CHAPTER 29: BELOW THE RECESSES OF EVIL

They fell.

Through blackness and an oppressive dark, they fell.

Together, Falinor and Harrkania held each other as they hurled to the bottom of the abyss below the bridge.

Something hit him and he grunted, their bodies turning in the air from the impact of the blow.

Suddenly they were knocked about, and this time it was Harrkania who cried out at the sudden pummeling.

Sand sprayed and they were separated.

Falinor rolled.

He grunted.

Limbs flailing, he screamed as he fell down a steep incline.

Beside him, Harkania shrieked, the sand under their boddies disturbed all around them.

In the darkness Falinor tried not to brace himself too firmly, or else, break all the bones in his body as he slammed onto his chest. White flecks exploded into his vision.

With a heavy and prolonged grunt of pain, he breathed, the air shunting out of his nostrils blowing sand about as he squeezed his eyes shut against the pain in his chest.

After a moment of catching his breath, the swordsman opened his eyes.

All was black.

He breathed.

Sand was in his mouth, in his nose and throat.

He coughed hoarsely.

“Harr”—he hacked—“Harrkania!”

“Falinor?” she moaned.

Oh no! She’s injured!

”Are you hurt?” He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, put out his hand in the dark. “Harrkania—answer me! Are you hurt?”

“I’m here. Ouch. I’m okay. Falinor?”

“Princess?”

He stepped forward, his bare feet sinking in copious amounts of sand. He lost balance partially as he tried to wade through it and fell, his forearm coming into contact with a steep mound of sand to his right—like a wall. He used it to push himself back up.

“Where are we?” she asked, her position not far from his.

“I don’t—“ He coughed. “I do not rightly know.”

There was silence between them for a moment as they meandered in the dark. Above, high above, the sounds of battle raged, of magic and of explosions and cries of death.

“Is my cousin fighting them?”

“It seems so,” he said.

“How do we get out of here?”

Drained of most his magical stamina, Falinor thought he might be able to summon some small amount of energy to guide them. He moved his hands and made the runic symbols. With what remained of his coalesced magical energies, he summoned the smallest of fireballs between his hands, the orange-yellow light illuminating himself and the area around him.

“Like this.”

Harrkania gasped. “I had almost forgotten you could do magic.”

She trudged forward, her body and her face illuminating in the dark just enough so Falinor could barely make out her features. Then she took another step forward. Harrkania looked at him and smiled.

“So did I,” he said tiredly.

“Falinor!” she called excitedly, her voice full of surprise and happiness. “We’re saved!” she lunged at him with an embrace that was half attack. “We’re saved!’

“Easy,” exclaimed Falinor. “Easy.” He glanced about. “We are not saved yet, Princess.”

“I am sorry. Are you hurt?”

“No, I am fine.”

He let his hands part as he held the fireball in a state of suppression, a sphere of burning magic within the palm of his right hand, like a lantern or a magical torch.

Lifting his arm, they had more light to see by, and the bodies were revealed.

There were many—human, giant. Torn and broken.

All dead.

They glanced about silently.

Finally Falinor said, “I am not surprised. I should have known with this stink of iron in the air. Do not look, Princess. Do not dwell on this carnage.”

Harrkania took hold of his free arm, her warm hand upon his skin in this cold place was comforting. He opened his hand as she slid hers into his palm, their fingers interlaced together. Their grip of one another was a firm embrace not to be parted.

Despite his words, Falinor did look.

But he did not find Chiarro among the bodies.

“Come on,” he said, trudging forward.

The mound of sand to their right was steep and high, and this sunken chamber, or cave or whatever it was, was vast and deep, and there seemed to be many more steep and vast piles of sand.

“How are we still alive?”

Harrkania’s tone was barely concealed astonishment.

Glancing about, Falinor looked at that sand. “Something hit me. I don’t know what it was, Princess. And then we landed—on the sand.”

“Up there?”

Glancing up, the pile of sand disappeared into the black void. Even higher the subtle light of the chamber above could barely be seen. He nodded and said, “I believe so. The sand broke our fall and we rolled down here.”

“I feel like I fell down a flight of stone stairs, Falinor.”

Moving his shoulders, the swordsman grunted at the pains in his joints and muscles. “So do I.”

