The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) Read online

  She smiled a little. “And you are Austinus, the wise Gnostic magician—really, though, just another worshipper of the sky gods. Like your wife, here.”

  The Queen turned to Javor. “And this is the young fool that bore the Fang. I am disappointed, daughter, that you were unable to persuade him to give it to you.”

  “Don’t let your head get too close to his,” Ingolf warned.

  “How do you know about us?” Austinus demanded.

  Kriemhild pointed at the bauble on her head. “I have the Eye of Knowledge, Brath, once the most prized possession of the Yonn-Sakathe. I can see all in the world and know what is in the hearts of men. I am now a goddess who possesses complete knowledge.”

  “Knowledge, perhaps, but not wisdom,” Austinus said.

  Kriemhild’s eyes and nostrils flared. “Wisdom! And how wise are you, Roman? How wise is the mighty Roman Empire, which conquered Egypt only because it had so degraded its own farmlands that it could no longer feed its population? Which cut down entire forests for its war machines, until Africa became a desert? No, Gnostic—do not presume to banter with a goddess!”

  “You’re not a goddess!” Javor could not believe he had said that. “You’re just a woman who doesn’t want to admit how old she really is! You don’t know anything about gods and goddesses!” he continued. “None of you do, not you Christians, you Gnostics or least of all you, Kriemhild or whoever you are!”

  Tiana goggled at Javor; Austinus’ mouth hung open. Malleus looked slightly amused.

  Kriemhild’s face was red. Javor thought she would slap him, but instead she stroked his face gently. “You are a beautiful fool. Ingund, I can see the attraction, but I truly hope you did not lie with him. Tell me, fool, how would you know of the nature of the gods?”

  “The dragon showed me.”

  Kriemhild could not disguise her shock. “A dragon showed you?”

  “And it showed me what ‘bones of the earth’ means.”

  Kriemhild flushed again and Javor once more thought she would hit him.

  Goldemar interrupted. “Queen Kriemhild, the People of Knowledge have fulfilled our contract with you. We have allowed you to live in our former entry chamber and use our oldest watercraft. We have delivered your daughter and the dagger through your servant, Stuhach. Now it is time that you uphold your side of the contract and return to us the Buill Brath, the Eye of Knowledge.”

  Kriemhild answered, “I thank you for your part in carrying out my plan, but I will not give you the Eye. Instead, I will increase your wealth and your holdings beyond your imagination, Goldemar.”

  “Nothing that we desire is within your power to give, Gudrun. Our arrangement was the return of the Eye that has been in our keeping for millenia in exchange for the Fang. You better than anyone here should know the consequences of breaking an oath made to the Yonn-Sakathe!”

  “With the power of the Eye alone, I have already brought Mother Earth’s deep power to the surface of the world! I have unleashed the plague that killed the Emperor Justinian! With the Eye and the Fang together, I can reshape the world as it should be, Goldemar! I will destroy our enemies. Rome and Persia will cease to be. I can cause the sea to swallow Constantinople, the Tigris to drown Ctesiphon! No longer will the Yonn-Sakathe have to hide!”

  “Without the Eye of Knowledge,” Goldemar answered, “no possessions mean anything to us. Return it to us or face the consequences.”

  The Queen turned her back to Goldemar. The soldiers in black formed a line to protect her. “It is time to begin the ceremony!”

  The herald gave her a large golden goblet. “Bless you, child and mother to be,” Kriemhild said. “Drink this to ensure your child becomes the embodiment, the fulfillment of our destiny.” Ingund took the cup in both hands and sipped. She grimaced. “Drink it all down, child,” her mother urged gently, but there was no gentleness in her eyes. Ingund closed her eyes, wrinkled her nose and gulped the whole contents down, then coughed twice.

  Kriemhild smiled horribly, lifted her hands and cried out in a strange language—like the Kobolds’, but they did not understand her, either. A commotion interrupted. She turned to see Ingolf’s honour guard fighting desperately against the Kobolds. Even though the Kobolds had no weapons, the black-clad men had no chance. Krum Chimmek picked up a tall Goth in his hands and hurled him into the water.

