Achmed nodded and the two men walked off into the depths of the Earth, leaving Jo up to her ankles in solid rock, howling with rage behind them.
The deeper Achmed traveled into the lands he now ruled, the more the silence enveloped him. The ancient corridors, half-formed and crumbling, required frequent stopping and intervention from Grunthor, who cleared away the rubble and tore through the stone as if it were aqueous, almost liquid, much as he had once dug them out of the skin of the Earth at the end of their journey along the Root. The clamor of the falling debris was momentary, and each new threshold they crossed revealed an even deeper stillness, heavy air that had been undisturbed for centuries.
It had taken Achmed less than a day to determine where the Loritorium had been built, informed by his ferocious study of the manuscripts in Gwylliam’s vault, his own innate sense of the mountain and his path lore. Finding it had merely been a matter of a quiet moment’s meditation on his throne in the Great Hall, contemplating where he would have built the secret annex if he had been Gwylliam. And then, behind his closed eyes, his mind raced off, speeding along the twists and turns of the meticulously mined tunnels of the inner mountain. It followed the corridors out of the interior city of Canrif and roamed over the wide Heath, past Kraldurge, the Realm of Ghosts, the guardian rocks that formed the hidden barrier above Elysian, Rhapsody’s hidden lands.
He had found the entrance to the ancient ruin deep below the villages that had once been settled by the Cymrians, past a second canyon, and guarded by an ominous drop of several thousand feet onto jagged and rocky steppes below. Its entry passage was cleverly disguised as part of the mountain face, a man-made fissure that resembled little more than a mountain-goat trail, and now . was traveled only by animals, if at all.
Once he and Grunthor were inside the tunnel he knew they were headed in the right direction, and it had infuriated him that Jo had breached the security of the Loritorium by following them in. Most likely the teenager was only being an annoyance, but Achmed trusted no one, and it was just one more thing that convinced him of Rhapsody’s folly in adopting the street wench in the first place. Mark my words, he had told her through gritted teeth, we will regret this. As with all things she didn’t want to believe, Rhapsody had ignored those words.
Now, as Grunthor ripped through the detritus clogging the tunnel befo them, Achmed could feel the silence grow even deeper. The sensation was ak to the one he had experienced upon finding a Cymrian wine cellar filled wi barrels and glass bottles of ancient cider deep within the desolate ruin that ha once been the capital city of Canrif. Much of the liquid had dissipated centurie before, leaving a thick, oozing gel that had at one time been potable but now was almost solid, with a concentrated sweetness. The silence within the newly revealed section of tunnel was almost as palpable.
Grunthor, meanwhile, was not hearing a deafening silence, but a deepening song. With each new revelation, each new break in the strata, the earth music was growing purer, more vibrant, hanging heavy with old magic that carried with it a sense of dread. His fingers tingled, even through his goat-hide gloves, as he moved rocks and boulders to the sides of the tunnels. Finally he stopped and leaned against the rockwall before him, resting his head on his forearm. He breathed deeply, absorbing the music that now surrounded him, filling his ears, drowning out all other sound.
“You all right, Sergeant?”
Grunthor nodded, unable to speak. He ran his hand over the wall again, finally looking up.
“They blew the tunnel when they left, before they was overrun,” he said. “Didn’t crumble on its own. Brought down the ’hole mountain. Why ’ere, sir? Why not the ramparts, or the feeder tunnels to the Great Hall? They could’ve held the Bolg off a lot longer, probably cut ’em off in the Heath canyon and crushed the external attack, at least. Seems odd.”
Achmed handed him a waterskin, and the giant drank deeply. “There must have been something in there that Gwylliam was willing to sacrifice the mountain in order to keep from falling into the hands of the Bolg, or perhaps someone he feared would wrest it from the Bolg. You still game? We can go back, rest up a bit.”
Grunthor wiped the sweat from his brow and shook his head. “Naw. Dug this far; don’t make no sense givin’ up ’ere. There’s quite a bit more rock, though; Oi guess as much as we already dug through.” He rose and brushed off his greatcloak, then ran his hands over the rock again.
As he concentrated the makeup of the stone again became clear to him. In his mind’s eye he could see each fissure, each pocket of ancient air trapped within the solidified rubble. He closed his eyes, keeping the image in his mind, then passed his hand through the stone as if it were the air, and felt it give way to him. He held both arms out to his sides, pushed a little farther and felt the solid wall of rock liquefy, then slide away from him like cool molten glass, smooth and slippery.
Achmed watched in amazement as his giant friend’s skin grew pale, then ashen, then stone-gray in the waning light of the torch as he blended into the earth around him. A moment later he could no longer see Grunthor, only a moving shadow as the massive mound of granite and shalestone plowed before “is eyes into the mountain wall, opening a eight-foot-high tunnel ahead of him. He held the torch inside the hole. The rock at the edges of the new opening glowed red-gold, almost the color of lava for a moment, then cooled immediately into a smooth-hewn tunnel wall. Achmed smiled and stepped into the opening, following the Sergeant’s shadow.
“Always knew you were a quick study, Grunthor,” he said. “Perhaps it’s a good thing Rhapsody’s not here; this is a lot like being on the Root again. You know how much she enjoyed being underground.”
“Lirin ” Grunthor muttered, the word echoing up the length of the tunnel like the growl of a subterranean wolf. “Throw a couple ’undred feet of solid rock on top of ’em, and they get all nervy on ya. Pantywaists.”
The farther he burrowed within the Earth, the faster Grunthor moved. Achmed could no longer keep up with him, could no longer even make out his shadow in the inconstant light. It was as if the rocky flesh of the mountain was nothing more than air around the giant, where before it had been as was walking waist-deep in the sea.
Suddenly Achmed felt the force of a great rush of air from the belly c mountain billow over him, a rolling gust both stale and sweet heavy wit mask His sensitive skin stung with the power of it, thick and undisturbed by time and the wind of the world above. Grunthor must have broken tl to the Loritorium.
He lit a new torch from the remnant of the one he had been carrying an. tossed the dead one aside. The fire at the torch’s head roared with life, leaping to the top of the tunnel as if shouting aloud in celebration. “Grunthor?” he called. No sound answered him.
Achmed broke into a run. He hurried down the remaining length of the tunnel and through the dark maw at its end, an opening into a place ever darker than the tunnel had been, then stopped where he stood.
Above him, higher than even the roaring flames of the torch could 1 illuminate, stretched a carved vaulted ceiling, smoothly polished and engraved with intricate designs, fashioned from the most exquisite marble Achmed had ever seen. Each massive slab of the pale stone had been shaped to a precise dimension and fitted perfectly into the vast cavern in which he now stood, walls of the cavern were of marble as well, though some of them were unfinished, with large scaffolds, stone blocks, and tools lying abandoned at edges of the enormous underground cave.
Achmed turned to the tall bank of rock that had plowed out into the cavern in front of Grunthor as he had tunneled into this place. He swung the tor around looking for the Firbolg sergeant, but saw nothing save for great mounds of stone and earth heaped on the smooth cave floor, with mart fragments scattered around the base of them. “Grunthor!” he shouted again, shadows flashing over the newly made moraine and the ancient walls. In the dark His voice echoed for a moment, then was swallowed by silence.