journey to memory.
They came upon the far side of the cavern city just as the Oritek guard stationed there was enjoying a midday ale and a slice of pie.
“Don’t get up, son,” Marley said, waving the guard to stay put. “You are the last checkpoint before we take to the tunnels, are you not?”
“Indeed, I am… son,” the guard replied, shoving the last of the pie in his mouth, a smirk on his face as he watched the half-blind group shuffle, as much as walk, toward the iron door recessed in the cavern wall next to his watch station. “If I stay put, you shall be going nowhere. For I am the Keeper of the key,” the guard said, his chest puffed out and a self-important swagger in his step.
He stuck the key into the lock and as he opened the door, he said, “I would give much to see how you overcome the restraint of the tear to bring your group safely to the mainland. As it is, mark it well, Jora, Gemma and Beryl. For it will be ye to sing the song of their passing around the community fires, come your return.”
He nodded sagely at the women. Laying a finger to the side of his nose, he winked at Beryl and motioned the group to enter the dark tunnel beyond. “Take care to treat our women with all respect and deference to our ways as they help you on your mission.”
The guard stepped aside, and Jora and Gemma led the dragonkin into the tunnel. Beryl and Chayse were right behind them, and Marley barely stepped across the tunnel threshold before the door slammed shut. Marley grunted and muttered beneath his breath, “safe journeys to you too, my friend,” before he turned to his allies. “It is now safe to take off your blindfold.”
Glyf was the first to speak up as they stood trying to get their bearings. “Seemed a lot of animosity in that guard’s voice towards a group here by accident and leaving as soon as allowed.”
“I don’t think it is so much animosity as frustration. We must remember nothing and no one has entered this place in close to a thousand years.” Marley glanced at their vort guides, looking for agreement.
Beryl nodded. “We have two factions in Oritek and another above ground amongst those that care for the Wista-Nem and the rest of the island. The Vort people have always been clannish and isolationists, just as Marley tells me Vortyls are. But there are those that want to learn and hear about what goes on in the world and would relish the ability to spend time away from the Isle of Alhwone’s Tear. This desire causes the animosity, not your group. Your arrival has just widened the rift enough to be visible.”
Beryl smiled and said with a shrug, “Please take no offense at the guard’s manner. Beyond the surface of it, he did not aim it at any of you.”
In the blue twilight created by their necklaces, Marley nodded, and his allies silently echoed the nod. “Does someone have a torch?’ Jora revealed a handful of them stuck through loops at the base of her backpack. Within moments, the rosy glow of the torch spread light within the tunnel and they stepped out as one, eager for the next part of their journey.
The wick burned down about three notches before the group stopped their steady descent in the tunnel.
“I fear we have gone as far as the tunnels allow,” Beryl turned her gaze toward Marley. “I have been told that you, runesmith, will make us a way to the mainland from here.” Her glance lowered slightly after meeting Marley’s eyes.
Marley self consciously cleared his throat. Confused by the draw Beryl had on his heart, he used the map the Tarkhyld had given him as a distraction. Although he knew full well, the map showed nothing beyond the blank rock face; he used the moment to refocus his thoughts.
“What do you see that we do not, Marley Stonebender?” Glyf asked as she slid her pack off her shoulder and stretched her back.
“It is not what I see, my dear, it is what I have. And Thysl, there is proof this should work.”
A look of fascinated confusion seemed to be universal from his allies. He thrust his hand deep into the folds of his cloak to find his pocket and dug his stocky fingers into the seam. The rune he secreted away those many days ago came free with a little coaxing.
He then pulled out his pouch, his hand dipped in, feeling past the collar key to his two last runes. Leaving the teardrop rune, he grasped the seeker. This was not the purpose for which he envisioned using it, but he thanked the fates he still had it.
Marley held the seeker rune up in his fingers for his allies to see. “This will tell us which way to go.” The runesmith then held up the rune he had secreted away in the seam of his cloak pocket. “This one will get us there.”
Beryl and the other two guides looked skeptical, but those that had traveled with the runesmith-bard kept their silence and waited.
“Once I start, stay quiet and stay behind me for I would hate to leave any of you as statuary marking our passage.”
“How will you know when we have passed beneath the Firasian Sea and will again find our way up to dry land?” Chayse asked, standing at the back of the group.
Marley hadn’t talked to the boy, or any of them for that matter, since reuniting, but Chayse looked well and Marley noticed he still carried the inscribed knives, as did the dragonkin. “We will sense the water and streaming life as we travel beneath the sea and the solid deep-rooted life that abides within the earth.”
“Does it work the same as the one you gave me on the boat?”
“Indeed, Chayse, just the same, so I will need most of my concentration. If we are ready, let us begin and not waste any of the torchlight.”
Marley held the seeking rune between his thumb and index finger and closed his eyes. After a couple of slow, deep breaths, he whispered. “Lead me to the closest mainland.” He looked down at the stone.
It glowed softly and as he turned to his left, the glow became a beam of light. “Glyf, you, Thysl and Chayse walk straight behind me. Then Jora and Gemma next, Beryl will walk with me.” Marley stopped and looked at Beryl. “I will need to hold your hand as we move. It will double the tunnel in width.”
Beryl smiled, her eyes slightly averted. “If I didn’t know better…,” she teased.
Marley felt his face heat and as Beryl placed her hand in his, he wondered why, in the name of En’Kur, he picked her. He required complete concentration, and the soft warmth of her hand was a distraction he could not afford. He now noticed that her scent was the spicy fragrance of mountain snowberries, and that was a distraction. Marley stood for a moment, collecting his resolve, but then an idea came to him.
The runesmith released her hand and, taking his new staff, he grasped one end and said, “Here Beryl, take the other end of the staff. I can use it as a conduit, extending my range and increase the tunnel size to a more comfortable width.”
