The city of Safirbai lay in the greatest cavern of them all. Instead of the twinkling, crystal studded rocks of the earlier caves, the walls were jet black, formed from octagonal basalt pillars. The city, built of crystal and glass, was luminous by comparison, glowing in jewel-like colours, all teal and turquoise and aquamarine. It rose up out of the floor in tiers, narrowing to a slender pillar that thrust towards the roof of the cavern, which widened at the tip into a tiered balcony.
It was a hundred times more magnificent than the version in Spiralia Online, but to Josh’s eyes the delicate glass spires were saturated in tragedy.
Behind him, carefully laid out in rows, were the huldra who had lost their lives taking back the city. Of the group who had crossed the bridge with him, only three had survived.
And that was before Josh counted the cost of the Northcrag guards who had been killed. Once the huldra had surged out of the bridge room, they had briefly rallied to fight along the road where it snaked up to the city gates, but once their line had broken, the remainder had surrendered.
His character sheet had updated:
ACHIEVEMENTS
Bridge Master: You have crossed the invisible bridge and survived. Reward: 300xp. (apply)
MESSAGES
You have gained 2 points of Strength, 2 points of Agility, 1 points of Speed, and 1 point of Chi.
You have 15,820 unapplied experience points. Go to the Quest and Achievements menu to apply these points now!
You have enough experience points to reach level 13. Once applied, additional levels will take effect during your next long rest. Multiple levels may take more than one rest period to apply.
QUESTS
Helping the Huldra. Assist the huldra across the invisible bridge so that they can claim their birthright, the city of Safirbai. Reward: 2,543 xp. (Bonus: release the huldra hostages held by the Earl of Northcrag. Reward: 420 xp per hostage.)
-> Progress: you have assisted the huldra across the bridge. Reward: 2,543 xp (apply).
Fair Rescue. Help Lady Paleyne and Lady Alianne escape from the Earl of Northcrag’s clutches, and assist them in finding their way out of the Azure Cathedral. Reward: 2,297 xp
-> Progress: You have helped the ladies escaped from the Earl of Northcrag. Reward: 2,297 xp (apply).
Josh’s projected level had gone up from 12 to 13, assuming he didn’t die before he was able to apply the experience. It felt like a hollow victory.
He couldn’t help noticing there hadn’t been an escort quest for the two ladies before he’d entered the Cathedral. He guessed that was because the system wouldn’t warn him if something was dangerous until he knew it was dangerous. He had an idea that the Fair Rescue quest had appeared the moment they’d been detained by Northcrag’s guards, but he’d been too distracted to look at it properly until now.
He closed the sheet before anyone wondered why he was staring blankly at the air in front of him.
Although the taking of the city had been Katofen’s plan, nobody seemed to be in charge, but everything got sorted with minimum fuss nonetheless. The huldra were a small group who had worked together for so long they all knew their roles without having to issue many orders.
There were four surviving huldra lieutenants. One of them stood with Katofen and discussed the city defences, while the rest swept the city to search for the hostages, and to make sure that no Northcrag guards had been missed. Josh stood quietly to one side. A group of huldra were running back and forth across the bridge—actually running, now that they knew the key—and bringing across supplies. Once it was fully secured, they would bring up the rest of the village, but there was a lot of work to do yet.
One of them pressed Josh’s things into his hands—his pack, his bow and arrows, and his staff—and had sprinted off before he even had time to say thank you.
Another runner came dashing down the road from the city, calling out urgently. Katofen and the lieutenant immediately broke off their discussion, and exchanged glances. The lieutenant nodded and turned towards the bridge, while Katofen drew in a deep breath and followed the runner towards the city. As he passed Josh, he gave an inviting tilt of his head.
“Come,” he said. “The hostages have been found.”
Since one of those hostages would presumably be the father of Anatis, who had crafted the staff, Josh could only feel reluctance, but that was just cowardice. He broke into a jog to keep up with Katofen, glad that his improved fitness made this easy.
Inside, the city was even more beautiful. The rock, glass and crystal it was constructed from had been cleverly blended with the basalt of the cavern, making it seem as if the city had extruded naturally out of the ground. More disturbing were the gaping holes in the external facing, where semi-precious stones and metal had been gouged out, presumably by the occupiers.
Katofen eyed the damage coldly, but said nothing.
They ignored the spiral road that wound around the city, instead cutting through alleyways and up steep, jagged steps to reach the centre. Eventually they reached a wide plaza which overlooked the city, and supported a palace built into a half-moon shape. This rose gradually from the pointed wings on either side, until it formed the pillar that soared upwards towards the roof of the cavern.
A huldra came out and beckoned urgently to Katofen, babbling rapidly and gesticulating. Katofen nodded along, sweeping through a wide corridor, up a series of steps onto the first floor landing, and then into a side room where several of the huldra clustered. Josh seemed to have been forgotten, so he hung near the doorway, and stared curiously at the contents of the room.
