Beastslayer : Rise of the Rgnadon Read online

  “‘For now’ is a very tenuous time frame,” Rusfaer muttered.

  “How are we to find our way out to the other side of mountain then?” demanded Amexi. “The snake has obviously blocked our path.”

  “A good question.” rasped Dereas. “Fezoul?”

  “There are other ways,” the dwarf admitted. “Detours and side passages, but my memory is dim.”

  “Well, you’d better un-dim it, hadn’t you?” roared Rusfaer.

  He prodded the dwarf with his sword, ushering him with no gentle persuasion down the gloomy path.

  “The first side tunnel that looks promising, we take,” Rusfaer called in a hoarse, gruff voice.

  Fezoul deigned no response. His private thoughts were dark and foreboding. Lips pinched back like a rat’s, he cast a spate of rueful glances down at the ruined Time Wheel. They left the Luminon behind. Dereas squinted under the glare of tantalizing natural light that streamed through the lonely slit. What he wouldn’t do to fly like a bird through that vent, free from this wretched mountain and its untold dooms!

  Through the masked terror that he hid so well, Dereas could see that Rusfaer’s fingers, normally steady, strong as eagle’s claws, now gripped the hilt of his sword with a hesitant slackness. Truthfully, he had never seen his brother thus shaken. The encounter doubtless had left him less than confident. Surely a formidable human foe, Rusfaer was not a beastslayer.

  Dereas’s mind strayed back to that blood-stained encounter with the snake. Beyond normal means the serpent had doubled around and cut them off from the front. How? Obviously the thing had supernormal powers, to track and corner so swiftly—and violently, which meant...what chance did they have, as mere gropers in the dark, to save themselves from certain annihilation?

  Dereas forced himself back to the present. He reached for his sword, found it missing from the scabbard. Stupid! He had lost it in the mad scramble back in the tunnel. His spear also. He stalked over to Draba and wrenched the wicked, curved scimitar out of the rogue’s hand before he could object—reward for his bad behaviour leaving Fezoul prey to the snake. It left him with only his flat-edged short sword and small notched dagger as weapons. Gape-mouthed, Draba spouted a spate of curses but Dereas rounded on him, and it was obvious Draba was not ready to fight him over it. He glowered at the beastslayer, grumbling and murmuring insults, looking to Rusfaer for sympathy, but his fear was palpable of one who had taken on the snake. Ill feelings bristled like pikes in the gloom and a greyer cloud of animosity rose over their company from the ashes of old tensions. The companions cast roving eyes at a side tunnel which Fezoul had recommended with a shaking hand.

  The wanderers filled what few vessels they still had amongst them with Vitrin and used the greenish glare to guide their way along the side tunnel. Dereas frowned, his gaze wandering cheerlessly to the bleak, flaked, carven rock all around. He murmured as if in a dream, “In what realm do you abide, mountain king, to house these horrors?”

  Fezoul grunted between his bared teeth. Through his trance-like reverie, he remained still the humbled, violated king of an ancient people. “Our seers spoke of a great flood once,” he murmured in a strange, disembodied voice,” —a cataclysm, o’er ten million years ago that rocked the world.” His voice droned on like one possessed. “The rains came and the ice melted. The seawaters rose to unheard of levels. The animals, stripped of their habitat, came to Vharad, the godless mountain within which we stand. ’Twas the only standing island in a deluge of water, stretching leagues as far as the eye could see. Some creatures burrowed into the ancient rock and founded the grim tunnels below. They are the same we tread now. Amongst themselves they fought for resources, scarce on a windy, water-cursed world. Only the reptiles survived. They evolved to become a horrendous brood, all needing size and strength to survive. When we arrived, most of the elder beasts had disappeared, but there were some that slept—deep down in places, forgotten from the minds of men...”

  “A joyous bit of history,” grunted Hafta.

  Dereas bit back a shiver, feeling the ache of familiar legends haunt his soul. Memories of the frights and atrocities in the crypts of Ahrion’s dungeons were still fresh in his mind, but he flung such recollections aside. He crept on with shaky feet, in silence, guided by an instinctive wariness which the others shared, knowing that they would fight to survive—though they be but shadow puppets in a sunless, windless world.

