Avenger, page 8
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
He squatted in a pained crouch on the cold stone, staring at the pit of death below him. The sound of machinery died. His sword and the lamp lay mashed down there somewhere. He cursed sore words at the loss of his sword.
Doubtless the trap had been ingeniously constructed, operating in some mysterious pulley and lever system beyond the feet of stone.
Clever minds were at work here and somehow he doubted they had anything to do with dragons.
A trap...to foil who? Would-be treasure seekers?
Vetra craned his neck, looking back toward where the crushing wall originated. A hidden chamber behind the wall?
He stooped and peered wolfishly down into the gloom beyond the wall where a passage disappeared off beside the massive, battering ram that powered the slab.
Another dragon claw was fastened on the inside of that wall in ceremonial fashion, like pieces of a puzzle. Almost fearful to touch the cursed thing, Vetra hesitated, then gripped it and tore it off its brackets. Nothing happened.
“So, now we have two of these claws,” he muttered. “Like parts of a toy. So much for your key,” he scoffed.
“Any one of them could be the key,” Lehundr objected. “I’m guessing it’s probably this one.”
Zren clambered forward to have a look; the others glared at him.
“Your curiosity nearly killed us all,” Vetra said through clenched teeth.
“Yet if Zren had not tripped the mechanism,” remarked Dunon, “we could not see the exposed chamber behind the wall.”
Lehundr weighed the truth of the matter.
An uncomfortable silence gripped the group. Jhara went to examine the lethal dragon levers on the wall behind the sarcophagus.
“Can’t see what’s down there,” muttered Vetra. He squatted to peer down, straining his eyes in the faint light streaming from the entrance. He saw shadows of strange statues huddled in the murk farther up and more carvings on the wall. “Dergath’s ghouls, what is this place?”
“We’re going to need a light.”
“Maybe if you use the small brand I brought along,” Zren muttered with thick irony. He rifled through the sack tied at his waist and produced torch with flint and tinder.
While Besu grunted and Dunon snatched the items and lit the torch, Vetra turned to the others: “We’ve come this far, so we might as well explore the likes of this treasure.” He pushed his legs over the edge and jumped down with the torch. “Anyone else coming with me? I’ll have a look around and when I’m done, you can help me back up again.”
Besu was the only one who volunteered. But Zren, blood dripping from his lip, gave a sullen grunt and on impulse jumped down, as if to redeem himself for his impulsive act.
The pit looked like a chamber out of legend, a crude, cobble-stoned dungeon laced in thick cobwebs that spread amid dense shadows underneath the floor above. The three groped their way about the chamber, Besu and Zren creeping behind Vetra. Unease had him padding like a wolf and blinking into the murk, straining eyes to see what demon or horror would jump out at them.
Vetra’s keen eyes discerned a dark opening in the floor some twenty paces to the side. It was crisscrossed with cobwebs, something resembling a stair descending to unknown depths.
The cylindrical stone ram rolled on wheels and was crudely chiselled and affixed to some large stone mechanism. The ram itself was cold and rough to the touch, a work of monumental proportions.
Vetra moved on, transfixed. Following it back under the floor above, he trained the torch up.
A dragon statue loomed out of the darkness, towering heads above them on its hind legs. Clawed feet were outstretched and hands cupped in a gesture of offering—its toothy jowl carved in an austere grin. Vetra gave the thing wide berth, circling round it with bared teeth. His toe snagged on something rough and he realized his foot passed over a long seam dividing a false floor from the real one. He figured the falling floor of stone was powered by a similar mechanism hidden underneath the tons of stone underfoot. Why the elaborate engineering to ensnare a few thieves?
A large disc above with pulleys and chains hung down to fasten on the stone ram. A chute allowed a trail of boulders to fall and power the wheel. The boulders had already spilled, powering the ram to do its bloodthirsty work. Ingeniously constructed, thought Vetra. His hairs stood on end. How floor and walls retracted was beyond his knowledge.
They inched along like mice in a snake’s lair, passing one springy cobweb after another and ever-present moulder and frightful shadow. The chamber narrowed to a dingy tunnel underneath the floor above. They followed it for about sixty feet.
