Excerpt-Underground

The first thing she became aware of was that she was no longer in her bed. Not only that, but the worn fabric of her homespun nightgown did little to keep out the cold of the stone upon which she lay. Opening her eyes did little to alleviate her unease at such an odd happenstance, for no light of any kind was visible, not even the soft starlight that was want to filter through the boughs outside her window.
She sat up and looked around in vain for any source of light. Even using the trick of looking from the corner of her eyes for faint outlines failed to work. The darkness she found herself in was absolute.
I must be dreaming, she thought. For there was no way in which she could be in a place other than her small room at the back of her family’s farm. Down the hall from her room slept her parents, not to mention three dogs that would raise a ruckus should she be taken from her home in the dead of night. It was inconceivable that she would be somewhere other than in her warm bed. Yet, she was not.
The floor beneath her felt real, the cold and roughness of the stone abrasive to her hand as she ran it across its surface. The clarity of sensation generated by her hand passing across the stone planted a seed of doubt in her mind that perhaps this may not be a dream after all. Dreams rarely held such precise detail as the disparity of temperatures between her hand and the floor, not to mention the tactile ambiguities of which the floor was constructed. Hairline cracks and crevices were not the part and parcel of dreams, at least none that she had ever had.
Uncertainty began to edge closer to alarm. What if she was no longer within her home? Where could she be and how did she get there? Hoping to detect the familiar odor of home, she slowly breathed in through her nose. Twice she sought any trace of familiarity but only detected the musty smell of earth. Not fresh turned earth such as one would expect in a field recently plowed, but that of her mother’s root cellar where vegetables were stored for winter.
Alarm was rapidly turning into full blown fear. All thoughts that this may be a dream dwindled rapidly. It seemed too real, too substantial to be the dream world. Fear getting the better of her, she readied to call for her father when a noise not far away caused her to stop. It was the sound of breathing, what one would expect coming from someone asleep.
Holding still and barely daring to breathe herself, she listened to the steady rhythm of inhalation and exhalation of another. Whoever it was couldn’t have been more than five feet away. If she moved but a little, she could reach out and touch the sleeper. But dare she? Could the rest of her family have been taken as well? One call or one touch could have her wrapped in the safe and strong arms of her father if that was the case. About to call out, she stopped as another thought entered her mind. What if it was the one who took her? In such absolute blackness there was no way for her to be sure.
Torn between the possibilities of being with those she loved or waking one who would hurt her in ways too terrible to imagine, she did nothing. Instead, she sat there listening to the dark.
Minutes passed and she soon became aware of another sleeper on the other side of her roughly the same distance away as the first one. In her fear and doubt she pictured the two sleepers as the worse humanity had to offer, each thought being worst than the last. Unable to bear simply sitting and doing nothing until the sleepers awoke, she pushed her fear down until it was at a more tolerable level, then slowly climbed to her feet.
Taking a moment to ensure the sleepers remained undisturbed, she began taking small, cautious steps with arms held out before her. Moving in a route taking her away from the sleeping individuals, she searched the space before her for any obstructions barring her path. Her plan was to find a door or window and get out before anyone was the wiser. She took less than three steps before her knee encountered something.
Made of stone and rising less than three feet from the ground, her hand told her its outer edge was rounded. The top was level, and constructed of the same material as the floor. It may be a pedestal of some kind, and as best she could figure it was three feet across from one side to the other.
Using her hand as a guide, she worked her way around the object to the other side. Enroute, her hand brushed against a section of the pedestal much smoother than the rest. Pausing a brief moment, she allowed her fingers to inspect an area slightly smaller than the palm of her hand. Roughly oval in shape, the area rose a miniscule fraction above the main body of this stone object.
A pattern of lines was engraved within the smooth oval shape. As the tip of her index finger traced the pattern, she tried to picture in her mind what it was depicting with little success. About to continue in her search for the door, her finger felt an imperfection marring the smoothness of the oval area, a small rough area near the bottom.
Out of habit, she rubbed it in an attempt to remove the imperfection as one would remove a dried dab of mud discovered on a handrail. When her first attempt proved unsuccessful, she used her fingernail. Applying more pressure, she scraped at the imperfection.
Whoosh!
Suddenly, fire sprang to life before her causing her to cry out and stumble backward in shock. Catching the back of her heel on a man lying prone upon the floor, she lost her balance and fell with a thud on top of him.
“What the…,” the man cried out a split second before having the wind knocked from him when she fell full upon his abdomen.
“Back!” a man’s voice yelled as a tall fighter in leather armor with drawn blade quickly scanned the room. Six foot three with black, shoulder length hair secured in a ponytail with a simple leather thong, the man waved his sword back and forth. His eyes were wild and they alternated from looking toward her and the man who was trying to extricate himself from her, and another man slightly smaller emerging from around the far side of the flame burning above the stone pedestal.