  “Kriemhild! We Kobolds have upheld our side of the bargain! Now we want the gem back!”

  “Do not dare to argue with a goddess!”

  More Gothic warriors fell, stunned, and Javor watched one of the smallest Kobolds pummel a tall Goth into unconsciousness. Miro’s group drew their swords but seemed unable to decide what to do next. The point was moot as the last of Ingolf’s men fell.

  Krum Chimmek stepped toward the Queen. She raised her hands and barked a command in a language no one could understand—none but Stuhach. The monster jumped forward, slashing its terrible claws at the Kobold.

  Krum dodged, lunged under the monster’s reach and punched it in the belly. Stuhach staggered back, but slashed again at Krum Chimmek. He jumped up and brought his two clenched fists down on the monster’s snout. When he hit the ground, he picked up the monster’s foot in two hands and tipped it over.

  Stuhach crashed to the floor, shaking the whole cavern, but managed to grab the Kobold in its claw. Javor tried to jump to help the small man, but his wrists were bound and he tumbled to the floor, helpless.

  Krum Chimmek pushed with all his might on the claws, but the monster squeezed and the Kobold’s face turned red. Stuhach was about to pop the Kobold like a gourd when Malleus sprang forward with a sword he had taken from one of the senseless guards and thrust the point into Stuhach’s eye.

  The monster’s scream terrified everyone in the room. Even the Queen shrank behind her husband. Ingund hid behind the couch.

  Malleus pushed the blade into the monster’s head, but it swept its free arm around and sent the warrior sprawling. Then it picked up Krum Chimmek and smashed him into the ground again and again until all that was left was a mass of bloody flesh.

  Miro sprang forward then, aiming his sword at Stuhach’s remaining eye. At the same time, Austinus jumped toward the Queen and tried to pull the dagger from her grasp.

  The monster backhanded Miro across the cavern. He hit the rock wall and lay still.

  Kriemhild called for Stuhach. With one taloned hand over its destroyed eye, the monster bit the gnostic’s head off. Tiana screamed as her husband’s headless body fell.

  “Goths! Push the Kobolds back to their boat!” Ingolf ordered, his voice ringing off the cave walls. Reluctantly, Miro’s men advanced toward the little people, who drew back toward the lake. But as one Kobold passed Javor, he brushed a single finger over the chain between Javor’s wrists. He felt a tiny click more than he heard it, and realized that his hands were free.

  “Begone!” Kriemhild shrieked. “You forfeit any reward or recompense for our contract! Go and never return to my sight!” Goldemar led the remaining Kobolds onto the boat, and it departed as silently as it came, bearing the little people back to the entrance to the mountain hall.

  Last chance! Javor jumped to his feet. Three steps, four, five ... behind him, Kriemhild screamed. He jumped as one of Miro’s men grabbed at his arm. He hit the water and was gone.

  No one left in the Queen’s cavern moved for several minutes until Kriemhild strapped Stuhach’s sheath around her daughter’s waist and chanted in her language again. There was a deep rumbling sound from the rear of the cave and a blast of cold air, and then a sense of something moving. An enormous form emerged from the darkness—another stone giant. Kriemheld said something else, and the giant bent low and cupped its great hands together. Kriemhild, Ingolf and their son and daughter stepped onto the great palms. The giant straightened without any visible effort, turned and strode back into the darkness. Stuhach, its eye leaking a foul black liquid, roughly grabbed Tiana around the waist and followed the giant.

 
; They strode up a broad staircase that led up a high, arched tunnel, and soon they were out in the open night again. Stars glittered hard overhead and the air was chill. The staircase continued up the mountainside and the giant and the monster strode up, ever higher, without slowing.

  Chapter 35: The people of knowledge

  Javor fought panic and stayed under the surface as long as he could. He tried to remember how old Photius had swum in the river the night they escaped the strigoi and kicked his legs and waved his arms until his lungs felt they would burst.

  Come up now, slowly, said the amulet.

  Javor pushed down with his hand and lifted his head above the surface as gently as he could. He barely made a ripple, but his first gasping breath echoed. He could not see anything. There was no light in the cave. Where are the others? I could not have swum that far!

