The Belromanticum

Chapter 45

When the six of us departed Castellandria, we did not know we were stepping into someone else's story. Two someones, in point of fact. There was the one we knew: Black Mira Sauret. The former companion of Ulrika and Mallathar from their years in the Swiftblades, I had joined them for the exploration of a single barrow in my youth. In the annals of the Swiftblades it was not worth mentioning, but for me it was everything.

The one we didn't know turned out to be one of my brides, perhaps the bravest of them all. This would be a strange reunion.

When we departed, I had no idea that I would find love in so strange a place. My thoughts were with Mira and our short time together. That barrow had been my first taste of adventuring, done while I was still a mere apprentice from an unremarkable stretch of rocky coastline in western Chassudor. The night after we returned, Mira had come to me in my bedchambers, and ushered me into the pleasures of loveplay. She had schooled me in the knight's kiss and taught me how I might utilize my gifts to please my partners. Her instruction was far from exhaustive, but it was the fertile soil from which my carnal life sprang.

I loved Mira as one can only love one's first. It was not precisely romantic, for I never harbored fantasies of taking her into my household and making her a concubine. It was more that she had lit a flame inside me that could never be quenched. It was a glowing sort of gratitude which filled a place inside me that only she would ever hold.

And she was dead.

She had gone into the Caster Mountains hunting a man with another band of adventurers, and had vanished. Only one of her companions ever returned. He emerged long after and shortly died, his body incapable of accepting what his mind now knew. Her quarry was Thabban, a ghoul who shepherded evil cults, and who was somehow connected to Diotenah the Shadow's Daughter, a powerful necromancer I had slain and whose ring I now wore.

We went forth to finish Mira's quest, and perhaps exact some measure of vengeance. Three of us had known and loved her, and we would not allow such outrage to stand.

The authoritative chronicle of this adventure can be found in the early pages of Palireen'sThe Dance of Shadows, one of the first great histories of the birthing pangs of the Sixth Strata. I had been fluttering at the edges of a flame I could not understand for some time, like a moth wary of setting its wings ablaze.

We christened our party the Night Delvers. Mallathar wanted to call us the Rusted Blades as a joke about his and Ulrika's age, but Ulrika refused so ill an omen. We set out from Castellandria on foot, traveling by standing stones to northern Esmia where the snowcapped Caster Mountains waited.

Ulrika Karksdóttir was our leader. A Svarl and priestess of Umione, she was in her late middle age and should be retired from this life. She was tall, broad, and handsome, her age showing in the deepening lines of her face. Her blond hair was long, worn in a single braid, and generously threaded with silver. She wore a breastplate over mail, her tabard decorated with the sunburst of her deity. She carried a heavy warhammer, and was as fearsome with it as she was with her holy power.

Mallathar was her oldest ally. A bard, he had put on some weight since his prime, but he was still a formidable opponent. He was square-jawed, and wore his hair short, his temples and beard gray. He wore enchanted leather armor, and fought with a rapier and main gauche. His enchanted lute was most often in his hands as he strummed and sang on our journey or even in the heat of combat. I had not thought much of him until the recent siege on Castellandria, when he had proven his worth many times over on the walls.

Framzet was our guide. A gnome in the latter parts of his second century, his hair had faded to a strawberry blond and noticeably retreated from his forehead. He dressed mostly in deep blues, grays, and black. His features were sharp and often looked young at first glance, but a change in his expression showed his manifold wrinkles. He fought with a crank-operated gnomish crossbow, but his real skill was in a form of gnomish hedge magic which wielded shadows to the benefit of his friends and the doom of his enemies.

My son Threch was our warrior. He wore the mail he had obtained during the siege of Castellandria, and he still fought with the orcish sword and axe he'd had in his youth. He had grown his dark hair long, and now it fell about his shoulders in an unruly mane. Once he had been known as Threch the Bastard, but in his time on the walls of Castellandria his fellow soldiers had given him the new name of Threch the Bold, which he wore proudly.

Quiyahui, my familiar, would not have stayed home. She had grown since my return from exile, and at the time I could not imagine she would get any bigger. Considering her vastness as I write, this is a silly thought. She was a white feathered serpent from the interior of the Ocaital, but where the light touched her, her feathers shone with the iridescence of a rainbow. Her eyes were lightning blue, and she most often traveled by slithering through the air as easily as if it were water.

