The Fur Trader (19 page)

Garrin shook his head. “I have found a few ruins during my time in the mountains, but this is not one I am familiar with. This must be one of the larger ones that Brent had been searching for.” The door was easily ten feet wide and half again as tall, made entirely of stone and covered with a light layer of dust and a couple of cobwebs spanning the upper corners. Garrin stepped in front of the others and inspected the strange runes in the door. It was not a language he recognized.

“Do you know what it says?” Richard asked.

Garrin shook his head. “I only speak Common Tongue. It could be Taish or Peish for all I know.”

“Bah, I don’t know too many elves who live underground,” William said. “Has to be Peish. Only the dwarves would live down here in a tunnel like this.”

Garrin shrugged. It seemed like a logical enough answer. He glanced up to the crystal, which was hovering and spinning in the air nearby. “The woman who gave me this was no dwarf,” he said. “Maybe this is something from her people. She called them the Punjak.” The trapper turned to see a visibly shaken William. The man glanced nervously to the crystal and then back to the door.

“Is that a problem?” Garrin asked.

William took in a breath and shook his head. “No.”

The answer came a little too flat for Garrin’s liking. There was something William wasn’t saying. The trapper looked to Richard, who was yawning wide and shivering in the cold. There would be time to understand William later. Right now, Garrin had to get the boy to a place where they could rest and warm up.

“Let’s open it,” Garrin said as he reached his hand for the large, iron ring. The door didn’t budge.

“Yeah, we tried that,” William said. “I may not know the mountains, but I can figure a door out.”

Garrin sniggered at the quip and let it roll off his back. He bobbed his head around, looking for a keyhole, but he didn’t find anything. He tried pressing on the door next.

“Tried that too,” William said.

The trapper took a step back and looked up at the door. “Maybe it requires a password, or a magical spell.”

“Well, none of us can use magic,” William replied.

Garrin nodded. “Nor can we read the runes to try passwords,” he said with a sigh. “I suppose we can try to sleep in here. Kiska and Rux will wake us if the wizard comes in.”

“What if he takes his fireball and burns us out?” William asked. “By the looks of the fire we saw, he might be able to do that. We’d be safer behind these stone doors.”

The trapper nodded. “True.” He looked around the area, but didn’t see anything he could use. There were no levers, gears, or clues for opening the door. Kaspar, who had crawled back into the canister before entering the tunnel, reemerged and leapt up onto the stone step in front of the door.

“Oh, look, the rat will open the door for us,” William scoffed.

Kaspar turned back around and offered what sounded like a high-pitched dog bark in William’s direction, then he turned back to the stone door and walked up to it slowly. He put the top of his head against the stone and began chattering quietly.

“Look!” Richard called out.

Garrin smiled as the runes began to emit a soft, maroon light, starting from the left-most character and going through one by one until they all glowed bright. The door swung in as easily as if it were made of paper. Kaspar turned back to William and looked as if he stuck his tongue out at the man before turning back around, tail held up triumphantly in the air, and walking through the entrance.

The crystal dipped in the air and went in after Kaspar.

“What did you say that weasel was again?” William asked Garrin.

The trapper slapped William on the shoulder. “Kaspar is a Dryfoot mink. Come, let’s get inside.”

Garrin led the others in, with Rux and Kiska bringing up the rear. The door slowly swung closed after them, leaving them inside a large, square tunnel of chiseled stone with round, wooden pillars lining the sides. Each of the pillars had runes carved into the wood, and was crowned with a ring of gold.

“That’s real,” William said noting the golden rings.

Garrin nodded. “Perhaps I will have to stop by here on my way back,” he said.

“Aren’t I paying you enough?” William poked sarcastically.

“Call it a tax for fighting wizards, you did fail to mention that particular aspect of the job you know,” Garrin quipped.

William stopped and put a hand on Garrin’s shoulder. “You must understand, I was in a tough spot, and I have to make sure Richard is safe.”

The trapper could see the sincerity in the man’s eyes. He nodded and let the subject go at that. William, on the other hand, continued to explain.

“Besides, I had hoped we were far enough ahead that we wouldn’t get caught by them.”

“It’s all right,” Garrin said as he turned and began walking again. The crystal was now hovering in place, waiting for them. Kaspar also seemed impatient, standing on his hind legs and chattering away angrily. “Pipe down, Kaspar,” Garrin said. “Or I’ll feed you to Kiska for dinner.”

Richard shot Garrin a look that made the trapper laugh.

“Not to worry, I threaten him all the time when he gets like this,” Garrin said. “Besides, Kiska won’t go for him anyway, not enough meat on the bone.”

Kaspar squeaked shrilly and then turned and ran down the tunnel ahead of even the floating crystal. Garrin soon understood why when he saw a second door. The Dryfoot Mink was already setting his head to the stone and the runes were beginning to glow.

