by Randy Nargi
They proceeded even more slowly than usual, each member of the expedition holding a torch to light the way and hopefully keep any more predators at bay. They had divided up some of the fallen man’s supplies and discarded the rest, so everyone’s pack was now a bit heavier. So by necessity, the group stopped frequently, and every time Bander was grateful for the rest.
After two or three hours of trudging through the dark, they were rewarded with the faint glow of sunrise over the mountains.
“This is probably safe enough to camp for a bit and eat, don’t you think?” Talessa Kreed asked Fenrue.
“Aye.” The big bodyguard nodded. “Looks clear.”
Bander turned and surveyed the area. They were in a wide valley filled with large boulders and scrubby trees that were nothing compared to the towering vegetation in the jungle proper. Ahead of them was a maze of canyons and beyond that, the mountains rose sharply up into the mist, their steep slopes sharp and rugged. The wind had increased up here and now gusted down, causing the scrubby trees to dance and bob.
Talessa Kreed found a sheltered area among the boulders and Eton Sward and the young sailor gathered some wood so they could build a fire. Then everyone warmed themselves, drank some tea that was bitter, but at least hot, and ate a meal of smoked fish.
“We’re close now,” Talessa Kreed said.
“How close?” Valthar asked.
“An hour at most. See that ridge?” She pointed off to the northwest.
Valthar nodded.
“It’s up there.”
Bander looked over and saw steep hills gouged by a rough canyon. The hills were covered by tawny grass and dotted with small trees of green and brown.
Although he wasn’t much of a climber, Bander decided he could manage an hour trudging up the steep slope.
The big question was, what would they find at the top.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It took them closer to two hours, but when they finally ascended to the top of the ridge, Bander saw what Rodan Scarfin Burritch must have seen on this same spot roughly five hundred years ago.
There, perched on a bald cliff side, were the remains of the blood-red temple. And, even from a distance, it looked very similar to the Temple of Dreams in Irfals.
Eton Sward whooped and hollered, but Valthar remained silent. When Bander looked over at his friend, he was surprised to see the man standing quietly, staring at the ruins. His eyes glistened with emotion.
Bander clapped Valthar on the shoulder. “Are you ready for this?”
Valthar didn’t say anything. Just continued to stare at the temple.
“What are you all waiting for?” Talessa Kreed asked, with a self-satisfied smile. “Get your journals out and start studying. We depart first thing tomorrow morning.”
They made their way up to the flat summit of the cliff to get a better look at the ruins. When Talessa Kreed had told Bander that it was just a pile of rubble, with no wall standing higher than ten feet, she had exaggerated a bit. Yes, at some point the tower had toppled over, spilling heaping ruins of red lumbia stone blocks. But at least half of the temple itself was still standing—although most of it was covered by thick snaking vines. Still, you could clearly discern the shape of the structure. And Bander wasn’t the only one who noticed it.
“Remarkable!” Eton Sward said. “It’s a twin—”
“Hold!” Fenrue said. The big guard slipped out of his pack, drew his sword, and strode towards a gap in the ruined wall of the hall.
“He probably saw something,” Talessa Kreed said.
After five minutes, Fenrue emerged and signaled that the area was clear.
“Just a jack deer.”
They all made their way into the heap of ruins. The inside of the temple hall was overgrown with gnarled bushes starved for light and the dead husks of a few larger trees. Vines encircled broken pillars and escaped through long-ago shattered windows. But there, towards the middle of the hall, was a massive black altar—just as Burritch had described it. Roughly nine feet long, three wide, and three tall, it looked like it had been carved out of a single block of stone.
“Remarkable,” Eton Sward said. The mage spent a good quarter hour studying the altar before he tore himself away and began pacing the length of the structure.
“What’s he doing?” Talessa Kreed asked.
“Not sure,” Bander said.
“He’s checking the dimensions,” Valthar said.
“Indeed I am,” Eton Sward called from the west end of the ruins. “And I can say with certainty that this structure has the exact same dimensions as the Temple of Dreams.”
“Temple of Dreams?” Talessa Kreed fixed Sward with a suspicious look.
“Yes, an archeological site outside of the Steading,” Eton Sward said. “I am the steward. Or I was.”
Bander didn’t hear the rest of the exchange. He had moved away—making his way through the forest of toppled pillars towards Valthar who was studying the wall on the east side of the temple. His friend stood where the ambulatory would have been. The walls there were more or less intact, although the ceiling had long ago collapsed, creating a sheltered open-air garden.
As Bander drew closer, he saw Valthar pawing at the wall, stripping away vegetation and pressing against the bricks as if trying to trigger a secret door.
“Don’t just stand there, you rumpkin! Help me, damn you!”
Bander knew what Valthar was searching for. Back at the Temple of Dreams there had been a tunnel on the east end of the structure which led to the room known as the Nave of Time.
“It won’t be in the wall,” Bander said quietly.
“How do you know?”
“Don’t you remember the temple in Irfals? The passage will be beneath our feet.”
Valthar kicked at the dirt on the ground. “You’re right. We need shovels, laborers.”