  The menace of Pygra had not lost its grip. With frantic strides and hushed whispers that echoed the grimness of their surroundings, they stumbled along the silent ways, a company ragged, cut, bruised and battered. There was a harried quality to their shambling; Hafta’s face was a mask of discord and turmoil. Amexi flexed his quivering fingers and gripped the pommel of his sword as if it were the only thing that kept him sane. Draba set his round, resentful, mole-like face in a sardonic grimace, always darting looks over his shoulder to see if anything was trailing them.

  Rusfaer had partially developed a healthy respect for Fezoul’s mythical snake and had curbed his remarks and drolleries about it. The mountain king had sunk into an infectious gloom that could not be lifted. Dereas’s stomach began to roil. It felt like days since he had last eaten. What he wouldn’t do to be out on the open steppes riding in the wind! Or snug in his yurt wrapped under the furs with a good woman.

  Wishful thinking, he grunted. He snapped himself back to reality, forced himself to stay alert to the long-reaching shadows and the endless, twisting corridor. Thankfully, the snake’s tumult had died down some time ago.

  Though they had discovered an alternate passage, it didn’t sport any stream of light-giving Vitrin. But the ceiling was high enough for them to walk upright at least without banging their skulls. No signs of ancient bones or eggshells did they encounter, only darkness, ropy cobwebs and shadows. Menacing shadows played tricks across the path they walked. Even if the shadows were only deformed caricatures of their own passing, they were enough to push them all to the edge of dread. The king took them on narrower routes, longer and more circuitous, but with the comfort that the gargantuan serpent could not pass.

  After a period that could have marked hours or days, they came upon a rough-hewn tunnel whose rightmost branch gaped into open blackness. Rusfaer shone his bowl down the passage where golden fragments of dust seemed to cling to its sides like fairy stardust. Blinking in curious wonder, he swept up some of the particles in his knob-knuckled hand and examined them carefully under the dim light. Their sparkling radiance implied abundant riches to be had.

  Hafta and Draba squinted over his shoulders, eyes saucers as they peered, conjectures running rampant in their devious minds.

  “Well, I’ll be a lizard’s uncle,” swore Rusfaer, “I think this is gold dust!”

  His comrades bent to crowd around him, eyes glowing with excitement and calculation.

  “Look here, more of the stuff!” called Hafta, with greedy purpose. “And a naked vein, even a nugget. Not fool’s gold.” He pitched himself forward to grab at a chunk of what resembled pure gold, but Rusfaer slapped the ham fist away.

  “’Tis a nugget!” insisted Draba.

  Rusfaer ignored the rat-faced warrior. He grabbed the chunk and tossed it to Hafta, who eyed it with satisfaction and tested it with his teeth. “Pure gold, I’d say.”

  The mountain king hopped about with frantic unease, waving both of the men to caution. “We mustn’t go down there! No! Lizards abound in the gloom, the haunt of the half-men.”

  “Half what?” croaked Rusfaer. “Another one of your wives’ tales? That’s the first we’ve heard of ‘lizards’,” he grunted.

  The mountain king’s eyes bulged like a frog’s. “No, ’tis true. I don’t speak of them. Because it’s bad luck, after all.” His voice betrayed a hint of guilt that puzzled Rusfaer and Dereas.

  “Well, I don’t hear the snake now,” announced Rusfaer bluffly, “and I’m of mind to overlook a few lizards. Carve them up with my sword, I will. Might as well make our ti
me worthwhile if we’re going to starve and get bitten by giant clams. Well,” he blew air out between his teeth, “anything to say, mountain king?” He seemed completely forgetful of the encounter with the snake. Or completely in denial.

  The mountain king shook his head sheepishly, his sweaty face exuding a dull cast. “Before I was declared king, a group of dissidents rebelled from our order and our devotion to snakes. Led by the renegade Xabren, a sinister visionary, they left Xatu behind, our little kingdom in the mountain. They were bent on exploring elsewhere. They tunnelled too deeply, and never returned, so it was rumoured. Some say they had been affected by the dream gas whose soporific vapour blows from certain vents in the rocks. This was the last place they were heard from. Look!—” he pointed to several cryptic markings etched over the gap, stone carvings withal at the tunnel’s foot. He licked his lips. “It was feared that the renegades discovered some untoward evil.”