  The water was surprisingly warm. Javor kicked and waved his arms to keep his head above the surface, but was still worried that splashing would give him away.

  Which way should I go?I don’t even know which was I was facing when I came up. He tried swimming forward again, but the blackness was so deep he could not even tell if he was moving.

  When he first saw a dim, yellowish glow, he could not be certain whether it was real or imaginary. It grew brighter and closer until strong hands grabbed him and pulled him up, out of the water and onto the Queen’s long boat. He struggled to his feet, ready to fight until he saw the Kobolds.

  Goldemar wrapped him in a cloak. “Thank you.” Javor did not know what else to say. He realized he was shivering. The air in the cave was cooler than the water. The Kobold leader handed him a silver flask. Javor sipped strong liquor that warmed him immediately. A cut on his leg smarted. He sat down on a bench. A Kobold smeared a tiny amount of some sticky liquid on his cut, then withdrew before Javor could say anything.

  So many questions whirled through his mind at once. He clenched his jaw and asked “How do you control the Queen’s boat?”

  Goldemar snorted. “It is our boat. We allowed Kriemhild to use it once, and she kept it.”

  Javor could feel the boat moving, could hear the water lapping the hull, but still could see nothing beyond it. “How does it move?”

  “Do you know what a machine is, lad?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “The Greeks were once quite skilled at machinery, but the Romans only appreciate machines as means of mass murder. We built all this. We began with natural formations, like this underground river, then the tunnels and the staircases. Later came the conveyances, like our boats, the bog sciopa and the lifting platform.”

  “Who are you?”

  “We are the People of Knowledge, the Yonn-Sakathe. In this part of the world, men call us Kobolds. Once we had a civilization above and below ground that stretched across this continent. Our numbers have declined as your peoples’ have grown, and many of our finest works have been abandoned. Opportunists like Kriemhild have taken advantage of them. Now, we are little more than a fading memory.” He fell silent, staring into the dark for a long time, reminding Javor of Photius. “We were powerful, once. The Companions were once ours—the Eye and the Fang were our most powerful defensive weapons. And now Kriemhild has them. We have endured her presumption only because she promised to return the Eye in exchange for helping her to acquire the Fang ...”

  “The Eye—you mean that big orange gem on Kriemhild’s head?”

  “Yes. It gives insight, as well as far sight, to its bearer. Little can remain secret to the one that bears the Eye. It must not remain in Kriemhild’s possession!”

  “Why not?”

  “In your religion, does your god not forbid you the tree of knowledge?”

  “You mean, Christianity? It’s not my religion. Too little of it makes sense.”

  “You think as we do. We are dedicated to knowledge, to learning how the world functions. Our civilization has fed and protected all our people without war for thousands of years, all without despoiling the land. We do not argue about faith or the nature of gods, or anything else we cannot see or measure.”

  “And the Fang is my dagger?”

  “Yes. An unbreakable, irresistible weapon, the only thing that can cleave the hide of a dragon—or of a monster like Stuhach. The Fang and the Eye are two of the Companions—the weapon and the light of knowledge.”

  “And my amulet is the Shield?”

  Goldemar gently pulled apart the cloak he had wrapped around Javor’s shoulders and looked closely at the amulet in the greenish light of the Kobold glow-globe. “I suppose it is,” he said after a while. “It appears to be a single scale from a dragon’s hide. As such, it cannot be pierced or broken.”

  “Even by the Fang? My dagger?”

  “To tell you the truth, lad, until now I had only heard of it in legends that are older even than our people. I doubted it truly existed. How is your leg?”

  Javor was surprised to realize it did not hurt at all any more.

  “Tell me,” said Goldemar. “Will you try once more to regain your dagger and help us regain the Eye?”

  Javor nodded. The boat stopped at a stone wharf. Kobolds jumped out and tied it off, while others helped Javor disembark. Goldemar led them down another glow-globe-lit tunnel. It ended in a shadow, but when Goldemar entered it, more globes ignited to light another spacious cavern with a smooth marble floor.

  At one side was a small armoury. The Kobolds donned shining silver and gold armour and strapped weapons on.

