He walked back out into the market square, catching some angry glances from a few stall keepers who, upon recognising his beaten features, rose nervously to their feet as he approached. One stall stood starkly empty, the remains of a few broken pots the only sign of the merchant whose brother had taken umbrage to Kerian’s earlier actions and then lost a digit as a result. He turned to the candle maker’s stall alongside the vacant space and plastered a fake smile across his face.
“Excuse me.” He began. “I don’t suppose you know where this man has gone.” The candle maker appeared flustered at Kerian’s question as if expecting another reaction, his hand openly reaching for a worn club to defend his belongings from a man who had earlier crashed through so many of his fellow merchant’s livelihoods.
“Look,” he replied nervously. “I never saw anything and I don’t want any trouble.” Something about the way the man acted raised suspicions in Kerian’s mind. He moved forwards, making the trader take a cautious step back, despite the fact his whole stall remained between Kerian and himself.
“Well maybe you can help me.” Kerian replied, dropping his arms down by his side and trying his best not to look threatening. “I appear to have lost something precious to me and I wonder if I could have dropped it during this afternoon’s fracas.” The stallholder flushed, his eyes looking away, confirming a guilty conscience.
“What do you know?” Kerian asked, his tone now turning decidedly chilly as he moved closer.
“I don’t know anything.” The hawker replied quickly. Too quickly for Kerian’s liking.
“Where has the man and his brother gone?” Kerian pushed.
“Is everything alright over there, Turner?” shouted another vendor. “Do you need me to come over?” Kerian glared at the candle maker, then realised his blunt approach would not work in this case. He needed to change tact or he was going to end up back in the jail cell again.
“Look I just wanted to apologise to the two of them for the damage I caused and the misunderstanding. I mean you no harm.” He paused, looking down at the floor. “I also really need to find the object I have mislaid.” Footsteps approached from behind and Kerian looked over his shoulder to see several stallholders approaching, displaying a solidarity in the close-knit community of marketers that Kerian had not perceived would exist.
“Is this man bothering you Turner?” asked one.
“Look,” Kerian turned. “I’m not here to cause trouble. I just need to find the two men that worked this stall and apologise to them for earlier. I mean no harm. I don’t suppose any of you have found anything this afternoon. I appear to have lost…”
“There is nothing for you here.” One trader stated, holding a large fish and trying to appear menacing. “I think you should leave before we call the watch.”
“Okay.” Kerian conceded, reluctantly stepping away. “I’m sorry, I’ll just be on my way.” He stepped away from the small group that had gathered, arms down by his sides, his mind racing. The candle maker knew something but as the stall holders seemed very loyal to each other. He was not sure what to do about it.
He wandered absentmindedly down one side of the market then turned and started back up the opposite side, his mind trying to conceive a plan for obtaining the information he needed. Clearly the trader and his brother had found something and had shut up shop and fled before Kerian had returned. However, the question remained, where had they fled to? He found himself standing at a random stall, perfume hanging heavy on the night air.
Kerian looked down at the tiny bottles of liquid laid out across the stall, all brightly coloured vials that shined and glinted in the lantern light. His eyes did not readily focus on the display itself but the miasma of different smells held unexpected consequences. Scent is a powerful trigger of memory and Kerian found his mind reminiscing with the association of the scents and the people and places of his past. Colette’s smile filled his imagination, making his feelings of isolation more intense and a chill gloom to settle about him.
“For someone special?” came a voice at his side. “Is it vanilla you wish to woo the ladies with, or sandalwood to tantalise their senses? Maybe, lavender for restful sleep, you do look a little perky. Do you have anything particular in mind?” Kerian looked up to see a young woman standing beside him. She smiled sweetly, head tilted ever so slightly to one side, hair flowing like black ink, framing skin that appeared slightly luminous in the lights from the stall. Hoop earrings, eyes of smoky grey and intense ruby lips completed an image Kerian found difficult to turn away from.
