Chapter Twenty: The Dark, the Damp and the Cthulu.
Twenty Second Day of the Fifth Month, 113 AC.
"This place is profoundly unsettling," I muttered as we walked through the 'halls' beneath the Hightower. I kept a hand on Clearsky's neck to reassure myself while we continued on.
"As you say," Ebermen snorted.
By 'halls' I mean the freakiest cave system one could imagine. The walls were pitch black stone which glimmered greasily as it at the light of the torched hung from metallic stands. Hanging them on the walls would have been pointless since the black stone was known to be indestructible.
I was no stranger to things in Westeros being strange or even freakish. Dragons, impossible architecture, magic and so on.
But the 'halls' were an entirely different thing.
For one thing, they were huge, our entire party walked down the pathways with ample room between us, and one of us was a pony-sized dragon.
For another thing, the caverns were perfectly round as if they had been burrowed by some great serpent, the floors beneath were in mortared stone overlaid onto the bottom of the tunnels to make the place easier to navigate.
"No need for worry!" Arral's laugh was somewhat distorted. "Well! Actually you should all be worried! Some of the vaults are filled with filth! Try not to breathe too much!"
Said Archmaester had opted to join us in my attempts to map out the halls of my foster home and Lord Lymon had felt that it would be a good excuse for a lesson on the subject at any rate.
It is worthwhile to know the history of ones ancestors, the lord had shrugged at my request. I fear that it will not be too exciting for you once the novelty of the walls wears off however.
The fact that the Archmaester was wearing some sort of breathing apparatus that resembled balloons tied to a welding mask by an assortment of hoses and bronze pieces. That it was sealed onto his hooded robes did not exactly reassure me given the hunched posture of the old man.
"I find it hard to believe that my ancestors dwelled here," I commented. If I recalled correctly, the Hightowers had lived for millennia in the depths of the blackstone fortress before they figured out how to bypass physics with wood, stone and probably bullshit.
"Nine thousands, four hundred and eighty one years-ish!" Arral nodded enthusiastically while tapped the solid tunnel wall to produce a thudding sound.
"That seems implausibly specific," I raised a brow. Most of the books I had read seemed to struggle with even relatively precise records any farther than thirteen centuries into the past to say nothing of eight millennia. "I had thought that there were no records on the subject?"
"I had understood that the first Hightower in the songs was Uthor of the Tower," Ebermen frowned, which by Ebermen standards meant that the edges of his mouth might have turned downwards minutely.
The maester snorted derisively and waved me off as I followed behind him with the dragon and the bull at my back.
"Horribly name! Uthor of the Tower! Bah! He commissioned the thing! Then I should be known as Arral of the Haniwa-well not exactly, I technically stole that! But that is hardly my fault! I asked to be allowed into the tomb but the empress was still a bit touchy about her daughter and her cousin, how unreasonable! They suggested it! Still, I did pay the Iron Price- in as much as it counts if the owner is already dead when you kill them!" The Archmaester stopped and gave his beard a few tugs. "Where was I? Oh yes! Uthor! Being known by what you commissioned! Hah! But no, I have confirmed the age of habitation!"
It took considerable restraint to not ask for details whenever Arral launched into one of his tangents, the man did not strike me as a liar but half of his stories seemed like the ramblings of a madman.
The farther we descended into the tunnels, the more space there was between individual torches.
"Bones!" Arral smiled. "I have studied burials in the proximity of the city and created a rough timeline of development but much to my fascination, the burials just stop after nine thousands, four hundred and eighty one-ish years! Give or take a few decades! But it was so fascinating! There were older burials! Misidentified by some of the elder maesters! The oldest bones most of all!"
Archaeological techniques which should not exist aside, I could not resist delving into what I suspected was a fairly creepy story to augment the already unnerving surroundings.
"The bones are different!" The Ironborn Maester (still an odd notion to think about) almost purred the words in his raspy and high-pitched voice. "Little things, very little things! Some irregularities in measurements, some shapes were odd! Strange! Wrong! Weird!"
