Colin slurped his last finger clean noisily. “I refuse to be anything but human,” he said.
Vaeren glanced toward Aeren and Eraeth, both with studiously blank faces. “I don’t understand why you associate with him.”
Eraeth shrugged. “He has his uses.”
Aeren smiled as Colin gaped in mild affront, but then his face turned serious. “You said we were close to the pass. I have never heard of this pass, nor of this tunnel into the Alvritshai halls beneath the mountain. Caercaern was supposed to be the only path from the northern reaches to the south over the Hauttaeren Mountains.”
Everyone turned to Colin. “The Tamaells since before the time of the Abandonment have kept the secret of this one entrance well. It has a rather dark and deadly history. I found mention of it in some of the oldest records in the Sanctuary, in journals and pages that nearly crumbled apart in my hands. I’m not even certain that Tamaell Thaedoren knows of it.”
“The secret has been kept from even the Evant?” Aeren asked with a frown.
“As far as I can tell. Its purpose, and what it was used for, is not something that the Tamaell or the lords of that time would have been proud of.”
“What was it used for?” Vaeren asked bluntly.
Colin shifted where he sat, frowning as he thought back to reading those pages, sitting in the depths of the Sanctuary’s archives, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of dusty books and loose sheaves of writings. “It was carved out of the mountain in an attempt to betray Cortaemall, the Tamaell of the time.”
One of the Rhyssal Phalanx gasped. “But Cortaemall was one of the most revered Tamaells of that age!”
Aeren nodded thoughtfully. “Which is perhaps why what happened at the pass has been suppressed.”
“Tell us what happened,” Vaeren said.
Colin hesitated. Even though there were no windows, he could sense that night had fallen, that it was already late. “It’s a long story.”
“You had us stop early,” Vaeren countered.
Colin sighed. “Very well.” He leaned back against the wall and gathered his thoughts as one of the Rhyssal guardsmen rose and left to check up on the horses outside. The frigid night air gusted into the hut, set the flames of the fire flapping, but no one stirred even when the guardsman returned.
“Gaurraenan’s Pass was named after a Lord of the Evant,” he began, letting his voice lower as he shifted into a more comfortable position. “A lord with ambition and patience. He wanted his House to rise within the Evant, wanted to become Tamaell.”
“Like Khalaek,” Eraeth interjected.
Colin turned in surprise, but Eraeth wasn’t looking at him. The Protector was watching Vaeren, the caitan of the Flame gazing down at his hands where he sat against the wall across the fire with a frown.
“Yes, but Cortaemall had been Tamaell for a long time and was loved and revered by the Alvritshai. Living in the halls beneath Caercaern, Cortaemall held dominion over all of the northern reaches. The Alvritshai prospered beneath his hands, the area that we now call the White Wastes producing enough food for the hundreds of thousands of Alvritshai that lived there. The great glaciers were far to the north, and the lands abounded with streams and springs, the growing seasons were long, the plains and lakes and forests teeming with herds of deer and antelope, with rabbit and fowl, and with the shaggy beasts called bison.
“Gaurraenan saw no support within the Evant for his ambitions, but as I said, he was a patient man. He knew there was no way to convince the other lords that Cortaemall should be overthrown, knew that the only way to seize the Evant and rule was through subterfuge. He began to ingratiate himself with his fellow lords, rising slowly but surely through the ranks of the Hall of the Evant, closer and closer to the Tamaell. But he knew that no matter how high he rose, he could never become Tamaell with Cortaemall and his sons in power. That’s not how the Evant and the ascension of the Tamaell works. Cortaemall’s House must fall before a new House can ascend. And so he began the tunnel.
“Within the depths of his halls within the Hauttaeren, he discovered a warren of natural caverns that led to the southern side of the mountains. He decided to finish those tunnels, giving himself passage to the south, and so hired hundreds of masons and miners to widen the passages near his own halls and carve out an exit on the far side, all under the pretense of building a new manse on the flatlands beneath his mountain stronghold. And he built that manse, using the stone from the mines. But the real purpose was the tunnel, wide enough to carry his Phalanx and their supplies southward and up to the pass. None of the other lords would suspect him of tunneling to the south. Everything the Alvritshai needed was there in the northern reaches, and the mountains were too difficult to navigate, the tunnels beneath Caercaern-the only known routes southward-were controlled by Tamaell Cortaemall. The glaciers had not yet begun to creep into the northern reaches to force the Alvritshai off of their lands.
