Slithering Maze 23: The Hidden Road of Vasam

Basysus 30, 1278: Upper Deeplands. If the Deeplands didn’t kill me, Auditor Elkerton was glad to give it a go…

Author’s Note: Kingdom of the Slithering Maze is a serialized fiction story that is a part of a collection called the Windtracer Tales. It follows the adventures of Tela Kioni and her crew dealing with expeditions in and around the world of Awldor. There they hunt down lost, and possibly lethal, relics of the Ancient Order, a near-mythical kingdom lost to the centuries old cataclysm, the Great Collapse.

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Previously: Tela, rescued by Azure from the tunnel collapse, take refuge in a Deepland Hollow—an oasis in the subterranean realm. While there, Tela uncovers strange markings and lost altars. Some for the Sunfate Sisters, but others for older, forgotten, beliefs which hint at much older ruins no one has seen before. But before Tela and Azure can discover more, hoofbeats and a loud voice herald the arrival of Auditor Gregori Elkerton, who has nothing safe in mind for Tela…

Basysus 30, 1278: Upper Deeplands. If the Deeplands didn’t kill me, Auditor Elkerton was glad to give it a go…

There’s an old saying that Windtracers are among the best at knowing when to run, fight, or hide. Then there’s me. I’ve always been good at the running and fighting part.

Hiding? Well, not unless someone dragged me off by the collar and shoved my face in it.

I grabbed my whip and snarled, ready for a fight. Azure sighed and yanked me into a jagged crack behind a curtain of glowing, feather-soft moss vines. What the vine didn’t hide, a natural stone column did.

The gap was narrow, barely wide enough for both of us, but she manhandled me inside anyway. I swallowed a sharp yelp from a new bruise on my right hip, then pressed my back against slick, cold blue-gray stone. Sickly yellow lantern light swept into the Hollow past the vines with a clop of hoofbeats.

Azure was braced nearly chest to chest with me in the fissure. For a deadly moment, she shot a sideways glance at the feeble light past the vines, then met my gaze with a stern expression.

“Not now. Not worth dying for.” She signed the words as quick as a knife cut.

I nodded, jaw clenched, as I shot a frustrated glare at the newcomers.

“Fine,” I replied as best I could with one hand. “Hope they trip on a rock.”

Irritation aside, Azure had picked a good hiding place. Through finger-thin, narrow gaps in the soft, glowing moss vines and around the thick blue-stone column, we could see most of the Hollow. On the left was the wide, natural archway entrance. The right was all ancient lime-coated altars, Traveler’s Wall, tinderbox, and more.

The breadth of the Hollow and its glowing pool of blue water spread out between both sections. Above, blue motes drifted lazily around the hair-like moss vines that carpeted the rock ceiling. I had no idea where the herd of mushroom-like hornwort climbers got to, but I figured it was someplace safer than we were.

In the middle of it all, or at least in the cavern’s entrance, four centaur soldiers wearing dirty gray leather and chain armor stomped into the Hollow. Stained purple tabards bore the golden-winged ram’s head of Herd Tolvana. They were grim and all business, heads on a pivot for any kind of threat.

Recent claw marks, half-melted into the armor, suggested they had plenty of reason to worry.

But it was the fifth centaur that was the biggest problem. It was Auditor Gregori Elkerton. The centaur looked much like he had before, from his tailored tunic and tabard to his styled sandy-colored hair and horse tail. His eyes swept the Hollow with a practiced, disgusted glare.

“The Windtracer’s here,” he growled, narrowing his eyes at the Hollow. “I just know it. She’s stuffed herself into some dark crack in there.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Yank her out.”

He seethed at the other four centaurs when no one moved.

“She’s a Windtracer and a thief, not a damn assassin or something that oozed out of the Deeplands. Show some damn initiative! Find her!”

The four soldiers spread out with scowls and drawn swords as they got to work. They looked done with Elkerton, this place, and just everything to the point they’d set it on fire if they could.

Two stepped outside the Hollow, probably to see if we’d already slipped past them. Another searched the altars, and the last studied our feeble campsite with its green fire. Elkerton? He stood out of the way and tried to look in charge. The effect mostly made him look a little constipated.

Azure glared at them with a brittle expression, but held her place. I watched them warily, then studied the fissure we were in. My water elemental friend had a good point. Five against two weren’t odds I liked. We needed another way out.

The Hollow itself was made up of different types of rock, such as limestone and gritty sandstone. I’m no stonemason, but fissures like the one Azure and I were in could have been just a deep break in the rock wall. But the break was unusually even, like a tight arch. The edges were broken and jagged, but that even shape made me wonder.

As silent as I could, I slowly shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Then I eased past Azure and deeper into this narrow gap. I hoped it was the start of a narrow tunnel cut by underground water runoff.

It was, in fact, something else entirely.

I leaned closer and explored the almost straight edges of a rectangular rock. That turned into me scrubbing at that wall with my fingers like a deranged squirrel looking for a nut. I paused mid-scrub when I noticed Azure staring, worry lines creased above her sea-green eyes.

Most people other than trained wizards knew very little about elementals, and even the wizards really didn’t know all that much. So I didn’t know how well she could see me, but I suspected her eyes—like mine—were well suited to the flickering twilight around us.

“Brick!” I signed rapidly to Azure. “This isn’t natural. It’s worked stone that someone tried to hide.”