The passage ended in a sheer wall, edged by supporting pillars, old as time.
Besu pointed. “There! Over by that column, the wall!” They stumbled on to stand gaping aside a closed-off arch. Two skeletons lay sprawled in layers of dust and filth by the wall; one still clutched a corroded pickaxe in its hand. The wall was gouged with crude strikes. Obviously, the figures had been hewing a hole, digging for something—or perhaps digging to get out? Vetra rubbed his jaw. “These wretches likely starved to death before completing their mission.”
He held the torch up to the wall. A grim pantheon of dragon faces and scenes met his eye: men, dragons, beasts, weapons, expectant armies and mesmerizing symbols.
Zren peered at him, his face a wild mix of angst and wonder. Besu looked like an old hunted owl, his wings clipped. They retraced their steps underneath what would have been the chamber’s wall above.
A harsh grating of massive slabs sent hackles rising on Vetra’s back.
“What are Jhara and those fools up to? Do they want to kill us?” He raced back down the tunnel, torch guttering dangerously close to extinction, the others at his heels. “They must have jiggled the controls!”
They came stumbling back to the death-dealing wall. But this time the stone slab was moving back toward them at an alarming rate. Jhara was leaning over the edge up top, whimpering, her face white with tension and a wail stuck in her throat. “Get up, now!” she cried. “Grab my hands!” While Dunon held her legs and lowered her down, she snatched at Besu’s wrists and together the two hauled him up.
Besu scrambled to his feet then helped Dunon lower Jhara to attempt to get Zren and Vetra up.
Vetra glared daggers from below.
“We didn’t cause it,” Jhara protested, answering his vitriolic stare. “The slab started moving of its own accord. Lehundr is trying to reverse it now.”
“Well, tell Lehundr to get a move on,” Vetra thundered.
“It’s starting to close over completely. Faster now!”
The Thrule looked up with fear that he would be the last left behind.
“Get up there!” ordered Vetra. Dropping the torch, he hoisted the smaller man up on his back, pushing him up with a grunt.
No sooner had the Thrule been hauled up when Vetra felt the slab push him back. He caught a brief glimpse of Jhara’s look of absolute horror as the wall slapped shut.
The resounding smack of stone echoed about the chamber. Jhara’s fading, sundered wail echoed about the chamber and Vetra blinked—to silence. The beat of his heart.
“They’ll flip the switches and spring it open,” he assured himself.
But no such welcome scrape of stone came to his ear.
Likely the mechanism had a mind of its own. He grimaced.
He stared around his gloomy surroundings, struggling to contain his frustration. The torch would not last forever. Already it sputtered at his feet, smoking and hissing. He stooped to clutch it in a sweaty palm, eyes wide. A square chamber stretched off in the distance perhaps thirty feet.
Something told him he could not depend on his comrades’ efforts. These wretched traps! He should have known where one was sprung, another would follow.
His mind sprang back to the ancient pickaxe. Could he chip his way through the wall? It was at least a foot and a half of solid rock. Not easy. Perhaps a work of many hours, if not days, if the corroded metal didn’t give out. What of the poor fools who tried to chisel their way through? Could he chip at the moveable slab above? Perhaps where the stone joined the ceiling it was less thick. He studied the dragon statue and imagined poising on its neck and shoulders and striking upward at solid rock. He frowned. Only to have stone chips blind him? It seemed a foolhardy plan.
He prowled his prison like a caged lion. Retracing his steps back to the two skeletons, he crouched on his haunches and pulled the tool from the moulder. Why? Where? To what end? What had these fools been hewing for? Did they have knowledge of what lay beyond?
Vetra passed fingers along the wall. Rough, cold. It was both inscribed and embossed with relief.
The arched door was five feet wide and sealed to perfection. The seams were tight enough to be hardly detectable. What lay beyond? Had the diggers been trying to get to an adjoining chamber?
He weighed his options and fingered the rusty pickaxe, peeling off the layers of flaking metal at its head. The tool had a stout, four-foot wooden handle; the iron was flaked with orange on the surface, but it was black and strong underneath.