“I’m sorry…” Kerian found himself taken aback at the unexpected attention, suppressing a shiver as the night air inexplicably turned cold. “Are you talking to me? Do you work here?”
“No. I am far away from here.” came the mysterious reply. “Maybe Patchouli to relieve shyness?” Kerian could not help but find himself smiling in response, the attention from such a beautiful woman undeniably flattering to his aged form. He had forgotten what it was like to feel someone was interested in him. He found his smile widening, then realised that by doing so he was encouraging this exotic woman to continue.
“Definitely not needing Bergamot for depression then,” she went on, reaching over to lift a bottle from the stall with a jangle of the bangles on her slim tanned arm. “Oh, no, I think not. This is for you, Causticum, Ignatia, a hint of seduction and a stolen kiss at midnight.”
“What would that potion cure?” Kerian enquired, his eyebrow raised. “And who supplies the kiss?”
“Why, recovering from lost love.” The woman replied mysteriously. “As for the kiss…” she licked her lip with a moist tip of her tongue. “…we will just have to wait and see.”
“Can I help you?” asked the stallholder, shattering the moment the two were sharing.
“What? Oh…” Kerian stole a quick look at the young lady who appeared to be running the stall, then down at the small bottle he held in his hand. “Umm I’m not sure.” He turned to address the mysterious woman who had been so entertaining, only to find she had moved away and was looking back at him over her shoulder with an enigmatic smile.
“Can I come back to you on this.” He replied, placing the small vial carefully down on the stall. He turned to follow the alluring stranger, taking in the detail of her knee length plain white dress, how she wore it seductively off one shoulder, the way the bangles on her wrists sparkled in the light, the sway of her hips and the way she carried her slender frame.
This felt so wrong, looking at this woman in this way, especially with how Kerian felt about Colette but something about this woman and the chills she sent down his spine intoxicated him. He needed to know more, who knew, maybe she had the information he so desperately required? He licked his lips nervously and closed the distance eager to explore his irrational feelings further.
The object of his fascination ducked into a stall selling lengths of silks, exotic scarves and headwear. Kerian shook his head in wonder at his own naive actions and followed into the stall, only to find there was no one there but an elderly female trader, who took one look at the bruised and battered customer before turning away, suddenly intent on folding a length of silk already adequately folded.
“Excuse me.” Kerian blustered. “But where is the young woman who just stepped in here?”
“As you can plainly see sir, there is no one else here but you and I.” Replied the woman. Something about her answer made Kerian realise she was telling the truth. This made no sense. Where had his mysterious siren gone?
He stepped back out onto the main walkway and looked left and right, taking in the shadowy figures moving about their business but there was no sign of the young lady he had been admiring. This whole situation was bizarre. He smiled again, wondering if he had hallucinated the whole thing and whether the guards had been overzealous when they had hit him on the head. A rare chuckle escaped his lips. For just one fleeting moment, he had to admit to himself that the air of mys
tery had been fun!
“Do you feel alive now?” came a husky voice in his ear.
Kerian spun about, finding no sign of the mysterious woman. Customers stopped and looked at his bizarre behaviour and then stepped lightly aside. Another chill racked Kerian’s form and he pulled his ruined tunic up around his neck, deciding for himself that there was nothing more he could do in the market tonight. The traders were all busy packing away and he knew his questions would only be treated with hostility and suspicion. He needed to find other sources for information. Maybe, the stallholders would seek shelter and a meal tonight rather than be on the road and risk attacks by bandits or wild animals in the darkness.
He realised it was time to go back to the Lusty Mermaid, have a stiff drink, something to eat and a long cold bath.
* * * * * *
The blistering air appeared to bow, then impossibly flex, akin to someone having dropped a pebble in water. Mystical energy crackled and sparked, threatening to ignite the volatile gases permeating the air within the crater of the volcano. An elliptical opening formed, sucking in the heat and surrounding air, as Justina stepped through the opening and out into the fiery abyss.
