And that made it special.
“Oh, no, please,” the bandit leader said, his eyes wide. “You can’t! You don’t understand!”
He grabbed at her hand weakly, but Elise yanked the stone out of reach. “No, you’re the one who doesn’t understand.” She tightened her grip once more, staring into his blue eyes as his face began to turn red again. “I don’t care what you have hidden in there. There’s one thing I want in that Temple, and I will do whatever it takes to get it.”
The man shook his head violently as he gasped for air, and the crimson in his cheeks began to fade to purple. Elise considered holding onto him until he passed out—he would raise no alarm until he awakened, and she could be long gone by then. But his attempts to speak rose her curiosity, and so she loosened her grip.
“Not trying… to keep you out.” He swallowed and coughed. “Trying to keep him in.”
“Him who?”
Before he could speak, a loud bell began to ring in the distance. Despite his vulnerable position, the leader’s expression of desperation gave way to a smirk that would have put Ibeyar to shame.
“That’s the alarm,” he rasped. “You’re finished. You won’t leave here alive.”
“Dengar!” a voice shouted from the entry, and Elise looked up to see a man stagger through the door. “It’s the intruders! The big one! He—” The man’s mouth snapped shut as his brain registered the sight before his eyes. He pointed at Elise with a hand that was covered with bandages. Ones that hid a few incomplete fingers. “You! The little one!”
It took Elise just a moment to place the familiar face. He was one of the bandits that had ambushed them on the side of the road. This was the one she’d defeated with a bloody disarm and a swift kick to the knee.
Elise thought he was going to attack her.
Instead, he turned and bolted out of the tent.
Probably to get help.
But maybe just to save the rest of his fingers.
“Set off all the alarms you like,” Elise said, turning her attention back to the bandit leader, Dengar. She raised the block of crystal above her head. “I would bet all of your men against the one of mine any day.”
She brought the keystone down hard on the man’s head, proving the preternatural durability of the material. Dengar went slack immediately, his eyes rolling to the back of his head.
Elise had no time to waste. She pulled the sword from her belt and ran out of the tent.
As much confidence as she had in Ermolt against half-trained bandits, there was still over three dozen of them. He might appreciate her help.
Chapter Fourteen
The bandits seemed as eager to flee as they were to fight.
Ermolt didn’t mind.
It meant the ones who stood against him were scattered into small groups. As their friends fled, they tried to clump together as if to form ranks. It meant that, while the camp outnumbered him by an enormous margin, the pockets of five to ten bandits that tried to swarm forward presented no challenge.
He was glad to have switched to his stone armor. The comforting weight allowed him to scatter all opposition with ease, even allowing him to be sloppy. Their blades skittered across the stone surface just to show the hopelessness of their predicament.
They faced Ragan Ermolt, pride of Celnaer Hold, and the best warrior to live in a century.
If the entire camp had faced him as one, he might have been threatened, but anything less was almost beneath his notice.
He was unmatched, and he didn’t even need the snow to crush them.
Ermolt had charged into the camp as soon as he heard the alarm. It was a loud bell that came from somewhere nearby, so he had assumed Elise was in trouble. But the bandits all seemed as surprised by the alarm as he was. An older woman was yelling orders to those standing around the bell as she rang it. Elise was nowhere to be seen.
He had trouble hearing what the woman was saying. It was hard to make out voices above the sound of the rattle of his armor as he charged into the thick of the bandits.
Likely didn’t help that he had roared at the top of his voice as soon as they turned to look at him.
That had been the best fight the bandits had to offer.
The older woman by the bell had called orders and directed the bandits against him, establishing command and preventing them from breaking ranks to flee as Ermolt smashed their comrades down with every strike. It let him get his hopes up, and his bellowing laugh rung out over the battlefield, likely unnerving the bandits.
He broke through them, leaving a half-dozen bandits battered and broken on the ground before they abandoned the ranks, fleeing despite the shouted orders. The older woman glared down at him when the last bandit fled, still ringing the bell, as if daring him to strike her down.
But she was unarmed and unarmored.
And Ermolt wasn’t lost to the snow.
“Keep ringing your alarm,” Ermolt shouted at her, even though his voice was likely lost to the sound. “Bring me another fight like that, and I’ll consider it a favor.”
But the smaller pockets of bandits that rallied against him as he marched deeper into their camp were not close to that first fight. He was almost disappointed as he left another dozen—nearly a third of the camp’s population—beaten unconscious, or feigning it, in his wake.
There was a group of bandits gathered around a campfire ahead, and one of them had the brilliant idea to grab a length of wood and set fire to it as Ermolt approached. Ermolt actually laughed. As if such a thing could threaten him. His armor had survived dragonfire. A stick burnt to ash was nothing.
He was about to charge when a familiar bundle of dingy white fur leapt at their flank. Elise’s blade deftly disarmed the first bandit she pounced on, and her other hand swept across with a block of stone and smashed into the woman’s face.
