Chapter 250: Orrun Tavesh, Shaman High Priest

Chapter 250: Chapter 250: Orrun Tavesh, Shaman High Priest

The drums were the first thing they heard.

They came down the last stair from floor 39 as a low, patient pulse, far off and steady, like a heartbeat heard through a wall. Rowan felt it in the soles of his boots before he heard it in his ears. It was not loud. It did not need to be. It carried the unhurried rhythm of something that had been beating for a very long time and saw no reason to stop.

"Do you hear that?" Mirei whispered.

"We all do," said Caelen.

The stair ended in a low archway of black, polished stone, wreathed in hanging strands of dried flowers and carved bone. Beyond it, a pale, smoky light glowed. Rowan stopped at the threshold, adjusted the brim of his Enchanted Straw Hat, shifted the hoe on his shoulder, and stepped through.

Floor 40 opened around him like a held breath.

It was a village.

That was the only word for it. A wide, bowl-shaped valley lay spread beneath a sky the color of old bronze, and across its floor, in loose circles and winding lanes, stood hundreds of huts. They were small, round, and thatched with dark reeds, painted with swirling patterns in ochre, white, and red. Totems rose between them, carved poles taller than a house, crowned with the skulls of beasts and hung with feathers, shells, and strings of colored beads. Smoke curled from a hundred hearths, thin and blue, and it carried the scent of burning sage, sweetgrass, and something older and stranger underneath.

There were no people.

Every doorway stood open. Every fire burned. Bowls of food sat steaming on thresholds, and strings of dried fish swayed in the breeze, and a child’s wooden toy lay overturned in the dust. But nothing moved. Nothing spoke. The whole valley seemed to be waiting, as if the villagers had stepped out for a moment and might return at any second.

"I don’t like this," said Barney, quietly. He had slid the tower shield onto his arm without being asked. "It’s too clean."

"There’s mana in the ground," said Rowan. He had knelt, laid one gloved hand against the earth, and closed his eyes. "Old. Deep. Layered. This place has been consecrated a thousand times over." He felt the Law of Earth stir faintly in his chest, a slow, grave note of recognition. "It’s not a village. It’s a temple."

"Of what?"

"Of the dead."

At the heart of the valley, the drums grew louder.

The center of the village was a wide, circular plaza of packed red clay, ringed by the tallest totems, each one carved with a different face. In its middle stood a great stone drum the size of a small house, its skin stretched taut across a rim of white bone. Around the drum, in a wide circle, burned a ring of low blue fires.

And in front of the drum, on a throne of woven roots and antlers, sat a man.

He was old. That was the first thing Rowan noticed. His skin was the color of dark amber and creased like weathered leather, his hair hung in long white braids threaded with beads and tiny silver bones, and his face was painted in streaks of white clay from brow to chin, so that he seemed a skull given breath. He wore a long cloak of feathers, black, gray, and gold, that spilled over the arms of the throne like a waterfall. A tall staff leaned against his shoulder, topped with the skull of some great, horned beast, hung with rattles and charms and strings of teeth.

His eyes were closed. His hands rested on his knees. And as the squad stepped into the plaza, the drumming faltered and stopped.

The silence that followed was enormous.

Then the old man opened his eyes, and they were the color of burning coals.

"Welcome," he said.

His voice was deep and warm and slow, with a faint, rolling accent that made every word sound like the beginning of a story. It carried without effort across the plaza, and the fires flickered as he spoke. "Welcome, children of the surface. Welcome, climbers of the forty floors. It has been a long while since guests came to my fire."

A pane of pale light unfolded in the air in front of Rowan.

[ FLOOR 40 GUARDIAN ]

Orrun Tavesh, High Priest of the Hollow Drum

Level 43

Keeper of a thousand spirits. Voice of the dead. Host of the final hearth.

Three levels above him. Three above all of them.

"Thank you," said Rowan, and tipped his hat with an easy smirk. He lowered his hoe, the blade resting lightly against the clay. "We were hoping for a warmer welcome than the last few floors."

"You will find hospitality here," said Orrun Tavesh, and a faint, gentle smile creased his painted face. "Though I confess I have not entertained in many years, and I may be out of practice." He raised one gnarled hand, and a ring of blue fire shifted and parted, opening a path to a circle of stools laid out beside the drum. "Please. Sit. You have come a long way."