Bander squatted down and started digging with his hands. The earth was soft and loamy. It wasn’t hard to get through, but Valthar was right. They’d have to dig down a dozen feet or more to reach the tunnel.
Eton Sward, Talessa Kreed, Fenrue, and the younger sailor joined them and stared at the ground where Bander was digging.
“Buried treasure?” Talessa Kreed asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Bander said. “We’re looking for a passage.”
“You never said anything about excavation. I would have brought another ship full of laborers.”
“We don’t need laborers, madam,” Eton Sward said.
“What are you talking about, Sward?” Valthar asked.
“Follow!”
Realization played across Valthar’s face as Eton Sward backtracked through the ruins and exited the structure. The rest of the group hurried behind.
Eton Sward circled around the outside of the eastern end of the building—on the other side of the wall which Valthar had been so interested in.
“Stand back, all of you. This may trigger a collapse.”
With that, he gestured in the air and whispered a word under his breath. Around them the temperature dropped suddenly and ground rippled as if it was liquid.
Eton Sward’s face tightened in concentration. He flung his hands forward and a glowing beam of energy issued forth, striking the ground a dozen feet from the wall. A narrow whirlpool of earth began to swirl around the beam and then fell in upon itself in a spray of dirt.
Talessa Kreed, Fenrue, and the young sailor scampered back as a four foot wide hole in the earth opened. Below it yawned a dark pit.
“Aha!” Eton Sward cried triumphantly. “That leads to the Nave. No excavation required.”
Bander had immediately recognized the spell Eton Sward had cast. It was stoneflow and was normally used to open up a tunnel in a castle or dungeon wall. At first he was a little surprised that an academic would know such a spell, but then he remembered that Silbra Dal knew stoneflow as well—and had used it to allow them to escape when they had been buried alive in the destruction of Wat
erside. The memory of that cataclysm still haunted him. All those hundreds of thousands of lives lost. The utter destruction.
“A clever trick, mage,” Fenrue said. “But what’s to prevent it from sealing up and trapping us underground forever.”
“Do I look like a mere acolyte, sir? My skill is such that this passage will remain for several hours at least.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean? Then it will close of its own accord, of course. But it matters not since I will just cast the spell again to release us.”
“And what if you are dead?”
Eton Sward didn’t hesitate. “It’s your job to prevent that from happening.”
Bander shook his head. “It’s not his job, because he’s not going.”
Fenrue took a step closer to Talessa Kreed. “Where she goes, I go.”
“You misunderstand,” Bander said. “She’s not going either.” He turned to Talessa Kreed. “You and your men need to stay here and guard the temple.”
“What?” Her eyes widened with disbelief.
Bander said nothing.
Talessa Kreed said, “This is my expedition.”
“We hired you,” Bander said.
“It matters not. This is a significant discovery, and I mean to be a part of it.”
“What exactly do you expect to find in there?” Fenrue asked.
Eton Sward said, “Another part of the temple. Two or three rooms, perhaps.”
“I say we come to an accord about the treasure now,” Talessa Kreed said. “So there will be no misunderstanding later. Agreed?”
Eton Sward and Fenrue began speaking at once, but Valthar yelled, “Hold!”
“I believe that this is my expedition, since I am funding it,” he said. “And you may have any treasure you find, madam. Treasure is not my concern.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Bander said to Valthar. “You know that.”
“Precisely why we need a larger party.” Valthar looked over at Talessa Kreed. “But you must know that we cannot guarantee your safety. We have no knowledge of what dangers might lurk within.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Talessa Kreed said.
Bander didn’t like it, and he told them so. “I’ve been in more of my fair share of delvings and there are dozens of ways to die underground—everything from traps to bad air. If you’re coming with us, you need to heed my warnings.”
“Of course, sir.”
In the end, they decided to leave the young sailor—Nyanel—as a rear guard. Bander gathered wood that they could use as magical torches and asked Eton Sward to cast light on each of them. The mage complied, but scoffed at the preparation.
“Likely the Nave is but fifty paces from where we shall enter the tunnel.”
“It never hurts to be prepared,” Bander said.
He tied a rope he got from Nyanel to a section of toppled wall and tossed the end down into the dark shaft. They were as ready as they could be. The only thing that they lacked were weapons. Fenrue had his sword, of course, but the one remaining spear was staying with Nyanel. Bander noticed a dagger on Talessa Kreed’s belt, but other than that, they were unarmed.
“Let us descend,” Valthar said. “Gods, I am eager to see this temple’s mysteries for myself!”
“I will go first,” Fenrue said.
Bander shook his head. “No. I’m going first. I need to check the hall.”
Fenrue didn’t appear happy to hear that, but he didn’t protest.
Eton Sward said, “Just don’t touch anything down there. All manner of of wards might still be in place.”
“Believe me,” Valthar said. “He knows.”
Bander wedged a torch into his pack so the magically illuminated end protruded from the top and then he grabbed the rope and climbed down into the pit.
Chapter Thirty
The first thing that Bander noticed was the smell. Dank and wet. Like a flooded root cellar. Which is what the passage looked like as well.
