The Copper Promise: Part One: Ghosts of the Citadel
By: Wydrin Williams 178
6
They walked. And walked. And walked some more. The steps were wide enough for the three of them to walk abreast, but Link tended to move in front, setting the pace and lighting the way. Malon would pause now and then to scratch a great cross on the wall with the point of her dagger, marking their progress in case they should need to head back that way in a hurry. Sometimes the steps would turn, left then right again, and sometimes they would level out for a while, but always they were heading gradually downwards.
"So, what is it you hope to find at the bottom of these steps, princeling?" asked Malon, after they had been walking for around an hour. "I thought that princelings had treasure enough already."
Even in the inconstant light Link's scowl was impossible to miss.
"Do not call me that. You only need concern yourself with reaching our goal. What I choose to do with what we discover is none of your business."
"Oh, I don't know. I think it could be my business. Everyone knows this place is haunted. Everyone knows that no one makes it out of here alive. We're putting ourselves in considerable danger, for you. I think that sort of makes it my business." Malon patted the daggers on her belt. "What is so important that you would pay us to brave the ghosts of the Keep?"
Link grunted.
"Ghosts, indeed. It's all nonsense. Stories made up by fools who don't understand what they're dealing with. The mages have left more than their treasures behind, and if there are voices in the walls, it is only evidence of their magic."
Malon sniffed.
"That's what you're after, then, is it?"
Link fell silent.
"I'm sure I don't know either way," said Rusl. "But if anywhere were to be a home to ghosts, I think it would be this place."
At the bottom of the steps was, finally, a door. As they approached, Rusl waved a hand at them to stop.
"There is a light," he said, squinting to see. "Through the crack in the door."
Weak, shimmering light moved at its edge. Link pulled his cloak over the lamp and they could see it even more clearly.
"What is that?" asked Malon.
"I do not know," said Rusl. After a moment's pause, he drew the sword from its scabbard on his back. "But we may not be alone down here."
Let it be Pipit, he thought. Let it be him.
They approached the door, Rusl leading. Malon strained her ears, trying to gather any clues about what might be in the next room. Rusl turned to her and nodded. She returned his nod, and rested one hand on a dagger. Rusl would enter first. It was difficult to miss him, with his height and broad shoulders, and while any potential attackers were watching the broadsword in his hands, she would slip in behind; small, slim, unthreatening. People would often only notice the daggers she wore when one of them was buried to the hilt in their throats.
Rusl pushed the door open, stepped through, and uttered a low cry of surprise. Malon rushed in behind him, blades in hand, and then stopped dead, staring at what met them. She felt Link step in close behind her.
"By all the gods what are they?" said Link in amazement.
They stood in a room vastly different to any they'd seen before. The walls were of brown marble, and hanging from the high ceiling were yellow lamps, casting soft light over row upon row of strange glass capsules. They were partially sunk into an earthen floor, and each of them contained a small, pale figure, no bigger than a child. The room was long, and there must have been around fifty of the smooth glass tanks. There was a strong chemical smell, reminding Malon of the apothecary shop to which her father would sometimes send her on errands.
"Are they dead?" Whatever they were, she did not like it.
Rusl stepped up to the nearest capsule and knelt, peering closely at the occupant.
"I don't know what they are," he said eventually. "Look at their faces, they look… unfinished, somehow. They all look the same."
Malon joined him at the side of the glass. The figure within was so pale he seemed almost translucent, the skin on his smooth cheeks looking thin enough to break and reveal the dark flesh beneath. He had no hair, no eyebrows, no blemishes, and rather than clothing he was wrapped in what appeared to be soft white bandages, from his wrists down to his ankles. Malon peered closely. It looked as though there had once been writing on the bandages, but the ink had faded with time to a pale, unreadable yellow. The figure was very still.
Link tapped on the glass with his stick, and Malon winced, suddenly afraid that he would wake it.
