Chapter 24: History

“I’m sorry, but you can’t go that way.”

For the past day, they had followed the narrow road that wove across the valley floor alongside the creek. The stream, a tributary of the River Talar, flowed at times swiftly over the rocks and stones scattered across its bed, its white waters frothing and churning. At other times, it glided gently, almost silently, down the valley, allowing Pelam, Larean, and Soria to hear frogs croaking in the reeds and the splash of a kingfisher catching its prey out in the water.

And now, they had to turn back.

Their initial plan, based on Pelam’s admittedly limited knowledge of the geography of the Agerian Empire, had been to walk in a northwestern direction past the villages of Rockfall, Orvar’s Stone, and finally Emberglow, before exiting the valley into the imperial heartlands.

But the old farmer they had met on the road had been adamant. The river had flooded the past week and overwhelmed the dam just north of Orvar’s Stone. The logs it was built from had shifted under pressure, and once the first leak sprang, it had only taken minutes before the entire structure collapsed.

Carried by the cascading waters surging from the dam, the logs had been rushed downriver until they collided with the wooden bridge crossing the creek, breaking its foundations and making it impossible to get to the other side.

Beyond the bridge, the northeastern side of the valley, where they were walking now, rose into a sheer cliff face, impossible to traverse for anyone but mountain goats. And without a bridge, there was no longer a safe way to get to the other side.

Soria and Larean had briefly considered crossing the stream where the water was flowing slowly, but Pelam had strongly advised against it. It was, he had said, almost impossible to know the conditions on the riverbed. What looked like a safe, shallow place where one might wade to the other side could be a death trap if you didn’t know the waters.

Their indecision had been fully resolved once they spotted unnatural movements just beneath the surface, silvery tendrils gliding quickly through the water in patterns that had less to do with the wind or the current, and more to do with malevolent intelligence.

Waiting for unsuspecting men to wade out into the deceptively calm stretch, the water spirits greedily patrolled their domain, ready to whisper sweet words into the minds of their victims. Wedged against a small rock jutting from the middle of the river, the ribcage and skull of one such casualty lay half-submerged in the current. Clearly, no one who came this way afterward had dared to retrieve the body, instead letting it lie in the sun as a feast for the scavengers.

In other words, they really did have to turn around.

Finding a new route toward Terynia wasn’t easy. There were no other roads there unless they wanted to backtrack several days. Pelam suggested they should try going north, over the hills on the southern side of the ruined bridge, and then crossing the wilderness, finally looping back toward the road once it exited the valley on the other side.

“I hate this,” Larean said from the back, trying to look as uncomfortable as possible as they ascended the steep hills.

Pelam glared at him over his shoulder, looking a little peeved. “Well, what did you expect when you asked to come with Soria?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I didn’t have a plan. Or I did, but going to Derimar was kind of stupid. I guess this is better than that, but I still hate all this walking.”

Then he looked up, a mischievous twinkle replacing his frown.

“What I really miss is being driven around in a covered carriage, and having slaves at my beck and call to feed me.”

Soria laughed. “I know you had a servant, but you never had any slaves, silly!”

“Sure I had,” Larean told her with a grin. “I called her Mom.”

After what felt like hours of grueling uphill trudging, they finally crested the top. Standing among the rocks and sparse vegetation, they paused to take in the view. Before them, the next valley stretched toward the horizon.

And in the middle of it was an immense labyrinth of square-angled shapes.

“What is it?” Soria asked. It was clearly not natural.

Pelam didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, Larean could hear uncertainty in his voice.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

Larean sighed. “We can’t turn back again? Do we have to?”

The Agerian turned to look at him. “I didn’t say it was dangerous. I just don’t like not knowing what it is.”

“It could be an old fortress, perhaps,” Soria chimed in. “Ruined in the Unification War.”

“It’s possible,” Pelam agreed. “It seems older than that, though.”

“In the Burn, abandoned buildings can stand forever,” Larean added. “Sometimes the sand buries them, only to reveal them again centuries later. The dry conditions in the desert preserve things. Maybe it’s the same here.”

“Well,” said Soria. “If we all agree whatever is down there is from before the Empire, it should be safe to pass through. I can’t imagine anyone still living there.”

Larean did very much not like the way she had phrased that. In his very humble opinion, things didn’t have to still be alive to be dangerous.

But seeing no other practical option, they eventually descended from the hilltop toward the ruins ahead. Once they were back on the valley floor, they lost their panoramic view of the strange labyrinth. Now, the only things they could see were what was immediately in front of them—large rocks, smaller hills, pebbles on the ground, and the occasional dead tree.

