Chapter 41 - A Walk Among The Dead

Cadryn found sleep elusive that night, and had instead relived the dreams of the past now stored within the constellation of tiny stars within his alcove. A few were mundane. One a slightly more heroic recollection of the Starless Night. Fully half were torrid fantasies; two based on actual nights with some additions. Eventually, the imagining of sleep gave way to the real thing and he was dead to the world, no longer concerned with the fingernails or sounds Encara described when they’d told her about that discovery.

Of course, all of that was waiting when he did return to the world of the living. Now he stood at the southern gate, watching the last light of the sun fading into the waves of the sea . . . Cadryn longed for the warmth of his blanket and lewd memories of the sleeping chambers.

“Wipe that grin off your fuzzy little cheeks, Keeper,” Vaast said, his voice alien and cold from within the depths of the Knight’s helm.

“Aye, sir,” Cadryn replied shaking off the warm glow. A gust swept over the rise and across the road, kicking what little dust remained out of the gravel and into his eyes. Cursing, he rubbed at it in annoyance.

“Proper helmet might help with that,” Vaast observed, a creaking followed as he shifted his body to look at Cadryn. “Really, any armor would be of help lad . . . Did you not requisition some?”

“They told me I’d be outfitted at my new post,” Cadryn replied, honestly.

As things were, he was wearing the same clothes he’d brought with him most days; with the exception of the emblazoned chain tunic sporting the Imperial fist that he donned when taking tolls. That armor, Sefton made clear, belonged to the guard post and was to remain there for whomever was on duty. Thus, he was currently equipped in nothing more than weather appropriate travelling attire, while the Captain wore a half-suit of his full armor, with a much nicer cloak over it all. Cadryn might as well be a squire from the difference in their equipment.

Vaast let out a gust of air and started walking without another word on the matter. Cadryn fell in beside him on the roadway, walking with the cart wheel rut between them. They followed the southern road for ten minutes. Then, at some unseen signal, Vaast veered off-road to the west, clomping downgrade. Shortly, an older, narrower, and much more overgrown cart path became apparent. As they passed a more tree covered portion of the snaking pathway, where the ground was still soft, fresh cart ruts were visible.

“Someone’s been this way,” Cadryn said, hoping to get the senior man talking about, well, anything.

“Aye lad, it’s as I feared, we got a grave robber . . . or worse,” Vaast said, without a hint of being winded.

“I haven’t seen any graves around the Neeft,” Cadryn stated, but it came off as nearly a question.

“Well, you wouldn’t. The Imperial Engineers aren’t paranoid, by nature, but they do follow instructions.” He stepped carefully over a half buried rock and thumbed leftward at the rise above in the direction of the Neeft. “All dead in any abandoned fortification are to be buried without rites in the nearest natural depression,” Vast said, pointing off to the deep canyon on their right.

“That would be the biggest depression around,” Cadryn said, and walking out to the edge stared down to the river below where it raged over broken rapids looking like little more than a stream from their high vantage.

“Not quite,” Vaast called pausing on the path ahead, clearly waiting so the pair could move together.

They walked for half an hour, roughly parallel to the canyon, dropping elevation only to gain it back on an uphill trek for a few minutes. Eventually, the trail took a sharp turn inland, following the edge of a deep ravine that cut back into the white sandstone cliff. Looking up, Cadryn could see the land rising back upward to the base of the outcropping the Neeft dominated. Ahead of them, invisible from the higher ground of the Neeft, was a massive fissure mouth. The rent in the Cliffside was as wide as the Citadel base of the tower and cut directly into the mountainside. The moon’s light, bright and strong where they stood, only penetrated a score of paces.

“They used to take salt out of here, in a proper mining operation,” Vaast said, and lifting the face plate of his helm, spit into the dirt. “That was before the Tower’s last occupant dug tunnels into the underground and flooded it.”

“That was Pentross,” Cadryn offered, unsure if he’d overheard Encara’s reading aloud from the library window correctly.

“Pentross the Paranoid, yes. Though. All told; the Empire did eventually kill and evict him . . . so how paranoid was he really being?”

With the question left to the air. Vaast closed his helmet and set off for the opening of the old mine with Cadryn close at heel. The earth rose up on each side to take them into her bosom. The wind died and the air felt dry, then the smell of salt began to grow, overwhelming their own scent. As the last of the light faded at their backs Vaast spoke into the stillness,

“The light of my vow, is the light of my life.”

With the words, the Imperial fist on the breastplate of his armor flared into clean white light. The washed out mine sprang into flaring life ahead and he pointed to an offshoot to the left. “That’s the way to the vaults we put the dead in.”

“You were here back?”

“Imperial we, sorry,” Vaast corrected. “Though my old unit was involved. Which is how I knew about this place.”

They walked along, as quietly as possible in the empty, echoing, space. Rivulets of water ran down the walls in places, creating shallow pools of salt water that splashed with their passage. Nothing moved, save the two men, and Cadryn began to feel himself relax at how peaceful the place felt. Then he remembered the dead waiting for them somewhere ahead, and the fingernails he’d brought Vaast. He was about to ask about them when they came to an opening, the first vault loomed wide.