"A mystery," he said. "What are they? Some remnant of the mages?"
"We are soldiers in an ongoing war."
The voice came from the far side of the room; a figure identical to the creatures in the capsules stood in the doorway. As they watched, he walked rapidly towards them, his soft feet making barely any sound on the dirt floor. Malon raised her blades.
"Not so fast, little man."
The creature did not slow, but came on until he stood on the other side of the glass capsule. His eyes were like almond-shaped pools of black ink. Looking down at his brother in the tank, he nodded as though satisfied and looked up at the trio of surprised adventurers.
"Leave now. Seals have been broken. We no longer hold the perimeter."
"What are you?" demanded Link. "Who are you to tell us to retreat?"
Another of the pale child-men appeared in the far door, and another. They, too, entered the room, walking swiftly without noise.
"I am known as Makar. My brothers, Linder and Rown."
"Well, Rowl and Lin-thing, I'd keep back." Malon glanced behind her, suddenly convinced there would be more of the pale men sneaking in behind them, but the doorway was dark. "We mean to go through this chamber and out the other side. We'll just let the rest of your family here sleep."
"No, no place for you here," the creature called Linder said. His voice was a touch higher than his brother's, but it was the only difference between them. "There is danger, death."
Malon laughed.
"I love it when people say things like that. You know that is only meat and bread to adventurers such as ourselves?"
"Malon..." said Rusl, a note of warning in his voice.
"Dust and death," said Makar. "Darkness and evil. The power that waits below is truly awake again for the first time in centuries."
"Power?" said Link. "What power is this?"
"The one that sleeps," Linder said, shaking his head. "Her agents are moving through the Keep. If they meet you, you will become hers too."
The three pale men moved forward as one then, as though to physically push them from the chamber. Rusl raised his sword, resting its point a few inches from Makar's throat.
"Tell us what you are, and we may leave."
The one called Rown sighed, and Malon noticed a small cloud of dust emerge from his mouth.
"We are Kokiri. The mages made us to wait forever in the dark, guarding the seals and holding the perimeter. To watch over the gods they imprisoned."
"But the seals are broken, and the perimeter..." The Kokiri known as Linder shook his head anxiously.
"Are you saying there are gods are down there?" Malon could not keep the scorn from her voice.
"Only one," said Makar. "She has eaten the others."
Malon laughed again.
"They have gone mad, down here in the dark."
"It is the mages we are interested in," said Link. There was a feverish light to his eyes now. "What is left of their power? Of their artefacts? Can you tell us?"
"There is a lake-" began Linder, but the Kokiri called Makar silenced him with a look.
"Enough," he said. "Her agents move. You will leave now."
"Wait," said Rusl. "I had a friend, he came here before me. Blond hair, ridiculous little beard. There would have been a guide with him..."
"No, no, no," said Rown. "No more talk. Leave now. We must protect the Keep."
"I mean to have the secrets of the mages," said Link. "You will not turn us aside."
"Then we stand against you."
Makar held his arms out to them, and for a bizarre moment Malon thought he wanted to be picked up, like a small child tired of walking, but a pair of vicious-looking blades pushed their way through the palms of his hands, each a full foot long. There was no blood at the separating of his flesh, only a thin stream of dark dust.
"What are you?" cried Malon, but then the other two stepped forward with identical weapons shooting from their own hands. And from behind them came the creaking of elderly hinges as the glass cases began to open.
The next few minutes passed in a panicked blur for Malon. The Kokiri were unnaturally fast, running and jumping at them with the speed of birds in flight. She narrowly avoided one strike from Linder by stumbling backwards, but he was immediately replaced by Rown, and then she lost track of which Kokiri was which. She brought her claws up in time to stop her throat being opened and pushed back against the Kokiri with all her strength. He skidded back across the floor, but it was then she noticed that more of the bandaged men were climbing out of their glass beds, every one of them sprouting long, shining spikes from the palms of their hands, even as they were blinking away their artificial sleep.