He concluded that such men, despite their evident failure, had embraced a worthwhile mission. At least they carried tools, so they likely had some purpose. Hand on chin, Vetra sat engrossed for several moments in some lip-chewing thought. Were there other options?
Nothing seemed of immediate interest in the vicinity of the tunnel wall. No chance of scaling the chute. The opening was too high, and it looked dead and dark up there. What he wouldn’t give to have access to the tunnel he had shunned earlier near the sarcophagus.
Off toward the far wall, a wide staircase in the centre of the hall wound down, now cracked and sunken with age. He was almost afraid of what he might find there and crept on cautious feet over to investigate. Drunken steps trailed down into the gloom, perhaps thirty feet. But that was not what held Vetra’s attention. They were flanked with low-riding dragon statues, of most familiar design.
Insanely lifelike! Almost like monster lizards, but with the bodies of leopards and the heads of dragons—not dissimilar to that strange, sphinx-like guardian lurking by the sarcophagus. He saw that more of them crouched, on the level below.
Vetra forced himself to walk down the steps, on the odd chance that something might offer an avenue of escape.
No such luck. More of the repulsive things lurked in the periphery, head to tail in what seemed random postures. Some were flatfooted, other poised in mid-step with necks bent and eyes glaring, as if frozen in time.
He stared. The chamber was like an insular menagerie, of size and configuration to the one above, circular, and admitting no exits, save but one corridor which ended abruptly. The walls and ceiling of this chamber bore no carvings or bas relief, unlike its predecessors, only simple smooth stone, as if it were a chamber to house only these repugnant things. Dergath, but they swarmed around him so life-like that he had to catch his breath. Every swell, lip, crack of bared fang and sharpened claw was depicted in startling detail. The things waited in an attitude of frozen menace for what was untold centuries.
Vetra thrust the torch into the face of one of the creatures, better to study its features. The flickering light showed the black-eyed face of a dragon and sleek torso of a jungle cat but sporting the scales of lizards and an alligator tail. The legs were stubby like those of a lizard’s. Though the eyes and horns were dragonish, it sported the wide snout of elder amphibians with razor-sharp serrated teeth. The stone was glazed over with red pigments. Like sleepwalkers, the watchers poised in a frozen prowl, as if they were in an induced trance. Jaws were slightly agape as if ready to mouth a toothy roar, and Vetra frowned. Such pantomime reeked of an ancient mystery impossible to decipher after so many passing centuries. He tugged at his chin. The whole place stank of menace and decay, as if upon the dragon-lord’s bidding, or perhaps his death, all had come to a standstill, frozen in time.
Vetra had heard of old tales spoken by the Kirns and the Guirites, of incredible life-like statues secreted in tombs. That they were watchers of the deceased, that they had been cast in stone, or iron, or some other form by arcane wizardry too old to name. That they could come to life at will to protect their deceased masters from unwanted intruders.
He brushed aside such thoughts with a wry grunt. These hobgoblins certainly had not come to life upon his entering this tomb. Mere fables. The stuff of myth.
Yet Vetra’s finger reached out to stroke the leafed stone of the massive gargoyle in front of him. Instantly he recoiled. The thing had a peculiar rubbery texture, as if made of old mouldered clay. Dead but alive—? Hard but yielding? His mind reeled. Too many incredible things lurked in this forsaken chamber to make sense of. He backed away.
What was that? A sound? He retreated to the broad stair. A wretched slithering? No, nothing. Just one of those many uncanny moments when a man lets imagination get the better of him. One of the repulsive dragon statues stared at him with its eerie, sightless gaze. A sudden swish of movement, as of a tail had him whirling. He crouched, drawing his pick. A tongue flickered out and a soft sibilance... The torch guttered and hissed. Vetra blinked. His imagination again. He relaxed, loosed a breath. The sound had played havoc on his nerves—it was a product only of his hissing brand and the elusive shadows in this dim, otherworldly place.
His torch would be burning down soon. How much time had he left? An hour? More? Why was he wasting time here?
Hurrying back to the skeleton tunnel, he propped the fragile flame on the wall. Time to pursue the digger’s cause. Taking up his tool, he began hewing at the hole where the others had failed.
