Silent Walls

[Vaa`len Kainn]

Mathiu was always the bravest out of all of his friends.

Adults thought him reckless, even foolish, but he was not a fool at all. Even now he was watching the armored figures atop the high walls of the structure that now stood where Alexander Kanashia's former estate once was, as he had watched them for the past four days. Well-hidden within the wooded area beyond the walls, Mathiu had observed the massive, black-armored silhouettes as they stood as still as the stones beneath them. The sun rose over the dozen or so identical sentinels, beat down on them for hours, lengthened their shadows across stairwells, courtyards and walls as it tracked across the sky and then left them to blend into surrounding darkness as it set. Not a one of them ever moved or showed even the slightest sign of life. Mathiu, with all the wisdom of his thirteen years of life therefore had finally come to the conclusion that they were, in fact, merely empty suits of armor, left where they were much as farmers leave scarecrows among their crops. His friends from town had spoken of this place in hushed whispers; of the mysterious lord whom no one had ever seen and his grim-faced servants who seemed to have vanished from the land completely. Perhaps they had all returned to whatever land they orignally hailed from, departed from an increasingly troubled Myrken to a more familiar and peaceful location. Perhaps these armored scarecrows had been left behind to deter looters and vandals from despoiling the hard work of those who built it, supposedly in but a day. Whatever their purpose, it would take more than sinister rumors and empty armor to prevent Mathiu from seeing what lay within the abandoned structure.

Mathiu approached the walls slowly, still watching the dark figures above. Reassuringly, they still remained apparently lifeless as he finally came to the towering steel gates banded with bronze. He placed one hand against the metal surface, still slightly warmed from the touch of the sun's rays. He looked up and down, gauging how difficult it would be to climb upwards using the bronze banding on the gates and slight seams in the stone arch surrounding them for hand and footholds. A veteran climber of trees and walls all ready, his feet were bare to allow his toes greater purchase. Reaching upwards, Mathiu began a slow ascent, one hand and foot searching out grooves in stone work, the other hand and foot bracing against smooth angles of metal. After only a few minute's work, he was straining with one arm to reach the upper edge of the arch framing the gates. Mathiu locked the fingers of his left hand as tightly as he could along the chiseled ledge, then placing his other hand beside it he swung away from the gates, kicking his legs for momentum. He swung right, and then left, and then back again until he had enough height to hook one skinny leg over the battlements flanking the gate. The other leg followed, he braced himself and then pulled himself upwards through the crennelations and stood up on the upper walkway.

And then his heart nearly stopped its beating.

Standing up, he found himself staring directly at a black, steel breastplate. The figure it adorned was well over six feet tall, massively broad-shouldered, the normally vulnerable joints in its armor protected by rondels surmounted with cruel spikes. More spikes bristled from the lobstered knuckles of its gauntlets, one of which was wrapped around the haft of a double-bitted axe that looked large enough to cleave an ox in half. Neither of them moved for what seemed like an eternity to Mathiu; an eternity spent with his heart caught fast in icy fingers. The armored figure remained quiet, still. Just another scarecrow in a silent kingdom of the same.

Mathiu's breath came harshly from his lungs; he felt dizzy, heart pounding crazily but slowing now as the initial rush of fear drained away. He looked closer at the hulking armored shape; oddly it showed no signs of the effects of wind and rain, no rust, no scratches to mar the almost mirror-like obsidian surface. Perhaps feeling some lingering dread, he decided against touching it. Edging cautiously around the silent sentinel, Mathiu made his way along the battlements towards a stone stairwell.

He walked across the open courtyard between the defensive wall and the main castle itself, gazing upwards at scores of windows closed and shuttered against intrusive eyes. The carved oak doors of the entrance were closed as well, but the smooth-worn black iron handles spoke of frequent use. So many had been here, but where had they gone, and why? Mathiu gripped one of the doorhandles and pulled, astonished when the door swung open soundlessly. The door was not only unbarred, but hinges that should have squealed a protest through neglect and rust were silent as the grave. Again, the twinge in his chest. Something here was not right, but his curiosity overwhelmed any misgivings he might have had about what waited for him within this empty structure. Besides, his friends would never believe him if he returned empty-handed, without some kind of evidence he'd done what they'd dared. Such evidence would only be found inside, so inside was where he must go in search of it. Mathiu stepped through the doorway, one hand trailing along the graven surface of the wooden doors polished nearly smooth as glass by its unknown craftsman, and went inside.