The sorceress staggered back as a wave of intense heat struck with the force of a blast furnace. Blue sparks rained down around her as the invisible protective field shielding her from the firestorm struggled to compensate for the sudden inferno she had walked into. Justina had known that there would be heat, expected it even, this was inside a volcano after all. However, planning for the impossible, then experiencing it first hand, were two entirely different things.
A small gem crumbled to dust between her fingers, adding more power to the shielding and reducing the blue sparks to only one or two every few seconds. The discharges now due to raining ash and soot colliding with the shield’s surface rather than battling the holocaust. Justina took a faltering step forwards on the uneven surface, checked herself and her small travelling companion, then took a brief moment to look around and take in her surroundings.
She stood upon the steps of a once substantial temple, the entire structure now ruined, eroded by age and constant exposure to the elements. The whole building had settled on the left side, the foundations dipping to kiss a molten lava river bubbling and swirling below, giving the complete edifice a lopsided look. The stonework appeared ancient, the three long steps at her feet worn smooth from the passing of feet over the millennia.
A line of weathered pillars stretched for the heavens, supporting a roof that had terminal cracks throughout the masonry, caused by the temple’s subsidence. The facia running beneath its skyline contained giant holes where murals had crumbled away. The whole building held a haunted and unnatural feel about it, as if something terrible lurked inside. Intense chattering rose from the creature perched on Justina’s shoulder, forcing the sorceress to look across at her shrivelled skeletal demonic familiar and identify the nature of the problem.
“Hamnet what is it? I need you to quieten down. I am trying to think here!” She snapped before realising that her shrill companion was gesturing behind them.
Justina froze; readying a spell to hurl at whatever unseen threat awaited her, before she slowly turned to take in the sight of an incredible twisting and turning pathway of ruined steps leading up from the temple steps to a platform high above. The huge slabs of suspended stone hung lop-sided, some steps were missing entirely, creating a pathway now impossible to ascend.
The sorceress soon deduced that whatever magical enchantment had once held these gargantuan steps hovering steady in the air, now showed clear signs of failure, similar to the subsiding temple. However, it was not the stairs that were the cause of her demonic familiar’s alarm but rather what rested on the bottom few slabs of smoking stone.
The crystalline skull of an immense dragon rested heavily on the step adjacent to the temple stairs. The teeth of the creature gleamed in the hellish light, reflecting back hints of russet and gold from the river of lava hissing and bubbling below. The sorceress tried to remain calm, taking in the sight of razor-sharp incisors, longer than she was tall, with only the slightest tremor to her slim frame.
What could possibly have brought down such a dragon? Justina looked to either side of the skull, trying to see the rest of the crystalline corpse and identify a cause of death but several of the next steps had succumbed to the loss of their enchantment and dropped away, taking most of the dragon’s corpse with them into the bubbling lava. A partial back claw and a long sparkling tail glinted from steps far above her reach. Justina suddenly realised how thankful she was for her magical prowess and ability to teleport. No one could ever climb up from this temple, especially with these steps being so unstable and at risk of the forces of gravity. Anyone left down here would find themselves trapped and increasingly desperate.
The sorceress turned away, spinning in a swirl of cloak as she realised the meaning behind the images seen in the scrying bowl. Someone was trapped down here in the temple! Someone was actually inside there… waiting for her!
A patchy mosaic pathway snaked through the pillars into the temple’s inner sanctum. Here and there, a glint of tantalising gold shone through, promising that riches beyond imagination lay within once the pathway reached its logical end.
“Stay alert!” Justina whispered to her eerie companion. Hamnet turned from the immense dragon skull towards the inner temple, her empty eye sockets appearing to see despite the fact her eyes had long decayed. She wrapped her skeletal tail around Justina’s bicep and chattered in her demonic language, advising her mistress that she was indeed staying alert.