She looked sharply into the Hollow when one of the soldiers clopped over to the pool to prod the deeper end with a sword. The other looked around, having searched the obvious places for cracks to hide in. There was a shout from outside the Hollow that drew Elkerton and the other two centaurs into the tunnels.

I swapped a nervous glance with Azure. She sighed, then lightly brushed a hand against the rock wall.

“Water remembers what the stone won’t say,” she signed quickly. “This place is old, Tela. Older than the temple.”

It took a moment before I realized she had signed my name. I’d introduced myself to her before we left to lure Lady Nimad on a wild goose chase; this was the first time she’d used it. Slowly, I repeated the gesture back, memorizing the word as I got lost in learning a bit more about the Merehaffru sign language.

Azure spared a thin smile.

“Yes. That was your name.” She indicated the walls. “Now. The Stones. What do they say? A way out?”

I shook off the moment and quickly studied the bricks. We needed a way out, and soon. I knew it wouldn’t take the centaurs long to know we didn’t sneak past them out of the Hollow.

Most of the bricks were just that—bricks. Nothing special, other than they shouldn’t have been inside the cleft of a cavern wall. Unlike the Sunfate Sister temple, these bricks had been set into a charcoal-tinted, glassy mortar. Where the bricks were coated in a thin lime, the mortar was clean. Bits of it glimmered with a muted green glow that I believed was from the firelight in the Hollow.

Then I found a familiar small carving on one brick in the middle of the wall. I squinted in the gloom.

“That’s a Sunfate Sister emblem,” I murmured. “The Sunbound Sister, I think. But what’s that carved under it?” I scrubbed away grime until it was easier to read. “That’s not a language I know, but I’ve seen those words in Rathalla Vasam’s notebook.”

I yanked open my bag and scrambled for my journal. But Vasam’s journal never mentioned this language alongside any viprin temple—yet, here it was near Toshirom Ifoon. I flipped to a blank page, then pressed it flat against the brick to make a rubbing with a pencil.

Azure glanced at me, then at the wall before she made a few quick signs.

“What is it?”

Before I replied, the brick slid back and vanished into the wall the second I touched the Sunfate emblem. Azure froze while I scrambled back until my spine thudded against the far wall. My skin crawled as I watched a dark seam split the mortar in two, dust trickling to the ground. It carved the outline of a wide door-like section in the wall. The bricked panel swung open on silent hinges. A soft glow spilled out the open doorway along with the gentle sound of running water.

“Check the cavern again!” Elkerton called from the far side of the Hollow. “Pull down those moss vines. Look for a gap in the rock. She’s here, I know it!”

I swapped an uneasy glance with Azure. She nodded, and we rushed through the door.

The room on the other side was a narrow chamber, where long wooden tables crusted in lime lined the walls. Forgotten chisels and folding rulers littered the top along with the rotten remains of ropes, pulleys, and what might have been gears. Channels, like stone drains, had been carved into the walls. Glowing water, like that in the Hollow, trickled down from above in steady streams along the channels. Soft moss vines reached down from the ceiling.

I took it all in with a concerned glance, then helped Azure to shove the hidden door closed on what looked like bronze-gold, dragon-glass hinges. We turned around and took in the room. That’s when I noticed a more normal and time-worn door at the far end.

“What is all this?” Azure signed with a frown. “I don’t understand. They were hiding?”

I glanced back at the hidden door, then at the normal one. After a hard frown at the tables, I crossed to the battered door that I hoped was a way out.

“There’s a good chance of that,” I signed to Azure. “There are tools scattered across the tables and floor. It looks like people left in a hurry. Which we also need to do.”

Azure studied one of the tables.

“Almost like they were attacked.”

I shrugged and signed back. “Maybe? Not sure yet.”

The door at the far end was wood banded in metal. Neither had handled the years well. The metal was rusted, and the wood looked more petrified than anything. I started to kneel and examine the handle for a hidden lock when I saw a small symbol carved to the left of the handle. It was the crested wave emblem of the Lady Deep, with the word Vasam carved beside it. My mind immediately jumped to Rathalla Vasam.

“Oh, I have got to get out of here and read his journal again. I missed something,” I murmured as I studied the lock, then tried the handle. It opened.

I had barely opened the door when Azure froze, eyes wide.

“What?” I signed.

Before she replied, the hidden door clicked and then swung open. Lantern light spilled through the crack and flooded the room with a sickly yellow glow that sliced the gloom. I saw the looming shadow of a centaur through the partially open door.

“Damn it!” I hissed under my breath.

I threw open the door, and Azure grabbed my arm. We didn’t look, didn’t stop. All we did was run.

“There!” Elkerton’s voice sliced the gloom. “After them!”

Hoofbeats pounded stone behind us, slamming closer with every heartbeat.

There wasn’t time to think, barely any to swear. Only run.

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Windtracer Tales is a work of pure, unashamed fiction. In fact, it considers itself rather fancy and quite proud of itself. Names of characters, places, events, organizations and locations are all creations of the author’s imagination for this fictitious setting. Any resemblance to persons living, dead, or reanimated is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s, since the characters and the author tend to disagree a lot.

Also! Windtracer Tales and Windtracer: Adventures in Awldor is written with much respect to Starfarertheta and their work on the other half of Awldor.