“Handy little friend,” William said. “Where’d you say you found him?”

“I didn’t,” Garrin replied evenly. The trapper quickly changed the subject by pointing out a large set of stalls off to the right. “Looks like we stable the horse here.”

“Look, there’s even hay here,” Richard pointed out.

Garrin looked to William, who only frowned and scrunched up his brow.

“How long can hay last, a few years maybe?” William asked.

Garrin shrugged. “I don’t raise cattle or horses,” he replied. “So, I wouldn’t know. But I wouldn’t think it would last centuries. If this is a Punjak ruin, then there shouldn’t be hay or anything here.”

The horse pulled away from William and went to the stable and began munching on the crisp hay with pleasure.

“Well, I suppose it’s better than foraging through the snow,” William said with a shrug.

Kaspar stood up on its hind legs and chattered, his teeth clicking and his tail switching behind him.

“All right, all right,” Garrin said to the animal. The three of them went into the next doorway, which was only large enough for humans and wouldn’t have allowed the horse through in any case, and then they stopped dead in their tracks.

“Icadion’s beard,” Garrin muttered under his breath.

Before them was a rectangular chamber, filled with wooden tables that in turn had open crates upon them. Some of the crates were filled with spider webs and dust, but others had candlesticks, short swords, bucklers, or jewelry. It looked to be some sort of market. Each table appeared to have items of a similar type grouped into the crates on top. Garrin surmised that the crates filled with dirt and old mold had likely started out holding food of some sort. He skipped the first table and went to the next, which had four boxes of knives, arrows, and short swords.

William and Richard went to look at other tables. Richard went to a box and pulled out a wide copper bracelet with a turquoise stone set into it, while William tugged at a dull buckler and held it in his left hand, swinging and pushing it around as if in a fight.

“It’s solid,” William said. “Well made.”

Garrin nodded and pulled up an obsidian dagger. He turned it over in his hand and scrutinized the edge in the red light of the crystal. “Age has not dulled their weapons much either,” Garrin commented over his shoulder. He smiled as an idea came into his mind then.

“Look around for some rope,” he said.

“Rope?” William echoed.

“I can set a few fun traps for our wizard friend, then we can get some sleep for the night.”

“I’m hungry,” Richard said.

“William, you have the bag from the bear hang, give it to the boy and then come give me a hand.”

Richard frowned when William opened his pack and handed him the bag of food.

“There’s nothing but oat rolls and dried meat in here,” Richard whined.

“Better than a kick in the backside,” Garrin said.

Richard ate while Garrin and William hunted down some rope and then built a web of swords and knives behind the door they had just entered. Once they had the tangled contraption rigged to stab through the doorway upon opening the door, they took another length of rope and hung three crates filled with bucklers above the doorway and set them to be activated by stepping on a loose stone in the floor, which would in turn pull an iron pin out of a mechanism off to the side that would then allow the crates to fall. Given the tripwires he had already set at the cave entrance, Garrin wanted to use a pressure plate further in.

“You learn these traps up here in the mountains?” William asked once they had finished.

Garrin shook his head. “I wasn’t much use with a sword or a bow, but I was a deadly spearman, and if I had any time on my side, I was a trap master. I slew far more Tarthuns with my traps than I ever ran through with my spear.” Garrin turned to William and grabbed the man’s shoulder to drive the next point home. “And I killed
a lot
of Tarthuns with my spear.”

William nodded and smiled appreciatively. “Gods help the fool who comes through that door after us.”

Traps set and doors locked as best as they could manage, Garrin and William went back to Richard and then continued through the hall to where Kaspar was impatiently pacing back and forth. Kaspar was quick to give Garrin a reproving
click-clack
and then he turned to scamper down a hallway to the left as the crystal floated along.

“Bit of an attitude on that one,” William noted.

Garrin nodded. “He’s a bit more excited than usual,” he replied.

The trio followed Kaspar through the hall, with Kiska and Rux close on their heels. They soon turned into a side chamber. Richard was stumbling now as he walked, exhaustion clearly setting in on the youth. Garrin stopped in the doorway, shaking his head.

“Kaspar, we aren’t sleeping in here,” he said. His eyes fell upon the many skeletons resting upon tattered beds in the room.

“By the gods,” William said reverently. “Looks like they were murdered in their sleep.” William pointed to one skeleton nearby that had a broken spear shaft protruding from its ribcage.

Garrin put a hand on Richard’s shoulder and turned the boy around before he could enter the room fully. “Come on, let’s find another room.” Garrin let the others out first as he turned back to the room and sighed. Perhaps that sorceress had been telling the truth after all. If the Punjak had been murdered in their beds, then it was a terrible crime indeed. As horrible as that nightmarish scene was, Garrin still couldn’t fathom that he could do anything about it now. How could he avenge a genocide that was centuries old?