Lastly, I was their wizard. I wore my elven robes, a gift from my paramour Tarasynora. I carried in my hand Ur-Anu, the godslaying spear known as Fate. The shaft was covered in reliefs depicting significant moments of my life, and the most recent addition placed me atop the walls of Castellandria, hurling a storm into a horde of enemies.

Esmia was cold, and as we made our way into the Caster Mountains, the winter turned bitter. When we located an entrance into the caves beneath the range it was a welcome respite from the cold and the wind, though the shadowy places were scarcely warmer. Discomfort was part of the life of an adventurer. We all had reasons to go into the dark, though all of us knew the terrifying vastness that awaited us.

It is hard for those who never leave the surface world to understand, but beneath our feet lies an entire world. Whole kingdoms and even empires rise and fall in deep places without the surface folk ever knowing. Dwarves, gnomes, ghouls, goblins, and other, stranger races make their homes in these places, and the communities we encounter on the surface are merely the barest tip of them.

The dark also reckons its time differently. There are kinds of fungus that only glow when the mysterious subterranean winds kiss them. There are tides in the great underground seas that shift for reasons I cannot guess. There are animals that migrate with seasons only they can detect. Do not mistake me for an expert. Though I had delved into the lightless places with the Mythseekers, I had barely scratched the surface on my first journeys into the deep.

I believe it was a month or perhaps two into our travels when our story met the epic tale unfolding and the brave young woman in the middle of it.

A tribe of hobgoblins had been preying upon the local towns of dwarves and gnomes, striking out from an old fortress. I recognized their symbol from Zaqhat's cult in Xoc-Nehar, the same cult that had been established by Thabban. We attacked the fortress and my suspicions were confirmed when we reached the keep. The doors opened and a horde of rotkin spilled forth.

The others had never seen these loathsome creatures before, but I had encountered them in distant Uazica, in a lost city taken over by their foulness. My companions initially panicked in the face of the abominations, but I stood my ground. This would not be the first time Ur-Anu had tasted the foul ichor of the rotkin, nor would it be the last. I still had no word for the creatures, but I hated them on an instinctual level.

Each one was more than a head taller than me, and had the bulk of a gladiator with a body heavily laden with both fat and muscle. Their flesh was wet and glabrous, pale as death with the green undertones of decay. Bristly hairs erupted in irregular patches. Each sported four powerful arms with three fingered hands, tipped with hard black claws. They wore harnesses of leather but no other armor, as their bulk served admirably to protect them from injuries that would slay another race. They carried two-handed battle axes in their upper arms and fighting hooks in their lower.

As nauseating as their bodies were, their faces were what truly inspired revulsion. Their round and hideous faces had multiple pairs of eyes, and although one pair was huge and insect-like, the others looked almost human. The only other feature on the face was a circular mouth that unfolded into a meaty sphincter ringed with jointed chelicerae.

"By the sun's light!" Ulrika swore.

Mallathar was not nearly so delicate in his curses.

"Fear not! They can die as easily as any!" I cried, springing into battle. My magic forgotten for the moment, I followed the threads of my weapon into an elaborate dance of death. Ur-Anu dismembered the creatures, impaled them, beheaded them. I was once again the savage Blackspear of the Uazican jungle, the boldisar of the Red Wastes.

Ulrika was the first to throw herself into combat, followed by Threch and Framzet, and finally Mallathar. Quiyahui stayed back, and I could hardly blame her. If biting was my primary method of attack, I would not fight these foul creatures either. We cut our way below, and when we found the heart of the keep, its commander, a robed ghoul, already lay dead on the altar with his throat cut.

"After all that, a dead end," whined Mallathar.

"You did not think they would make it easy," said Ulrika.

At the time, I believed that what followed was thanks to my jungle-honed senses, bolstered by those of my familiar. I thought I had detected a change in the air, a subtle alteration in the subterranean climate I had only just begun to understand. The truth was that she let me detect her.

We were being watched.

My hackles rose and I clutched my spear, hunting for the thread to my attacker. Yet Ur-Anu's threads, writhing like serpents, found no imminent assault. I stood with the others, in a pool of light spilling from the head of Ulrika's enchanted warhammer. Beyond its reach, the darkness loomed deep and sticky.

"Bel?" Ulrika said, watching me with concern.

"Something is here."

