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“They may yet drive the foul things forth at great cost.” Efain shifted slightly, exchanging yet another telling glance with Soren. Had they expected to roust us from leisure? Perhaps that was fair, for I clearly had notseidhrenough to suspect their purpose in Dun Rithell. “Regardless, we have brought danger here.”
“And while Curiaen and Caelgor are occupied, your lords may whisk their prize away.” My chin rose, and I drew my gloves on with sharp tugs. “Very well.”
Efain stiffened, but it was Soren who answered. “No matter what you think of our captain, the Black Land is far worse. Will you consent to accompany us?”
I could have remarked that my consent meant little, but a massive noise boomed through Nithraen, bouncing from wall to stone paving, from the houses to the great dome-ceilings. The orb-lights shuddered, trees quaked, and shadows danced. A bolt of pain lanced from my braids to the soles of my overboots; my strangled cry was lost in blaring, echoing cacophony.
Arn’s hand fastened upon my arm, and she hissed an imprecation at the Northerners to dissuade them from seeking to bolster me as well. Efain whirled, preceding us from the room; as soon as we burst from the house another massive impact boomed through Nithraen. At first I thought rain or hail was pattering around us.
Then I remembered just where we were, under the hills of Nithlas-en-Ar, and realized the small stinging drops were falling pebbles. The dome far overhead shuddered, creaking. Arn yanked harder upon my arm, and we ran in perfect accord, following a Northerner’s black-clad back.
Death of Nithraen
The first of the great wyrms was wingless, and it is said the thing left Agramar against the Enemy’s command, eager for plunder. For they are ever greedy, those things bred in foulness and fed upon giant carrion in the darkness under the Ash Citadel; they will swallow all they may, even as the meal chokes them.
—Eohyna the Riddlemaker,On Wyrms and Their Habits
Just as there are sagas about its glory, there are laments of the Breaking of Nithraen. No few tell of how the battle veered across the causeway and many a great deed was performed by the two sons of Faevril, or by the Crownless—for so they called Aeredh, whether in mockery or strict truth—and his Secondborn friends. It was not the great iron-tooth ram the Enemy’s servants christenedKrogwhich broke the doors but something else entirely—a long sinuous shadow running with wet, wriggling flame, its snout dripping vile orange-yellow heat and its eyes deep glassy crimson, a creature grown immense by rancid feasting in the Black Land. Its teeth were chips of glassy stone, and its hide was thick.
It heaved itself against the great doors of Nithraen thrice, and it was a wondrous mercy none of the cavern roofs broke during that battering. But the thing—afterward namedUgurthal, the Glutton—wasa burrower and delver itself, and perhaps knew precisely how much force to exert in order to gain its new home.
Ugurthal’s unholy presence was such that terror smote even the brave under his lidless red gaze, and if it did not the great belching heat of his breath would. He heaved through the wreckage of Nithraen’s well-wrought, deep-carven gate on a tide of clinging slime-flame, and the inner defenses fell one by one upon a morn of lamentation and fear.
Some sagas tell of after the battle was done, the wyrm drove evenorukharand lich, whip-wieldingtrul, and other foul beasts of the Enemy’s army from the defiled caverns before settling in spaces rendered dank and lightless. He was not drawn forth until some time later, but I do not ever sing that particular tale.
Through shuddering streets under fading orb-light we ran, Efain keeping just in sight before us. I do not know how long we stumble-staggered between the peppering of tiny rocks falling from great heights, stinging as they landed. At some point Gelad and Karas appeared from palls of rising dust, both with blazing eyes and unsheathed, ichor-spattered blades. That left only Elak, Eol their captain, Aeredh—and Soren, who I discovered was not behind us after all. I tried to halt, digging my heels into stone with bruising force, but Arn merely hauled me along, perhaps thinking me struck with fear orseidhr.
Rumbling, crashing, overlapping echoes and screams, the ground itself trembling like a living thing with a twitching hide—just a short while ago, we had been trapped in a great silence, and now all was chaos.