“But I am happy to be with you. I would choose no other person in the world but you.”

“To be in a dark, cold abyss with possibly no way out?” She said nothing and he glanced up at her. “A little dark humor in a dark place not suited to your liking, Princess?’

“It is not funny, Falinor. I am serious.”

He sobered. “I know. Would that I was the only one down here now.”

“Do not say that.”

“But I wish it.”

“There is no use in wishing a thing that cannot be,” she said. “We must make the best of what the gods have provided us.”

The young giantess was a very logical young woman—a good thing, especially in a situation such as they were. He nodded. “You are right, of course.”

“I wonder if Orvin is all right.”

“Where did you last see him?”

He moved, trudging forward and raising his arm this way and that.

“He found a way out of the temple,” she said, then grunting, she lifted her feet through the sand. “He is hurt. I left him where he was.”

“Badly?”

“His leg. I don’t know. It may be broke.”

“I am certain he is fine,” said Falinor, reassuring the princess. “He cares for you, you know.”

“I know.”

With demons on the loose, for whatever reason, Falinor was uncertain his words carried any weight. Perhaps he and she were safe, down in this pit, assuming they could find a way to escape the sand trap before them.

But Orvin?

The demons would probably find him.

And just then he realized he was being pragmatic, leaning toward the morbidly realistic. Often he would become morose if he gave such negativity a hold to grasp, to grow and to fester within his mind and spirit.

He banished such thoughts and they trudged on for a time.

“Can you hold your magic for long?”

“Like this?” asked Falinor. “Forever.”

“That is good.”

“Indeed.”

They trudged for a long time together.

*

“What were those things?” asked Harrkania suddenly.

He knew of what she spoke.

“I believe…” Falinor said, trailing off as he stepped across the sand, his feet hitting hard objects. They moved about, lightly and hollowly. He suspected they were bones, but he did not glance down to look.

“I believe,” continued he, “that they are guardians of the temple.”

“My cousin was deathly afraid of them,” she mused, her tone full of awe and fear, and quiet thoughtfulness. “I wonder if she is still alive.”

“Do not dwell on anything but escape, Princess,” he said. “We must leave this place, find Orvin, and get out.”

“I lost my sword.”

Breathing in deeply, he said, “I know. I am sorry.”

“Do not be.”

Glancing up at her, Falinor realized Harrkania was looking down at him, her countenance one oddly of contentedness. He nodded reassuringly.

When he looked ahead, he saw light.

“Look.”

He moved his hand forward.

“It’s light!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, I think we—“ he was cut off with a grunt as his foot his something large.

“What is that?”

Looking at it with the light, Falinor realized it was the body of one of the giants who had fallen off the bridge, mangled and broken, bones cracked and splintered protruding through flesh and skin.

A dried puddle of blood surrounded the body and drag marks from where he had carried himself evident.

“Oh,” she said. “We are truly lucky to be alive, Falinor.”

Nodding, he stepped over the corpse. “Let us go to the light, Princess.”

She nodded firmly. “Mm.”

*

Leg swelling horribly, Orvin made his way down the narrow steps upon the side of the rock face where the temple stood.

The Gods Eye rumbled moodily across the sky.

With each step, he used his arms to position himself firmly and then to move feet forward, being careful of his leg so not to disturb the broken bones.

Then pain was beginning to make him wince, even when he was not putting any pressure upon it.

Orvin lowered himself down to the next step, sat upon it, and continued the process. He did this for hours, the light of the day beginning to recede as the sun, dimmed from the ash in the skies, became low, casting a muted orange light across all the rocks.

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When he finally reached the bottom where the pulley system was, he found himself on a small expanse of flat rocks. He dragged himself across them with his back facing the winch, his broken leg outstretched, kept straight.

With a heavy sigh, he glanced about, feeling as though, if he were to die here on this day, he would not regret it. Not since losing her.

I am so, so sorry, Princess.

He moved, dragging himself to the lift.

That he should be the only one to get away was a cruel outcome—one the gods would no doubt even raise an eyebrow at, surely?

He would never write his book.

Orvin did not want to.

In his sorrow for losing the princess, he knew that he would never be able to put ink to paper to tell the harrowing story—a nightmare—ending in such loss as he was feeling now.