"Stop this!" yelled Rusl as he cut his way through them, his sword a blur in front of him.
Malon had time to see a Kokiri cut in half by that blade, saw the dust and rags that made up its insides, and then they were on her again, three at once. A slash from a razor-sharp sword caught her across the forearm, but it only sliced open her shirt. Whatever they are, she thought, they attacked us. And I don't even owe them money.
Kicking one in the legs, she plunged Frostling down through the bandages at the base of his neck as he bent over, grunting with satisfaction as the strange flesh yielded. The Kokiri fell to the ground in a boneless heap, but two of his brothers circled her, constantly moving.
"Come on, children of worms," she said cheerfully. The next Kokiri lunged at her, bringing his swords together in a double-point, but she stepped away from it so that it only scraped against her boiled leather armour. While he was within her reach she brought the pommel of her dagger down hard on the top of his skull which, to her surprise, caved in as though made of plaster. He went to his knees, and she took the opportunity to slit his papery throat.
"What are you made of, spit and paste?" she laughed, but the third Kokiri wasn't content to listen to her taunting. He ran at her, eyes like empty holes, and his first blade was only turned away by the thin mail over her leather vest. The second he threw up towards her face, and for a terrible moment Malon thought she'd lose her nose, but Rusl was there, pulling the Kokiri off her by the scruff of his neck.
"Bastard thing nearly had my face off," she had time to say before they were rushed by five more. It was around this point that Malon thought to wonder how Link was faring. She saw him some distance away, his blond hair the brightest thing in the room. He was leaning awkwardly on the wall, but he had a rapier in his hands and was holding the Kokiri at bay, the blade almost moving too quickly for her to follow.
Where did that come from?
There were dead Kokiri by his feet, but even from where she stood she could see the exhaustion on his face.
She hacked, and slashed, parried and stabbed, over and over, until her shoulders began to sing from the ache of it. She stole glances at Rusl occasionally, shouted encouragement or mockery, but his face was closed and still, as it always was during a fight. The Kokiri just kept coming, always pushing them back towards the door, stepping over the torn bodies of their brothers and producing their strange blades from within their bodies. Malon felt sweat begin to trickle down her back. They were trying to press them back, towards the exit, and they were succeeding. They might be short and strange-looking, but they are so many, and for every one, two blades. Malon took a breath, preparing to tell Rusl it was time to run for it, when there was a shuddering crash and the chamber was filled with bright, greenish light. She almost lost her footing, but when she looked up she saw around fifteen freshly dead Kokiri, and Link standing beyond a veil of smoke.
"What the hell was that?"
Malon saw hope in Rusl's eyes and knew he was thinking of Pipit, but as she watched, Link reached into his cloak with his free hand and produced something small and round. He threw it on the ground nearest a group of the Kokiri and there was another bang. This time, Malon saw the brief burst of green flame and the curling cloud it produced. Several of the Kokiri were thrown back by the initial impact, but those who were caught in the cloud began to writhe and scream, their powdery white skins turning black. The Kokiri who were attacking them paused in their efforts, looking back at their brothers in apparent horror.
"What are you doing?" she cried, but Link, apparently seeing them both for the first time, motioned impatiently for them to take cover. Hurriedly she threw herself into the corner, before Link hurled another of his grenades right into the midst of the stunned Kokiri. This time the explosion was so close it made her ears ring, and she cringed away from the poisonous cloud.
The Kokiri that were left turned and fled then, back through the far door where Makar and Linder had first appeared. Malon slid down the wall, exhausted. Link came over to them, his slim sword thick with black dust and tattered pieces of bandages. She watched him retrieve his stick from the floor, and slide the blade back into its hiding place. The Copper Cat of Lon-haven began to laugh.
"So why did you employ us at all, princeling?"
A/N: Thanks for reading, guys! Please comment.