The squad exchanged glances.

"Is it a trap?" Barney muttered.

"Of course it’s a trap," said Seraphina, though her eyes were bright behind the monocle.

"Almost certainly," Caelen agreed.

"I rather like him," said Mirei.

Rowan chuckled. "We’ll sit," he said. "But we keep our weapons close."

"I would expect nothing less," said the High Priest, and inclined his head.

They sat. The stools were low and rough-hewn, carved from some pale, heavy wood, and the fire at their center burned with a soft, steady blue flame that gave off no heat. A girl appeared at the edge of the plaza, a pale, translucent child with hair like smoke, carrying a tray of small clay cups. She set one before each of them without a sound, and then dissolved into the shadows of the huts.

Seraphina lifted her cup, adjusted her monocle, and studied the pale liquid inside. After a moment, her eyebrows rose.

"It is a tea," she said slowly. "Of a sort. Spirit-leaf, wild honey, and something I cannot identify. It is entirely harmless. It is also..." She frowned. "A binding. A mild one. It marks us as guests of the house."

"It means," said Orrun Tavesh, "that no harm will come to any of you under my roof, until the hearth is cold." He lifted his own cup in a toast. "And that none of you may leave it until the guest-rite is complete."

"The guest-rite," said Rowan.

"The final trial of this floor." The High Priest sipped, set down his cup, and folded his hands. "You may think of it as a courtesy. A formal exchange. You have come to claim the passage upward. I have kept the passage for longer than your kingdoms have had names. By the old law, the keeper and the climber may not simply fight. First, they must sit together, and speak, and share bread."

"And after?" asked Caelen.

"After, we dance."

He rose from his throne in a single, fluid movement, and the great feather cloak billowed around him like a living thing. Beside him, the stone drum began to hum, a low, throbbing note that rose from the earth through the soles of Rowan’s boots.

"I am Orrun Tavesh," the old man said, his voice deepening, "first and last of the Hollow Drum. Priest to a thousand spirits. Keeper of the Forty Gate. In my youth, I led a people who were forgotten. In my age, I have kept the doors of a Tower I did not build. I do not fight for hate, or for gold. I fight because the old compact demands it, and because I would not insult a worthy guest with a hollow duel." He lifted the horned staff. "So I ask you to forgive me for what comes next. And I ask you not to hold back."

The staff came down.

The drum spoke.

BOOM.

The world changed.

It started at the edges. The huts blurred and rippled, their thatched roofs bleeding into dark, shifting shapes. The totems stirred. The smoke from the fires thickened and began to glow, rising in slow spirals above the clay. A hundred voices began to chant, soft and distant and everywhere at once, in a language Rowan had never heard.

And the sky turned black.

Not night. Not storm. It was the deep, endless black of a world beyond the edge of the stars, and in it, ten thousand points of pale blue light began to burn.

[Domain: The Hollow Drum]

The pressure of it rolled over them like a tide. Rowan felt the Law of Earth flare in his chest, small and bright, resisting. He felt his Eden answer, a distant, golden pulse, steadying him. Around him, the squad staggered and braced. Mirei was on one knee. Seraphina had both hands clamped over her monocle. Barney grunted and drove his shield into the clay.

"His own domain," Rowan said, through gritted teeth. "He’s pulled us into it."

"I noticed," said Caelen.

Orrun Tavesh stood in the center of it all, small and old and impossibly vast, with his feathers streaming in a wind that blew from nowhere. His burning eyes found Rowan across the plaza, and for a moment, something very like respect flickered across his painted face.

"You carry a domain of your own," he said softly. "A garden, I think. A strange and gentle thing. It will not help you here." He lifted the staff. "Here, the dead are many, and the living are few."

He struck the drum a second time.

[Skill: Call of the Hundred Spirits]

The ground split.

A hundred shapes rose from the red clay, pale and translucent, in the likeness of men and women, children and elders, all of them barefoot, all of them draped in the rags of ancient clothes. They did not move like ghosts. They moved like a crowd, jostling and murmuring, and their eyes were empty hollows that burned with the same blue light as the sky.