What an evil fate.

Gritting his teeth, both from pain and anger as his eyes filled, he hauled himself into the lift and took stock of the the winch. There was a wheel and a lowering mechanism with hand holds.

Grasping the winch, he pulled on it, but it did not budge.

Thunder cracked over the clouds and the sky flashed.

The winch gave way, fell and the lift mechanism squeaked terribly, but began to turn, the old and rusted chains holding the system together rattling with every spin of the wheel.

The lift was falling, fast, far too fast.

A fright not of the mind traveled through his stomach and he moaned fearfully.

Orvin needed to grab those handholds, but they were spinning around far too quickly. He reached out to take them as they slammed round and round, but the force of their trajectory simply knocked his hand away, buffeted like a blow from an angry brawler.

Between grunting and screaming, he pushed both his open palms in that churning of handholds. He caught one, and his entire body lurched.

He screamed from the impact in his arms and shoulders, but mostly from the sudden powerful jolt that affected his broken leg.

But the lift had stopped, and as he held that handhold as if he had found a lost child, he cried out, his mouth ajar and his eyes watering as the knives of pain cut up across his shin and through his leg up and pounded through his hip.

“Gods!” he snarled, spittle coming out of his mouth.

Agonized gasps continued to leave his mouth as the sharpness of his wound receded, turning only into a dull and pounding ache that he would remember for the rest of his days.

If I survive.

With his strength, he let the wheel turn, holding it, taking one hand off the hand hold and grasping the next. The winch moved, lowering Orvin a few more hand spans toward the bottom.

He could not see over the edge of the basket, but knowing the passage was a long one, he did not know if he had the strength to carry on like this for the space of that would be required of him to make it to the bottom.

With a wheeze, he moaned.

But now he moaned not for the pain in his body, but for the princess.

The words that came out of his mouth were barely a breath. “I am so sorry.”

Should never—I should have never allowed her to do this.

My fault.

All mine.

Stupid man. I am... a stupid foolish man.

Grabbing the handhold, he squeezed—squeezed as if he had his hands around Orchan’Da’s neck and he shook, rattling the winch.

*

“I see something!” exclaimed Harrkania. “There is something there!”

“I see it, Princess.”

They were pillars, large, thick and square, like the archway of a massive structure in the rocks. The flat of that archway of pillars, reflected the orange glow of sunlight from outside.

As they walked, the sand had receded, steadily melting away into a gravelly concourse of white and petrified bones.

There were thousands of them. Thousands upon thousands. With every step, they crunched. With every foot forward, Falinor winced.

Thankful that they sat atop a layer of sand, for the bones were not fully exposed, and still they injured him with every step forward.

For a moment he stopped and he grunted, lifting his foot to reveal the blood across the white and dry surfaces of the bones—like carved chalk or limestone.

“Falinor,” exclaimed Harrkania. “Are you all right?”

Nodding, he looked up at that slash of sunlight. “I am, Princess. Anything is better than where we were on that bridge just some little time ago.”

“I know.”

“We don’t need this anymore.” He let his magic be extinguished.

“Here,” said Harrkania.

She bent and picked him up.

“What are you doing?!”

“The bones,” she said. “They are hurting your feet.”

He looked at her and her eyes and face portrayed no amusement at their situation, only an honest want to help him. He would have protested, but he was momentarily taken aback at her beauty.

Finally, he said, “Should our positions not be reversed?”

They looked at one another and she grinned. “Why ever for, sir?”

“Should the man not carry the woman?” he asked again.

The princess then laughed. “I am trying to imagine you carrying me in such a way, Falinor.”

With a short chortle of amusement, he realized the image he had conjured within their minds to be quite a silly one. “You are right.”

“Now come,” she said, crunching over the bones. “We must leave this dreadful place and find Orvin.”

He gestured with his hand as if a beautiful runner were unfolding before them. “Lead the way, Princess.”

She laughed.

With every step the bones beneath her boots broke and turned to dust, and she carried the swordsman to the archway where that stretch of sunlight shone, and when they came under it, the sun, opaque and setting behind the incline of the God’s Eye, beamed into their eyes.