These consisted of five sarcophagi, carved from black and red marble, and inscribed on the surface with a cursive script in gold. They looked as if they had been forged in the heart of a volcano, then frozen mid-flame, and couldn’t have been more out of place in a city of blue and green crystal.
They also looked like the kind of thing that would hold vampires, but once Katofen recalled Josh’s existence, he explained that this was where the hostages had been secured, bound in an eternal sleep.
“Our Queen,” he said. “And the most powerful of our mages.” He traced a line of script with his finger, his mouth twisting. “A great loss to us. Even if we had any born amongst us in the years since who were skilled in the ways of the arcane, there has been no-one to instruct them. This magery is beyond us.”
He looked expectantly at Josh.
“Er…” Josh said. “I’m not … I don’t really know much either…”
He couldn’t even read the language.
“Then you must ask your mistress.”
“My what?”
Katofen gave him a questioning look.
“We know she is a mage. Are you not her apprentice?”
“No!”
“Well,” Katofen said, “We will go now and wake her, and ask for her aid.”
Josh goggled at him.
“We?” he asked, pointing at himself.
Katofen smiled mischievously.
“She likes you! She will listen to you! And if you are not even her apprentice, then you have not disobeyed any of her orders, so she will have no grounds to be angry with you!”
“Do you honestly think that’s going to make the slightest bit of difference?” Josh asked, exasperated.
An hour later he was back in the huldra village, sitting cross-legged in the hut where Lady Paleyne and Lady Alianne were still sleeping off the effects of the mushroom powder. One of the huldra had left incense sticks burning which, Katofen said, would counteract the drug.
Josh had nothing to do but wait, and think about all the ways this could possibly go wrong.
Lady Paleyne woke first, and Josh handed her a mushroom bowl full of fish stew, because if he had been ambushed with a serious discussion the moment he woke up he would have preferred to do it on a full stomach. However, she gave the bowl a faintly nauseous look, and waved it away, accepting instead a cup of reviving but astringent huldra tea.
“Go on,” she said croakily, after a few minutes. “You obviously have something to say. Why don’t you get it off your chest?”
Josh took a deep breath.
“I think we should do more to help the huldra,” he said.
Lady Paleyne stared narrowly at him over the rim of her cup.
“Presumably you have a suggestion,” she said.
Josh preferred to lead up to the actual suggesting part a little more slowly than that.
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“The Earl of Northcrag took the Queen of the huldra hostage, as well as all their mages,” he said. “They’ve been hostages for fifty years. During that time, the huldra weren’t permitted to see, speak to, or exchange messages with them, or even get proof that they were still alive.”
A tiny crease did appear in Lady Paleyne’s forehead at that.
“That is unusual practice, certainly,” she conceded.
“The huldra built Safirbai, it’s their ancestral home. What right does Northcrag have to take over their caverns and imprison their people for so long? They can’t even petition for outside help because he’s got forts barricading the exits.”
Lady Paleyne set her cup down on the heating stone by the fire with an audible click. Was she angry or irritated? Josh couldn’t tell.
“If we had had this conversation yesterday, I would have told you…” her voice trailed off and she compressed her lips. “I know you think me heartless and unfeeling. It is not that I have no pity for the huldra, because indeed I do. I understand their situation very well, if only because my people have also been outcast from our homeland.”
Josh didn’t think it was the same thing at all, but Lady Paleyne obviously had more to say, so he waited.
“Those of us who wish to return to Celespire have campaigned tirelessly to take it back, but as the memories of the city fade, our faction grows weaker. I am just old enough to recall the capital before it was sacked by the scourge, but there are grown men and women at court now who have never seen it, and for whom it might as well be a fanciful tale. Meanwhile, the power of the Storm King grows with every passing year. One day it will be too late.”
“Why doesn’t King Rupern try to reclaim it?” Josh asked. He’d assumed that it was because the Storm King was too strong, but it sounded as if it was more complicated than that.
“Because he is afraid,” Lady Paleyne said bleakly. “The Celespiran royal line have always been the chosen of Ciandar, but many at court argue that the loss of Celespire can only mean that the blessing of Ciandar has been withdrawn.”
Josh had been vaguely aware of Queen Halina’s divine right to rule, which was tied to the land magic of Celespire itself.
“And also because…” Lady Paleyne hesitated. “Let us say that the threat of the scourge is … convenient for the King. He has used it to consolidate his rule in exile. There are those who have grown in power by supporting his policies, and they are reluctant to deal with the problem of the scourge once and for all, because it would rob them of the basis of that power.
