Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [111]
“He says that old Varn’s already put the fear of the gods into him, and so you can pass by.”
The massive stone stairs led down straight and steep to a narrow landing below. To either side of the marble floor, tunnels branched off, while ahead, another flight of stairs plummeted down like a waterfall of white stone into a river of gloom.
“We turn to the right,” Garin said. “To tell you the truth, it gladdens my heart that we’re not going all the way down to the deep city this time. The climbing back up again gets to a man’s knees.”
“So it does.”
They walked briskly down the wide tunnel, lit by baskets of silver-glowing fungi in carved niches. Rhodry would have preferred to linger. Although the walls themselves were plain, made of highly polished white marble, each alcove sported carvings, and each different. One piece of stonework would seem to be woven of salamanders, all writhing round, biting each other’s tails, carved from green and black marble so that you would have sworn they were alive; the next might be roses, so delicately carved of pink that you might have smelled their perfume. Each door that they passed was inlaid in different colors of polished stone to produce pictures so cunningly drawn that it seemed you could reach right into them, as through a window. Once they passed a young dwarf pushing a wooden handcart filled with fresh fungi mounded up so that it seemed he carried the moon. In that brighter light, Rhodry got a good look at one door and saw a garden, blooming with as many different flowers as the colors of stone would allow.
The door to the armory was, predictably enough, inlaid with a battle scene. Dwarves were storming the ramparts of a mountain town while strange warty creatures strove to push them and their ladders down.
“Trolls,” Garin said, pointing. “Well, or so the old saga calls them, not that I’ve the slightest idea what they mean by it. But see that fellow there with the gold great-ax? That’s one of the gods, though I can’t tell his name to a stranger.”
The god in question was just gaining the top of the wall and splitting a particularly ugly troll in half while he was about it. Rhodry decided that the dwarven gods were a bit more to his taste than Alshandra and her lot. When Garin pushed the door open and ushered him inside, Rhodry found the armory itself disappointing. Except for the polished stone walls, it looked much like any other armory he’d ever seen, a long narrow room filled with wooden rack after rack of weapons, all oiled and ready, while shields lay neatly stacked in the corners. At the far end a small door stood half-open.
“Ah,” Garin said. “He must be in there.”
As they walked down between the long rows of axes and swords, Garin snagged one of the glowing baskets and carried it like a lantern. They stepped through the door and found themselves in a small square room, where broken shafts and blades lay piled on what seemed to be a workbench. Rhodry could make out another door on the far side.
“Odd,” Garin said. “I know he said he’d meet us in the armory.”
“Well, maybe he’s gone on a little further.”
That door proved to open onto a landing, from which a narrow flight of stairs plunged down into darkness.
“Surely not!” Garin whispered. “He wouldn’t have gone—well, I don’t know where else he’d be. Rori, he must have somewhat truly important to tell you, that’s all I can say. I’d best go first, since I’m carrying the light and all.”
A voice floated up from below. Garin called back, the voice answered, the envoy turned incredulous. For a moment