The Lost Runes Saga [Epic Fantasy]

TWENTY-EIGHT

Vidar ran. They were looking for the dragon's skeleton. If they found it and harvested the bones, Rend would never forgive him, and any hope of having the dragons agree to some peaceful solution would turn to ash.

He noticed eyes on him as he made his way out of Nordstan and saw figures skulking after him. It didn't matter if it was Tyv's men, Fjodor's protection, or Jarl having him followed. Vidar did not intend to get cornered. He ran as soon as he passed over the moat, turned into a side street, turned again, then a third time before hurrying into a shop to pick up the leather satchel. It came out just as he envisioned it, with accessible compartments for each of the different runes, and he slung it over his shoulder, peering out through the window, seeing no suspicious characters.

After a moment of hesitation, he rejuvenated the leather worker's algiz rune, gave him a silver coin for a job well done, and headed out before the man could fully launch into the story of how the barrier proved useful in a tavern brawl just the other night.

Vidar saw no one following, but he still took care as he made his way down through a hatch near the dragon's final resting place, heading into the underground waterways. Once he made the climb down, he stood in the darkness, listening. The water made it impossible to hear much else, but Vidar thought he heard faint words drifting through the tunnels. He inched through the narrow passage, then stopped and looked back as he heard a click from above. Someone had unlocked the hatch behind him.

It opened. He hadn't imagined being followed. Someone was coming for him. He set his jaw and hurried down the passageway to the platform by the water and hid behind the corner. Someone, a man, let out a small curse. It drifted down the ladder, and the sound of boots on metal followed. They were descending the ladder. Vidar waited and readied his runes with bated breath. For the longest time, all his ears picked up was the water rushing past next to him and the thumping of his heart. Then, a scuffle of leather boots on stone, a whispered word, and Vidar steeled himself, moving to face the passageway.

He triggered the kenaz rune on his forehead. It flashed with bright, cold light, showing those inside. The triggered rune blinded them as Vidar got a good look. It revealed three soldiers. They were short and thin to fit through the hatch. Two men and one woman, all of them with hands covering their eyes, trying to shield themselves from Vidar's light. Jarl figured he would lead them right to the dragon bones. An incorrect assumption.

Running on the wet stone down there was treacherous going. One slip-up and you were down in the water, pulled along in the icy cold. Still, Vidar could not allow himself to get caught, and his ears already picked up more sounds of pursuit. Killing the soldiers was not an option. He was no murderer, and he had no intention of seeing the inside of another cell.

In one of the longer corridors, he saw light from another lantern. More voices joined the three, not just from behind him, but from the sides too. At least two groups were down there with him.

Vidar crossed a small bridge, turned left, rushed forward past two intersections, made a right, then a left, and reached the correct corridor. The ladder down was within reach. He hurried past it. A few more turns, and he stood looking down at the water basin, the dragon's glinting eyes in the distance. He hurried upstream and placed a sowilo rune on the ground. It was full of dragon's essence.

Once in place, he triggered the sowilo rune. Back behind a corner, Vidar peeked out and aimed with the palm of his hand. A weak thrust from the stakra rune, not even powerful enough to throw him backward, destroyed the wooden disk with the active sowilo rune on it.

The stone beneath his feet shook with incredible force and the sound sent his ears ringing. The whole tunnel groaned after the blast and fell in on itself, stone and dirt raining down. Pleased with the result, he hurried back to the corridor near the ladder. The voices were closing in when he returned, and he saw a light from one of their lanterns reflected on the far wall. Far too close. He dropped another sowilo rune, triggered it, and ran down the corridor.

"What was that?" someone asked.

Someone else shushed him.

"Don't shush me! Do you think it was a rat, or was it him?"

"I don't know. Now shut up," a female voice replied.

Vidar blasted the sowilo rune with another stakra thrust and repeated the collapse from before. This time, there was no corner protecting him. Vidar stood in a straight corridor, and the shock from the explosion threw him stumbling back, almost falling over on his ass. Voices cried out in alarm as piles of debris filled the entire intersection with the branching corridor. When he approached the blockage, muted voices carried through the debris, their words inaudible over the ringing in his ears..The blast hadn't reached his pursuers.

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Vidar breathed and allowed himself a moment. His pursuers still lived. He hadn't taken their lives. Now, he was barred in. An enormous cell, but a cell nonetheless. Unless there was another way out. That was his gamble. The tunnel on the other side of the dragon's final resting place. Blocking off this corridor and the one by the basin had been the plan all along, but he hadn't intended to do it so soon. First, he would've liked to secure that other exit. Unfortunately, Jarl's men proved too quick in following him.

He spat, his mouth full of dust and dirt from the explosions, filled it up with water, and spat again before taking a few swallows. Best not sit around and wait. With the limited supplies he always kept on him, he didn't have forever to find that other way out. The nuts and dried meat were almost out, too, since he hadn't restocked them after giving most of it to Rend the last time Vidar was down there. The water would last for a few days if he rationed it.

