Three thousand years after the gods fled, the vast and many lands had only begun to recover from The Disaster. It was exceedingly difficult for sages to track progress in The Recovery, for The Disaster had wiped all details related to its occurrence from collective societal memory and had destroyed any early recordings of its world-spanning impact. All that men knew now was that they had descended from a grander age, from a time in which magic was the lifeblood of society, and the gods no strangers to men.
Three hundred years ago, ongoing after-effects of The Disaster included earthquakes and massive cave-ins of prodigious tracks of surface lands into the seemingly bottomless bowels of the Deep Down. When half of the Exarchate of Prolemion suffered this same fate, Rameses Kal-Leon III made an offer too tempting to resist: any brave soul or group who brought a solution to the world's ongoing breakdown back from the World's Bowels would be given archon status; they and all their family would be deeded access to one of the Sky Islands, lord of their own aerial mini-kingdom.
This was too rich for Deornoth Stelgaard and his lover, Exodore (ex-oh-DOOR-ray) Swift to pass up, especially given that they were hunted by the Surface authorities. They would undertake risk to life and limb in the Deep Down, and perhaps taste Death — but was that not better than rotting in a dungeon or being hanged? And so, which Entrance to use? Arden, Dwimmer, Great-Barrow, Helix, Thracia? They opted for Arden, for it was the nearest.
Later...
"Are we entirely certain, sweet love, that this undertaking is supported by both our research and by common sense?" Exodore inquired, large brown eyes studying the mountain before them from beneath her cloak's hood. "For it cannot be a coincidence that the rumored wealth of ancient, lost Vul hasn't been plundered through the centuries.
"More than certain, dearest. Not only am I pursued by Lord Imla's guards, but the Gatekeepers seek me for tax evasion. And if those were not jointly motivation enough, the guild remains unconvinced of my innocence in the recent embezzlement." Dorn noted Exie's quick turning of her head at this pronouncement, and he hurried on: "Our vault in Lowshelf was endangered by the recent quakes. I merely relocated funds to a safer location in—"
"In one of your hidden caches, in the Catacombs, yes!" she agreed archly. "Did you really think that there was Theo's Chance that Grandmaster Gio—"
"Shh!" Dorn shushed Exie, quickly taking her arm and pulling her down beside him where he now squatted in the tall grass. Fifty yards away, three people came up the Dawntrack and approached Arden's Mouth: a sauntering blond youth with a goatee, a woman with a crossbow slung across her back over leathers, and an older man carrying a walking staff.
"Great..." Exie breathed. "Now we not only have to flee, but we must avoid being seen by those three." Exxie slowly released an arrow she'd been about to draw from her quiver. "Or maybe they were sent after us by Giodon." The two watched as the trio made their way into Arden's Mouth and disappeared into the mountain. The Dawntrack was empty again. Dorn and Exie could hear the waterfall from where it coursed thunderously just beyond sight, perhaps a couple radians northward around the mountain. After ten minutes the two rose and began moving toward the mountain. "I wouldn't worry too much about those three," Dorn said, and he grinned.
Three minutes later, the duo were inside the mountain and a few dozen yards down the gullet, as Dorn chose to think of it. Arden's Mouth, Arden's Gullet. He grinned. He raised his unsheathed longsword as a shadow advanced upon him from down-tunnel, then saw from the faint lichen illumination that is was only Exie, coming back from silently scouting ahead. She signaled to Dorn in the barely adequate illumination, using the sign language particular to the Black Fists mercenaries: nearby ahead, nobody spotted but crosses a boundary. The descent steepens; hazards include razor-rock and slick stone.
Dorn nodded his understanding and gestured for Exie to lead onward. They each wore the tough but supple leather boots of the guilders, and their equipment — though mundane — was of high quality workmanship. It was generally believed, and this seemed born out by lived experience, that most magic across the surface of Issenda had been undone by The Disaster. That was the supposition. There were notable exceptions. Dorn was nearly certain that Guildmaster Giodon Thales wore an enchanted cloak that somehow embellished the man's already prodigious talents.
