Solitudes and Silence
Chapter 8
Clang and Clash
They had no way of staying underwater for longer than they could hold their breath, so Waimbrill planned on attracting the attention of the pond rainids who lived in the lake to see if they had any magical means to allow them to stay under.
As they approached the shore, Terredor’s mind wandered to the first time he stole from a pond rainid. The victim was a young female priestess of Maraki, god of patience and preparation. Terredor was hungry and bored, waiting patiently for a perfect opportunity like this one. He snuck behind her and cut out the bottom of her pack. A few coins and a small white pouch fell out. Terredor caught them, scampering into a darkened alley to examine his prize.
The coins were copper, and the pouch was made of soft white felt. Inside were a written note and two rings with the same powerful aura that reminded Terredor of the magical trinkets his father would steal. He was excited, thinking he would be able to sell them at a fantastic profit.
But Terredor had heard the folktales and knew well the dangers of magical rings of unknown provenance, so he took the note and pouch to an elder woman of his clan. Her name was Helga, a stout woman with a warm, comforting smile, always ready with a kind word and a stern scolding.
“Ah yes,” Helga said, “It say’ ‘I am a priestess of Maraki, Lord of Patience and Preparation, as was my mother, and her mother before her, who hath received a vision from Maraki when she was but a girl, and this pouch and rings, and Maraki bade her be patient, and pass the pouch and rings on to her daughter, and then again to her daughter’s daughter, that I might carry them into Crikburg on this very day that a cunning young Delver might steal them. These rings will prepare gentle Delver for a journey into the deepest of darks. As life must begin at its moment, and must death arrive rightly, so must these rings be donned and doffed when borne truth dictates.”
He had hidden the rings from his father, who would have sold them regardless of the note. Terredor fingered the soft felt pouch and told Waimbrill the story of the rainid priestess. He rarely thought about the rings anymore, but he kept them with him always, to be prepared for the journey the note referred to.
Terredor slipped the ring on his finger, and felt his throat close. His shoulder blades became warm and itched terribly. Under the rough cloth of his tunic he saw a row of feathery gills along the top of his shoulders. Though it wasn’t immediately apparent because the sun was shining, the ring glowed when worn as well.
Waimbrill and Terredor walked into the lake with trepidation. It was a curious sensation, Terredor thought, the rushing of water through his gills, which pumped cold into his blood. It was a deep chill, a bitter, stabbing cold, like the painful icy sensation on the roof of the mouth when eating snow too quickly, but on his shoulder and not his palate.
Terredor found that he could swim, not like a fish, but more a levitating dancer, striding in every direction effortlessly. He and Waimbrill cavorted in the water, thickly green with algae, laughing as they brushed past the fish and turtles and small shrimps that dominated coastal Lake Crikmere.
Entranced by their newfound grace in three dimensions, they didn’t notice at first that they spoke a curious, guttural language that resonated in the heavy blanket of water around them. Even though his brain understood the words, they sounded alien, like staccato bursts of bombastic, stabbing sounds, wrapped in silky vowels that stuck in his head. The tongue brought to the forefront of his mind that they were barging headstrong into a dangerous place they knew nothing about. Terredor wondered what kind of people would have a language so harsh, so booming, so crazed and incessant, with the clash and clang of consonant-choked syllables, crawling with protean cruelty like primordial crustaceans scuttling across a cave floor.
A black shape drifted overhead, and they waited, heads upturned in awe. Seven feet long from head to tail, the huge beast swam slowly. Terredor had seen giant lake turtles before, but only the head and the top of a shell, and once, he saw men bring home a hunted specimen. But here, in the green murk and mire of the lake, it was a whole different beast, a prehistoric predator whose snapping snout could rip off a limb without missing a gentle stroke of its legs. It passed by without so much as a glance in their direction, and they continued swimming toward the center of the lake, where the fishermen had told Waimbrill they would find the Fissure.
The Fissure was a jagged crack in the lake floor that stretched some half a mile, and was a hundred feet at its widest. They floated above the ground, at its southern tip, where it was only a few feet from edge to edge.
“This is where we should descend. The fishermen said to go to this spot and swim straight down.”
The water in the Fissure was cold, its chill emanating from the darkness. The life that teemed in the lake thinned as they approached it. Judging from the greater distance the light from his ring traveled into the Fissure than through the algae-clouded lake, Terredor guessed that the water there, in that abyssal blackness, must be mostly dead.
“What do you suppose the people down there live on?” Terredor asked, “There can’t be any food growing so deep.”
“Perhaps they eat only each other,” Waimbrill said, stroking his chin as he peered into the darkness, reaching his illuminated hand down to see if there were any features to be seen. But there were none.
The pair huddled together. The inky ebony of the Fissure oozed out, infecting the water around it with a penetrating cold. And its name now made more sense: the Deepdark. His voice changed it to a cluttered gutter of consonants and clicks, its very tone making his gills shudder and flutter anxiously.
“Is this what it’s like to be a hero?” Terredor asked, peering into the darkness.
“You need not come with me. You should not come with me,” Waimbrill said, “This journey will be my end.”
“Maraki gave me two rings, Mortiss Waimbrill. Surely a god of preparation would not have overprepared me.”
“Point well-taken, lad,” Waimbrill said and grinned.
“So we stick together, and we’ll both be heroes,” Terredor said.
“I suppose so. But I don’t see you bravely diving in.”
“A pair of true heroes will surely face foes more dangerous than a hole in the ground.”
“It’s no good trivializing our fears,” Waimbrill said, “The shame in fear is in its denial. You wish to worship Modroben? You will have much to learn about overcoming emotions. Let me teach you.”
They sat crosslegged, facing each other next to the lip of the Fissure, or what Terredor was beginning to think of as the entrance to the Deepdark.
“Clear your mind,” Waimbrill said, “And let your fears flow away.”
Terredor closed his eyes as he had seen Waimbrill do so many times over the years.
“Visualize your fear,” Waimbrill said, “Visualize it as a pile of pebbles you carry. Think about every possibility that frightens you now. Maybe the ground will collapse, sealing us in the Deepdark. Perhaps we will descend countless fathoms only to be captured by villains, or maybe I shall take this ring off my finger and let myself drown, leaving you alone to battle great evil. Now-”
“This is not helping,” Terredor said, opening his eyes.
“Hush!” Waimbrill said, “The risk is real, but the fears are a beast of your mind, a stupid, ravenous beast that will rip and rend your sanity if you let it. We shall use our minds to reject terror and face risk. Think of each of those fears and picture each one as a rock you hold in your hand. Go on, close your eyes and do it. Focus on your breathing - or rather, the flow of water through your gills, I suppose - and meditate, praying to Modroben while you focus on each rock. Those fears constitute part of your Paradigm. As you examine each rock and each fear, assign it a new thought. Change ‘I could be crushed by tons of rock’ to ‘I will be able to escape even if there is a cave-in’. The fears that haunt your mind now haunt the rocks. Remember what that rock looked like in thy mind, and every time you fear again the crushing weight of stone,
respond with thoughts of the new meaning, and picture the rock whose fear you have mastered. When you finish with each rock, throw it into the Fissure, so it will be down there when you need it.”
He focused on the darkness, pictured himself throwing a handful of pebbles one by one into the Fissure. He prayed, and the tension and anxiety streamed out of his muscles into the flowing water around him. His shoulders drooped, his biceps relaxed, his gills quavered gently.
Terredor and Waimbrill stood, looked each other in the eye and smiled. They peered into the dark, cold waters beneath them, linked arms, and swam over the crack, then slowly descended.