Justina moved cautiously along the crumbling path, nerves stretched taut as she stepped into the darkness. Friezes on the wall displayed scenes of idyllic life, farming, teaching, hunting and offering thanks to a king and queen of times long past but the sorceress had no time for such trivialities and quickly swept through the area, her long black robes whispering across the floor in her wake. Hamnet started chattering excitedly when they reached the end of the corridor and entered a semi-molten golden landscape. The treasure hoard beyond occupied an area measuring easily one hundred feet by eighty feet, with piles of plunder and offerings obscuring her field of view, making it impossible to see across to the far side of the building.
Coins from different realms lay scattered across the floor, piles of discarded currency now becoming soft and malleable in the intense heat from the volcano. Some coins had melted completely, forming shapeless mounds of molten gold, copper or silver, looking for all the world like huge melting candles, complete with slow moving blisters of slag impurities that bubbled and popped in pools dotted across the surface.
There was more wealth here than the sorceress had ever seen! This coin could finance her position for decades to come! Her eyes could not believe the depth of wealth she saw around her and it was all melting away! The very air of this temple reeked of old magic. Clearly, sometime in the past, powerful spells had been employed to protect the treasure. As in all things, when the magician died, their magic had faded with them.
A statue of horse and rider, half submerged in the puddled remains of a trove of silver coin looked for all the world as if the rider were trying to ford a priceless mirrored river slowly flowing across the floor. Ornate vases lay cracked in the heat, their contents spilled out onto the sloping floor. Gold leaf peeled away from a series of decorated wooden benches, the exposed wood charring in the high temperature as the thin metal covering dripped to the floor and smoke spiralled upwards through the hole in the temple ceiling above. Goblets lay forgotten on their sides as if revellers had just left the scene after drinking their fill and suits of warped and buckled armour lay on the ground as if ancient warriors had decided to take them off due to the heat from the roaring inferno.
Helmets, greaves and shields bearing insignia of armies from lands that had ceased to exist long before Justina’s time lay forgotten and forlorn. Empty gilt picture frames marked heavi
ly with soot jutted from piles of coin, the canvas of their absent masterpieces long since burnt away. Slow trickles of molten currency tracked across the floor and dripped over the edge of an open pit cut into the centre of the floor. Lava lapped hungrily at the edge of the pit, threatening to spill out across the horde and making the brickwork smoke as it seared the material away.
It took a while for the sorceress to realise that Hamnet was pulling frantically at her sleeve, as everywhere she looked there was something else to fascinate her roving eye. She looked at the mummified remains of the demon just as its skeletal hand scored the exposed flesh of her breast.
“What is it?” She snapped, knocking the creature’s hand away and drawing two thin lines of blood across her bosom. Her demonic familiar chattered manically, gesturing to the far corner of the temple, the highest point in the slowly sinking structure and the side furthest from the conflagration.
“I know he’s over there.” She replied ominously. “He’s been watching us ever since we walked in here…” Justina paused as a thought suddenly occurred to her and then looked more closely at the piles of molten gold. Everywhere she looked there were coins and metallic treasures but no gemstones. Not a single jewel anywhere. There had to have been jewels in this trove this treasure was simply too vast not to have… Justina paused as her eyes located the remains of a shattered gemstone.
“And he’s been using magic…” she stated to herself. “I did not know Mathius could use magic.” Justina paused, thinking back to the past and the man she believed to be hiding in the shadows. Mathius had been an elite assassin for the church she now ruled. Her predecessor Pelune, had used the Raven to kill targeted members of Catterick’s high society, removing obstacles from his rise to power.
Justina recalled how she had transported the Raven aboard the El Defensor under Pelune’s instructions; to retrieve a magical religious artefact; a golden serpent dagger that granted unholy powers to the one who used it, drawing life energy from the victims of its bite and restoring the vitality of the one who wielded the evil weapon. To hide his appearance from the crew, the sorceress had fashioned a headband rendering the Raven invisible, whilst at the same time allowing the sorceress to see everything the assassin observed.
The Labyris Knight Page 10