I had a very bad feeling but restraint had never been my specialty, yet I still felt my arm pulling my closer to the dragon that crawled along next to me as if Sky were a security blanket.
"In what way?" I asked.
"The traits were wrong!" Arral repeated and I could hear the Ironman's smile beneath his mask. "Too tall, too heavyset, arms too long! Some were monstrous even! I have a theory as to the subject! Ser Ebermen! Do you recall the tale of Uthor's marriage?"
"He took the hand of Maris the Maid, saving her from Argoth Stone-Skin," The Shield said in his typical monotone.
Runciter had always disliked that tale if I recalled correctly, I thought that he disliked the vanity it encouraged. I could not blame him for that given how vain Rhae turned out. I loved her but I would never claim that the Realm's Delight was a humble girl.
"It is a metaphor!" Arral cackled. "It is my belief that Uthor was a metaphor for the influx of some population migration which assimilated the original inhabitants of the region!"
"And how did this slip by the elder Maesters?" I asked with a strange curiosity.
"They mistook them for giant burials!" The maester snorted rudely. "Anything bigger than the average man is a giant! They should go north of the Wall for a season! The dimensions are all wrong!"
I thought about that for a moment before nodding, "That is fascinating."
"As you say," Ebermen added.
"Come, come!" Arral laughed as he picked up speed. "Let me show you!"
"Show me what?" I asked.
"The burials of course!"
…
That the fortress was labyrinthine was no surprise, the upper levels had arrows and symbols painted in white ink along their walls which made it somewhat navigable.
Deeper in, the directions stopped and the corners, up and downs became less and less predictable. Sometimes one would need to go up a turn to come down another or a downward turn was merely a dip before a long climb.
From the outside, the fortress was fairly large and made more imposing by its stern, square walls but it seemed small compared to the structure built over it.
Much to my regret, the nameless fortress stretched deep beneath island and according to most everyone, it probably ran deeper and wider than Whispering Sound over which Battleisle stood. There were even legends and tales of hidden entrances to the structure beyond the Sound.
Yet Arral navigated the maze with ease as we tailed behind him, deeper and deeper in the maze.
The torch stands grew more and more sparse with each level and the darkness grew with it.
I was thankful that the Hightowers were a bit of a paranoid bunch. Some two hundred men patrolled the depths of the fortress in regular shifts and it relieved me every time we had to stop as Ebermen explained what we were doing in the vaults while the men shied away from Clearsky.
The dragon herself was taking to the depths just as poorly. Clearsky was normally not as claustrophobic as most dragons, having spent the bulk of her life indoors but the place had her growling. Every few minutes she would exhale a plume of bright, narrow fire which momentarily banished the darkness.
At least her training is paying off, I counseled myself. The little dragon still seemed to only be able to manage a controlled burn for a little while before spending a few minutes wheezing for breathe but it was something.
As we went, Arral continued going over his theory.
As far as the Maester was concerned. The theories regarding the fortress being created by the Mazemakers of Lorath or the Valyrians were ludicrous. The scale was wrong for the first and the style was wrong for the latter.
More, he argued that the Valyrians were discounted by simple math. The keep predated the Valyrians and quite possible every other civilization by millennia.
"Forget those Yi Ti!" He grumbled at one point. "Beautiful calligraphy but pretty forgery is still a forgery! All one needs to do is to read over the scrolls in the Forbidden Library of the Old Capital and compare them with the eldest tax records in the northern ruins! The writing style is wholly different! Every time they discover something older than them, they come up with a new dynasty! Or Emperor! They have a great many one Emperor dynasties! You might think it is better to be young and successful than ancient and incompetent!"
France, Rome, Greece, China, Japan, Koreas, Incas, Britain, I listed off in my head. Forging bullshit records to legitimize claims or to stroke the cultural ego was a constant of human nature. I was hardly surprised that the Westerosi (no that did not work… planet-osi?) did it as well. It was even a refreshingly normal kind of crazy.
"Who were the builders then?" I asked.
