Chapter 81: A Room with Runes

The southern doorway, Etienne explained as he pulled on his hefty backpack, led directly back to the huge cavern which they had come from, and Ubund had gone through the northern doorway, which led onto a long, winding passage, telling them that he would be back before long.

”East or west then?” said Alcar.

Olynka nodded. “West. Because we already looked to the east, and there are just old stores that way – long rotten foodstuffs.”

“Okay, then.”

Leppie led the way through the doorway to the west, holding up one of the lanterns with one hand and her warhammer with the other. Alcar and Olynka were next, with Etienne and the second lantern bringing up the rear. Brutus walked at his master’s hip.

The west doorway led onto a straight corridor, narrow and smoothly constructed. It was clear to Alcar that whatever the origin of the Dungeon of Zorika, it had been more carefully built than the rough entranceway that they had recently walked down.

And the surroundings all looked very old indeed.

After walking for around thirty yards along the featureless corridor, it widened into a dusty rectangular room with two recesses on the left hand side and a double doorway between them. An opening also led away to the right at the far end of the room.

“Looks like those were once some kind of wells, or water basins,” said Olynka, pointing down at the nearest recess. Alcar followed her gaze, and saw that in the shadowy area there was a large stone trough, not dissimilar to the ones that farmers near Katresburg sometimes used to provide water for their livestock.

“Yep,” said Etienne, walking closer to it and raising his lantern. “Perhaps water once gathered there from above. But not now. It’s dry and empty.”

“The question is,” said Leppie, do we go through this doorway, or off to the right?”

“Let’s try the double doors,” said Alcar. “I have a feeling that this codex isn’t going to be just lying about. It’s a book, right? So you’d expect it to be on a shelf, not just in some dusty room like this.”

“Let’s go, then,” said Etienne. He crouched down and checked the gap between the doors, pressing at them gently. “This looks safe enough, and it’s unlocked,” he said. “Come on.”

The others followed Etienne through the doors, which led onto a corridor that was similar to the one they had come down, but wider.

Before long, though, it opened out into a circular room with a pit in the middle, a murky brown substance within it. Above this pit was a large bronze archway, which had uniformly weathered green. The walls were mostly plain, but there were further runes, many of them quite roughly and unevenly cut into the stone. Two further openings led away at the far side of the circular room.

“What is this?” said Olynka, pausing and looking around.

“I don’t know...” replied Alcar slowly. He was staring down at the brown substance in the pit. It looked like mud or slime that had dried and formed a solid crust over the top... except for one thing.

There was a striped caterpillar, squashed flat and lying upon the hardened brown surface.

“That looks very like...” he began to murmur.

“Does anyone understand these runes?” said Etienne loudly, interrupting Alcar’s train of thought.

Leppie raised her lantern closer to the wall on the left hand side. “I think I know some of it,” she said. “It’s much the same as the script in some of the texts that we had to study during my training. It’s an old Dathmiri form of writing – I’m sure of it.”

“I thought the folks in Dathmir spoke the same language as us,” said Alcar, leaning on his staff as he looked around at the walls.

“Woof!” said Brutus, sniffing the air.

“They do, more or less,” Olynka explained with a broad smile, “but before they became part of the Empire, they had their own writing system.”

Etienne chuckled. “Maybe that young woman should have continued her studies rather than becoming an adventurer.”

Olynka glared at him.

“Well,” said Leppie, “Olynka’s right, though that form of writing was already dying out even before they were annexed by the Varians. It’s only seen in the oldest texts.”

Olynka nodded, and then looked around at Alcar. ”I’m surprised you haven’t seen it around your master’s tower!” She winked.

Alcar shrugged, feeling a bit defensive. “Well, I didn’t exactly get a chance to complete my training with Master Maluhk, or get a proper look at his library. Though those runes do look sort of familiar....”

He wracked his brain; he was sure he had seen very similar runes before, and recently.

“They look more recent than the dungeon itself, that’s clear enough,” said Etienne, running his free hand across one of the more rudely scratched sets of runes. “I’m guessing that the rebels who used this as a base must have carved these.”

”Perhaps they used the ancient Dathmiri as some kind of code,” suggested Olynka. “A way to hide what they were doing from the Empire, you know?”

“Yes,” said Leppie nodding. “Perhaps. Though some of these seem to just be names. This one says ‘van Bork’, that one says ‘Figgis’, and that one ‘Gorba’. It’s just graffiti, basically.”

“No van Zorika, then?” said Etienne. “Whoever that actually was... I wondered if they might have been back to their own dungeon!”

But Alcar narrowed his eyes. “Gorba, you said? Gorba Longtongue? That’s the dude that wrote my book. But he’s no Dathmiri hero – he’s a goblin!”

“Huh!” said Olynka.

“Well, that checks out,” Leppie replied. ”We’ve seen their kind down here, too. Scum.”

“Yeah,” said Alcar. “But perhaps not all of them. I do think he was involved in the revolution somehow. He wrote this book, and it’s all about...”

But Alcar didn’t get a chance to explain more fully, for at that exact moment, an enormous figure darkened the door of one of the far entrance.

“By the gods – it’s a troll!” yelped Etienne.

“Shit. Run!” cried Alcar.

And Brutus was already scarpering back through the double doors.