NOVEL NEXT 152. The Ember Dimmed
Left at the fork the beaten pavers of an ancient path. He blew gently on the ember and out of the dark were illuminated cold flecked stones, perfectly cut and masoned. Inlaid cartouches standing floor to ceiling, engraved pictographs chiseled with geometric precision and inlayed with untarnished gold, there to stand millennia against the coming age. He stooped for the sign of Khaz but he saw no such sign. He began nethermore the long inkblack tunnel, an abyssal warmth breathing softly upon his face, only ever seeing two or three yards ahead by the glow of the firebrand.
A ways on, he could not tell how far, someone had rested a clay amphora against the wall. Beside it a smashed wooden crate. Dryrot shot through, inside dust and chaff smelling of wheat germ. He put his ear against the amphora and rapped a knuckle. Sounded full. Unstoppered it smelled of freshwater. He upturned it and drank deeply. He continued down.
The wynd wound on for hours and hours it seemed. The ember consuming the good wood, the larval red worm wavering and shimmering and threatening to suddenly metamorphize into a mothlike flame: soft, manic, fragile. Once it died he would be blind. He stopped, held it out at arm's length. He adjudged it half gone already. He shook his head and went on. Creeping within this arterial vein of the world like some parasite. Passing dioramic superstructures of its construction on every side. Layers of an onion. You could see how it was put together, how it might be pulled asunder. The air dead silent. Black as oblivion. He stretched his shoulder as he walked and would have stopped to cut the sutures from his chest but there was no time. There was no time for anything anymore. She was depending on him and what was coming for her wouldn't wait.
The ember was but an inch above his hand when he felt a strange unburdening of his progress. As if someone stood behind him, their hands on his iliac crests, pressing him onward. By the glimmer of the firebrand he saw the saberblade raised up off of his hip, its tip pointing obliquely at the floor ahead. On the other side of his body Booky's blade quivered in its sheath as if in eager anticipation. The invisible force channeling through his weapons drew him on and he had to lean back against it, his feet slapping and sliding over the pavers. He threw out a hand to take hold of the wall and it flaked off under his grasp. He reached again and found purchase. Slowed his forward motion. The wall was very cold and it appeared ruddy by the ember's orange throbbing and perhaps from something else. He held to his nose the grit impressed upon his fingers. It smelled like running too hard. Slaughtered swine. The estate's old iron fence.
He stumbled on a few steps. There was a thin powder covering the floor and hazing up the air. The smell of iron grew stronger. Like he was drowning in cold blood. He stopped to listen and that's when he heard the wheezing. The rasp of a scythe against whetstone. He stepped gingerly now. Through an archway and into a cylindrical chamber with seven other arched portals, six sealed up with stone and sacred runes, and one whose runes had been defaced and whose stone had been partly jammed up on some rocks beneath it. Then the rocks spoke. "Name yerself," they said. "Else hold yer firestick down where I can see yer ugly face."
He lowered the ember to the side of his face as he was bid to do.
"Orc," said the rocks.
"Khaz," he said.
"Mountain and glass. The others? Mym?"
"She's waiting outside."
"By the dead stones at least there's that."
As they spoke Orc walked over to the rocks crushed under the seal of the arch. The seal looked to be a slab of iron. Six or seven tons. The rocks, he saw, had stoppered the slab about eight inches off of the floor. He looked closely and saw the rocks themselves were something else entirely, for they had begun to weep.
"What happened?" he said.
"We were coaxin up the door here when it just stopped listenin. Damn thing dropped straight down on us."
"Us?"
"Me and the lass. I pushed her off as it came down. Woke up and she was gone. Cave in might've caught her. I can't say. I can't move anymore. She never answered me callin."
Orc got on his knees and peered under the slab at the wynd beyond. It was too dark to see. He slipped the plank into the gap.
"Careful of that," said the dwarf.
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"What's down there?"
"The wynds of time."
He pushed the plank as far as he could reach along the floor. The ember didn't light much of the wynd but it was clear everything past the seal had collapsed. Who knows for how far. What was left of Khaz was emerging out of the cave in at the hip. Body pinned and broken by the iron slab, twisted, transforming to stone. Orc withdrew the plank and sat up.
"Not pretty is it."
"Looks painful."
"It's a damned torture." Eyes like obsidian beads glinted in the emberlight. "Tell me ye brought the stone of yer folk."
"No."
"Mym got it?"
"No."
"The witch?"
"Dead and gone. The stones too. Lost beneath the sea of suns. Likely the power's gone out of them anyway. The redeemer took back what was his."
"The redeemer?"
"The god of men. We saw him come out of the block your forefolk used to behead their gods. Seems he took Daraway's sorcery and Mym's stonespeech."
"And mine."
"And everyone's. I don't think it was ever yours. Not really. It was always his."
"So he's who dropped the moon on us."
"I'd say it's likely."
They were silent for a while. Orc thought he could hear the slow drip of water coming from somewhere behind the seal. Then he couldn't hear it anymore.
"I'm going to try to pull you out."
"Ye can't."
"I'm still going to try."
He did. The dwarf grunted and then screamed for him to stop.
"Sorry."
"We're fusin together."
"You and the rock?"
"Aye."
This seemed an impossibility to him. Then he remembered the wooden figures of those consumed by the mother. He thought he might cut the dwarf loose, if only he had time and a tool.
"How's Mym," said Khaz.
He didn't know how to answer.
"She's hardenin too, isn't she?"
"Yeah."
"Best if ye get back te her then."
"Yeah."
"Don't ye leave without doin it."
"I won't."
"Good."
He reached in and ran his hand over what was left of the dwarf's body. His coat torn in places, the skin rough and cold beneath. On the floor dried blood like frozen mercury.
He peered again at the cave in. "Cousins is back there?"
"Aye. Poor thing."
"Are you sure she's dead?"
"I've been lyin here fer ages. Stonin. Starvin."
"What's down there?"
"There's not a dwarf alive who knows. Plenty gone inte wynds lek these and never come back."
"You called it the wynds of time."
"It's just a name."
"Then why were you trying to get in?"
"We were hopin it was more than just a name." The dwarf grunted again. His breathing, such as it was, grew ragged and short. "I can't wait much longer," he said.
Orc nodded. "Alright."
"Will ye tell Mym I'm sorry."
"Yeah."
"Fer everythin."
Orc stood up. The ember now burned the last inch of wood. There wasn't enough plank left for him to hold. With his foot he nudged it over so he could see what he needed to do.
"Use me stock," said Khaz.
Orc looked around for it. Its steel glinted out of the dark at the height of his head. He reached for it.
"It's stuck to the seal," he said.
"Aye. The whole room's a lodestone. Thought it was natural. But if me forefolk crafted prisons fer gods who knows what else they could do. Likely they charged the whole bleedin earth."
Orc reached both hands around the shaft and placed his foot against the seal. He heaved with everything he had and the alpenstock came loose and he almost fell over backward. He looked at it in his hand. The outline of its pick silhouetted against the glimmering ember.
"Get on with it. Filthy hog."
He turned. Hefted the tool like an ax. Like he was chopping wood.
"Not lek that. Use the spike."
He flipped his grip.
"Aye. Aim fer me heart."
"You're sure?"
"The hell I am."
He gripped it by the head and by the shaft. He looked a last time at Khaz's eyes. The dwarf couldn't nod but Orc saw the assent between the fits of pain. He drove down upon him with everything he had and the scraping resounded through the shaft and then there was a final crunch. Next he looked the eyes were still open but now unseeing. The ember dimmed and then it went out.