The doors closed behind him as quietly as they had opened, witnessed only by the mute and motionless sentinels that guarded them.

[Vaa`len Kainn]

Mathiu's bare feet padded softly down marble-tiled floors, whispered across carpets and rugs. Within the castle was even stranger than without; each room was fully furnished, the halls hung with tapestries and paintings, as if the entire place was either still inhabited or merely waiting for those who would soon arrive. Stranger still, flat surfaces bore no dust, no cobwebs hung in ragged streamers of grey from corners and ceilings. It didn't feel abandoned, it felt alive. Alive... ...yet asleep. Asleep and dreaming of those who once walked its halls, voices that rung through rooms, activity, life . Mathiu struggled with himself, within this sleeping giant, wanting to run and leave the creeping dread of the place far behind him, but with his young mind entranced by the mystery of it. He hadn't forgotten his quest; with merely one token of his explorations he could leave, but furniture and works of art were much too large to carry off and he could not bring himself to break or tear any of what he saw into something small enough to fit within a pocket. Want and wonder drew him deeper into the heart of the slumbering colossus, searching for something small yet undoubtably fashioned by the same hands who had worked this magick.

Something caught Mathiu's eye farther down the hall, a strange angle out of place that turned out to be a partially open door. Amber light gleamed from behind it, revealing carpeted black marbled stairs that wound down out of his view. Small sconces cupped flickering flames at regular intervals on the walls, pouring gentle illumination down the stairs, picking out the metal fittings that bound fabric to stone with faint gleams of silver. It was, Mathiu decided astutely, far too richly appointed to be a dungeon or gaol below. Perhaps a vault for the missing lord's riches? Fear of the place had hopefully kept thieves far away from it, perhaps one less bold than a thirteen-year-old boy had come this far before the eerie ambiance of the place cost him his nerve. Perhaps some sorcery warded them off. With the same implacable logic as he'd exercised moments earlier, Mathiu decided surely such sorcery would be directed at black-hearted thieves and robbers, not curious children. Once more emboldened, he pulled the door open wider, feeling the soft carpeting velvety beneath his toes and started down the winding stair. Perhaps he could find what he sought down there, not plunder but proof.

Surely the patron of this place wouldn't miss just one coin.

The stair descended downwards, round and round, seeming to spiral down deep into the earth, but the lights remained steadily bright, the stairs even and easily manageable. There was no smell of dampness or mould; the air was clean, if a bit dry. Definitley not a gaol, or worse, a tomb. Mathiu knew that no shades awaited him below, their rest disturbed and anger kindled by his innocent explorations. He came to a landing after a while, also finished in dark marble and darker carpeting. It led to a short hallway ending in an arched threshhold. Here it was finally, he'd find what he was after and leave this place, his friends would be awed by what he'd done and found. Light flickered from within the darkened room beyond the arch. He could not see what it contained, but he knew he was, at last, at the end of his journey.

[Vaa`len Kainn]

Mathiu drew close to the archway, the fitfully flickering light within did little to reveal the contents of the room beyond, barely brightening a half-circle from the wall just inside the arch to about three feet away. Indistinct shapes huddled in the murk beyond. Mathiu turned his attention to the light itself, and saw the strangest thing.

The light appeared to be coming from a block set into the wall itself, just inside the arch to the left. A rectangle just slightly larger than Mathiu's head flickered and shifted with grey-white light, casting patterns like windblown snow upon his wonder-struck face. Without thinking, he reached out with his hand towards it. His fingers encountered a smooth, polished surface; as smooth, cold and unyielding as the marble beneath his feet. Flicker, shift, pulse, the light danced across his eyes. Then color. Shapes. Green, brown, a tree? Many trees? A rough hand sketched jagged angles of iron grey and black, mountains. An image of life formed in the lifeless wall beneath his fingertips, alien and somehow familiar at the same time... ...the woods! Myrken Wood! He recognized the leaning trees, the roll of hill and hollow, but how? Some magick was allowing him to see elsewhere in world around him; he'd heard some of his elders speak of scrying but had never thought he'd ever actually see such a wonder with his own eyes...