Ermolt charged at the other side of the line that formed against him, and the bandits broke before he even got to them. He assumed it had to do with Elise’s arrival, and the hopelessness of their survival.
The ex-Conscript looked as if she wanted to chase some of them down, but relented with a shrug. She turned to Ermolt and held out the block of stone she’d used to knock the one woman out. It seemed unaffected by the bash against a face. “Let’s get to the Temple,” Elise said. “We have time before they regroup, but they know where we’re going since I have this.”
Ermolt thought about it for a moment but he finally shrugged, settling his hammer against his shoulder. “It wasn’t a fight worth remembering, anyway.”
“The farmers south of Khule may remember it,” Elise said with a smile. “They might gather their last harvest of the year unmolested.”
“Ah, a good deed then! I suppose it was worth it.”
“We also got the keystone.” Elise held up the stone once again. “But we need to hurry. We don’t want to give the bandits the chance to catch up before we’re safe inside.”
“You think we’ll be safe?” Ermolt arched an eyebrow. “Guardians and traps, and an unknown but vast font of power?”
“The point is, they won’t follow,” Elise said, brushing off his question. “They were afraid of something there, so they won’t think to come after us as long as we’re inside.”
“What did they fear, other than everything except their own shadows?”
Elise looked down at the stone and turned it over in her hand. She absently smeared a bit of blood off the side with a smirk. “You know, he didn’t say. But we should still be cautious.”
Getting back to the Temple was easy, and they met no further resistance. It was unnerving to return to the emptier parts of the city after venturing into the bustle and noise of the encampment.
The discomfort was made that much worse by Ermolt’s armor, and he winced at the rattle of stones that accompanied every step. A cacophony of uncomfortable tinkling noises was thrown back at them from all sides. When it finally began to sound like distant voices, Elise called for a halt and the pa
ir slipped into an abandoned building for him to change back into his quieter hide, and for Elise to put back on her cuirass.
Putting the stone in the top of the archway was a problem solved with minimal argument. Elise’s protests at being seated on Ermolt’s shoulders evaporated as soon as she heard a shout from the streets behind them. She had to stretch to reach it, but as she pressed the stone into place it almost seemed to leap from her hands, sliding home with a click.
Ermolt lowered Elise to the ground as a crackle of magic filled the air, a gentle white glow sliding down the surface of the door like a receding ocean wave. Before they could touch it, the door swept open smoothly and silently.
The gentle rumble of it sliding across loosen stones reminded Ermolt of mocking laughter. It teased him for his earlier attempts to force it open, and Ermolt found himself hating the door.
But that was silly—doors didn’t mock.
It still bothered him anyway.
Beyond the doors was a place unlike any Ermolt had seen on Neuges. The room they entered had been entirely picked clean by raiders or researchers some time ago, but the inner wall was missing, whether by age or design. At the end of the room was an open space in the form of a giant pit that filled the center of the Temple. Ermolt could see walls across the Temple on the other side, and some of them were cracked and damaged to reveal the rooms beyond. But the pit vanished into darkness below, and stretched upwards towards the roof of the tower.
Distantly, in the murky gloom above, Ermolt thought he could see movement.
“Moving platforms,” Elise said in a voice barely above a whisper when she noticed him squinting above them. “Athala mentioned them. They rotate on mechanisms that… gather energy?” She trailed off, furrowing her brow. After a bare moment, she shrugged as if giving up on remembering. “They exist for a reason, at least. And not just to terrify Conscripts who need to reach the top of the Temple.”
Ermolt had no reason to doubt her, and so he returned to looking around. Nearer at hand, the place was choked in rubble and debris. The Temple had fallen into some serious disrepair, with pieces of the walls cracked away, and blocks having fallen from the ceiling where mortar had been damaged by time, elements, and whomever had plundered the place over the ages. The floor was lined with square tiles, but they were cracked and chipped. Many of them lay crooked, poking up out of the floor, while others had sunk down, creating an uneven surface.
The Temple itself was silent, and unlike the city, the silence was muted.
Almost stifling.
Even in the massive vacant pit, the sounds of their footsteps and voices didn’t bounce back off the walls across the Temple.
There was also no plant life encroaching on the interior of the Temple, and Ermolt realized that the exterior had been void of vines or other plants as well.
Ermolt drew a torch from his pack and used a bit of flint and steel to light it. He leaned out over the pit, looking down.
He saw nothing but more darkness.
With a frown, he drew out a second torch, lit it off the first, and then tossed it into the gloom.
He watched the flickering flame fall for about twenty fen before it reached the bottom. The walls were solid, showing no sign of rooms below them. There was a splash as the torch hit water, but the flame guttered a moment before going out, showing that the bottom of the pit was only covered in a shallow puddle of water, rather than a deep pool.
“A dangerous fall,” Ermolt said as he stared down at the bottom of the pit. He turned his eyes to the rotating platforms above. “And a fatal one from up there.”
“Athala’s notes mentioned that.” Elise stepped up next to him. “Followers of Isadon would face death every day, to keep them familiar with it for some reason.”
