Anu stared at her. She licked her lips. “You wish to leave?”
“Yes. I would return to my husband. I would return to my children. You understand this, surely?”
Anu sighed. “Yes. I understand you. But it will be a harsh and terrible journey. I believe the paths are…treacherous.”
Alloria nodded. “I would suffer anything to see my family again.”
“Then go. With my blessing.”
“You could come with me,” said Alloria. “I heard what Vashell said; about this place, this Nonterrazake. And the Harvesters who reside there. You don’t even know if your father still lives! It is insanity to go on.”
“You listen well,” said Anu, a little stiffly. “No. I will travel there. If nothing else, I will discover the truth.”
Queen Alloria moved forward, and gazed into Anu’s eyes. “I know I have been…distant.” She licked her lips. “but…thank you, for saving me, from the soldiers. I find it hard to comprehend your ways, but hopefully, one day, if you arrive at my lands in Falanor, I will be able to extend you some form of courtesy; some help.” She paused, awkward, not really sure what she wanted to say, her mind awash with conflicting thoughts.
Anu smiled, leant forward and hugged Alloria.
“It will be as you say.”
Anu stepped back onto the Engineer’s Barge, the scents of rich flowers in her nostrils, in her golden curls, and she nosed the boat away from this inner sanctum, this temporary Eden, and towards the ominous cave which seemed to beckon her with a tiny, sibilant whisper.
Come to me, the cave seemed to say.
Come to the Vrekken.
The brass barge glided across still waters, and entered the darkness of the tunnel.
Within seconds, Anu was swallowed. Was gone.
For hours the brass barge eased through blackness. Occasionally, it would bump against jagged rock walls, and Anukis found herself praying. She did not want to drown. Even worse, she did not want to drown in a tomb-world beneath the Black Pike Mountains!
The wind whistled eerily down tunnels, and it was with a start Anu realised she was in a maze. The tenebrosity obscured the nature of the labyrinth, and it only came with time, with context, as Anu realised she was being drawn along by powerful currents, and no longer the hum of the clockwork engine. For a while she set the engine to full power, heard it clonking, gears stepping, straining against the pull. Then she realised it was futile; whatever pulled the brass barge seemed almost sentient, and she would simply burn out the engine if she continued.
Anu cut the power, and sat in eerie silence made more deafening by the stillness of the barge. She realised, then, she had grown used to the sound of the clockwork engine; it had been a comfort, like mother’s heartbeat in the womb.
Now, only the wind sang her to sleep.
Minutes passed into hours passed into days, and Anu lost all concept of time. She slept when she was tired, and ate what meagre rations remained in the hold of the barge, mainly hard bread, salted fish and a little dried pork. Or at least, animal flesh of some kind.
Eventually, veins of crystal ran through the black rock over Anu’s head; faintly at first, no more than occasional threads, strands of orange and green to break up the monotony of the terminal black. Then the threads grew more proliferous and thicker in banding, and it provided an eerie, underground light of sorts. Anu could make out the backs of her hands, and a vague outline of the barge. That was all.
The noise came after…she did not know. It could have been two days, could have been five. It was a blur, a blur of time, of memory, of identity. The noise began as a tiny crackling sound, which had Anu scampering down to the engine to see if there was a fault. But the clockwork engine was dead; killed by her own pretty, vachine-clawed hands.
Then, after hours, the noise increased and Anu realised it was the sound of gushing water, like that of a waterfall, or fast rapids over rocks. It echoed through the tunnels, strange acoustics summoned and distributed by the very nature of the environment.
More hours passed, and Anu grew increasingly agitated as she realised the source of the increasingly raging noise. It was the Vrekken, a natural whirlpool talked about with reverence in adventurer circles, around camp fires in the middle of the night, by hushed bards in rush-strewn taverns; and by the Blacklippers, who were said to have some unholy alliance with the great whirlpool. Nowhere, however, had Anu ever heard tales that the Vrekken was beneath the Black Pike Mountains-effectively entombed.
She shivered, now, and was drawn along in the darkness.
She realised that forces beyond her controlled her fate.
And she accepted this fate with a great, heartfelt sigh.
It was said her father, Kradek-ka, was down there, in the mythical land of Nonterrazake, down through the Vrekken, down through the mingled salt and fresh waters of the curious rivers which joined and flowed between savage towers of rock. Either that, or a simple death awaited.
The noise grew with every passing minute, and Anu realised the brass barge was moving subtly faster. The noise increased until it was no longer a noise, but a roar, a roar of anger and bestial hatred, a roar to be feared, a roar to instil pure hot terror. Anu grabbed the barge rail, knuckles white, as it began to rock and she wished, for a fleeting moment, that she had stayed with Alloria, travelled the high mountain passes, faced the threat of the hunting Harvesters. But then her jaw muscles tightened, her eyes narrowed, and she conjured a single word.
No.
She would not fear death. She would search out her father. Or she would die in the process.
The roaring grew and grew until it was so loud Anu could have screamed at full pitch and not heard herself. The river was dangerously agitated, rocking the barge from left to right, and slapping it abusively against rock walls.
And then…
A world opened before Anu, at once incredibly beautiful, and awesomely dangerous. It was stunning like a shark up close is stunning, dazzling like black-magick fire, and it held her gaze and she knew, if she survived this ordeal, nothing, ever, would compare to this moment…
The Vrekken was nearly half a league across, and filling a cavern of such incredible scale she never would have believed it could fit inside a mountain. The arena was lit by wrist-thick skeins of mineral deposits in rock walls, swirling, twining bands of orange and green that put Anu in mind of a carnival or festival; only here, there was very little to celebrate. Unless one wanted to celebrate death.
The Vrekken roared, a mammoth circular portal, a frothing juggernaut of churning river water all spiralling down, down, down into huge sweeping circles and further, into a savage cone depth. Anu’s eyes were fixed. Her mouth so dry she could not eject her tongue to moisten lips. The Engineer’s Barge was tugged, then flung into the Vrekken and caught like the tiniest of toys, powering along on surges of current, nose in the air leaving a wide wake through circular waters and Anu spun down, and down, and round and down and she realised the mighty whirlpool consisted of layers and she passed down, through layer after layer of this oceanic macrocosm, of whirling dark energy, of raw power and screaming detonation and mighty primordial compression, and she thought…
There is no fabled Nonterrazake.
I am going to die, here.
I am going to die.
And the Vrekken roared in terrible appreciation.
FIFTEEN
Endgame
The cankers charged, howling, and the brave soldiers of Falanor marched in armoured squares to meet the attack head on. In ranks, they advanced across the plain, shields locked, a full division of 4800 men arranged in twelve battalions of four hundred, with six in the centre two battalions deep, and three battalion squares to either side of the main square, like horns, the intention being to sweep round and enclose the enemy on three sides.