“The Duchess of Kaldermere,” she went on, “is spearheading the movement to retake Celespire. This brings us to the purpose of Lady Alianne’s mission. The King is the only one who can grant Philosopher’s Stones, and he invariably bestows them upon his favourites. Previously the Stones have only been granted to those nobles who wish for the capital to remain at Dendral, and who have no interest in returning to Celespire. Lady Alianne is the Duchess’s granddaughter and heir. For her to be so honoured may be a sign that the King is willing to re-consider his stance. However, it is crucial at this juncture that we tread more carefully than we ever have before.”
By this point Lady Paleyne had risen to her feet and was pacing back and forth. Josh had never seen her so impassioned.
“You cannot have any idea how much work has been done, how much has been sacrificed, to get even this far,” she said fiercely. “I have pledged my support to this cause, and to the Lady Alianne. You think I should jeopardise that for the huldra?” She gestured around her. “For the sake of a single village? When the fate of an entire country hangs in the balance?”
There was a clapping noise, which made Josh start.
“Well said, Pally!” Lady Alianne declared. Her hair was mussed up on one side where she had been lying on it. She must have woken up in the middle of Lady Paleyne’s speech.
Lady Paleyne, however, now fixed her gaze coldly on Josh.
“That,” she said, “is what I would have told you yesterday, had we had this conversation then. However, I suspect it is already too late. I have detected traces of a sleeping drug in my system, and I’ll wager if I were to examine Lady Alianne I would find it there too. What, exactly, have you helped the huldra to do whilst we were unconscious, de Haven? Do not tell me they were able to take the bridge!”
“Uh…” Josh said. “Well, about that…”
It turned out that Lady Paleyne was the kind of person who turned cold and imperious when she was angry, and the process of getting back over the invisible bridge, in which both ladies had to rely considerably on Josh’s assistance, did nothing to improve her mood.
Josh would have preferred it if she had shouted or wept or something. People with cold tempers only got angrier as time went on, and tended to nurse a grudge that would come back and bite you painfully and unexpectedly days, or even weeks later.
They were now standing in the chamber with the black and red sarcophagi. Lady Paleyne, after a secretive discussion with Katofen from which Josh had been excluded, had reluctantly agreed to inspect them to see how they might be opened. She laid a hand on one of them, closed her eyes, and frowned in concentration, while everyone else watched.
Eventually she dropped her hand and stepped away.
“The magic is complex, but it is also well obscured. I can tell that is designed to keep its occupants in stasis, and that there is a rite which can be performed to wake them, but the details elude me. The only thing I may be able to do is set up a sink to drain the enchantments, but it would take several days, and I cannot be sure what it will do to those inside.” She gestured at the script on the side. “If the writing could be deciphered…” her voice trailed away.
“Oh,” said Lady Alianne, “but that’s easy! It’s Fourth Caliphate mehalim.”
Everyone turned to look at her, and she went pink with embarrassment.
“I had tutors,” she said. “I was thoroughly trained in all the classics.”
“Our agreement stands,” Lady Paleyne said to Katofen. He inclined his head in reply.
Josh stayed out of the way while the rite was being carried out, and tried to remember the half-elf NPC who had given out the Azure Cathedral quest in Spiralia Online. There had been a group of exiled huldra living in a small camp in the mountains, who had offered various quests leading up to the Cathedral, but there had been no mention of a queen. However, Josh had never got around to doing the quest that came after clearing the dungeon, so maybe it was something that had been revealed later in the questline.
When he returned to the corridor outside the sarcophagus room, a group of huldra, including Katofen, were gathered in the corridor. Lady Paleyne, Lady Alianne and one of the female huldra were sequestered within, having insisted that the Queen would undoubtedly prefer not to awake from a fifty-year sleep while surrounded by a ring of gawkers.
Eventually the door opened and Lady Paleyne emerged, followed by Lady Alianne, and last of all by the Queen herself, leaning on the arm of the female huldra.
She was the NPC from Spiralia Online.
It was the first time Josh had met one of the characters from the game, and he was struck by the weird sense of familiarity. She was tall for a huldra, with a relatively broad, plain face and white hair wound her head in braids. She wore a medieval-style gown of a deep russet brown that contrasted with her pure white skin, making it glow. It was gathered under her bust with green ribbons, and had long, impractical trailing sleeves, with a train that brushed the floor behind her.
As an exile in the game she had worn plain, ragged clothing, but her face was immediately recognisable. Where had the game developers got their information from? How had they copied the face of a real person, who had been suspended in a sarcophagus for fifty years?
Katofen and one of the lieutenants stepped forward and spoke as together.
“Whirkoma!” It sounded like a greeting.
The Queen must have been speaking English with Lady Paleyne, because she answered in that language.
“Is that how you greet your Queen?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“My Queen,” Katofen said, switching to English himself. “We have waited so long for this day! But we cannot delay. We must secure the city’s defences immediately.”