Flakes of rock chipped on the rude paves.
Before long a pile amassed at his feet. His long-reaching hope was that the iron head would last long enough for him to hack his way through this barrier. How long had it lain here in the dust and silence?
The minutes passed. Sweat oozed from his pores. His muscles stood out like iron bands as he strained under the flickering flame. Should that light go out... The clinks landed like blacksmith’s blows and the tinny smacks rang in his ears like bells with every strike. Ghostly shadows played on the tunnel walls.
All the while he felt a strange presence weighing upon his soul. He felt the intolerant dragon statues glaring over his shoulders and their visionless eyes scrutinizing him and his movements with disdain. That he was trapped here underground with them he sensed they knew and had waited for. Who knew what sinister purpose they guarded?
The minutes passed; Vetra cleared the pile of rock away with his boot. Minutes of life remained in the hissing flame. No sound of help from his colleagues. Surely they could hear his tapping? He had the sickening feeling they had failed and were forced to move on.
The torch flickered and died. Vetra slumped, back to the wall, arms and shoulders sagging. The first vestiges of panic began to crawl over his limbs. The bones of the diggers rattled at his feet. He kicked them away. A bleak feeling of failure washed over him. What a fate to die here in this darkness with these skeletons! He lurched to his feet, a snarl on his lips, rejecting such a demise. It was getting hot in this chamber. The air was less potent, less breathable. The sods had likely died of asphyxiation; two mouths breathing the same air. His head swam, his bloodshot eyes burned, and now his throat felt clogged with dust.
He pounded on without pause, merciless stroke after stroke, every muscle feeling the battering shockwave of steel on rock up his arm. There came a different sound to his swing. A thunk versus a thwack. Had the blunt head hit air? He smashed with all his blind fury. A tremor of hope bloomed in his chest. He pulled the iron free and passed fingers through a small notch. Yes! Air! A tiny finger-sized hole.
Like a prospector striking gold, Vetra hacked with zeal, surrendering all restraint, flakes of rock flying at his feet. He knelt and heart pounding, passed a hand through the arm-sized opening. The air was cooler there. A glow, very faint, almost imperceptible, drifted from behind that hole. The presence of air meant some fresher source and possibly an escape route out of this stifling burrow. He chipped some more rock and squeezed his sweaty head through and snuffed a mouthful of welcome air.
A two foot hole was gouged out, and he crouched, peering through.
Some natural light shone from a slit in the rock from high overhead.
Solid objects loomed in the dimness. More statues? He could not be sure.
He crawled through, eyes widening pools in the murk, pick raised. The hall was huge; his scuffing boots echoed cavernously. It was like a great amphitheatre here, with lofty ceiling lost in gloom. The air was pervaded with an ancient grandeur and the uncaringness of ages.
He crept forward like a man in a trance and in front of him at the hall’s front stood a dragon lord statue, eight feet high. On either side crouched two guardians, miniature versions of the ones in the adjacent chambers. Draped on the statue’s chest was another dragon claw similar to the others but worn as an amulet. The look on the lord’s face was one of solemn wonder and sublime reflection. Yet, a sadness, which struck Vetra as odd.
The statue was not dissimilar to those he had seen in the desert. Was this the last lord of a dying dragon realm?
The lord faced the outer semicircle, as if addressing a vast crowd. A proprietary hand was placed on one of the small leopard-lizard’s heads like a pet hound. Vetra turned to see benches spread and tiered on high, row after row, rising from floor to domed ceiling. He shook his head in wonder. What a hall of the ancients. His head swivelled in full circle. The acoustics were perfect here, and he could hear the scuff of his boots and his heavy breathing amplified three-fold.
Wait. There—a light gleamed in the dead dragon lord’s eyes. A chill crawled down his spine. The glint vanished, whatever it was. Only a glister off his tool perhaps from the pale sunlight streaming through the shaft above.
He went to stroke the claw-amulet. Two or three of the precious gems encrusted in the ornament rattled free of the ancient collar and clattered to the paves. With swift ease he picked them up and put them in his pocket.