It was easily the size of the toll house and courtyard combined. Heavy oaken beams supported the walls and ceiling. From these, smaller beams descended to the floor, anchoring and supporting the buttressing. The space was nearly filled . . . all around them there were crates stacked high, nearly touching the vaulted roof. They bore the markings of the Engineers, the contents denoted in short hand: C.H. 20, C.H. 21, C.H.22, It went on.

“Corpses, Human,” Vaast said, and feeling at the edge of the crate found it still intact. “These look unmolested, we shall check the rest.”

They moved onward, delving deeper into the mines, two more vaults emerged, each equally at rest and with no signs of desecration. As they advanced upon the next however, Cadryn noticed something awry. The air had shifted, and something besides salt drifted on it: decay. Vaast ended the magic of his armor, casting them into utter darkness, but it was short lived.

In the distance of the tunnel a faint glow emerged, faintly illuminating the way ahead. As their eyes adjusted, the floor and walls resolved, the crystals of the salt glittered like sand in the night. The pair moved forward slowly, creeping like thieves into a manor house, and as they moved the light grew. At last, drawing close upon the cusp of the next vault, it was the sound that left them frozen and sweating in the dark.

The low wailing of the lost; voices, dozens, whispering and pleading out their final memories.

Vaast placed one gauntleted hand on Cadryn’s arm, the metal nearly cold enough to make him gasp in shock. Cadryn turned, and the Captain signaled him to go forward alone. The reason was quickly apparent: the man’s armor, while reduced, would still be too loud to move any closer to the room. Swallowing, Cadryn offered a small salute and, one foot at a time, slipped down the side of the tunnel. Pressing his body close into the wall Cadryn felt it suck his skin dry even as he began to sweet profusely. Fear of what lay ahead gnawed at his nerves, and left limbs shaky from the exertion of creeping in silence.

Finally, he arrived even with the doorway, and daring to look saw what he had only feared to see while approaching.

Before him, the room lay in ruins. The carefully stacked crates of the previous vaults had been hewn down to kindling and piled into massive heaps at the edges of the chamber. Their contents now stored in stacks of corpses twice Cadryn’s height, sorted by size: child, man, beast, and other, stranger things he could not identify. Between the piles shuffled the reanimated corpses of the undead. A dull crimson light emanating from their skulls, casting the room in the random shadows of the dead. The dead’s mouths moves moved in mockery of speech. Impossibly, each retained a voice. From the variations in pitch and timber, Cadryn guessed they were the voices each possessed in life. They all spoke, repeating refrains now devoid of context as they carried on their tasks of dragging the still lifeless corpses from the room down a side passage.

Cadryn returned to the Captain, told him of what he had seen.

“Let’s cut back to the previous vault and go into the side passages, we need to see who’s doing this,” Vaast said evenly.

“I agree,” Cadryn lied, attempting to restore his flagging courage.

Quickly retracing their steps, the pair soon arrived at the end of the previous Vault’s side passage and came to a disturbing realization: they all emptied into the same, truly massive room. It was the nexus of the old mining operations, with shafts leading off on different tiers into darkness. This expansive space was well lit by an arcane ritual that left a floating pillar of heated salt casting its yellow-white radiance down upon the whole space. The chamber, if anything, was larger than the cavernous entrance to the mines. Various platforms and pulleys clung to the far wall, long abandoned by the miners. In the center of the room, below the floating pillar of salt, was a campsite.

Leather tent, cooking pot, a table with an inkwell and a smattering of scrolls, a stack of books bound in earth-toned leather. Several large area rugs with intricate concentric patterns in white and black covered the raw stone floor, giving the area an oddly cozy look. Beside this space, they could make out a large cleared floor absolutely covered in ritual circles. Cadryn lost count at twenty, but most of the circles were occupied by lifeless corpses. As they watched, a trio of desiccated skeletons dragged over new bodies to the remaining empty circles. When a skeleton left the last circle, it tripped a wire attached to a small sliver bell that jingled out a soft chime.

The flap of the tent flipped open and a man wearing bone ivory robes emerged. He was tall, easily taller than even Vaast, but very thin. His ribs and hips were visible through the silk of his robes. Adjusting the sash at his waist, the man ran his long fingered hands over a shaved, pallid, scalp covered in tattoos the color of old rust, the designs of which were a match to the rugs under his slippered feet. Yawning, he ambled over to stand before the two lines of ritual circles, inhaled deeply, and began to speak in a clear voice that carried well in the open air of the old mines.

“Hear me, O’ spirits of the unwillingly departed.

O’ spirits of the abandoned dead,

O’ Spirits Mine.

I, Zahkar the Ivory,

Call you back.

Back to the world departed,

Back to your bones abandoned,

Serve me,

O’ Undead Mine.

Gain the final rest,

For all time.”

With the final words spoken, Zahkar walked to the first corpse and, bowing deeply over it, exhaled into its face. A crimson, twisting, miasma poured from his mouth into that of the corpse and a moment later it thrashed upright into life. He moved down the line, repeating the bow, the exhalation, and the horrible reanimation.

Cadryn felt something holding him back, realized it was the Captain’s hand on his shoulder.

“Not yet . . . If we die now attacking, the others won’t know what’s coming.”

“Understood, Sir,” Cadryn replied, but his eyes remained fixed on Zahkar. He could feel his heart beating with a slow, cold, anger that arose from somewhere deep within his soul.