Looking at her, Josh thought the Queen was still adjusting to her new situation. Fifty years gone in an eye blink, it had to be disorienting. She was gripping tightly onto the arm of the huldra who supported her.
“I must take counsel…” she said, her voice trailing off, perhaps as she recalled that she had no advisors. Maybe she was thinking of the four huldra mages who were still in the sarcophagi, awaiting their own rites of awakening.
Katofen hesitated, then stepped forward.
“You are disoriented, I know,” he said gently. “The elders are gathering everyone in the village as we speak, and will be with us soon. They will guide you to the best of their ability. But we must ensure our young, our sick and our elderly can make it across the bridge before Northcrag’s forces in the southern caves can rally against us. My Queen, you are the heart of the city, and array will respond only to you.”
The Queen drew back, perhaps feeling pressured. Lady Paleyne’s eyes were narrowed in speculation.
Josh’s head craned upwards as he thought about the artefact in the room at the top of the pillar. That must be the array that Katofen was referring to. That was the first time Josh had heard that only the Queen of the huldra could interact with it. Had Lady Paleyne known about that before? It didn’t look like it. Had Northcrag?
Josh was reminded of Celespire, which was supposed to be magically linked to Queen Halina. And the dwarves of the mountains to the north-east, whose King was selected by an anvil or something. There was a pattern here. Were magically elected leaders an inevitable consequence of a world with magic? Had some long-ago Kings and Queens decided to create magical artefacts that would forever favour their own bloodlines when selecting rulers?
Katofen managed to coax the Queen towards the base of the tower that led to the array, while the lieutenant oversaw the rites that would wake the remaining mages. Josh found himself at a loose end, and so practiced with his staff in the plaza.
Some hours later, the villagers arrived. It seemed that the Queen could change the bridge by turning all the panels solid, and setting them opaque, so that it resembled a paved room that could be easily walked across, and not a transparent bridge over a horrifying drop. Once everyone was in the city, Katofen persuaded the Queen to engage the defensive array, which would remove all horizontal panels completely, leaving only vertical ones to block the way.
“The one we walked across wasn’t the defensive array?” Josh asked Katofen, much later.
Katofen shook his head.
“What do you know of the history of the Cathedral?” he asked.
It hadn’t come up in the questline in Spiralia. Josh confessed his ignorance.
Katofen smiled.
“The clue is in the name. Long ago, it was a place of pilgrimage. Many came here as part of a spiritual journey, travelling up through the caverns to the shrine, and then, if they truly needed guidance, across the bridge and into the city to speak with our sages.”
And one of the first caverns all the pilgrims had travelled through had consisted of shops, Josh thought cynically.
“For the huldra,” Katofen explained. “The bridge was a symbol of mystery and of faith. Our histories speak of how our young would cross it as a rite of passage, gaining their citizenship and earning their place amongst our people. Had the previous Earl of Northcrag waited but one day to enact his coup, he might have learned the secret of the array. But he sprung his trap at the ceremony held to welcome the Queen after the Cathedral had been saved by the Heroes. Only those huldra who had not yet crossed the bridge were spared the slaughter, and managed to flee deep into the caverns.”
He gestured to the pair of double doors in front of them.
“The Queen would like to thank you personally for your aid.”
While he waited for his audience, Josh dug around in his backpack for the least squashed and bedraggled feathers in his collection, and turned them into a selection of bracelets and rings, then created a belt, a necklace and a tiara. He had obtained some swan feathers at the market in High Howe, and they interweaved with the speckled pheasant feathers in a way that he thought looked pretty good. He ended up with nine items in total. Then he enchanted them to glow.
When he was finally allowed in, he presented them to the Queen. He felt obscurely guilty when he gained not just one, but two achievements.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Royal Patronage II: You are favoured—you have crafted ten items for royalty. Reward: 2500xp. (apply)
The Regard of the Huldra I: You have secured the gratitude of the Queen of the Huldra. Reward: 300xp (apply).
It was nice to be thanked, but once she had got over politely admiring her feather items, it turned out to be one of those stiff, awkward interviews where neither participant quite knew what to say.
“If there is anything we can do for you?” the Queen asked eventually. “In exchange for the great service you have provided us?”
Josh hesitated. Her city had been stripped bare of valuables after its half a century of occupation, and, despite her grandiose manner of speaking, she ruled over no more than a few hundred people, all of whom had spent five decades managing their lives without her. Her experience of the world was fifty years out of date.
That gave him an idea.
“Will you tell me of the Seven Heroes?” he asked. “What do you know about them? Where did they come from?”
“Oh, there weren’t seven,” the Queen replied, blinking in surprise. “There were eight.”
“Eight?” Josh echoed. “Who was the eighth?”
The Queen shook her head.
“He wasn’t the eighth. He was the first.” She smiled fondly. “His name was Anthony Harrison.”