That hollow tunnel below was wide enough for thirty people to walk across, or even a dragon. It had to lead out somewhere. He made his way down the corridor, climbed the long ladder, and crossed the wide-open space, barely glancing at the dragon's bones. The translucent, glowing mushroom material Rend used no longer emitted light.

Vidar made it to the enormous, circular stone gate without it having moved even once. He waited. Being crushed by that thing was not the way he wanted to go. Once it completed its attempt at closing with the grinding sound of stone against stone, Vidar got up, made it past the skeletons and walked into the tunnel, yawning open before him, heading toward the unknown.

He brightened the kenaz rune on his forehead, trying to see through the gloom, but the light failed to reach the other end. The tunnel was like a horizontal cylinder with the bottom flattened to allow for people to traverse the strange, somewhat eerie place. A few steps in, he got down to his knee to touch the smooth stone of the floor. Rather than stones stacked upon stones into infinity, this tunnel was one solid piece. Impossible. He scratched at the side of his face and bit his lower lip, shaking his head. No, that wasn't it. Not quite. Vidar had seen this a few times before, after the dragon attacks. Tools had not smoothed this stone. Something melted it, and Vidar didn't have to think too hard on what. Dragons. Had to be.

Unsure what to do with that revelation, Vidar dusted himself off and set to walking.

At the other end of a long, long trek, Vidar came up against another circular stone gate. This one was closed. He glanced up towards the ceiling so far above it was staggering. Even if he stood upon the shoulders of twenty men stacked, it would not be enough.

"Hello!" he shouted, hearing the word echoing back again and again until it turned into a whisper and disappeared.

How someone could have built such a thing was beyond him. If not for the corridor built into the wall to his right, leading away from the main tunnel, he'd be trapped. Before he veered off, though, a pang of curiosity saw him walking up to the gate to put his palm against the rough but smoothened stone. No symbols or circles appeared in his mind, but there was something there. Through his hand, Vidar's mind spread into the stone, like essence through his body. A jumble of incomprehensible designs jumped out at him, and he pulled away with a yelp, his mind burning. He grabbed the sides of his head and sat down with a whimper. Too much. Far too much.

"Not doing that again," he groaned. "Stupid curiosity."

Again, he peered up at the massive stone gate. Secrets lurked within, but they were beyond him, at least for the moment. Gathering himself once the worst of the pain in his head subsided, he headed into the side corridor. Here, the stone was like the rest of the underground tunnels, stacked on top of each other like the building blocks in a house wall. No sign of melting. It was a simple U-shape and ejected him to the other side of the gate. Whoever built the stone gates did not intend to stop something as small as a human. Emerging on the other side of the door, the tunnel continued, the only difference being that it now sloped upward. The incline was slight but noticeable.

At this point, he figured he had to be somewhere near the wall around Halmstadt, having headed east, as far as he could tell, for the better part of an hour. Time was tricky down in the dark, surrounded by stone, walking where no human had set foot for thousands of years. Vidar walked up the slope and soon found himself winded. By the time he reached the end, sweat pooled at the small of his back, and made his shirt damp, despite having long since opened his coat to let in some air.

"A wall," he muttered, glancing up at the sheer wall in front of him. The tunnel didn't end, it continued upwards. Even at maximum strength, his kenaz rune failed to illuminate far above.

A small passageway to the right made Vidar sigh. Stairs. He just knew there would be stairs.

Legs burning, he lifted one leg, his body screaming at him to stop, and placed a foot on the next rung. The spiral staircase was endless torture. Vidar panted, emptying the last of his water bottle before taking yet another step. He had long since tapped his heartwell for more strength of limb, and it worked well, except it only lasted for short bursts, a sprint, when he needed something more long-lasting. If he drew too much, or for too long, the exhaustion following would be impossible to overcome, and he'd black out and fall down the stairs, and he refused to go up them a second time.

So he trudged on. One damn step after another. He was too tired to even complain. The empty staircase would give no satisfactory response, anyway. With shoulders slumped, his upper body almost horizontal to the steps out of sheer exhaustion, the back of Vidar's head thumped into something solid. He collapsed down onto the steps, panting, with closed eyes, for a long moment. Once Vidar steadied himself after the worst endurance challenge of his life, he looked up at a yet another door.

"So many doors," he croaked, throat parched.

The metal looked old, rusted, and when he pushed on it, the hinges creaked. Leaning against it, he searched his pockets for the key. Using both hands to steady the trembling enough to fit the stupid thing into the lock, Vidar heard a satisfying click.

"It worked." He breathed a sigh of relief. "It worked."

Drawing on the power within his heartwell for one last boost of dragon's essence, Vidar shouldered the door open.