And there was something in the air, something that spooked them as they traversed the difficult ground. At first, they didn’t understand what it was, but suddenly it hit him.

“There are no birds here!” Larean exclaimed loudly, the sound of his voice echoing among the building-sized rocks littering the valley floor.

Soria pointed to the vultures circling above the area ahead of them, where they thought the labyrinth would be if they could see it.

Maybe you should look around once in a while before speaking, Larean.

Embarrassing himself like that in front of Soria ranked pretty low on the list of things he wanted to spend his spare time on. But seconds later, she surprised him.

“You’re not wrong,” she said. “There are just carrion birds here. Ravens and vultures. No sparrows, pigeons, or thrushes.”

Suddenly, a sound ahead of them caught Soria’s attention. Somewhere out there, someone—or something—had scraped against a rock.

“Get down,” she said, shushing them.

For a long minute, they stayed frozen, silent and unmoving. But the sound never returned, and eventually, they continued their slow trek northwest. They did, however, decide to climb down the rocks to their left instead of continuing straight ahead, hoping to avoid whatever had made the eerie sound.

After descending from the rocks, they entered an open clearing, stretching from where they stood and a hundred men's lengths ahead, then curving to their right and disappearing behind the outcrop they had come down from.

No, not really a clearing. To Larean, that word suggested something natural. This was long and straight, more like a road than a plateau.

Absent-mindedly, he dragged his right foot along the ground, trying to dig into it with his shoe. It didn’t bulge. In fact, he couldn’t even scratch the surface. Taking a closer look, it seemed to him that he was standing on an immense, gray stone, as flat as a calm sea, like someone had poured it on the ground, allowed it to settle, and waited for it to harden.

Behind him, he heard Soria draw a deep breath.

“I know what this is,” she exclaimed, her voice strangely elated.

Larean turned around to look at her.

“We have one of these back home, but I didn’t recognize it until now. Ours has been overgrown by the jungle. You wouldn’t even see it unless you were surrounded by it. This one’s been preserved better by the dry conditions.”

Tell me now!

He was too curious to wait for her to finish her explanation. But he didn’t say anything.

Soria bent down and picked up something lying on the hard surface. She held it up into the sunlight to look at it, before handing it over to Larean.

The object was about the size of his ear, its thickness the breadth of half a finger, with edges sharp as knives. It was hard, perfectly flat and mostly transparent, though marred in places by scratches and dust. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a thin piece of clear ice, yet it didn’t feel cold to the touch, nor did it melt when he handled it.

He’d seen these before. He’d used these before, polishing them into gemstones he’d sold off as diamonds.

This was a piece of the Old Ones’ warm ice.

Without knowing, they had walked right into one of the fabled ruins of one of the cities of the Old Ones.

“Well, is it dangerous?” Pelam asked, his tone concerned.

Soria looked around before answering. “I don’t think so. We sometimes visit the ruins in our jungle just for fun and adventure, and I’ve never heard of anyone running into trouble. Going there is something of a rite of passage back home, though we only venture to its outskirts.”

Larean followed her gaze. Now that he looked closer, he could see the entire ground was littered with pieces of broken warm ice. For a moment, he saw himself filling his satchel with the shards and rushing home to Jai Karal to sell them, but his dreams of riches evaporated quickly once he remembered he’d be executed the moment he set foot in the Square of Traders again.

From beyond the bend in what seemed to Larean to be a road, the sound of feet scraping against rock made the hairs on his arms stand up.

It’s back, he thought, his pulse quickening.

“Hello there!” a voice, old and hoarse, shouted from the end of the road. To his great surprise, it didn’t seem to belong to a monster, though he reminded himself not to take anything for granted. In this world, some fiends were beautiful, yet still quite deadly.

From beyond the outcrop in the distance came a man. He wore a gray cloak that billowed slightly in the wind, his head mostly hidden beneath a hood, and in his right hand, he carried a staff made from a gnarly, withered branch. He was indeed old—a century or two, give or take, Larean thought—his hair gray and his beard long and white. Beautiful, he was not.

“You must be exhausted, having walked so far,” he remarked as he slowly approached them, a warm, winning smile playing on his wrinkled face. “Why don’t you come with me to my shed, and I’ll give you a taste of my award-winning armadillo stew?”

The man winked at Larean, who found himself against his will smiling back at the geezer. Actually, he admitted to himself, the man was probably no more than eighty. His initial estimation of the old gentleman’s age might just have been ever so slightly exaggerated.

