Healer of Sakkara

Chapter 1 - Lost

Tailing Sevhalim was easy enough at first.

The tunnels dug by the miners followed a seam in the rock and ran roughly straight into the mountainside. The walls were narrow and smooth, and the ground was clear of debris. All Galen had to do was feel his way along in the dark and keep the glow of Sev's lantern in sight.

Then Sev's lantern went out, and things changed.

Panicked that he had lost him, Galen pushed on, completely blind. At last, a different light, like the blue twilight before dawn, appeared ahead of him, growing steadily brighter until, with a suddenness that made him gasp and fall against the wall at his back, Galen arrived at the place where the tunnels broke through into larger, older caverns.

Like a cockroach peeking from a crevice, Galen peered forth and found himself upon a narrow ledge halfway up the wall of an enormous open space. Immense pillars upheld a ceiling lost in darkness, and below lay the ruins of an ancient city built to gigantic scale.

All it took was a glance for him to see why Anira's people believed they had found the Dweller realm, though it took him several minutes to realize how strange it was that he could see it all.

This far below ground, with hundreds of feet — if not miles — of rock between him and the moon, sun, or stars, it should have been blacker than the pits of hell; and yet the same blue-gray twilight provided just enough illumination to make a lantern unnecessary. He could identify no source; it seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at once, though it was brightest at ground level.

By this eldritch light, Galen absorbed the wonder — and the challenge — that lay before him.

The cavern (if such a vast space could be called a 'cavern') was at least as large as the Grotto whence he'd come, and the architecture it contained matched the style of the great edifice carved into the cliff there. Huge archways — massive portals to palaces, or crypts, or who knows where — yawned darkly from the walls, while the open space between looked to be like a public park or promenade.

He saw the broken remnants of statues, monuments, temples, derelict fountains, and what might have been gardens made of stone. Criss-crossing all were the scars of ancient paths and roads, leading to the looming doorways and to whatever deeper places they contained.

All lay in ruin, of course — piles of broken stone, rubble, and debris making a labyrinth of obstacles across the plain. Most of the destruction seemed to have been caused by rocks falling from above — some as large as buildings themselves — which had shattered on impact, spreading a stony chaos far and wide. Some remained intact, like the hulls of sinking ships, the prows sticking up in proud defiance of their demise.

By the time Galen took stock of all this, Sev had vanished.

Falling to his hands and knees at the edge of the precipice, Galen scanned the broken landscape below in search of movement, but all was gray and silent, shrouded in blue mist.

No, not 'silent.' In fact, Galen perceived, there were many sounds, though quiet and subtle: the muted rush of hidden water; the tumble and clatter of little pebbles knocked free by the natural movement of the earth; the flutter of leathery wings, as clouds of tiny bats swooped and swirled in the open spaces like flocks of starlings above a field.

There are other noises too, even more subtle still — clinks and clanks, and a grinding groan, as of massive metal gears, rising from deep below. But it was something else that made Galen's blood run cold: something that sounded an awful lot like the distant wail of a barrowling.

Finally catching sight of movement, Galen's breath snagged in his chest as he recognized Sev's lithe form slipping into the labyrinthine ruins far below. He watched for a moment until he saw the tall, dark-haired man emerge from behind the wreckage of a gigantic statue and established the general direction in which he was heading.