Beryl nodded, though a look of disappointment flickered in her eyes. The rest of the group moved into file behind them. As all settled into position behind Marley and Beryl, Marley put the seeking rune into his cloak pocket and clasped the runic token he’d dropped back in a few moments before.
He was facing the direction the seeking rune told him they needed to go. In his mind, he saw the symbol engraved on the stone he touched and whispered the word, “Aluljaro.”
Before them, the wall shimmered and as the runesmith stepped forward with Beryl in step, the staff of Wista wood between them, the wall retreated. They walked like this until the torch they used to mark the time sputtered and died. The runesmith let the image of the sigil fade from his mind’s eye.
The wall lost its translucent quality and was again a solid wall of stone.
“We shall stop here for a bit to rest and eat,” Marley said, turning to face his friends as Jora lit another torch with her tinder box. Beryl dropped her end of the staff and they all looked back to see what he wrought.
A tunnel, ten spans across, smooth hewn and solid, stretched behind them as if the loving work of a generation of diggers and delvers. The walls, floor and ceiling shone with tracings of precious metals and studded clusters of gemstones. The blue stones that sparkled about their necks no longer littered the tunnel with their gleam. Marley’s senses told him they outpaced the stones only moments before they stopped.
“Will the necklaces continue to work at least so we may continue to understand each other, now that we’ve left the confines of the island?” Marley asked the Vort women as the group spread out, dropping packs and gear where they would and resting while they had the chance.
Beryl frowned as she considered the question. “We have never had visitors to the island or tried to go beyond the constraints of it. I would think they would continue to bestow both the benefits and the restrictions. I must ask that you each honor your commitment to give up the stones when you leave.” She gazed at each of the outlanders, getting their nodded agreement.
“How long until we are free of the stone?” Chayse asked, shifting uncomfortably on the floor where he sat, leaning against the tunnel wall. “The weight of the rock and water above us pushes upon my spirit from every side and my mind keeps wandering to the unknown fate of Mek.”
Marley sighed, sitting next to his friend. He remembered Kestrel was also troubled in the mountain halls for any length of time, and he wondered how and where she was now. Things had taken such a strange and twisted path.
He knew such idle meanderings were true folly and this path they trod now enough to contemplate. The last thing any of them needed was to lose focus. “Ho, there Chayse, don’t lose hope when we have almost won free of this prison of stone and sea. I think the bond you have with Mek is powerful enough that you’d know in your spirit if Mek were dead. You have heard the saying, ‘Straight as an enchanted arrow’s flight’?”
Chayse nodded and Marley continued, “We travel that enchanted arrow’s path. We were in the Firasian Sea before the wreck and these ladies and others have led me to believe this island is still somehow within that realm. The seeker rune pointed us North-Northeast, and my gut says we’ll find solid land up top in no more than two more torches.”
“If we have left the confines of the island, should not our abilities have returned?” Glyf asked, unstopping her flask of water.
The Vort guide, Gemma, answered before any others could reply. “This tunnel is connected directly to the heart of Oritek and thus still filtered as a vein connected to the heart of Alhwone’s Tear. Until you leave us and the stones behind, I would say the Tear still silences you.”
Glyf accepted the answer with a sigh. She turned away to rummage her pack with a preoccupied look on her face. Marley took a pull from his flask, his eyes lingering on the hatchling.
She looked worn and her large amber eyes held a withdrawn, almost haunted aspect that had not been there at the beginning of this quest. He worried that her grief and anger over the deaths of all the dragonkin had turned her melancholy. The runesmith vowed to himself to talk with her as soon as they were free of this place.
The rest of the group followed Glyf’s example and ate out of their stores. Chayse chewed on a piece of jerky, while Marley nibbled on a little oatcake and cheese.
“When everyone is ready, we can push the tunnel forward by half a torch or more,” Marley said as he accepted a piece of fruit from Beryl.
Chayse finished the jerky and stood stretching his shoulders and back and asked, “Where does all the rock and soil go when the tunnel appears?”
“That is a good question, youngin’. I would think the bulk of the tunnel would cause less damage if it t’were spread out as a thin layer on the ocean floor or perhaps a new island or mountain.” Marley chewed on his apple for a couple of moments as he mulled the question over. “Seldom are runes or weavings of this magnitude done because of the resources and time used to make something like this. This runic stone is of the dragon rune class. It took me a double handful of years to slowly build up enough essence in it to do what it is doing. But I had never thought about what happened to the shifted substance.”
“The answer to that question should be worth pursuing. I can envision lives affected in no small way by these kinds of actions.” Beryl’s frown spoke of deeper disapproval than her words. After a moment, her demeanor lighted and she said softly, “It is good that it is such an arduous task to make such a small and short-lived rune.”
“How do you know the rune won’t stop working before we are to the mainland and back under sun and moon?” Chayse stopped fidgeting with his pack, shifting his eyes once again to Marley.
“It is a little too late to worry about such a thing as that,” Jora said as she finished closing up her pack and slid the travel strap over her shoulder.
Glyf too readied her bag to travel. “If I remember right, the fewer starts and stops we make, the longer the stone will last. And that being said, I say we press on for the fullness of that torch.”
Marley waited until all looked ready to move. He let his eyes pause upon Chayse. He still looked disgruntled and Marley realized the young al’far’s question hadn’t been answered.
As his friends lined out behind him, the runesmith waited until all were ready to move and said. “If the rune should burn-out before we reached the mainland, we will retrace our steps and await at the door to Oritek and the consideration of the Tarkhyld and the Guardian of the Wista-Nem.” With that, he turned back to the blank wall in front of him and, grasping the staff with Beryl, spoke the runic symbol “Aluljaro,” and the wall shimmered.