Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 25



Far beneath the sea, Ashok’s journey continued.

At one point a deep rumble passed through the tunnel.

“It’s a quake,” Moyo warned, as he braced himself against a wall. “Hang on.”

Dust fell from above and the watery trench running down the center of the tunnel rippled, but the tremor didn’t seem too dangerous…but what was a dangerous quake while beneath thousands of tons of rock and millions of tons of water? Ashok waited for the shaking to subside, before asking, “Does that happen often here?”

“It’s rare. That wasn’t a big one, thank the gods. You can see the breaks where those have hit over the years. Just imagine what would happen if the ground split above us and the whole ocean came rushing in!”

Ashok would prefer not to think about that.

“Don’t worry. We wouldn’t drown. We’d be squished to death long before we could drown. Worse, if the down below were to flood entirely my guild would be out of work. Future collectors would need to grow gills if we were to keep up on our duty. Ha!”

They made good time, despite Moyo often having to stop and carve new guild signs where cracks had formed, and he once nearly fell down a hole that hadn’t been there before. It would be easy to slip and break a leg. Alone, that would be a death sentence.

At one point they passed a shaft in the center of a big room that had a unique sign, with the points of three triangles meeting in a circle. Moyo said this hole was notorious among his kind, for at the distant bottom there was stored a vast treasure of metal that did not corrode. Except it was a trap, as anyone who carried this metal would gradually sicken, their hair falling out and sores appearing on their skin, until they inevitably perished. The other collectors couldn’t even carry those bodies back without getting sick themselves, so they had been tossed back down the hole.

After several more periods of what felt like days, the tunnel changed, widening out and branching off in two different directions. It was the first true fork in the road that Ashok had seen thus far. Moyo had warned him about this place previously—just in case he had fallen down a hole and left Ashok on his own—that he was to always stick to the rightmost tunnel. Doing so would get him back to Lok eventually.

There was a cache hidden at the fork where a portion of wall had crumbled, revealing a few small rooms that had been picked clean hundreds of years before. There was food and drinking water left in casks sealed with wax. The rations were dried meats and a kind of unleavened bread crusted in honey and salt—hardy stuff meant to keep a traveler alive, and which would last a very long time.

Moyo declared it a good place to rest, so they set down their packs, gathered some food, and then put out their lanterns to conserve oil. Even though the odd Fortress fuel seemed to last a very long time, sputtering with a steady orange glow, it was best reserved for movement. It was not needed to provide warmth. If anything, the underworld was surprisingly temperate, even somewhat humid.

“Once a year, when it becomes too cold and snowy to collect along the shores, all of my guild in Xhonura gathers for a mighty expedition down below. We refresh all the caches and push a little bit farther into the dark to see what we can find.”

“How many times is this for you?”

“I’ve been on twenty expeditions.”

He had been a Protector for twenty years. “That’s a good number for an obligation.”

“Yes. Twenty proper, and one forbidden trip, with just me and a fugitive who is most likely a god reborn.”

“You’re still going on about that? Fortress breeds stubborn men.”

“It has to.” Moyo’s face couldn’t be seen in the darkness, but Ashok could hear the melancholy enter his voice. “We’re a dying people.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every year, we make do with less and less. The belts get tighter. We’ve used up what the ancients left behind, and our land is poor. There are fewer and fewer children born. There are houses that were filled for generations, only they’re quiet as this place now. I’m no trader. I’ve never been to your infidel land, but I’ve heard tales about it. Rich. With forests full of lumber, and fields full of wheat, far as the eye can see.”

“In places, it is like that. In others, it is not.”

“But those have something to trade still, don’t they?”

“I suppose.”

Moyo sighed. “We have no real trade. We have you. With a Law that hates us and wants us to die for our beliefs.”

Ashok chewed his dinner in the dark for a while before suggesting, “It is likely if Fortress surrendered to the Capitol, they would trade.”

“It is said our people will unite someday, but as equals. Not as your slaves. They’d take our beliefs away. We wouldn’t be us no more. That’s dying either way, and I suspect you know it.”

Ashok could only nod, a pointless gesture when neither of them could see. Perhaps Moyo was right. Thera’s rebels only wanted to live their own way. The Law could never allow that. Why would these people be any different?