"A decent question!" Arral nodded with his heavy apparatus. "I have no notion! Or rather, I believe that we are meant to not know a thing about them! Logical really! Recording enemies is largely only done in vaguest terms in the First Men tradition! The focus is celebrating their heroes! Sanctimonious lot!"
He spit in punctuation but immediately started clawing at his helmet, realizing his mistake.
After he managed to rectify his error, we continued on our way until we reached the supposed burial.
Eventually, we were forced to take a torch with us to light the way as we passed deeper than the guard patrols seemed to go, although given the twists and turns it was quite possible that they had never found Arral's path. The paths were still paved, and ancient stands suggested that it might have been known at some point but that was long ago.
The thing that struck me was the lack of animals or dust.
The collapsed passages and blocked rooms of the upper floors seemed to vanish completely as we made our descent and there was not a single damned rat or spiderweb in our way.
The only sounds were the growling of Clearsky, Arral's chatter and the crackling of the torchflame.
It unnerved me how those echoed across the halls, but the most irksome thing was the footsteps.
They reverberated across the stones in what must have been a particularly mean-spirited architectural trick.
Thunk.
Thunk, thunk.
Our steps and the trick of the light on the reflective stone almost made it seem as if we were walking through the veins of a beating heart.
The gate reminded me more of a triumphal arch than a door, the arch was not obvious at first however. In fact, they seemed more like some sort of outgrowth at an outgrowth from afar.
But as we closed I realized that the stone there had a shape much more refined than the surroundings. Patterns were formed by the veins of white and gold and silver in the black stone, it was obvious that they were some sort of script.
The script was denominations of a square shape, with differing measurements of lines in the form of the mineral veins.
But, there was a queer familiarity to them.
"What does it say?" Ebermen asked as I looked over the letters or symbols or whatever they were. The Shield had at some point taken his mace from his belt, idly holding its hilt in one hand while holding up the torch in the other.
"Something to the nature of a warning!" The Maester snorted, his voice reverberating through the halls loud enough to wake anything within a few leagues. "The usual thing! Pay reverence to those within, they were quite impressive and do not steal their things! Painfully unoriginal!"
Can't argue with the classics, I gulped.
"Come, come!" The old maester waved enthusiastically as he walked through the gate waving us forward.
"How is it that you are armed head to toe, I have a dragon and the old man without any form of defense is the least disturbed one?" I asked my Shield after a moment.
Ebermen shrugged, I turned to see that he was as unfazed as usual. His eyes flicked occasionally to the other halls but that was far from a sign of discomfort.
I sighed, "So I am the only one bothered by this?"
"As you say," Ebermen said with the suggestion of a smile.
Clearsky snorted in agreement.
I gave dragon and man a dry looked before letting out a breath.
"Fine! Lets walk into the strange tomb buried beneath a mysterious fortress!" I grumbled as we followed the Archmaester into the burial chamber.
And no sooner did I walk into the chamber that I started looking up.
And up.
And up.
"Oh what the actual fuck," I whispered while staring numbly at the chamber.
"As you say," Ebermen agreed.
Clearsky snorted while extending her neck up.
The chamber expanded far past the light of the torch, the sides of the chamber vanished to my sides of what must have been a conical chamber of truly enormous size.
And the ceiling, if there was one I could not even see the suggestion of it.
"How far underground are we?" I whispered before blinking. "How far underground are we."
It did not feel as if we had gone down nearly for the chamber to have been completely underground, unless the labyrinth had messed with us so well that I had completely lost a sense of direction.
And the chamber was far from empty.
I slowly walked forward and looked down.
And gulped.
I came to the edge of a ledge and realized that to either side there were stairs down to the floor of the chamber, no. Not stairs, they were too smooth and awkwardly curved.
Beyond the ledge were slabs, row upon row of stone slabs rising up from the ground as if they had been pulled from the floor.
A body lain over each of the slabs.
"Quite the sight! Fifth grandest tomb I have ever seen!" Arral shouted from the edge of the torchlight, waving while leaning on one of the slabs. If he was at all disturbed by the body next to him, I did not see it.