A couple dozen yards further down the Gullet, the descent steepened, and Exie pointed out scratch marks on the walls of the tunnel. The graven sigils were ancient, and neither man nor woman could decipher them. But what was known from the reports of previous expeditions — when someone actually returned from one, which wasn't often — was that these markings indicated a boundary between the surface lands and ... elsewhere. Crossing the boundary, they both felt it: a deepening of the brooding darkness, a further drop in temperature, and a screaming recognition in the hindbrain that one was now in Dangerous Territory.
The darkness was now so thick that Exie reluctantly lit a hooded lantern. She adjusted it so that it produced a thin arc of light directly ahead of her, a beam that she played upon the floor of the tunnel as she carefully picked a way forward, ever vigilante for slippery stretches of stone and razor-rock, a combination that had been the undoing of many who had plumbed these depths over the centuries. "I hate the necessity," she said quietly, raising the lantern momentarily to indicate her meaning. "The light will make us a target, but there's nothing to be done about it."
Dorn grunted, cutting off a length of jerky with his belt knife and passing it to Exie. "Legends tell of a now extinct species that could see perfectly well in darkness. Aelves they were called. They were descendants of The Visitors."
"And who were they?" asked Exie.
"A race that visited Issenda in the very distant past." He retrieved a block of cheese from his pack, cut each of them a chunk of it.
"Oh, so they were the ones who left the portals, such as the Prayer Gate of Wynthia, then?"
Dorn chewed, swallowed, then drank deeply from a wineskin before passing it to Exie. "Perhaps," he answered, "or maybe they used some other means of coming to our world, a great galleon that plied the void between worlds. That's what Ender of the Collegium believed."
"Ender the Heretic," Exie said, and finished off the wine, discarding the now empty skin amid a pile of shale on the right hand side of the tunnel. "You surely don't believe his theory."
Dorn shrugged. "I've not studied at the Collegium, but I'd not presume to know better than someone who had. Perhaps someday I'll get the opportunity." What he didn't say, but what they both were thinking, was that it was of questionable likelihood whether they either one would get much of a future. If the dangers of the Deep Down didn't take their lives, a return to the Surface likely would — unless of course they could outlive both Imla Falsta and Giodon Thales.
Dorn stroked the stubble on his chin, thinking, then turned to Exie. "Here's what we're gonna do..."
Half an hour later, Dorn stood in the center of a large cavern that is riddled with stalagtites and stalagmites, some of which joined to form eerily flowing stone pillars. He held a torch aloft. He only raised his voice a little, but his words carried well in the echoing chamber. "You may as well come on out. I saw you entering Arden's Mouth, and I know you're seeking me. Let us therefore palaver. There is one of me and three of you, and as you can see my sword is sheathed."
A baritone voice from somewhere to Dorn's left: "Hail, Dorn. Father Zorvin of Cromm. I am accompanied by Jorun Fielenghast, nephew to Lord Falsta, and Vida Moinder, guardswoman of the Prelm Gatekeepers. We bear a court summons demanding that you surrender yourself to our custody and return with us to the city."
"Oh?" Dorn's voice clearly conveyed he had raised an eyebrow at this. "Well then, Cromm care for and keep you, Father."
"Cromm care for and keep you," came the priest's reply. "Will you surrender yourself peacefully? If you will do so, I will stand surety to your fair handling and will see to it that you have legal representation."
"Show yourself, priest. Let us converse like men, face to face."
A portly, gray-robed man with a tonsured pate and graying hair emerged from behind a stone column where the slow deposits of geologic time had conspired to form a natural pillar. He approached and handed Dorn a scroll. "I believe you'll see everything is in order, if you will read the summons."
Dorn extended a hand. "Hold my torch, would you?" Then he unfurled the scroll and began reading: Deornoth Stelgard, inasmuch as considerable coinage has gone missing from a secure holding of the Black Fists Guild, and given that you additionally are changed with evasion of taxes, you are ordered on the authority of Devis Prelm to present yourself before the magistrate at City Hall on Conqueror's Street, City of Prelm, forthwith."