Unlike other times when the group fell behind the crystal or moved in different directions and the crystal waited until they caught up, this time it moved to follow Garrin. The trapper opened doors on either side of the hallway, briefly poking his head in and seeing many scenes like the first.

“How many do you think perished in the night?” William asked as Garrin opened and inspected the seventh room briefly before closing it and shaking his head.

“Whoever did this had no heart,” Garrin said. They passed another ten doors before they finally came to a room free of skeletal remains. It was a kitchen situated at the end of the hall before it turned to the right. The prep tables were bare. Old pots hung from racks dangling from the ceiling, joined by cobwebs and covered in a thick layer of dust. Boxes and crates were stacked in the back, some covered with mold while others had broken down with age.

Still, there were no bodies, and that is all Garrin was needed to make a campsite for the night.

“Come in, bar the door, and let’s get settled in.”

William nodded and quickly went to the tables, laying out a bedroll on each one. Richard barely waited long enough for his bedroll to be set up before he crawled up onto the table and slipped into his covers. He was snoring before William or Richard had finished rearranging their own blankets.

Rux and Kiska took up positions flanking the door into the kitchen. Kaspar wouldn’t return to his canister either, choosing instead to curl up on top of Kiska and watch the door.

“Shall we take shifts?” William asked.

Garrin shook his head. “If the wizard makes it through the traps, he’ll still have to search the rooms. With any luck, he won’t make it this far. If he does, then the split-tails will wake us.”

The crystal started to fade then, spinning down through the air and approaching Garrin. The trapper held his hand out and took the artifact, tucking it back into the pouch on his belt.

“Is that it?” William asked. “Is it out of power?”

Garrin shrugged. He honestly had no idea. Either way, it had helped save them tonight. He found himself whispering a silent thanks to the sorceress as he crawled into his bedroll and closed his eyes. Yet, even as he could hear Richard’s snores and William’s breathing turned heavy and slow, sleep was unable to find the trapper. In his mind came images of what might have happened to those he had found in the bedrooms lining the hall. Shadowy forms moved quickly through the rooms, stabbing and slicing silently as their victims slept in their beds. Man, woman, child, it made no difference. They slaughtered them indiscriminately, turning what surely had once been a thriving city built within the mountain into nothing more than a catacomb filled with the echoes of its once blossoming civilization.

It seemed as though the nightmares plagued him for hours as time dragged by. It didn’t help that the table he was trying to sleep on was stiff and rigid as stone. He couldn’t settle his body, much less his mind. He tried to turn onto his side, but then his arm fell asleep. He rolled onto his back again, but the flat table made his lower back ache and throb. Finally he sat up, hoping to at least shake the discomfort of the table. He swung his legs over the side and put them down upon the floor. As he stood up, a faint glow came from the crystal as it emerged from the pouch once more and hovered in the air. This time, however, instead of spinning in place, it was making large orbits around Garrin. The trapper stood, bewildered at the sight.

Kaspar jumped up from Kiska’s back and went to the door, tail erect and body stiff.

A strange sound came from the other side of the door. At first it sounded like metal scraping upon stone, as if someone was dragging something along the floor. Then there were heavy thumps accompanied by high-pitched squeaks. A strange, green light appeared at the bottom of the door and the sounds stopped. The crystal around Garrin circled faster in the air, spinning and glowing brighter. The trapper tried to grab it and conceal the light, but it was too quick for him.

Kiska and Rux stood up as something tapped on the door. Their heads hung low and they began to growl.

The door was thrown open, despite having been locked and barred. There in the doorway stood not a wizard, as Garrin had expected, but a large, bipedal golem of metal. Its left arm ended in a great crossbow, while its right arm was fashioned with a three-fingered hand. A face of smooth metal turned and looked at Garrin with green eyes that glowed brightly. It lifted its hand and a wave of green light coursed through the room, illuminating each living creature therein and leaving them with what looked to be a covering of glowing, green dust. Garrin tried to wipe it off of himself, but it was as if the green dust had adhered to his skin permanently.

Kiska and Rux began to inch toward the strange golem, but Kaspar turned and chattered at them both. The two split-tails then sat on their haunches and ceased growling.

The metallic golem entered the doorway and its head turned as it scanned the inside of the room, the hinges in its neck squealing and screeching in protest. Then, the red crystal moved higher in the air and let out a wave of red light. The green dust disappeared from Garrin and the others, and the green eyes in the golem’s head began to glow red. The clunky machine turned and left the kitchen, pulling the door closed behind itself.

“What in the name of Hammenfein was that?” Garrin asked.

*****

Seidrif brushed himself off and picked himself up from the cave floor. He should have expected traps. The bearded wizard summoned his white crystal’s full strength, bathing the tunnel in bright light and laying bare the other tripwires before him.