He landed in two inches of wet, slimy silt and his torch reflected off of pools of fetid water all around him. Bander held the torch high and inspected his surroundings.
It was either a very long chamber, or a wide hallway—maybe twenty feet from north to south. And the room stretched off to the east for more than fifty feet. It was too dark to see much beyond that. To the west the way was blocked by a floor-to-ceiling mound of dirt and rock. That would be the way that led back to the temple.
Could this be the Nave of Time?
Bander turned his torch to illuminate the walls. No murals. Just the same big blocks of lumbia stone that the temple above was built with.
“You didn’t die on us already, did you?” Valthar called down.
“No.”
“Well?”
“Fetch me Nyanel’s spear,” Bander called. “And scour the area for branches we could use as poles.”
“Did you say poles?”
“Yes. I don’t like the looks of this floor.”
Valthar handed down the spear and Bander used it to begin probing the mud-covered floor of the hallway. He was looking for the rails. If this was the Nave, it would have rails—and it would be very bad if someone stepped within them or even near them.
“I’m coming down,” Valthar said.
“Me too!” Eton Sward called after him.
This wasn’t good, but Bander knew that there would be no stopping the rest of the party.
Valthar climbed down first, a little wobbly, but he made it without any issues.
“Give me a two hundred slow count before the next person comes down,” Bander called.
“It smells down here,” Valthar said.
“You noticed, eh? Hold the torch while I probe. We need to make sure there’s a safe place to stand for all of us.”
Bander concentrated on checking the fifteen foot by fifteen foot square beneath the opening they had climbed through. He systematically poked and prodded the floor and felt for both the rails and any traps that might be hidden by the mud. But all he found were a few fist-sized rocks underneath the muck. He cleared some of the mud away by hand and saw that the floor was made of what appeared to be solid stone.
“Can I move yet?” Valthar asked.
Bander handed him the spear. “Keep checking the floor, while I help Sward down.”
During his descent, which was punctuated by non-stop cursing, the mage almost fell off the rope several times.
“I should have just levitated down for Dynark’s sake!” he huffed.
‘Don’t move from this area,” Bander told him. “We don’t know what’s under this mud.”
“Likely nothing,” Eton Sward said. “This appears to be a ceremonial entrance hall.”
“You recognize it?”
“Not really. But the Temple of the Ages has something similar. More of an alcove, to be honest. Still, we think it served as a symbolic transition zone between the mundane world above and the special world of the Nave.”
“Was this alcove at the other temple trapped?” Bander asked.
“I don’t believe so, but who knows for sure? It was so long ago.”
Talessa Kreed and Fenrue didn’t wait a full two hundred count, and soon all five of them were crowded in the corner of the hallway that Bander had checked. Between them they had four magical torches, the spear, and two other long branches that could be used to check the mud floor.
“Doesn’t look like much to me,” Fenrue said. “A flooded storage room.”
“This hall was looted—a long time ago,” Eton Sward said.
“How can you tell?” Talessa Kreed asked.
“There would have been tapestries on the wall,” Eton Sward said. “You can see the hooks still. And that block there would have been a base for statues.”
Ten feet away, up against the south wall, was a stone block carved with various ridges and shelves. It was five feet all around and Bander could see how one might place statues on its steps.
“Th
ere’s likely more of them,” Eton Sward continued.
Talessa Kreed took a step forward towards the block.
“No!” Bander shouted.
She froze.
“Stay in the safe area.”
“Sorry.”
She gingerly took a few steps back.
“I am not telling tales when I say that this undertemple is extremely hazardous.”
“Possibly,” Eton Sward said.
“Almost certainly,” Bander replied.
He turned back to the rope that hung from the shaft. “Your knife, madam.”
“What?”
“May I borrow it?”
As Talessa Kreed handed her dagger over, Valthar asked, “What are you doing? You’re wasting time, rumpkin!”
“We need the rope,” Bander said simply.
“So you’re going—?”
“I’m going to cut off the part that lies on the ground, so that we may take it with us.”
“I forgot how punctilious you are,” Valthar said.
Bander ignored the barb.
Just then there was a loud clanging sound and a cry sounded from behind them. Bander whipped around to see Fenrue disappear beneath the mud, arms flailing.
Everyone raced over to where the guard had fallen.
“Stop!” Bander yelled. “It’s a pit.”
Valthar said, “The damn fool must have wandered off and triggered a trap.”
“Fenrue?” Talessa Kreed called.
Bander moved closer, spear out. “Keep behind me”
There, a dozen feet from the edge of the area he had checked, was the open maw of a pit. The opening was roughly square, ten feet on a side. Mud and water streamed down into it.
“Fenrue!” Bander called.
No answer.
Bander moved closer until he could peer into the pit.
Below was a grisly sight.
Ten feet down, Fenrue’s lifeless body lay, impaled by a grid of iron spikes as tall as corn stalks. On the sides of the pit, opposite each other, hung two doors, fastened to the edge of the pit by long hinges and swaying slowly.
Bander closed his eyes. Unfortunately he was all too familiar with this type of trap.
“What happened?” Talessa Kreed was at his side. She looked down and saw Fenrue—then stumbled back, gasping in horror.