Seidhrwas lost to me, and in any case I could not hold up hill or mountain from underneath. But I could pray, and I did, crying aloud to Tyr who loves the Secondborn, to Ullwë-Aol the Smith who shaped the very bones of the world, to Fryja the beautiful whom my mother loved most. I prayed to Velundh the vengeful and to the Allmother herself, the Old Tongue falling from my lips of its own accord, unheard in the noise. Falling pebbles showered us, dust rose in choking veils, and a huge jagged chunk of grey rock calved from the roof as if from the ice-floes the seashore folk speak of inwhispers, breaking from white ice-walls to splash into grey, wind-whipped waves.
I sensed more than saw the stone’s descent, my entire body turned cold, and I yanked against Arn’s grasp, terror granting my smaller frame a measure of strength and bringing us both to a skidding halt. The crash sent sprays of jagged spears and sharp chips in every direction; its bulk broke a graceful stone house and landed in what had been a garden. A great spreading tree gave a forlorn creaking cry as it was crushed. A smaller rock—I saysmaller, though it was twice my height and wide as the stable doors at Dun Rithell—slammed onto white stone where Arn and I would have been, had I not stopped us. As it was, it barely missed Efain too, but I do not think he noticed.
The boulder tumbled upon its way, smashing against the house opposite. Arneior let out a hawk-cry, her lips skinned back, and we bolted forward afresh, running side by side as if we were upon the riverbank in girlhood again, my single braid bouncing and a shorter, weighted practice spear clasped in my shieldmaid’s not-yet-adult hand.
Karas had sheathed his sword, and grasped my free arm. Between him and Arn I was carried along almost bodily, and thank the gods Efain knew where we were bound, for I was half-mad with fear. I caught sight of ash-pale skin and a fanged mouth opened wide in murderous mockery—orukharwere in Nithraen, though not many this deep in the caverns.
They had not yet time to plunder, being occupied with murder and other business.
Gelad’s black-clad form flickered between dust-veils, billowing like ink dropped into swift water before stretching into a man’s shape again, and the foul thing died upon his blade with a howl lost in the vast noise of breakage and ruin. Efain spun aside into a shivering house carved of a single block of gleaming white stone, and I might have attempted to balk again like a frightened horse if my feet were anywhere near the ground.
A hall with trembling, carven pillars on either side swallowed us; Efain darted aside, and I was hauled after him like so much laundry. We plunged through a narrow aperture and it was not so bad for thefirst few steps, for some light filtered through as well, but then the stairs began.
When Gelad wrenched the cunningly designed stone door closed behind him, a vast darkness swallowed us whole. And I was a sorry excuse for avolvaonce more, for I was still screaming prayers to any god, Aesyr or Vanyr, who might listen.
It is said Aerith, the king of a mighty people who followed Faevril to the mortal shores not for gain but because they loved their kin and wished to right a great wrong, had the aid of thethrayndverger in building Nithraen. I can well believe it, for there were secret ways from the city’s deeps. Dverger have a fondness for such things; a cave without a second—or third, or more—exit is, when all is said and done, merely a hole.
In other words, a trap, no matter how cunningly wrought or beautifully lit.
The darkness of that passage was not like a moonless night. It was not even that of a cellar with a thick door. Perhaps it was the consciousness of what was happening overhead as we huddled on broad, spiraling stone stairs, or the cold blue gleam of the Elder-wrought lantern one of the Northerners produced, light holding us in a fragile sphere. Outside that thin scintillating glow, the blackness was a living thing, a cold empty smothering, anabsencelike the Unmaking.
Only the Allmother knows the secret of holding that endless, devouring nothingness at bay.
My throat was raw with screaming, but so was Arn’s. We were all coated with fine floury dust, the Northerners almost as grey asorukhar. Their eyes blazed just as fiercely, too, and Efain set off down the stairs.
“Soren,” I managed, husky from screaming and dust. “He was not behind us. We have to—”
“Don’t worry for him.” Gelad’s sword whispered back into its sheath. “Filthyorukhar.” His lip lifted in a snarl, and the wolf in him was visible for a bare moment, turning inside a man’s skin as a hound will settle in a corner to sleep.