  “Hold up,” objected Rusfaer. “There is no one down there, old man, so let’s not get our robes in a knot. There are no footprints, no slime pools, lizard prints, or lizard scales that I see, and no sounds. Listen? I think our snake is gone.”

  True enough, there was only the roaring in their ears of unnatural silence and an ill feeling of dread. Even Dereas, despite the romantic idea of delving for riches, did not want to explore these tunnels, especially with the snake roaming free.

  Fezoul loosed a hissing whimper. “You are mistaken, chief. There are other things that prowl these deeps that you do not yet know of.” And Dereas could see the fear lurking in the mountain king’s eyes.

  Draba, meanwhile, burning with excitement, had pushed past the group, to stand glaring down into the tunnel. He, of all, seemed obsessed with the prospect of treasure and moved his head back and forth like a weasel, scanning for gold dust.

  The mountain king pointed a quivering finger at the fractured rocks over the carved lintel to the side tunnel. “Fool! Did you not hear me? Those are warning stones. A group of us erected them ages ago.”

  Though Dereas craned his neck, he could barely make out a petroglyph of a lank lizard with a foot over the neck of a gigantic snake which in turn, gobbled a man.

  Fezoul announced, “We of Xatu, erected the cairns to warn innocents—unsuspecting folk who would tread to their doom...But look, the blocks have been jarred, defiled!”

  “Maybe shifted over time,” suggested Dereas.

  “No!” called the haggard king. “Something is afoot. I feel it. And still, after all these years...”

  “Let us look then,” suggested Rusfaer. “No harm. And in the meantime, let us be on the alert for snakes, lizards and crabs—and for a major lode at least.” He laughed, blissfully ignorant of the import of the wives’ tale talk and the recent frights. He seemed fixed on a mission of precious minerals and a dogged stubbornness burnt in his wolfish eyes.

  “This must be an old mine,” Amexi remarked offhandedly.

  Rusfaer jerked a thumb at the sparkles of gold dust speckling the rock. “Maybe it was a blessing, rather than a curse that old Pygra diverted our attention to this gold-sprinkled niche,” he mused. “We could have ourselves a fortune here, brother!” He turned to Dereas in the interest of appealing to his silent qualms. “Nothing to guard the treasure except this timid owl—” he thrust an elbow at Fezoul who still gnashed and flitted from foot to foot. “That and a few legends of some half-baked lizards.”

  Dereas demurred. “I don’t doubt that’s true, brother, in the face of such wealth, but I side with Fezoul.”

  “What? You crazy fool! You could buy an army of warriors to carve out a kingdom!” He snatched the bowl lamp from Hafta’s fingers and shone it down the tunnel. A bend in the passage obscured view of anything further than twenty feet, but more gold glinted and what looked like a set of steep, crooked stone stairs. Part of Rusfaer’s anger seemed to dissipate in the light of so many riches. “I want to know how much is down there and how much we can carry with us.” His eyes burnt with dizzying depths and springing shadows, as if the horror of the crab and snake were distant memories and the old fires burned once more in his blood.

  Dereas, however, was of better memory and not so quixotic.

  Rusfaer ripped out his sword and scraped it on the wall with contempt. “Go then with your coward king!” he jeered. “Be swallowed by Pygra.” He shook off Dereas’s restraining arm. “I will stay and investigate this corridor and lay claim to the riches below! Who else is with me?”

  Hafta, Draba and Amexi exchanged murmurs which grew to grunts of accord.

  Dereas gave an exhalation of defeat. To split the group was an unwanted outcome, but he knew his brother’s stubbornness. Rusfaer would commit to a cause to the end, like the hound that clamps jaws onto its favourite bone. The beastslayer grit his teeth. They could ill afford side ventures, especially with the snake on the loose and the mountain king’s grave warning looming darkly. Though he did not want to be left out of what could be a treasure hunt beyond his wildest dreams, he could not at the same time completely mask his trepidation.

  And yet, to show fear or admit to cowardice in front of his brother would be nothing less than reprehensible. “A simple look-see and then we follow Fezoul’s lead,” he said harshly. With a grimace, he squelched his misgiving and pushed after the others.