“Clever,” Seidrif commented dryly. “Simple, but clever.”

With the added light from his crystal, he could easily avoid the others as he walked through the cave. The dirt and stone in the walls glistened with frost from the early morning air as he passed by with his crystal. This made it all the more easy to spot the rope snaking up the wall many yards into the tunnel. Seidrif eyed the trap carefully, and then stepped over it, avoiding triggering it. He had to stifle a laugh when he looked up and saw the hefty piece of wood hanging near the ceiling. The metal traps on the road had been very dangerous indeed, but these tripwires and this bit of wood that was hardly more than a stick in Seidrif’s estimation, reeked of desperation.

The wizard quickened his pace, pausing only at the large door in the wall. He studied the runes carved into the doorway. He couldn’t read them, but he knew what they were. The Punjak had used spells to lock their homes and fortresses in the mountains. He knew how to figure out this lock.

Seidrif pulled a green stone from the folds of his robes. He turned to the ground and drew a circle around himself. The bearded wizard sat cross-legged on the floor and placed the green stone upon the ground in front of himself. He closed his eyes and spoke the incantation exactly the way Zek had taught him.

Though he had performed this spell a few times already, it still unnerved him as the ground below him seemed to fall away and wind rushed up around him. He had to consciously remind himself that he was not, in fact, falling, though it very much felt that way. His body was as still upon the ground as it had been before he spoke the spell. The illusion of falling was part of the magical connection, an astral conduit that stretched from his circle to a scrying tool that Zek used.

When Seidrif opened his eyes, he was no longer able to see the cavern or the door. Though his body was still seated there, his consciousness was hovering cross-legged above a small pedestal with a pool of dark liquid held inside. The light was dim, but he could see Zek sleeping upon a large bed a few yards away.

Zek, a tall wizard with brown hair and a mean scowl, must have felt the intrusion, for he rose out of his bed without a word from Seidrif.

“What is it?” Zek asked as he wiped the sleep from his eyes. “Have you found the child? Is the traitor dead?”

Seidrif shook his head. “I have trailed them to an underground ruin.”

“A Kossin ruin?” Zek asked.

Again, Seidrif shook his head. “No, I believe it is a Punjak stronghold.”

Zek blinked his eyes and shot up from the bed onto his feet. “A what?!” Zek narrowed his dark eyes and approached the scrying pool, coming close enough to look directly into Seidrif’s eyes. “The Punjak were destroyed, along with all of their dwellings.”

“No,” Seidrif replied evenly. “This one still stands. There is a doorway that I cannot open. Can you help me decipher the runes?”

Zek grumbled and wagged a finger in the air as he moved to a nearby table and fumbled with a map. He rolled the parchment and set it aside, then he reached beyond the table to a shelf of books behind it. “Show me the runes,” he said as he pulled a large tome out and set it down where the map had been moments before.

Seidrif nodded and lifted his finger in the air. He drew the characters from memory, careful to mimic not only their shape and design, but also the gentle arc they formed across the doorway.

“Those are the runes, you are sure?” Zek asked.

Seidrif nodded. “They appear exactly as written.”

Zek opened the tome and flipped through the pages. He stroked his chin as he glanced from the glowing phrase in the air to the pages on the book. It only took a few moments before he clapped his hands and turned back to Seidrif with a smile upon his face.

“I have it. Listen carefully.”

Seidrif didn’t need to listen so much as sit quietly and clear his mind. A trail of blue mist grew from Zek’s hand and stretched into the liquid in the scrying pool below Seidrif’s consciousness. Within moments, a phrase of sounds entered Seidrif’s mind, imprinting themselves on his memory. He had no understanding of what they meant, but understanding was not necessary with such a spell. This was simply a key. Had it been more complex magic, like summoning an elemental force, then of course he would need to understand the words as well.

Once the phrase was fully recorded in his mind, the astral connection severed and he was back in the tunnel with the door before him. He picked up his green stone, replacing it back into his pocket and then stood up from the circle and wiped across the symbol he had drawn with his foot.

He moved to stand before the door and spoke the incantation. The runes on the stone began to glow and the portal opened. He walked inside, finding a large, square tunnel of chiseled stone. Round, wooden pillars crowned with a gold plate lined the sides of the tunnel. The floor was smooth, well-worn in the center but still in excellent condition.

Seidrif called upon his white crystal to amplify the light in the tunnel, searching for tripwires or other traps left behind by the men he hunted.

It wasn’t long before he came to another door, this one much smaller. A set of stables was situated to the right. Seidrif looked to the stables and saw his brother’s horse resting peacefully. Seidrif may have been able to use the horse, but somehow the sight of the beast sleeping easily in a stable after serving the men that had killed his brothers churned the rage in his chest. He moved deliberately toward the animal, his fingers on his right hand twitching as his wrist flipped upward and prepared to launch his spell.