“How do you know where we’re from?” he inquired, still somewhat suspicious of the newcomer.

The man with the staff chuckled softly. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. I’m Joas. Joas Kalemin. You could say I’m a bit of a hermit. I’ve lived out here for more than sixty years now, and in all that time, no one’s ever put down roots closer than a day’s walk from here. So, I’ll say you’re exhausted, and you’ll say, 'One more serving of your most excellent stew, please, sir, thank you.' Do we have a deal?”

Larean chuckled along with him. He quickly realized he was the only one. Both Pelam and Soria stayed silent, their expressions unreadable.

“I don’t trust him,” his Derimar friend whispered to Pelam, who nodded back to her in silence, acknowledging her concerns.

Larean couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Joas seemed like a great guy—for an old hermit, that is.

Once they had arrived at the man’s home, he gave them each a full serving of stew. It tasted about as good as Larean had expected, yet he slurped it down with satisfaction. A little wine, a little music, and he could have been dining at some outrageously exclusive restaurant back home, one known for serving dinner more expensive than tasty.

Oh, that’s right. A little cleaning, too.

“So, you’re taking a shortcut through Omanavar,” Joas said, indicating the ruins beyond. “Sometimes I see people entering the city. Sometimes I see them leave. The numbers don’t necessarily match every time.”

That sounded just the tiniest bit too ominous for his taste, Larean thought. But Pelam was dead set on crossing the ruined city. Emphasis hopefully not on dead.

Joas sighed. “To be honest, children, if there’s any chance you could find another way, I’d suggest you take it.”

Soria leaned forward.

“What exactly is it that we should be afraid of there?” she asked, her curiosity overtaking her disdain for the hermit.

“If I knew exactly, I'd be teaching in an academy in Derimar now, not sitting here, horizons away from civilization, talking to rocks,” he said, winking at Soria. “No offense. I only meant until you three arrived.”

“There are more mysteries out there than I could even begin to imagine,” he continued. “Some are dangerous. Most are not. But there are two things I must warn you about. First, beware of the Soul Sickness and those who have fallen prey to it.”

“Who are they?” Pelam inquired. “How can we defend against them?”

“They’re just men. As long as you keep your distance, you’ll be safe. But the disease itself—you can’t see it. It permeates the air, the ground, and the water near the city center. Anyone staying there too long will experience nausea, diarrhea, and fever. Then they lose their hair and start to bleed.

“All that can be treated with magic, of course. That’s what they do, those who have made the city of the Old Ones their dwelling. Their bodies are constantly broken down by the Soul Sickness, and so they continuously heal themselves, standing with one foot among the dead and the other in the land of the living.

“But after that comes the damage to the mind, starting with disorientation and then worsening, until they no longer know who or what they are. They can keep their bodies alive—just barely—but the brain is too complicated to heal. They cannot mend the damage done to their minds, and eventually, they forget they are even men.”

They sound like cheerful lads. Better not invite them to dinner.

“So the disease, it’s not spirits?” Pelam asked, clearly afraid they’d run into emissaries from the gods of the world.

“No. No, it’s not,” the hermit replied. “Though there are indeed evil spirits there, more twisted than you’ve ever seen before. Staying in places where few men walk, they hunger more than the spirits of the forests or the streams. In fact, those are the second threat I needed to warn you about.

“But the Soul Sickness is not spiritual, no. It’s an illness, no different from a broken bone or the common cold—just a disease that originated from the Old Ones.”

“Do you know of them? Do you know what happened? To the Old Ones, I mean.”

Soria was fascinated by Joas’ explanation, seemingly no longer caring that she didn’t like the man. That, or her scientific mind had just taken command now.

“I don’t know much,” the hermit told her. “Throughout the years, I’ve pieced together a few things. Combined with what others have told me, I do know a little about them.

“They were a proud people. Their contraptions surpassed even their magic. Their knowledge grew until they learned to harness a power like that of the sun. But they were divided, and the so-called gods of the world deceived them into using that power as weapons against their brethren. When the Fires faded, the knowledge and machines of the Old Ones were gone. Standing naked on a battlefield that covered the entire world, our ancestors were all that remained. All they had left were stone tools and magic.

“That’s the answer to your question. The Old Ones aren’t gone. Only their knowledge is.

“We are the Old Ones.”

Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods! If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider giving it a like.

Now also available as a free audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/@LordsOfTheStars