  Rusfaer seemed not to hear. He wound his way down into the shadow-haunted darkness, eyes scanning hungrily up the corridor. The steps turned out to be ancient roots of a deep underground tree, oddly, that had been hewn down for some unknown purpose ages ago. The ungodly wood had been chiselled into the shape of steps, how was anybody’s guess, and then smoothed down by skilled hands. These they took warily. Rusfaer leading, then his cronies, Hafta and Draba, and finally Jhidik and Amexi. Dereas slunk at the rear with distrust, looking for any sign of danger or pursuit that might hound their heels. He gripped his rusty scimitar, notched, but at least serviceable, flicking out of his eyes the sweat that trickled down his grimy face. His hair fell in matted loops, eyes bloodshot webs deep to the whites. Why was it he had a harrowing feeling about this venture?

  Grimacing sourly, he forced his feet to move onward.

  5:Realm of the Rgnadon

  “And there will come a time when giant beasts shall reign,

  Walking the lands on two legs or four...”

  —Book of Lost Prophecies, Amar-Amon-Reth, overlord of the age of Saeth

  The spiral stairs curved like the coils of a great python, flanked on either side by primeval carvings—eels, salamanders, lizards. Then the path levelled out into a tunnel veined with pure gold.

  Rusfaer’s men stalked forward as if they were lords of an enchanted palace. They held forth their light-giving bowls, gaping at the ribbons of glittering golden on the floor. Their faces were lit ghoulishly in the pale light while festoons of gold, a wild weave of them, marked the walls. Crystals galore too sparkled in great clumps amidst the eerie, reptilian faces that leered out at them, carved in the naked walls.

  Rusfaer gave a chirrup of triumph. Excavation on such a side venture would be arduous, chipping with swords, but the return would be no less than a king’s ransom.

  A blur of movement crossed their line of sight. Rusfaer held up a finger, at which his men dropped to the stone like sacks of grain. Dereas’s men quickly followed.

  Heart pounding, Dereas flung himself on his belly pulling Fezoul with him—so close to the dank stone that he could smell the decaying clay and the moulder of ages.

  He glanced over the supine sprawl of his ragged comrades. He strained his eyes in the darkness ahead, but the shadows revealed nothing. Then several lithe, unfriendly shapes darted into the foreground. What in Balael—? The creatures had an eerie, springing gait.

  He motioned Amexi and Jhidik into a side tunnel. The rest of Rusfaer’s band slithered behind on their bellies, eager to be away from the menacing movement. They crept down the narrow, gold-corded way, shielding their light-giving bowls to minimize detection. In the damp
confines they crouched like toads, hearing the stealthy pad of footfall grow and fade. Then, as they squinted in the dark, several sinewy shapes skulked rhythmically past a dozen paces away, as no human would. But then they shrank into the shadows, as did the men who hunched ever closer to the stone floor.

  Dereas felt a chill crawl up his spine. He studied them for several seconds. The creatures had the air of lizards from a forgotten time, walking upright, hunched forward on gangling hind legs. They stooped like apes, rising less than shoulder height. Their foreclaws held bone clubs, spears or curved blades. Their fleeting, steely glint mirrored the murderous efficiency of the sabre-sharp, knucklebow tulwars of the old Singlaurian tribes of the northern plains.

  The sinking feeling grew. What were these weird freaks? A roving band? Some sort of patrol? Either way, it was an ominous sign, and he recalled his earlier intuition of dread. Already he could hear more shuffling at the junction and an instinctual chill fled up his spine as of the wolf that feels trapped by the hunter in the dead end canyon.

  Peculiar hammering and an invasive clink of heavy tools on stone echoed from far down the tunnel. Dereas bit his lip, for the sound came from somewhere below: amidst the low, unceasing yammer of weird, guttural voices...and yet, he swore he heard the crackle of strange fires, and possibly the weirdest of all, mysterious bellows of a monstrous beast.

  Cursing under his breath, he pushed forward on his elbows, an offensive reptilian musk in his nostrils. His peers and Fezoul wore panicked grimaces as they crept noiselessly down the side tunnel, away from the rhythmic, padding feet.

  The light grew in this narrowed alley. A torchlit glow from the space ahead flickered across the rough stone walls. The wanderers came out onto a landing, overhanging a rock cliff. In grim concert, they peered out over the rim. A sheer drop of dark rock yawned before them, and below a strangely disturbing and massive work area and sprawling courtyard nestled in an enormous, bowl-shaped cavern.