I carefully walked down the smooth stairs while Clearsky launched herself into the vast chamber and Ebermen made to follow me. The room was easily vast enough for the little dragon to fly without concern.
The bodies were big. Each would have towered over Ebermen by a good foot in life. Large and imposing in their stature.
No, that was wrong.
They might have once been imposing but that that was long ago. Before the functions of the body sunk into them.
They were little more than skin and bone, reduced by millennia of wear yet still unnaturally preserved.
The skin was grey, grey like concrete or gunmetal.
It could have been the sheer span of time that they had spent in the place.
Every single body was dressed in some sort of timeworn linen which had lost its color long ago, long skirts and vests. Over that were plates, gauntlets, greaves and breastplates of some odd style, slopping and rounded in its angles. The metal was as weird as everything else about the place, smoky and dark against the torchlight.
For a moment, I thought that it might have been Valyrian Steel but I reconsidered after looking at it closely. The metal was webbed in gold and marble and the texture was wrong. It was all too glossy.
"They were warriors," Ebermen commented while holding the torch over me. He had a point, they bore thin-hilted short spears and shields over their clasped arms.
"Obviously!" Arral laughed as he neared us. "But you are missing the key point! Look more closely!"
At his command I looked more closely at the body before me.
The sunken sockets which once might have contained eyes were a touch too large and the shriveling of time had pulled their lips back to reveal a fanged grimace. The bared head was next to a helm that reminded me of something I would have expected of Greek hoplite.
Their arms were indeed a bit too long at a glance and their legs were a bit longer than they should have been. Their chests were also wide relative to their hips.
But it was all… difficult to interpret.
The place was weird, the bodies were weird.
Their skin was a touch too grey, the materials they wore were unfamiliar, they were unusually tall and fanged… so what?
My skin was crawling, but the things were far more human than the Children of the Forest, the Giants, the Others or anything even a touch Cthulhu-i.
It was unnerving that the tomb was so vast but that was just Westeros.
A crypt being built beneath a castle or a fortress were similarly not at all unusual.
Yet, my skin felt like it was about to slither off my flesh.
Then I caught the glimmer in the torchlight.
I pulled myself up onto the slab to get a better view and ever so carefully reached at the body.
Please don't come to life, please don't come to life.
I sucked in a breath and ran a finger along one of the threads beneath the shrunken elbow.
It was strong and taut enough that it did not even react to my touching it.
Its entire body was pinned to the slab by the thread.
As was the body beside it and the one in front of that one.
And the next and the next.
"They're restrained," I whispered.
Well someone went out of their way to take precautions.
"Fascinating, I know!" Arral laughed. "Every single body in this chamber as well as the others."
"Others?" I asked after a moment.
"Of course! There are fourteen other burial chambers," The Ironborn nodded. "Ah yes! You likely cannot see it! Have your dragon brighten the chamber! I am sure you will enjoy this!"
I was genuinely frightened by what might happen, but I was morbidly curious as well as terrified.
"Clearsky! Dracarys!" I shouted into the chamber and heard Clearsky roar her answer from the depths of the chamber before roaring a flare-like breath.
The chamber was not just flooded with light, it positively caught fire.
Veins of gold caught the chamber and seemed to illuminate further than the light of the fire should have reached.
None of us were walking but the sound came back.
Thunk.
Thunk, Thunk.
In time with the beating of the light.
The walls were lined with hundreds of shelves.
Thousands more of the bodies sat on black stone thrones in dozens of ascending lines spiraling upwards into the expanses of the chamber.
Somehow, the last observation was nothing compared to what else lay in the chamber.
"Oh!" Arral cooed. "I had never seen those before!"
Some of the shelves were larger than the others.
Far, far larger.
Beneath them the gold veins formed the same pattern over and over again.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
"Hail Meraxes, Here Rest the Servants of the Earth bone," I lost consciousness at the sight of hundreds of dragon skulls.
My last thought?
I hope the floor is softer than it looks.