“So Gaurraenan carved his own path to the south, with the intent to take his Phalanx through the tunnels into the southern lands, skirt the mountains, and then back into the depths of Caercaern through the back entrance in secret. He could attack Cortaemall from behind, catch his Phalanx and his House unprepared, kill Cortaemall and his entire family-his wife, daughter, and sons-and ascend in the Evant to take his place.”
Vaeren was shaking his head. “It wouldn’t work. The southern entrance to Caercaern would have been closed and sealed from the inside. Gaurraenan would never have been able to open the doors from the south.”
“There are always those within the House who will betray it and their lord,” Eraeth said quietly. “For wealth, for position, or for simple spite.”
Everyone shifted uncomfortably, but Colin simply nodded. “Gaurraenan found a few within Cortaemall’s Phalanx who were willing to open the seal of the southern portal.”
Petraen huffed in disbelief. “Betrayed by his own Phalanx?”
“It was a different time, remember,” Aeren said. “The Houses were much larger than they are now. There were more Alvritshai then, at least ten times as many as there are now. The Phalanx of each House was larger as well. The caitans and the lords of the Houses would not have been familiar with the individual members of their own Phalanx, not as they are now. I wonder more how Gaurraenan kept his tunnel secret. Building the manse was a nice subterfuge, but what of the masons and miners who built the tunnel? One of them would have said something.”
“Gaurraenen had them killed. As soon as the tunnel was finished, his Phalanx slaughtered them beneath the mountains. Those who worked on the tunnels had lived there since the tunnel was begun. None of them saw the light of day again. Gaurraenen blamed their deaths on a collapse, and ceased construction on the manse immediately out of respect, although it was nearly finished by then.”
Petraen scowled as he reached forward to lay another chunk of wood on the fire.
“So what happened?” Siobhaen asked. “We all know Cortaemall wasn’t killed by Gaurraenan.”
“No, he wasn’t.” Colin closed his eyes. He sat in silence for a long moment, absorbing the heat from the fire, feeling the chill embedded in the stone at his back, the scent of roast meat still thick in the air. “The reason Cortaemall was so revered, and remained in power for so long, is because he wasn’t stupid.” He opened his eyes, caught Siobhaen and Vaeren watching him closely. “He knew what Gaurraenan intended, knew of his pretense with the manse, of his tunnel, of his betrayal.”
Siobhaen flinched and looked away, troubled. Vaeren’s eyes narrowed, creases appearing above the bridge of his nose.
Colin let his gaze drop. “After years upon years of gathering influence within the Evant, rising to its highest ranks, the southern tunnel now complete, Gaurraenan finally felt ready to become Tamaell. He sent word to his contacts within Cortaemall’s House, and prepared his Phalanx for the long march to the southern pass. They left at the end of autumn, after the Evant had been called to a close, but before the snows would make traveling the pass with an army at his back impossible. When they finally emerged from the dark depths into the pass, they found it free of snow, the southern lands waiting for them. Gaurraenan took this as a sign, a good omen, and so he marched east. The weather held, and emboldened, he pushed on to the southern entrance of Caercaern.
“It was nothing like the Caercaern of today. There was no city, no walls and tiers and marketplaces and halls. It was simply a tower, where the Sanctuary now sits, on a ledge of stone that jutted out from the side of the mountains behind, a ledge barely large enough to hold two thousand men. On the first day of winter, with dark clouds beginning to emerge from the west, Gaurraenan and his men scrambled up the slopes to this ledge, and found the doors to the entrance at the base of the tower firmly closed. Nailed to those stone doors with iron spikes were the men of Cortaemall’s Phalanx who’d betrayed him, the men Gaurraenan had bribed into opening the seal to