“Do you think this pit is where Isadon’s dragon was held? Kept frozen here, or something?”
“I could find out,” Elise said, and Ermolt knew she referenced the book he held. “But I don’t think it’s important right now. We need to find the Favor, not the dragon.” She pointed up at the slowly turning platforms. “And if we don’t have to get to the top, past those platforms, to find it, I’ll eat my boots.”
Ermolt smiled, stopping himself just short of a laugh. “A good a start as any. How do you think we get up there?” He rattled his pack. “I have rope and pitons, if you want to climb.”
The ex-Conscript made a face. “There has to be a safer way up.” She looked over the pit once again and shivered before backing away. “If we can find stairs, I would prefer that.” Elise paused a moment and then chuckled low. “Honestly, if the place was traversed by lift, I’d rather climb the empty shaft than climb out over that pit. It unnerves me.”
Ermolt nodded in agreement. His shadow, thrown by the lit torch, bobbed with him. “Though I would question that it has to be safer than this, if an entire floor exists only to keep the High Priest one misstep away from death.”
“Conscripts would be down here. New recruits. And petitioners, besides. And they would hold sermons somewhere down here on the first floor, right? A God wouldn’t get very far by making every follower run through a gauntlet of traps when they seek counselling, support, or the aid of the Temple in other matters. I’m almost certain there has to be a safe way to get from the first floor to the second. After that we might be in trouble.”
“Which direction do you think it’ll be?” Ermolt asked with a glance around the entry room. It had a door to the left and to the right, on either side of the massive shaft.
Elise looked between the two doors. She stepped up to the left one before she waved Ermolt over so she could use his torch. Next to the door he could see an ancient fresco painted on the wall. What remained of it showed a number of people, though from the cracked paint and missing stones, it was impossible to tell what they were doing, or even how many there were. All that could be discerned is that they were well-dressed.
“This may be the way to the sermon hall,” Elise said. She brushed at the painting as if she could make it clearer. “This might be a depiction of some historical event, but with many people dressed up so nice, it could also be a way to welcome people into the Temple and point them in the right direction.”
“Alright. What does that tell us?” Ermolt examined the scene more closely, trying to imagine what the missing details were. “Should the stairs be this way?”
“Perhaps?” Elise walked to the other door. “But there’s another painting here.”
Ermolt crossed the room and shone his light on the wall. This fresco depicted a pair of figures, and while as much of this painting was gone as the other, the details that remined were telling enough. The larger figure was comforting someone who was crying, and Ermolt assumed their shortness was because they were kneeling.
“The Priests were in this direction,” Elise said in a matter-of-fact tone. “This is the way the petitioners would have gone to seek help. If there’s a faster way up, it’s likely this way.”
Ermolt almost said that she would know best, since she had been a Conscript who had spent most of her life in a Temple. But he realized it would be a sore point before the words left his mouth. Instead he nodded and motioned to the door. “Let’s try it then. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Chapter Fifteen
Elise had been to most of the Temples in Neuges, both during official Conscript business, and during travels for pleasure. She was used to the approaches the clergy took in how things were presented, and so she had a rough idea of what to expect of the Temple of Isadon. Even if it was centuries old and abandoned.
But this place made no sense.
Not even in the context of age and ruin.
Things just seemed… wrong.
The entryway they’d come through had been picked over, sure. But the first room they entered had enough furniture in it to be identifiable as a sitting room. The furniture was broken apart and badly decayed, but she could still pick out what looked like chairs with rotten padding, and
tables with legs that had long since decomposed from under them.
Along the walls hung partial tapestries that were rotten and torn, with fragments having long since fallen to the floor. The wall between them and the giant pit in the center of the Temple was intact, and with the two doors on the opposite sides of the room closed, the room had been sealed from the wet ocean winds.
But other than the dry rot that had claimed cloth and wood alike, the room was undisturbed. There were no footprints in the dust. No stolen artifacts to litter a bandit leader’s opulent tent, or book carried off to a far-away city.
“What is wrong here?” Elise asked aloud as she approached one of the tapestries. Her feet kicked up large chunks of dust as she moved through. The tapestry was browned with age and rot, but she could still pick out the outlines of the top half of the scene it had depicted—a black-scaled dragon that blotted out the sun. “There are scholars and historians who would give every limb on their body for just one of these tapestries. Why has no one recovered them?”
“Perhaps they were scared off?” Ermolt said as he performed his own investigations on the other side of the room. “Or they were looking for a bigger score farther in?”
“The front room was cleaned out, though.” Elise moved on to the next tapestry. The top half of it depicted a face with a severe expression. It was a man with a dark moustache and full lips, though with the tapestry so discolored, she couldn’t determine much in the way of detail about him. She could only assume it was a depiction of Isadon, but with the cloth ripped beneath his chin, she couldn’t say for sure. “Why would they have emptied that one and left this one?”
“Maybe it’s the corpses. Perhaps they had weak stomachs.”
“Corpses?” Elise asked, turning away from the tapestries.
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