The skies were grey and yellow and orange with ash, a sheet of smoldering suffocation that got worse the nearer one went to the mountain, for it roiled with ash as thunder boomed here and there.

The clouds and the ash lit in different places as lightning flashed about the skies.

Falinor thought Harrkania could not be more beautiful in this instant, with the orange glow upon her face, illuminating her big green eyes.

She glanced away from him, down toward the ground and up ahead. Falinor saw the bones, piles like a dune of sand, the many skulls forming a sort of rockslide as they had come out of the dungeon for centuries, perhaps far longer.

“Be careful,” he said.

“I am.”

She stepped among the bones, careful, making certain that she had solid footing before putting her weight down upon her boots. With each step they made headway through those bones, out of the side of the mountain, far below the temple of Arrac Dur, which loomed above them atop the sheer cliff face of sun beaten and ash stained rocks.

Once making her way clear of the remains, Harrkania picked up her pace, the large rocks ahead of them casting long shadows in the setting sun.

Something scrapped behind that boulder and Harrkania froze.

“Princess,” said Falinor quietly. “Put me down.”

She did as he bid her, and his feet came down firmly over the hot and ashy rocks. With his eyes wide and his heart beating fast, he glanced about for anything that might be used as a weapon, as that dragging sound, nothing less than a giant or large creature, disturbed the stones and scree behind that bolder.

Falinor bent, reached down and picked up a large rock as Harrkania lifted her belt dagger from the sheath at her waist.

Together they stalked forward.

Harrkania glanced at him, her face a mask of concentration, like a hunter—no, a warrior. They rounded the rock, and suddenly Harrkania came up short, and Falinor saw what made that sound.

“Orvin?” she called, the surprise in her tone as if a spirit and seeped from the stones to greet them.

The man turned his head and looked at them, his eyes opening and his mouth falling slack. Then a smile lite his face. “Princess?!”

“Orvin?!”

“Good gods,” breathed Falinor. He scratched his head as Harrkania ran across the rocks and scree, sliding in the ash to her knees as she went to embrace the small man. He cried out, both in happiness, but also in pain. She jerked back and apologized.

They both laughed, exclaiming among one another in surprise and delight.

“Thank the gods!” Orvin said, glancing up into the sky. Then he regarded the princess and touched her as if making certain she were real. “I thought you had perished.”

“So did I!”

“But how did you survive?”

He glanced to Falinor.

The swordsman shrugged with a tilt of his head.

“We fell into the sand—it goes down, like this.” She made a motion with her hand. “It is very steep. And we rolled and Falinor used his magic to light the way. But there were bones and dead giants.”

Orvin laughed, his head thrown back as he listened with tears in his eyes.

Falinor nodded, smiling with satisfaction.

Glancing about their surroundings, he decided that they could go back up the lift. But then that would take them through the temple, a place they would not go.

No.

They would follow this ancient river bed that had once been a thoroughfare for the hot magma of the God’s Eye, and they would make their way back up through the rocks until they came to the river. There, the sloop would be waiting for them and they would leave this terrible and evil place, forever.

“Falinor,” called Harrkania. “He’s hurt.”

“Can you carry me?” asked Orvin.

“Of course I can! I carried Falinor down here.”

He laughed. “Did you?” he looked to the swordsman who now had no sword. “I would have liked to have seen that.”

“No you would not,” said Falinor with a smile.

Orvin gasped with pain several times as Harrkania lifted him up into her arms. “That hurts.”

“I’m sorry. Your pack is in the way.”

“It’s very uncomfortable.”

“Take it off.”

“I’m trying, Princess.”

“Here, let me—Falinor, help us?”

He walked to them and assisted in getting Orvin’s pack off his back where their water supply was. There was one jug left.

“I’m thirsty,” said Harrkania.

“We wait,” said Falinor, swinging the pack to his back. “Let us get away and across those rocks there”—he pointed to the ridge at the top of the incline—“before we get into the water.” He glanced back up to the temple above them. “We are still far too close to the temple for comfort.”

“You are right,” said Orvin. “Absolutely correct my friend.”

They turned and began to make their way over the ash-covered lava rock, long since hardened in this riverbed. The rocks under Falinor’s feet were rough, as scree and little pebbles had coalesced here over centuries.