More light caught the corner of his eye, shimmering unsteadily. Another block in the wall had come alight with the same chaotic whorl of white and grey as the first. Then another. More of the scrying glasses (as he thought of them now) came alive, one after the other, spreading from where he stood, their arrangement haphazard, random from floor to ceiling, as if whomever had placed them cared not for any kind of neat order. He followed their progress about the walls, all his last remnants of fear washed away on an exhilarating tide of wonder. Gradually the room became brighter, the darkness drawing back, revealing the circular sweep of the room's walls, touching ever so slightly on some sort of object at the very center of the round. It looked almost like some kind of bizarre sculpture or statuary; here angled sharply, there curved and fretted, but with an overall symmetry of some kind he could not understand.

And then it spoke.

"Boyyyyyy..." . One syllable, drawn out, a deep rumbling bass Mathiu felt shivering through his bones, echoing in his skull. The shape he'd mistaken for statuary had become a bit clearer in the half-light, a huge chair set in the center of the room, a throne, and seated in it was a dim, massive man-shape he still could not quite discern. He wanted to scream, but his jaws seemed frozen shut. He wanted to run, but his feet seemed turned to lead and anchored in the unfeeling polished stone beneath them. A pair of greenish, corpselight glares in the figure's head flared to life and in that moment Mathiu realized that his short life had come to an end because of a foolish acceptance of a foolish dare.

"Do not fear, boy. We have no wish to harm you." , the voice again, echoing from the walls, feeling as if it might rattle his soul loose from its moorings. "You do not come here to steal or destroy, as others have, so unlike others you are safe here. You are merely curious, about this place. About Us. We too are curious, about what goes on beyond Our walls. You will tell Us so that We will know. Tell Us about Myrken." . Mathiu's mind spun; he didn't know what this terrifying apparition wanted, what he could possibly tell this being that would satisfy it. Without his direction, his mouth opened, words came out; but what they were or why he spoke them he did not know, could not know. After a time the flow of sound from his throat ceased. His mouth was dry, the muscles of his jaw ached slightly. The speaker sat silently for a few moments; the sickly emerald glare of its gaze tracked here and there around the room before returning to settle on Mathiu's own eyes. He thought he caught a further glimpse of the anatomy of the speaker's face; seemingly all pale, harsh angles, a flash of a smile or perhaps a frozen grin, ragged hair a black that blended into the dark that seemed to enshroud the speaker himself like a mantle of ink. "We thank you, boy, for what you have brought Us. You must leave this place now, but perhaps return when you are older, wiser." , the last word spoken with almost a chuckle. Still unable to move, as still as one of the armored figures in the courtyard above, Mathiu watched as the speaker lifted one hand from where it rested on the arm of its throne. Talons tipped the fingers, steel hooks that glinted harshly. Black, oily armor plating shone wetly, looking almost horribly organic in its convoluted and veined surface. The lighted spots on the walls subsided to pinpricks in a field of solid black, and he was falling...

Mathiu woke, staring up at a cloudless expanse of blue sky. Grass prickled the back of his neck, his arms and legs. He wondered how he had gotten here. Only a moment ago he'd been crossing the quiet courtyard of the abandoned castle, reaching for... ...what? He couldn't remember. The sun seemed to have moved farther in the sky, not quite evening yet but approaching it. Had he become overwhelmed by fear and fled the place? Again, he couldn't remember. But there was something heavy in his left hand.

He sat up, inclining his head down to gaze into his palm. A smile crossed his face, chasing away the confused expression he'd worn when he found himself inexplicably outside the walls. He had what he came for. He must've picked it up in the courtyard and then been frightened by... ...something. Mathiu wasn't sure what that could have been either. But his friends wouldn't be able to deny what he'd show them, they'd know he'd been true to his word and gone where none of them were brave enough to venture.

In his small hand, a large coin, shining pale silver in the touch of the sun. On the visible face, a five pointed star within a circle, containing a cross-shape with an oval loop at its top. Around its edge, almost runic symbols he did not recognize at all. He flipped it over to get a look at the other side. A momentary chill went through him but left him just as quickly, as he beheld the grinning horned skull embossed on the coin's opposite face. A cloud slid across the disk of the sun, obscuring it slightly, as it continued its stately descent towards the horizon. It was time to go home.