Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern

Chapter 17: In the Heart of Chraun: Larc

 Larc gripped the gold plate as she marched up the Spiral Tunnel, running her fingers over the sinuous marks Medoc’s scribe had impressed in the metal. She should have tucked it into her armor, but she wanted to hold it in her hand, wanted to believe that it would really protect her people and that the nightmare of war was over at last.

 Glace hovered at her elbow, and weary as he was, she sensed his impetus to pass her and run up the tunnel. He had regained his strength enough to help her to organize the freed prisoners, but she could sense a change in him. His stance no longer as straight as it once had been, his eyes downcast when once he had gazed intently into her eyes—were these things wrought by the war, or the loss of Stasia, or his time as a slave to the Flames? He had not mentioned Stasia’s absence. Larc believed Medoc when he said she still lived. If she was dead, why try to hide it? But she did not think Stasia had escaped. How could a lone Icer have escaped from that place? More likely, Medoc still had her, and was holding her back to use later if the Icers refused to clean the lake. Larc could only hope that he would free Stasia once he was satisfied that Larc would follow the Treaty.

  Behind Glace, over forty thousand humans made their way up the Spiral Tunnel toward home. The long line of freed prisoners, now refugees, stretched all the way back to Chraun. Until she could find scribes to count the people, Larc had only the assurance of the gold plate in her hand that all of her people would be released. There was no one down there watching the tail of the Spiral except Flames. She wondered if she had made the right demands; how was she to feed so many with a thousand cababar and fifty sacks of spore?

 Larc had sent a few of the stronger survivors to the Outer Tunnels to fetch Kiner, and he met her at the head of the Spiral with the remaining Icer army, less than two thousand strong. From there, Larc ordered the least exhausted Icers to scout ahead. She did not know what to expect of the city, but she imagined the ruins being a dangerous place, still coated in Fireblood and full of pitfalls and loose buildings. Until they were stabilized, she would need a space large enough to house all of the people.

 The vast Fungal Caverns were cramped, but just big enough. A few patches of spore had sprouted here and there, but the giant sheets of fungus were gone, destroyed in fire. Soot covered the columns, poison to the spores. Bodies sprawled among the columns, covered with pale fungus, glowing blue under her icelight. Larc ordered them stacked against the walls, the fruiting fungi carefully harvested and rationed, and the columns washed. It was a wearying, disheartening homecoming, and she could see it on the people’s faces. Those who had tasks took to them mechanically, as if they were still slaves. The people with nothing to, when they realized the march was over, sat or laid where they were and did not move, talk to each other, or look around. The children were the saddest. Larc’s heart ached to see them wandering around the cavern like ghosts, looking for parents they would never find.

 Before she could begin to think of doing something for them, Glace and Kiner were at her side, returning with scouts from the lake, urging her to see it with her own eyes. The swath of bodies continued through the livestock caverns. A few chirat gone feral hissed in the dark. There was barely space to step in the cavern of the guildless; the bodies were piled high. Larc thought of Hali, wondered if she had family lying here. Then she saw that the bodies wore chirsh and leather armor; they were Warriors, not guildless, and she remembered that some of the guildless had been taken into the city during the war. Others had fled to the Outer Tunnels.

 Larc thought the deaths of the royal family, and the surrender of Iskalon, had broken her heart as deeply as it was possible to break it, shattering it into millions of tiny pieces. When she left the cavern of the guildless and saw the unrecognizable lump of melted ice that had once been the Palace, saw the dark slick of Fireblood coating the lake, still burning in places, saw the bodies, half decomposed, floating in the water, her heart broke completely, turning to dust as fine as powder ice.

 She wanted to fall to her knees at the foot of the sunken Fire Bridge, and weep for all that was lost. The vast cavern, once a lively bustle, was silent, save for the lapping of the water at the shore and the soft gasps of the scouts behind her. She walked out past the bridge, hovered above the lake, and drew T'Jas deeply from the cold air. The familiar act was soothing, but it did not fill the hollow where her heart had been.

 She was overwhelmed, thinking of how much work there was to do. Just clearing the caverns around Iskalon would be a task, let alone fixing the bridges, sorting the rubble, and rebuilding the Palace. Larc would have to oversee it all. She could not grieve yet. The war was over, but her battle was just beginning. She shifted from sorrow to thinking of what they did have to be thankful for. There did not seem to be any Flames here; Medoc had called them back. And it was cold—deliciously, blessedly cold.

 She left Kiner and Glace and the scouts trying to mend the raising-gears of the Fire Bridge and headed back alone through the grisly tunnels to the Fungal Caverns. She stood in the entrance to the cavern, looking in. A few slow groups were still trickling up from the Spiral. The caverns were overfull; she would need to order new arrivals diverted to the mines, to be housed there. It struck Larc how quiet the cave was. A similar sized crowd in Market Ave would susurrate with conversation. No one was speaking who did not have to, here. The people did not look at each other in sympathy or curiosity. Demoralized by their long imprisonment, they were a people in profound shock. It was up to Larc to give them hope, to make them understand that they were home.

 “People of Iskalon,” she called out, using T'Jas to amplify her voice so it resonated around the cavern. A few people looked toward her, but far more kept their eyes on the ground. “Do not be disheartened by what you see here. Iskalon has been struck a great blow. We have lost much. All of us have lost family, friends, homes, innocence. But we have our lives and our freedom, and that is more than we had yesterday. Together, we will rebuild Iskalon to be stronger, more beautiful, than ever!”

 More heads rose. A few people stood, and they began looking at each other, really seeing that they were alive and free from Chraun. Larc watched a woman reach out and pick up a child who was wandering alone and cradle it to her breast. The cavern was coming alive as the people began to think of themselves as a Kingdom again, not just a bunch of slaves.

 “When the Ancestors gave us Lake Lentok, there was nothing here but a lake, a rock, and a few wild animals in the Outer Tunnels,” she continued. “Our forefathers took that and built the mighty kingdom of Iskalon. We have more than they had. We have spore, we have stock, we have all the pieces of our Kingdom, and we have each other. Together, we can put them back together.”

 A small cheer rose and grew, louder and louder until it filled the cavern like the rumble of a rockslide. A small part of Larc’s anxiety quieted for the first time in many days. There were many strong Guild members among these forty thousand freed, who would not hesitate to put their backs into rebuilding Iskalon. She remembered Stasia’s first words as Queen, and felt compelled to repeat them.

 “Iskalon stands!” She shouted into the roar, and it echoed back to her ears as forty thousand voices rose together.

 “ISKALON STANDS!”