Chapter 46
After walking for several hours they paused under a dried-out tree to eat. They wouldn’t risk a fire with the heat as it was, nor would they stay long. This wasn’t a camp, but only a quick stop - Mikel wanted to rest longer, but Helsket had made it clear that he hadn't been joking about covering more ground.
Something had set the old warrior off and Mikel couldn't place what had done it.
It went without saying they needed to put distance between the assassin and themselves - there was no telling how quickly the black-clad killer could move. Distance wouldn’t stop another attack, but it would give Mikel and Helsket a buffer to act should the killer close distance on the flat plain they found themselves walking across.
Attackers like the assassin didn’t give up when beaten back - they only stopped when they were killed.
Sweat poured from them both and Mikel was unnerved to find how quickly the water he’d brought was running out. By his aching shoulders, back and feet they had covered over ten miles - still leaving half the distance for the day to trek if Helsket continued to press.
It was hot and he was miserable - although he wouldn’t admit it.
He missed the Raithson Estate… At least there, there were devices in place to keep the worst of the heat away. Out here, it was you and the elements.
Not to mention assassins in blacked-out cloaks and Time Demons.
“I’ll have to get used to this,” he thought as he found a comfortable spot on the blasted soil. The grass, even under the shade of the trees they’d sat near, was brown and crunched as he stepped on it. The dirt was visible under the thin, dying blades and mirrored the ill health the grass exhibited. If dirt could wilt, this dirt would be doubled over and lost to any curative measures.
“Half done for the day?” Mikel asked as he pulled the wax paper from the edge of his sandwich and bit into the cold bacon, egg, and hard bread.
The bread, dry and tasteless, crumbled in his mouth like chalk and he had to work to contain it before it spilled out like so much sand from an hourglass.
Helsket took a bite and nodded, “About. We’ll stop once the sun hits,” he pointed to a spot in the sky several hand widths away from where it sat now, simmering directly above them, “there.”
He regarded Mikel silently, before taking another bite, “Tired yet?”
Mikel shrugged, “Not all the way. The food helps.”
He wasn’t about to admit how exhausted he felt. After the whole debacle earlier in the day with the Stamina nearly draining him.
“I don’t want to hear about your aches though. I bet you’ve got a mountain more than me.”
“Why? Don't want to hear about the joys of getting older?”
Mikel shook his head, mouth full as he pulled the ream of maps from his pack. He wiped his fingers, and now clean, began to rifle through the sheave of disparate papers.
“Quite a collection you've got there,” Helsket said as he ate half of his sandwich in one bite.
“Years of study,” Mikel said, half chewing on a tough piece of bacon, “I had to do something while I was trapped at the estate.”
“I always remember you being bookish,” Helsket said as he inhaled the other half of his sandwich.
“I had to find adventure, somehow. By the time I was old enough to carry a sword, you and Dad had already retired from your adventuring days. It wasn't much, but books provided an outlet. If I hadn't had them... I'm not sure what I would have done, being cooped up like I was. I read everything I could get my hands on - lore about monsters, fighting techniques, swordplay manuals - you name it and I read it. I must have covered most of the library and then some. It was… difficult, but I got through.”
“You didn't have a choice to leave?”
Mikel shrugged as he took another bite of his sandwich pulled out a thick sheet of vellum from the pile and handed it to Helsket.
“It's not so much about being allowed to leave, but not having any other choice. I didn't have money, no weapons, and... Dad was already losing it. He didn’t have anyone else. Before he lost his voice he kept threatening to stab people in the legs with things, and any mention of me leaving, even to go to town for supply runs, enraged him. It was... a mixed blessing when he lost the ability to speak. At least then he couldn’t forbid me from getting supplies or cleaning the place up.”
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“I didn't know it had gotten so bad,” Helsket said as he wiped his hands on his cloth pants.
“The Rot isn't kind,” Mikel said, “nor, is it slow in any way but killing its victim.”
Mikel handed him a rolled-up map.
Helsket unfurled the map and pressed the edges down around his legs, allowing him to take in the entirety of the ancient image drawn in rust-colored ink.
“And you found this map, where then? If you couldn't leave the manor?”
Mikel smiled and shrugged, “Once Mom stopped showing herself around the place, I figured I could escape on occasion. Many of these maps are from our archives, but the one you hold, I had to barter for with a merchant who'd come from the Western Sea on a half-destroyed caravan. He was raving mad when I met him… But still sane enough to make a deal through the chatter about monsters in the night, coming for him.”
Helsket quirked an eyebrow and glanced at Mikel from under his brow, “Monsters in the night eh? In the West? There are plenty of creatures there - lots of old Sunken Folk ruins littering the way, all chock full of their… beasties - but they rarely venture far from the old cities. I can’t imagine what kind of horror gave an experienced caravaneer trouble enough to drive him mad.”
Mikel nodded, “It was all I could do to keep him on track. This map was one of the few things he still possessed with any real value. Other trinkets, and worthless bobbles, were all he had.”
“And you know it's real, how?” Helsket held the map up in front of him – it was as wide as his arm span and he spun it between his hands to orient it into a north-south position.