"Nonsense," said Mallathar. "You're just jumpy."

"The wizard is right," Framzet said, sniffing the air. The gnome's senses were keener than a blade, and he knew the dark well.

"As I was saying, good show, Bel."

"Show yourself," I ordered the dark.

She stepped from the thickest shadows. She was a ghoul, a young woman, fresh-faced and beautiful in that funereal way of her people. Her skin was smooth and a pale blue-gray, the color of a full moon. She was entirely bald, lacking even eyebrows, and I knew that her hairlessness was complete. Her ears came to sharp points, and her large eyes were pure, oily black orbs. Her teeth were like razors, perfect for stripping rotten meat from bones. Her face had a girlish roundness to it, her nose small and upturned, her mouth generous and warm. She was slender edging to skinny, a fact displayed by her skintight costume of deep grays. She was absolutely covered in daggers of varying lengths, some almost shortswords, others that could vanish in a palm.

"I am not your enemy," she said in the soft accent of the ghouls. Her people communicated in whispers, swallowing the harder and hissing sounds. Such noises could easily carry to unfriendly ears underground. She pointed to the dead man. "I am his."

"We wanted to speak to him," Ulrika said.

"He would have told you nothing. The Rising Shadow does not betray its own."

"Itisthe same," I said. "I heard that name, Rising Shadow, from the lips of a Kharsoomian wizard."

She cocked her head, her black-in-black eyes boring into me. "You are known to me. How are you known to me?"

"I am Belromanazar of Thunderhead."

Her eyes widened. "The wizard? You cannot be!"

"The same. Do we know each other?"

She approached, and Quiyahui reared up from her coils, the feathers about her neck opening in a hood. I held out a hand, stilling my familiar. The ghoul paused, watching the coatl warily. She touched her chest. "We have met once. I am Maireili."

I whispered the name as it danced through my memories.

"Leagues underground and you find a woman," Mallathar said. "I should be learning from you."

"I saw her maybe twenty years ago," I explained, not quite able to believe she was the same individual as the little girl I had known so briefly. "She was a child then. She saved my life."

"You battled the Shadow's Daughter," she said. "You saved my people from her evil. On that day, you gave me strength to fight that war. I have been enemy to the Rising Shadow since I could use a blade. I hunt one acolyte, Thabban the Subtle Fang."

"Thabban, yes. We seek him too."

She broke into a sharp toothed smile. Though many find ghouls to be unnerving, I could not help but be charmed. She had, after all, already saved my life. "Praise Dharai. I seek an enemy and I find you." She knelt before me. "I pledge myself to you, Belromanazar. I will be your blade."

I helped her rise. "Please, Maireili, this is unnecessary. We are comrades in this."

Her cheeks glowed with the blue blush of the ghouls. "I cannot believe my good fortune! To find the brave wizard who defeated Diotenah."

"Please, this is...let me introduce you to my companions."

Maireili was suitably impressed. When she reached Threch, her eyes widened. "Your son! He is handsome. He looks like you."

Now it was Threch's turn to blush. "I don't know about that," he said.

"Did I say the word wrong? I learnt Eomet to talk to surface dwellers. I mean pretty, but for a man."

"Handsome is the right word," I said, beaming at my son.

"Maireili," Ulrika said. "You described Thabban as an acolyte. An acolyte to whom?"

"The Rising Shadow worships Ughor, known as the Shadow, the Unholy, the Devourer, the End of All Things. Thabban follows..." she trailed off, and said something in the ghoulish tongue, frowning. Then, in cautious Eomet, said, "The Sovereign of Decay? No, that is wrong. The King of Maggots."

"What is that?" Framzet asked.

"He is one face of Ughor the Devourer. Thabban is a..." another pause as she searched. "A heretic? Even for the Rising Shadow. The chaldum serve him as the children of the King of Maggots."

"Chaldum?" Ulrika asked.

She pointed to the corpses of the grub creatures. "These beasts. From the deep. The word is...brother of decay?"

"Rotkin?" I managed.

She nodded. "Yes, rotkin. They are footsoldiers? Yes, they serve the Shadow in his form as the Devourer. The closer we draw to Thabban, the more of them we will find."

Ulrika looked at us, seeing assent for the unspoken question her eyes asked. "Maireili, we would like to offer you a place in the Night Delvers. That means a share of all treasure, a vote in our decisions, and whatever protection and aid we can provide."