And then, as one, they began to run.

"Formation!" Rowan shouted. "Barney, Caelen, hold the front! Mirei, high ground, anything you can find! Seraphina, keep them off the flanks!"

The squad moved. Barney slammed his shield into the ground and braced. Caelen drew his sword, and the storm-gray cloak swirled around him like a thundercloud. Mirei sprinted for the nearest totem, her bow already drawn.

The first wave struck like a river through a broken dam.

The spirits hit Barney’s shield with a sound like surf on rock. They clawed, bit, and screamed, and each blow carried a cold, numbing weight that crept up his arm and into his chest. He roared, heaved, and swung the hammer in a wide, glowing arc, and five of them dissolved in a burst of pale smoke. But for every one that fell, three more rose from the clay.

"There are too many!" Mirei called from the totem, loosing arrow after arrow. "Every time I hit one, another takes its place!"

"They’re not the real threat," said Seraphina, through gritted teeth. She had pulled a vial from her belt and flung it, and a burst of silver mist swept across the front line, dissolving a half dozen spirits like salt in water. "He’s calling them from somewhere. He’s feeding them. If we cut the source..."

"Then he’s not done," said Rowan.

Orrun Tavesh struck the drum a third time.

[Skill: Totem of the Bone Wolf Pack]

The great carved poles at the edge of the plaza trembled. Skulls rattled. Feathers stirred. And from the shadows beneath each totem, long, lean shapes began to slink forward, wolves, huge and gaunt, made of yellowed bone and wreathed in cold, flickering flame. Their eyes burned a vivid, hungry green. They moved in absolute silence, spreading out in a wide, tightening arc around the squad.

"Oh," said Barney, faintly. "That’s new."

The wolves leaped.

The next minutes were a blur.

The Bone Wolf Pack hunted like nothing Rowan had ever fought. They did not charge. They flanked. They probed. They darted in, snapped, and fell back, forcing the squad to defend three directions at once. Caelen’s cloak showed him every attack a moment before it landed, and he cut down two wolves in a single sweep. Mirei dropped from her totem and slipped through the melee, her silent boots carrying her between the creatures like a shadow, and her arrows found the eye-sockets of the rest. Barney’s hammer shattered a wolf’s spine in a spray of glowing bone.

Rowan, in the center, kept moving.

[Terra Tilling]

The clay turned to mud under a dozen paws, and the wolves sank and staggered. Rowan swung the hoe in a short, vicious arc and shattered the leg of the nearest, then reversed the stroke and crushed the skull of the next. He slid under a snapping jaw, planted his heel on a ribcage, and pushed off in a clean, flowing motion, and the third wolf fell apart in a clatter of bones.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Orrun Tavesh lift his staff a fourth time.

[Skill: Ancestral Host]

The air chimed.

Out of the dark above, a column of pale light descended, and in the light stood a warrior, tall, broad, armored in layers of hide and bone, wielding a great curved blade. He did not look like the other spirits. He looked solid. His eyes burned with a bright, steady gold, and when he set his foot on the clay, the ground shook.

Behind him came another. And another. A line of them, shoulder to shoulder, a dozen strong, each one a veteran of some forgotten war, each one carrying a weapon that gleamed in the cold light.

"Ancestral Host," said Seraphina, and her voice was strained. "He is summoning his own dead."

"How many does he have?" Mirei called.

"All of them."

The warriors advanced in perfect step, and the squad fell back before them, step by step, the clay churning under their boots. Caelen met the first with a ringing clash of steel. Barney took a blow on his shield that drove him to one knee. Rowan, at the rear, felt the Law of Earth tremble in his chest, vast and patient and strangely sad.

They are not evil, he thought. They are not even angry. They are just old, and tired, and bound.

He looked across the plaza at the High Priest. The old man stood motionless in the midst of his storm, one hand on the drum, the other on his staff, and his burning eyes were fixed on Rowan with a kind of grave, expectant patience.

He wants us to find a way through.

Rowan tightened his grip on the hoe, tilted his hat, and let out a slow breath.

"All right," he said, softly, to no one. "Let’s see how deep your roots go."

And he stepped into the storm.