“Put that thing away,” the smaller man said to the larger. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Unconvinced, the tall man merely continued backing until encountering the stone wall of the room they were in.
Now that her initial shock the sudden appearance of the flame produced, the girl quickly rolled off the man whom she landed upon. The man as it turned out was somewhat older, perhaps in his mid to upper forties. Tall, though not nearly as tall as the man with the sword, he had brown hair with a touch of gray about the temples. And like she, was dressed in a long sleeping gown.
His eyes met hers as he quickly gained his feet. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. From the tone of his voice it was apparent he was used to issuing commands and having them obeyed.
“I…I don’t know,” she replied, then uncertainly added, “milord.”
The tall swordsman appeared to be the only one with a weapon and that fact soon dawned upon him. Relaxing somewhat, he lowered his weapon, but only by a small margin.
“What is your name child?” the man upon whom she fell asked.
“Breya, milord,” she said. Not having been corrected when initially using the form of address for nobility, she used it again.
Dismissing her as being no threat, the man turned his attention to the young, tall swordsman. “You,” he said as he crossed over to the young man, “tell me where we are and how we came to be here.”
Moving the point of his sword toward the older man, the young swordsman said, “Back off old man or so help me I’ll run you through!” Though attempting to show bravado, he was unable to hide the hint of fear and uncertainty in his voice.
The older man came to a stop. “I am Lord Michael, Baron of Trellar Doon and I demand to know how I came to be here!”
“Trellar Doon?” the young man said. “Never heard of it.”
“Neither have I,” said the third man. Of average height with dark brown hair and blue eyes, the man came around the pedestal and moved closer to Breya. He wore brown jerkins with a dagger on his belt and a brownish cloth hat which sat slightly askew atop his head.
Breya, being the only girl present and the youngest of the four, remained silent.
Lord Michael glanced at the third man, and as he did with Breya, dismissed him as not being an immediate threat. Returning his attention to the young swordsman, Lord Michael put hands on hips and asked, “Well?”
“I don’t think he knows,” stated the third man. Having come to a stop near Breya, he kept his gaze firmly locked on the young swordsman. “He doesn’t act like a man concealing a hidden truth.”
“It was one of you!” accused the young man.
“Which one?” asked the third man. “The young girl in her night gown, the elder baron in his, or me?” He only paused a moment before adding, “And I would hardly leave myself unarmed while allowing you to retain your weapon had I been behind your being here.”
“You have a knife,” the young swordsman argued.
“Do you really consider this a threat?” he asked. Removing it from its sheath, he held it before him. “My three inches against your three feet?”
Breya was scared. Being in an unknown place, alone with three men she did not know, was something a young woman tried to avoid. Add to that the fact the young man was waving around his sword in a most agitated way left her even more ill at ease.
“I suggest we all calm down and try to find out what happened,” suggested the third man. Looking at each of his three comrades in turn, he said, “Would I be correct in assuming that none of us expected to find themselves in such surroundings?”
Lord Michael nodded. “I was asleep in my bed before awakening here.”
“As was I,” added Breya softly.
“For myself,” said the third man, “I was walking home from The Cryck.”
“Cryck?” said the young swordsman questioningly. “Never heard of it.”
Turning his attention to the young swordsman, the third man said, “It’s a tavern.”
“And who might you be?” asked Lord Michael.
“Name’s Parr,” the man replied. He then glanced toward the young swordsman. “How about you?”
Eyes flicked from one to the other until finally settling on Lord Michael. Lowering his sword even further he said, “I am Vika Tor. Guard of Lord Yellist, Duke of Ghear.”
“Duke Yellist?” mused Lord Michael. “The name is unfamiliar.”
“How…” began Vika Tor as the tip of his sword fell the rest of the way to the floor, “how did we get here?”
“That I do not know,” replied Lord Michael. Glancing at the others with him, he asked, “No one remembers anything about how they came to be here?” One ‘no’ and two shakes of the head answered him.
Breya felt somewhat relieved to hear that the three men were in the same predicament as she. Though still very much ill at ease, at least the threat of immediate harm seemed lessened. Then, she noticed something that had escaped her attention before.
“Excuse me, milord,” she said.
Turning toward her, Lord Michael asked, “Yes my child?”
“How did we get in here?”
“That is what we are trying to determine,” he replied, a little peevish at her asking a question currently under discussion. “Who brought us here and why.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, how did we get into this room? There is no door.”
The three men grew quiet as each came to realize what Breya already had. There was no door. Walls, floor, and ceiling were each constructed of stone blocks set one against the other with no sign of an egress. The room itself was roughly square in shape with the ceiling being slightly higher than the length and breadth of the walls. The only thing marring the simple plainness of the room’s design, aside from the pedestal with the flame burning above it, was a small patch of lichen growing in one corner.