But they were nothing like the sharp bones from before—

He came up short, noticed footprints in the ash, the footprints of multiple walkers, but because of the scree and the pebbles, it was hard to make out if they were from giants or—

Harrkania had stopped as well, glancing from Orvin to Falinor.

“Unless Orvin was stamping around out here,” said Falinor, “I should think we may soon have to contend with another threat.”

Just then, rocks and scree fell from atop the boulder looming over them. They all turned and Falinor’s eyes shot open upon seeing the giant waiting, her legs partially bent as if she were ready to spring upon them.

“You!” hissed Orchan’Da.

She was a mess, her bloodied face and scratched arms revealed the threat she had escaped. Something about her left shoulder bespoke of a magical curse, as her skin was greyer than ash and beneath the discoloration angry marbling of a purple color showed.

“Oh my gods!” cried Harrkania. “How did you—

The sorceress snapped her whip, which lashed forward like the tongue of a serpent and coiled about Orvin’s neck, his heard jerking at an odd angle. The sound that came out of him was one that brought horror to the back of Falinor’s mind as he bent and picked up a rock.

“NO!” cried Harrkania, she grabbed at the whip and convulsed from the electrified energies coursing through the magical weapon.

Orchan’Da laughed and yanked Orvin out of her arms like a doll. The small man flailed, his body convulsing like a fish as he fell heavily into the rocks.

With a snarl and a hiss, Falinor hurled the stone up at Orchan’Da with all his strength. It impacted her directly above her eyebrow and her head jerked back. As she fell away, she yelped.

“Orvin!” cried Harrkania, and she rushed to the rocks to the unmoving form.

Falinor felt a knot in his throat, his stomach heaving.

There was no time.

“Harrkania!” he snapped. “Leave him!”

“WHAT?!” she shrieked, her face wet with tears. The ash that had sullied her pale skin was smeared across her cheeks.

“Give me your knife!” he hissed as he rushed toward her.

She pulled it out of her scabbard and tossed it onto the ground, her attention completely upon Orvin lying motionless across the ground.

As she lifted him up in her arms, his head lolled back. Orvin’s eyes were still open and the wound around his neck, a reddish-purple atop the whitening skin.

Falinor needed to know no more as he snatched up the knife and sprinted around the massive bolder, glancing up as he went.

“Orchan’Da!” he snarled. “Orchan’Da!”

Heedless of his feet, the swordsman ran across the rocks to the other side of the boulder where he might find purchase to climb it.

From behind, he heard Harrkania whaling.

Orvin was dead.

When he reached the other side of the rock, he found Orchan’Da sitting, her whip uncoiled from the one hand, her other nursing the wound above her eye. Her fingers were covered in blood, and so was her face, enough to drip down onto her bare thigh.

She was breathing like an angry bear.

The swordsman wiped his face with the back of his hand, glad that the stone had split her skin open most excellently—as if he had hurled a stone at her with the deadly force of a sling. Even a giant could fall to a much smaller warrior with courage and a rock, it had been said—and written.

Seeing him approach, the Sorceress of Da tensed, her mouth breaking into a sneer of snarling hate.

With the knife, he gestured to her. “Come down here, that I might slit your throat and be done with you, Sorceress!”

She smiled then, a wounded feral beast filled with madness and rage.

“I may be cursed in the eyes of the Messenger,” she said slowly, a kind of deliciousness in her words, “but that does not mean I cannot feast on your magic, Falinor!”

She flung his name at him just as she leapt into the air like a large jungle cat. Falinor tensed and raised his knife.

When she crashed into him, he was certain the knife penetrated her as they rolled across the rocky ground, ash dust kicking up among them all around.

With a heavy grunt his vision shook as his body was pummeled from every direction. When they stopped, Orchan’Da’s legs were already around him like a vice or like the jaws of a river lizard.

She howled then, a toothy smile revealing itself as she snatched his left wrist and held his jaw in her steel grip, her nails biting into his flesh.

He screamed.

“I will have you, Falinor—yes—have your body and your magic!”

She leaned in and dragged her red tongue across the side of his face, and because they were both covered in dusty grey ash, the wetness of her mouth and eyes gave her a wild obscene air.

Glancing up at her, her growled, scrabbling for a rock with his free hand as she gyrated her hips against him.