  The armour was too small for Javor, except for helmets. He found a very ornate one with a tall horse-tail crest and golden wings on the side, but Goldemar shook his head and gave him a simpler silver one. It actually fits better. He picked up a Kobold broadsword, which for him was like a Legionnaire’s short sword.

  Once armoured, the Kobolds marched across the floor to another circular lifting platform. Javor hesitated until Goldemar gave him a sharp look, then joined the small people in their formation. He nearly fell when the platform started to rise. It rose so fast, he could barely breathe in the rushing wind.

  Chapter 36: The spell on the mountain

  The staircase wound around a shoulder of rock and Tiana shivered as a blast of cold wind hit her. She pushed uselessly against the monster’s claw. It followed the giant ahead, on and on, and Tiana realized that the staircase spiraled up the highest peak in the area. The other mountains, outlined dimly in the starlight, fell away around them. The air was getting so cold that Tiana felt a little grateful for the monster’s claws where they blocked the icy wind, even though its scales were cold.

  The stair ended on a wide, roughly circular area just below the summit. Except for the stone staircase, three sides of the ledge dropped off sheer cliffs. When Tiana peered over the edge, she felt almost as if she were looking down at stars. The half-moon was low. Is it rising? Or setting?

  In front of them was a rocky outcrop, the mountain’s peak, about twice the height of the stone giant.

  The giant gently put down its human cargo. The little boy shivered in the cold mountain air. His father wrapped his red cloak around him and held him close.

  Kriemhild went to the edge, lifted her hands over her head and screamed defiance in her strange language. She turned and walked to the opposite edge and repeated her scream, then again on the third side before approaching the rocky hump and bowing, muttering in the same bizarre tongue. Its harsh syllables sounded ancient to Tiana. At that moment, there was a red glint against the cliff: the sun was rising.

  Ingund climbed onto a small rock at the base of the hump, like a little step. She leaned back against the rock, legs a little apart, and gazed at the sky. Her face was calm, intent, and she seemed to hear something no one else could.

  Ingund drew Javor’s dagger, the Fang, from the sheath that still hung around her waist, kissed it, then held it out handle first to Kriemhild. The Queen took the knife in her right hand and held her left out for her son. The boy came to stand under her arm, cuddlin
g against her for warmth but not finding it.

  Tiana felt a sudden alarm as she started to guess Kriemhild’s intentions. She squirmed in the monster’s grip, but it was no use. The Queen lifted her arms again and spoke, this time in Greek.

  “Oh Great Mother, giver of all life, on this solstice day, I bring before you two young lives. One conceived and born wholly of the earth, the people who have never left the true faith of the earth: this innocent born of my loins, Ana-kui, who bears the name of that people who have ranged across your holy face these seven generations.

  “And the other lives still in the belly of my daughter, now arrayed upon your altar, Great Mother.” She lowered her hands and spoke to Ingund. “Tell your Mother truthfully, child, are you carrying your own child at this time?”

  “Yes,” Ingund answered proudly, face high to the night sky. “Two months now.”

  Kriemhild lifted the tip of the blade under Ingund’s thin shift, then slashed upward. Tiana gasped, expecting the girl’s evisceration, and she saw Ingolf jump a little, too. But to their surprise and relief, the Queen had only ripped apart the dress, leaving her daughter naked on the rock. Tiana shivered sympathetically.

  “Answer truthfully, mother, were you a virgin upon conception of this life?” Kriemhild demanded.

  Ingund/Danisa hesitated less than a heartbeat before she answered. “Yes.”

  “No! Javor was her lover!” Tiana yelled.

  Both women stared at Tiana. “Silence, witch!” Kriemhild commanded.

  “She is lying!” Ingund protested.

  “It’s true! Javor told us that he and she had been lovers!” said Tania.

  “Do not break the spell!” Kriemhild snarled. “Be silent, witch of Tabita, or I will kill you immediately!” She turned back to her daughter. “It matters little whether you were a virgin. But answer truthfully, mother, what is the sex of your child?”

  “A girl,” Ingund answered firmly.

  “Answer truthfully, mother, who is the father of your child?”