The Gatekeeper's Daughter

The River Gate

www.gatekeepersdaughter.com

Now available for you in Kindle and trade paperback formats on Amazon.com

Also the sequel (book 2 of 9) has is posted here on Wattpad.  The Title is "In Darkness Deep"

Halfstone went only a few steps when he heard the door behind him close. The darkness seemed to swallow even most of the torchlight. The black walls and steps and ceiling soaked up all light and made the torches all but powerless. There was just enough light to see the steps before them.

To Aramos it felt as though the steps appeared just before he stepped on them. The temperature quickly began to drop. The air was cool, even cold and there seemed to be a sudden vapor on the air. In the distance he began to hear a strong current or water. After some time and 451 steps by Audra's count they came to a landing that was not stone, but instead was earthen. The soil was hard with a light sandy layer on top and was slightly moist. In the distance the underground river could be heard clearly. The walls quickly ran off in every direction to points unseen even by Theon. It was clear they were in a vast cavern. The occasional stalagmite could be seen to the left and right of the path they took. Many joined to their stalactite counterparts to form columns randomly dispersed as far as they eyes of any could see. The ground to their right and left was rough and uneven. They walked north for thousands of yards and eventually a river that came from the south and west met up with them so that the path they took was just on the west side of the rapid river. As they walked along there were cavernous areas on both sides of the river that would open up and disappear as they would pass them by. The long silence was broken briefly by Aiden "Ahead still some two miles is a small dock with a few rope boats. We will take them down river to a landing where we will find stairs going up and down and a hallway straight ahead." Aiden said no more, but left the question begging to be asked. 'Okay, I'll bite . . ." Kilimir said with sarcasm. "Which path will we take once we get to the stairs going up and down and the hall going straight ahead?"

Aiden did not answer; instead, stealing Aiden's silence, Unvaba spoke for the first time in his thick bass musical accent. "We will take the way down. We go to the deepest parts of the catacombs, to where people do not go."

There was another long silence as many questions raged in the minds of many. "How does this man from so far away, know what no one else seems to know? Why is he here and why is the Mercenary Shue Hern here? Why is Aiden and the other thugs of Zurvan Larka here? Where are we going? What is this evil that rallies the helam?"

Theon asked of himself only: "What am I doing here?"

And so they went for a time until they reached place where the cavern ended at a massive black porous stone wall that was made from huge blocks of several tons each. The wall ran east-west and only had a tall arch where the path continued past the wall and a lower arch that allowed the river to pass under the wall. The wall was more than 30 feet thick at the base and ran upward out of sight of the lights or Theon's vision.

They passed under the arch and in faded letters cut into the stone was something written in an unknown language. Below that written in Linithalian Elvish was: 'Ith Hildrilim Wil'. Aramos looked up and said: "I do not know the meaning of the words on the top, but the other words say (pointing to them): 'The River Gate'."

As they passed the wall into a large room they saw the two river rope boats. They were tied to worn stones built into the stone floor near the water's edge. The boats were old, but sound. The very strong current had eaten away part of the stone wall on the far side of the river, more than 30 yards across. The river disappeared into a vast tall archway on the far wall.

A long rope was tied to the entrance wall and anchored there by a sturdy iron hoop screwed into the stone itself. There were signs of many pervious such devices, some even made of stone. But all previous ones had been aged beyond use. The rope ran along a series of loops down the current and along the wall into the cavernous arch that swallowed the river down further into the earth. In like fashion older rope loops could be seen, that no longer were suitable for use and had been abandoned.