“We give your criminals guns and get back seeds. We’re just surviving, waiting for the day the Workshop can fulfill its purpose.”

“What is it you wait for, Collector Moyo?”

“You, Avatara.”

The two men sat there in silence for a long time, eating their dried-out food and drinking stale water until Moyo spoke again. “As a boy, my first expedition through these caverns was my grandfather’s last. His rope snapped; he fell down a shaft and broke his neck. Then my father died trying to find another way into the forbidden section. As did my son…upon his very first expedition.”

Ashok had never been good at offering comforting words. “There is honor in dying while fulfilling your obligation.”

“I hope so because dying is a family tradition…” Moyo abruptly stood up. “Come on. Light your lantern. I must show you what my people hope and die for. It is not far.”

Ashok took up his lantern and followed Moyo down the warned-against left fork of the tunnel. At first it didn’t seem so different from the one they had been following to get here, but then he began to notice how much guild sign had been scratched into the walls. Ashok traced the carvings with his fingers as Moyo had taught him. Danger. There were more and more warnings as they went along, many of them including symbols he had never seen before. It appeared some had been struck quickly, hurried and imprecise compared to the rest.

There was a broken pick lying on the floor, rusted and unusable. It was the first time Ashok had seen something salvageable abandoned like that.

“My people don’t like to linger in this area.” Moyo gestured with his lantern. “The reason is just ahead.”

The tunnel passed through a threshold of sorts. Ashok had seen such structures many times along the way, but this one was different, for it had been garishly decorated with bones, thousands upon thousands of them. Somehow bodies had been fastened to the wall and left there dangling. Some were whole, others fragmented, and a few appeared to have been torn apart, and then reassembled wrong.

“Is this another tomb? Like at the beginning of the caves?”

“No. We didn’t make this. The Dvarapala made this from us. The tomb you saw was made to respect our lost. This is a mockery.”

Ashok lifted his lantern high to try to take in the entire thing, realizing as he did so that the bones hadn’t been left haphazardly. There was an order to them. They had been arranged in geometric patterns. It was a design made out of death.

“What is Dvarapala?”

“It’s an old word. It means it guards the door. Stop!”

Ashok had been nearing the threshold. “Beyond this line is trespass?”

“Aye. You might make it a hundred feet. You might make it one. But the Dvarapala will be angered, and it is a mighty thing. Strong, even like unto the gods who gave it life. Even demons fear it. Many collectors have dared cross. Very few have lived to tell of it. Those who have seen it say it is a giant from before the kings and it has lived here since the ancients carved these tunnels.”

Glancing down, Ashok scowled as he realized not all the bodies were human. At first he thought the desiccated remains belonged to a child due to the size, except the skull was shaped like an opossum, and it had long fingered hands that ended in claws. Instead of toes, there were hooves like a goat.

“What is that?”

“The reason I hum while I walk, so they can hear me coming, and I do not surprise them.”

Looking at the sharpness of those fangs, Ashok would never again question the handed-down wisdom of the Collectors Guild. He stepped away from the arch. “What is on the other side that makes it worth such risk?”

“Hood your lantern. You will see.”

Ashok did so, and as his eyes adjusted, he could make out a strange illumination in the distance. It wasn’t fire, nor was it the dim sunlight he’d seen filtered through the ocean in the clear.

“At the end of this tunnel is the broken city, the last section of Ramrowan’s workshop. It is a vast cavern, abandoned since the first king, but somehow lit as if it were day. Those who have seen it speak of wonders, tall buildings full of treasure, including precious black steel, more than enough to make our island wealthy and strong again. Except Ramrowan ordered the Dvarapala to guard and keep his workshop safe until he returned.”

Ashok opened the hood on his lantern. “Yet you keep testing it.”

“There’s always someone who claims to be Ramrowan reincarnated. So we collectors think, maybe this will be the time? Then some of us end up on the Dvarapala’s wall, and the rest know it is not time yet. I still think you’re the Avatara, myself. Maybe we should try again, eh?”

“All treasure hunters are fools. I am not your god reborn. There. I have spared your life…Have your warriors tried to kill this beast?”

“Oh, so many!” Moyo laughed, and then abruptly quieted himself, as the sound echoed. “Not a single one of those has ever made it back. Come on. We must return to the cache. This is not a good place to rest.”


Back | Next
Framed