A Castrovel Adventure: Part 3, Chapter 39

In which Vaeol and the others seek out the Damaya Queen’s resting place.

From the Daylog of Vaeol-Zheieveil u’Zhasaele Zolaemaue be’Son

18. Vealae, 24,542 - the Barrow (31st day afetch)
Today brought us back into the barrow, where we outsought the fifth and last delve. Kazos, rather against his earlier fear, took lead once we reached the main hall. We followed in yesterday’s same dight, with him and Tolamad first, and then the Korasha ready for fight, next Master Mearthil, and last Semuane and I again stooped to shun our heads’ harm against the stone.
Halfway down the burrow, Kazos waved at a gap running cracklike through the stone, wide enough that one may slip sidewise within. Tolamad swore it had not been here when last his folk outsought this stead. Over yearhundreds, however, an earthquake might have opened it, and none wiser. Kazos told the Queen’s Room lay at its end.
After talk, we deemed to outseek the burrow’s outstaying half, and then come back. Yet little else beshowed from the last burrow: more empty rooms and rubble, a fallen roof that might once have yielded another outway but now shut, and likely other outcome from the same earthquake that had opened the crack. Fully outsought that nothing else worthy lay along this leg, we came back.
I bade Kazos that he must lead, for none else had gone there. I witted the fear running through him. Yet he shirked not and fitted himself in the gap, sucked in his breast, and with a lightwand in hand led hobblingly sidewise inside. One by one, we followed wise and introd the narrow opening.
If I had ereward found the barrow’s tightness overwhelming, this new steadship was unbelievable. I could hardly stir. The gap, though taller than the burrow, still made Semuane and me crouch, and, since we must bend from knobs within the stone, meant we could hardly fare through. Our breastplates scraped frightfully, so that I feared the tonguelash I would laterward get from Kaure and Remaue. I must make myself not forsake and flee backward. Only when I reached the end did I besoothe I was shaking.
At last the gap widened, and we betrod a room hardly taller than I, with eight walls bowed to make edges where they met, and nooks between. In each nook stood such things that dazed my mind. Some held mere chests or rubble, while others such weirdlooms that I cannot bewrite.
In one nook waited a glass chest, whose lid glinted under the witchlight. It lay wide and long of bedlike size. Light ran in eldritch patterns along its edge. Kazos beckoned to it.
Within, we looked down through the glass and behold what there lay: a Damaya naked, eyes shut, hands lying aside. At her Kazos waved wordlessly, for they were needless. She was the queen from my tree-sight. She missed merely her body-shroud and crown, and which crown even now stayed with Kazos’s folk.
Shortly we outsought the room, though our minds too swiftly drew back to the glass chest. Kazos outlaid the crown had been taken from the nook to the Damaya’s right, whose stand waited emptily, along with the other gems his clan had taken. Another bed-chest stood in the far nook. Yet it was empty but for some dust. I glanced at it and the things standing in the other nooks, which beseemed either maddeningly manifold alchemy sets, unwholesomely chiseled stones, or metal cast in unfathomable shapes. I again headed to the Damaya, the only whitsome thing of them all.
I took time to bewit her shape. She was tall, maybe even taller than I, though so thin I almost bethought her ill or starved. Her hair was long and coppery, coiled under her neck, almost pillowlike. Her skin was palely tan, Remaue’s hue, though without any stripes, shades, or freckles. Though her eyes were shut, I already knew their hue from my tree-sight when first we came to the Elfring Dale. If she clothed herself in a skirt or bodyshroud, she could walk down any street in Son or Qabarat, and none would know wiser.
I knelt near and felt into the weird bed, which foreguessably had kept the body from rot all this time, and then further down, trying to reckon the craft. My mind struggled with this unknown eldritchness to outmake its wit, sought within, and harried something hiding underneath, as if slumbering, and then felt it stir, almost as if a beat.
I startled upright, leapt away, and yelled, even against myself. ~Veae!~ “She lives!” I outquoth, misbelieving I had even so deemed.
The others looked at me as if mad. Yet I could not naysay what I had felt. Straightway Master Mearthil overcame and fiddled with the bed. After some while he came to me, Semuane, and Tolamad and shrove that I might be right. He said the glass bed was bewrought to halt time for the person laid within, so forkeeping and outstretching life endlessly. He believed that someone may so sleep, and then waken after yearhundreds or yearthousands, outcomeless of oldness.
I told them of my tree-sight, inmeaning the Damaya Queen wearing the crown, and my belief she is the same, though when they asked what she had been doing or other whits, I could give nothing, owing to the tree-sight’s shortness.
I asked whether he could wake her, at which he answered he must reckon, which would take some while. At knowledge of this Lashunta trapped timelessly in the Moqeva-wrought weirdloom, I shivered. What would it mean to awaken beyond one’s time? Master Mearthil also waved to the dust in the far bed: he guessed it broken, and the body it had once held long withered.
Master Mearthil agreed to learn the bed-loom’s workcraft and see whether it could be opened, and its dweller wakened. He began its loretide, and I stood to help. While belltides spent, Semuane sent others topside to let the watchers know our stand, and to bring food and drink. Bywardly, Kaure came beside me, her first while in the barrow. She hugged me, then looked downward at the bed, and its dweller within, and gasped.
Long laterward, after much weariness, Master Mearthil quoth he had learned the bed’s workcraft. He asked our leave whether he should bring her awake. Semuane and I yaysaid. So he flicked button-like knobs upon the frame, at which the lights shifted glow. When they had gone from green to blue, he spoke the wake-trend done.
Softly I took the handle and lifted the glass top, which hinged open. To my fingers, it felt the warmest glass I had ever known, lacking wontful coolness. Instead, it felt almost like amber. Within the bed the Damaya lay still and changelessly. Master Mearthil read that she was brought to wholesome sleep while her mind and body resettled to time. How long until she fully woke he knew not. Yet while I watched, she breathed.
After talk we deemed to bring her thence. Our quest of the Queen’s Room had found a door shut, though no wise to open, and where it led we knew not, for neither our outseech nor any earlier by the Elves had ever found anything linking to this room. This meant we must carry her through the crack, which burden would make the tight thoroughfare even tighter. After some hardship, Krastaes and Kaure outwon in bearing her through until the burrow, where after short halt, we brought her to the main hall, and thence outside to the cleft’s mouth.
Father-Night had spread his cloak overhead when we outcame, after a long daytide spent outriddling the bed that had held the Damaya Queen trapped for untold yearthousands. A soft rain fell blessingly while we breathed freshness, and offwashed the barrow’s worry and queerness. While we climbed to camp, I watched the Damaya Queen’s head stir and loll. I called warning, at which we halted.
The queen’s eyes fluttered. They snapped open, showing the golden-brown hue I reminded from my tree-sight.
Then she screamed. She fought Krastaes’s and Kaure’s arms, nowise however kindly they tried to hold, and against our soothing words. At last Master Mearthil uttered Elfcraft to put her asleep, and we carried her until the way’s end.
Now she lies on my bedroll while I write this log. My heart is too overwrought too sleep, against weariness. What have we found?