Dorn tsk-tsked, rolled up the scroll, and handed it back to Father Zorvin. "You have the wrong man. I don't know who Deornoth Stelgard is, but I am Deornorth Stelgaard, with two consecutive letter 'a's in my surname. I'm sure that you know that this error makes this summons not legally binding. But I must confess to curiosity: how did you predict that I would be entering Arden's Mouth today, for I told no one my intention?"
The priest was still apparently processing Dorn's claim that the summons wasn't legally binding. "Well, I... well, you see..."
Out from behind a rather broad stalagmite stepped the young man, hair blond, goatee neatly trimmed and coming to a ridiculous point below his chin. He worked something he was carrying, and a window of light bloomed from his bullseye lantern which had heretofore been shuttered. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am—"
"—Lord Falsta's nephew, yes — the priest already said so," Dorn interrupted.
"Well, in that case, you'll know that I am—"
"—not yet a barrister, if the priest's description was accurate. As I understand it, you are in training, a mere student of legalities and therefore unable to act as an officer of the court. You—"
"—Now see here!" huffed the young man. "My father is Lord Imla Falsta and you would do well to be careful in how—"
"Perhaps you are," Dorn interrupted, "but was he married to your mother when you were conceived? If not, that would make you a bastard, and only a partially educated bastard at that. Why, I would hazard to guess that—"
"Vida, arrest this man now! On my father's authority!" The youth's voice had grown shrill, and the lantern jangled metallically in his now shaking hand. A woman approached from elsewhere in the cavern, not yet within the torch or lantern's light, and Jorun — angry eyes locked on Dorn — instructed her: "Put him in irons, and be none too gentle in so doi—"
The youth's words abruptly cut off, as a dagger's point pressed to the spot where the back of the skull joins the neck. "Vida is indisposed at the moment," Exie explained, "and you are two inches of steel away from an untimely death." She paused for a moment, then: "And you apparently need medical attention for incontinence, but that isn't your most immediate concern," she said. Urine continued to dribble onto one of the dandy's boots, then pooled on the cavern floor.
A couple of hours later, a trio sat warming themselves at a small, unadorned metallic cube some six inches on a side. Most enchantments, at least on the Surface, had been broken by The Disaster, but various pieces of tech left by some Visitors in the distant past still worked. What Dorn appreciated the most about this small device was that it produced heat without simultaneously emitting light.
Dorn's torch had long since burned out, but they had the bullseye lantern, thanks to Jorun. Exie laughed, "I can't believe how smoothly that went; how did you manage it, Zorvin?"
"Ah, it was easily done. The Gatekeepers merely do what they are told, and have raised lack of curiosity into an art form. And young dandies like him ... well, they're far too absorbed in their daydreams of climbing the social ladder to piece things together. Father Sovrast was so appreciative when I offered to cover his shift at the temple. He blessed me for offering, and that was that. I was just the right man in the right place, when this was all put into motion."
Faintly visible in the mostly shuttered lantern's illumination, Exie shook her head in amusement. "But now you've gone and done it. You'll have made an enemy of Lord Imla, and that isn't nothing..."
"To be truthful, I've been growing more and more disaffected with the politics of the temple, its collusion with the government. I was ready for a change. And there are matters of both history and faith I would investigate here in the Deep Down. Besides, the other half of the Exarchate is liable to fall off anytime. It's a good time to be leaving Prelm."
Dorn clapped the priest on the shoulder. "We're glad to have you. You're sure the guardswoman will be all right?"
"Oh yes, she wasn't unconscious long, but my was she trussed up like a pig." He looked at Exie. "Where did you learn knots like that?" When she didn't answer, he went on, "They'll make it back safely. I gave them an extra torch. They should be able to get clear of the Mouth just before darkness falls." He turned back to Dorn and said, "What's our itinerary?"