"I need no treasure," she said, "but I will go where Belromanazar goes. If he is a Night Delver, then I am a Night Delver."

Ulrika smirked. "Good enough. Welcome to the Night Delvers, Maireili."

***

***

Framzet was an able guide when it came to surviving underground, but Maireili could put us on the trail of our quarry. She had been on this quest since she had saved my life, and she had turned herself into a terrifying adversary for the Rising Shadow. In the dark, she was nearly invisible, her breathing and heartbeat almost completely silent. She was a master of her blades, distributing death as though it were flowers. After a battle, she would go from body to body, collecting each and every one of her spent blades, cleaning it and resheathing it. She was fastidious with her weapons, and possessed an intuitive knowledge of where each was.

I caught Threch looking at Maireili from time to time. I couldn't blame him. She was a comely lass. Many humans find ghouls frightening, but I enjoy their strange beauty. I still thought of her as that little girl, and was content, even pleased, that it appeared my son would woo such a magnificent woman.

We had found a dwarven village on the banks of an underground stream, our first civilization in many days. They welcomed us as dwarves do, and we found their inn, which was a stone structure overlooking a fast-moving section of the stream. A roaring fire lit the interior of the common room, while outside a few firestones shined their sullen light upon an expansive balcony. I ate my fill of dwarven food, and with a mug of their beer, I went outside to find my son leaning on the railing, looking out over the stream. I stepped up next to him.

"This is adventuring," he said.

"Not as you expected?"

He shrugged. "Orcs, we look at it as something humans do. Making trouble for oneself. I mocked it too, but I always thought it would be nice, going far away."

"A lot of it means you are either too cold or too hot." I chuckled to myself. "I can't imagine this is what your mother wanted for you when she sent you with me."

"She wanted me to make my way in the world. This is one way. I think she would find it funny."

"I wish I knew her better."

"You know her well enough."

I looked back into the tavern. "Maireili."

He colored. "What of her?"

"She's a fine woman."

"I don't need your blessing."

"No, you don't. I'm pleased that you've chosen well. You have not brought anyone home, and you are of course welcome to have paramours."

"Oh. Yes. Well," he muttered.

"What?"

"Ku-Aya," he blurted.

"What about...You've been laying with her?"

"She wanted to! She has been teaching me. How. You know."

"You'll not find a better teacher."

"You've..." he trailed off and shuddered. "Of course you've had her."

"It was but once, and it was a Kharsoomian wedding tradition. They call it the Gauntlet of Silk. The groom must please the bride's three handmaids--"

"Father!" he barked. Just stop."

I fell silent. Then, quietly, "Father."

"It made you stop."

"That it did." I paused. "I have not lain with Maireili."

"Good."

I left my boy to his musings, and returned to the inn where Ulrika, Framzet, and Maireili ate at one table. At another, Mallathar spoke with a trio of comely dwarven women.

"Bel!" he called, beckoning me over.

"I am going to get some sleep," I called back. Quiyahui was already in our room, sleeping peacefully. Her slumber bled into me and made me wish for nothing more than a warm bed. Unfortunately, Quiyahui could not see the moon, and this was long before she learned to control her transformations, so we had no other way to entertain ourselves. She remained a serpent for our entire sojourn underground.

Mallathar got up, coming to my side and throwing an arm around my neck. "Bel, these ladies here," he waved to them, and they waved back, batting their eyes, "are eager to try a man from the surface. I think I can bed two of them, but three tests my skills. Pick one, and she is yours. I'll take the other two."

I considered it before shaking my head. "No, Mallathar, I'm tired."

"Have you ever bedded a dwarf? Endurance, Bel! She'll have you going for days!"

"Further cementing my desire to sleep. Try Framzet or Ulrika. Or Threch for that matter."

"Threch! Yes, strapping lad he is, he'll not let me down." Mallathar clapped me on the arm, held up a finger for the ladies and scurried out to fetch my son.

I laughed to myself, going upstairs to my room. Quiyahui roused herself when I entered only long enough to uncoil and recoil. The light was dim; the firestones were nearly dark. I undressed, climbed onto the hard dwarven bed, and pulled the blanket over me.

"Belromanazar?" I will admit, I have always loved the way my name sounds in a ghoulish accent. I sat up in time to see Maireili melt from the shadows.