As he took hold of a rock, he was about to slam it into the side of her head when Orchan’Da bucked him with her powerful hips so hard her grunted as if he had fallen off a horse.

He made to strike her with the rock, his palm nearly coming into contact with the side of her uninjured face, but she lurched away and all his vigor to sustain that attack ceased when she gripped his jaw with such malicious force as to all but crush his face like a straw doll.

The pain in his jaw spasmed into his head and his vision went black on the edges.

“Ohhhh—Faaaalinnorrrrr! Yessss!”

“Get!”—the sound that came out of him was half a grunt and half a wheeze—“off of—me!”

“Never! I would have preferred you that night—but this”—she continued arching her back as she dragged her hips over his body—“this! will have to do!”

Then her back arched once more and her face was turned up to the sky, his own head unable to move for her powerful grip holding him still, holding him hostage.

The only thing the swordsman could do was grunt out pain or half bitten words.

“Oh gods of the darkness!” she called, her hipes gyrating over him disgustingly as she took what she wanted. “I open my soul and that of my sacrifice to your dark magicks! Let me sacrifice him, that I may please you and attain his power!”

“NO YOU DON’T!” cried Harrkania.

The look on Orchan’Da’s face as she turned her head was one of complete surprise and utter bafflement as Harrkania flipped the corded handle of Orchan’Da’s whip over her throat and yanked her off of Falinor.

As soon as he was free, Falinor lurched to his feet and found Harrkania on her back with Orchan’Da atop her, struggling against the whip pressed to her neck.

Harrkania bared her teeth and snarled as Falinor rushed forward, but Orchan’Da lifted her leg and kicked him in the stomach.

The pain that wracked him was the least of his worries as he crashed into the rocks and rolled, grunting and coughing through the dust.

He got up on his hands and knees, his heart hammering inside his chest.

“Harrkania!” he called. “Harrkania!”

She screamed.

Both of the giants did, but the sounds that came out of Orchan’Da’s throat were stifled gasps of pure need for air as she squirmed and flailed, her limps lashing out and her nails slicing through the air.

Stalking forward, he came upon them once again to find Orchan’Da still struggling her last defiance against her red-faced cousin. Harrkania’s arms jerked with powerful anger and corded tautness as she snarled and cursed her dying cousin whose mouth bubbles with bloody spittle.

With a final pathetic kick of her leg, the Sorceress of Da stopped moving.

Like a horse, Harrkania breathed fast and deeply.

“Harrkania,” said Falinor. “Harrkania. She’s… dead.”

Harrkania twisted the whip with all her might and the sounds that came from Orchan’Da’s neck were akin to a popping or crushing of rocks under a thick blanket.

“Die! Die! Die!” Harrkania hissed, her voice merely a breeze in the air.

Falinor pulled back slightly at the gruesome sight before him.

Orchan’Da’s eyes had rolled up into her head, wetness and blood spearing her cheeks with ash. In her death throes, she had mostly bitten off her tongue and it still hung wetly over her chin.

The swordsman took pause. Then finally, he reached down and took hold of Harrkania’s forearm with his hand, and she seemed to see him for the first time as her eyes connected with his.

Then she glanced down at her dead cousin.

She shrieked as if disgusted and hurled the corpse away like so much trash.

Falinor followed the trajectory of the corpse as it rolled across the rocks. Then he turned to the princess and limped toward her, grunted with the effert. He offered Harrkania his hand.

She did not take it.

“Falinor?”

He leaned down and she looked at him, touched his cheek gingerly with her fingers. The pain from Orchan’Da’s claw-like nails that she had dug into his face smarted, but he made no indication of the sharp and stinging pain, though the blood on his face must have been evident.

Harrkania did not get up from the ground as he leaned over her and pressed his forehead to hers, their faces barely a hair’s breadth apart.

“Are you all right?” he asked her quietly.

She said nothing.

Reaching under her neck with his hands, he leaned down against her and pressed his lips to hers.

It was hardly a kiss at all.

Then she said, “Orvin is dead.”

“I know,” he said softly with a nod. “I know.”

And then she cried.

Taking her in his arms, he held the princess as she whaled in his arms.

“I am so sorry, Harrkania.”