“Clues on the map. The map itself is a copy of one the merchants had, detailing ancient trade routes through the western lands, leading out of the Continent to the seas, and to the lands beyond. I verified the map by cross-referencing others from the same period. It was easy enough once I had three or four maps from the same time that one was originally made, but getting ahold of those was a problem as well.”
Helsket glanced between Mikel and the map appraisingly for a moment before speaking.
“Your father had a collection of maps from our adventuring days. Calcifer kept good records on more than one, detailing what treasures and what dangers we found along our wanderings.”
“And unfortunately, all of those were hoarded away in Dad's stash. I couldn't get past the wardings on the door even if I tried – Just after he exiled you and the rest of the retainers, he had a mage come from the Capitol and seal the door shut behind his throne so that only he or one equal to him could open it.”
“I suppose you didn't have any idea how he quantified 'equal' then?”
Mikel ate the last of his sandwich and shook his head, “Only he and the mage knew. I tried to open it one night when he was in a fit of screaming madness and I couldn't sleep, but all the door did was hum and remain shut when I touched it – meaning, I am no equal to my father.”
Bitter disappointment showed in Mikel’s every expression as the memory of that particular failure bubbled to the surface.
“Few men are, even mad,” Helsket said as he nodded towards a familiar point on the map, “That's Farraway, or at least what'll become it.”
The map, although crude in nature, had enough detail to parse out mountains, roads, and towns with little more than a glance across the roughcast paper. The information was dated, but anyone familiar with the basic topography of the area could extrapolate what would come to be there in later years - cities, roads, and even a few new lakes and bends in rivers.
Mikel inched closer to Helsket and nodded, indicating several more markers on the map so they could figure out their relative location before pointing to the far south of the map, where a vaguely illustrated desert vanished off the page.
A single black arch, casting an equally dark shadow behind it, was the only ornament in the desert sands aside from a few wavy lines to indicate the momentary location of the ever-shifting dunes.
“Indeed, and to the south is HelGate.”
A barely visible trail, etched into the vellum with a light hand and lighter ink, wended its way from Farraway, which appeared near the center of the map, to a collection of slashed lines, arrayed in a rough octagon shape, which in turn led to other, less recognizable shapes as the map moved south, until the ink stopped entirely with the final words near the border of the map reading, “Gather ye' souls who walk the Paths' fer yonder this bourder lay only death and wrath.”
“Ominous,” Helsket said, “But I suppose with HelGate being HelGate, it only makes sense something like that would lead the way in.”
“That’s not nearly all of what I found out about it. Some of the books and scrolls I found had… interesting descriptions of the place, and of the things we might encounter on the way. Hang on a sec, I’m going to grab something.”
Mikel stood and went to his pack and pulled it over to them. He set the ruck between Helsket and himself, sat, and began fiddling with a series of straps and latches to open the bag. A moment later he had a side flap open. With a grunt, he drew out a single silver key.
The key was the length of his palm, with a large round loop at one end and two square teeth on the other. The metal it was made of glimmered in a granular, rough way. The surface wasn't smooth, instead cubed and jagged, like a pile of salt turned to liquid silver and molded into a key.
“You ever see one of these?” Mikel asked as he offered Helsket the key.
“And wonders abound,” Helsket said as he held out his hand, "A Byways Key."
Mikel passed him the key and said, “That's the key to one of the passages in HelGate. I've got four others like it, for four other doors once we’re in. From what I managed to piece together, this key is the first of the series, and within the paths, we'll likely find more to open more paths. Some will lead to riches, while others will lead us to... places, I'd rather not think about.”
“Hel Realms,” Helsket said as he examined the key. He squeezed the key and allowed the sharp edges to bite into his tough, callused hand. If his skin had been soft the edges would have drawn blood. Instead, they left tiny white gouges which faded like night mist at dawn.
“For being a bookworm, you've managed to accumulate quite a few treasures. I suspected your father had one of these keys – but five?”
Mikel shrugged, “He did have one, but not that one. It's still in the bag. I had to find the rest myself – and it was difficult without leaving the estate too often. Dad's gone insane, but he still keeps an eye on things as best he can.”
“Crazy old man,” Helsket said as he handed the key back to Mikel. “Is it supposed to make your skin tingle when you hold it?”
Mikel took the artifact back and squeezed the key, waited a moment, and then shivered as an odd, electrical sensation passed from his hand to his arm and then the rest of his body. Every small hair on his arms and neck stood upright and a shiver ran up his spine as the feeling coming from the key ebbed and flowed on a schedule all its own. It wasn’t unliked the sensation The Callisto Jewel pumped into him.
“It hasn’t, no, but…” he squeezed the key one more time, squinted at it in confusion, then shrugged and smiled, “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The keys themselves are just to open doors to paths inside HelGate. I imagine to get to the doors we’ll be put through trials, but the keys are supposed to be just that - keys.”
“And if we open the wrong door? Go to a Hel Realm we can't handle on the first guess?” Helsket asked as his eyes flashed. He looked back to the map, finding the symbol for Helgate near the bottom, waiting for a response.
“I don’t think I have to tell you what happens,” Mikel said in a dead calm.