by William King
‘Flooded?’ Tyrion asked.
Teclis nodded. ‘Seems most likely.’
‘Let’s hope the whole city is not under water then.’
‘It would not be the first slann city to be so.’
‘You do not reassure me, brother.’
‘We still have to find what we came here for,’ said Teclis. ‘We still need to find the sword.’
Tyrion sprang upwards and grabbed a vine. It was wet and slippery, but he was agile even by the standards of elves and he had soon pulled himself up into the lower branches of the trees. From there he used his dagger as a piton and climbed as high as he could go.
He was hoping for a good view of his surroundings, and even through the downpour he managed one. Although these trees were not as tall as some of the millennia old giants of the deep forest, they were still far taller than the mast of an ocean-going ship. What he saw was as awesome as it was disheartening.
They had found Zultec.
The old slann city stretched to the horizon. Less than a league away were a number of ziggurats, partially overgrown but the size of small hills. They had been hidden by the jungle until he climbed above it. He counted at least a score and gave up. He knew that there would most likely be smaller ruins hidden among the wreckage. They had found the city but it might take years to search it for what they sought, assuming it was even there. He scrambled back down the tree and told Teclis what he had seen. His brother smiled. He did not look at all put out by Tyrion’s discovery.
‘Zultec is not all that huge by the standards of slann temple cities,’ he said. ‘This was a mere satellite town of Pahuax according to Beltharius.’
‘If this was a small town, their cities must be gigantic indeed,’ said Tyrion.
‘They are.’
‘What now, brother?’
‘You have shown what brawn and eyes can do here. I will show you the uses magic can be put to.’
‘I would be grateful if you could,’ Tyrion said. ‘I do not fancy spending the rest of my life searching this place for Sunfang. There is a woman in Lothern I am anxious to get back to.’
‘I am not so sure her husband will be that keen,’ said Teclis.
Tyrion shrugged. One of the reasons they had set out on this quest was to let that particular scandal die down. Lady Valeria’s husband was a powerful ally of House Emeraldsea and he doted on her the way she doted on Tyrion. A duel would not have done anyone any good. It would have damaged a powerful faction in politics.
The humans were looking at them again, wondering what they were saying. Tyrion turned to them and said, ‘It is Zultec, no doubt about it. Unless there is another huge slann city we have not heard of hereabouts.’
He turned to Teclis and said in elvish, ‘Sorry, I meant to say small slann village.’
‘I told you we would find it, didn’t I?’ Despite the wet misery of the rain, and the sunken look of their surroundings, Leiber could not keep the triumph from his voice. He sounded like a man who had come close to realising a lifelong dream. Tyrion could not deny the human his moment of triumph.
‘You were right, Leiber,’ he said.
Leiber smiled again, showing his missing teeth and blackened stumps. ‘We are all rich, lads,’ he said. ‘The slann gold is almost ours.’
There was nothing like the prospect of wealth for cheering humans up, Tyrion thought. Even soaked to the skin and swatting at mosquitoes, they looked happy at Leiber’s announcement and ready to run off into the nearest ruins to seek for treasure. Tyrion could not really blame them. For the most part their lives were short and miserable and gold helped humans find comfort in their hovels.
‘The really big pyramids start about half a league away,’ Tyrion told them, to add to the good cheer.
‘What about the monsters that attacked you the last time you were here?’ Teclis asked, always ready to spread a little gloom when things started to get too light-hearted.
Leiber nodded at this. ‘We should move slowly and cautiously and try not to raise any ruckus. Once we find the gold we’ll make a grab for it and do a runner.’
‘You are supposed to help us find what we are looking for. That’s what you are getting paid for,’ said Teclis.
‘That’s what I meant,’ said Leiber. ‘We’re all looking for treasure.’
‘We’re looking for a very specific treasure,’ said Tyrion. ‘And we won’t be leaving until we find it.’
‘Argentes died here. His burning sword will be here still. You’ll find it.’
‘Let us hope so,’ said Tyrion. ‘And let us hope no lizardman has made off with it. That will make finding it a lot harder.’
That did not lighten the mood any either, Tyrion thought. Maybe he was acquiring some of Teclis’s talent for depressing people. The humans looked at him as if he had just announced a plan to start cutting off their noses one at a time.
‘You might never leave if the lizards find you,’ said Leiber. It was a good point.
‘We’ll all do better if we stick together,’ Teclis said.
‘No lie there,’ said Leiber. ‘We could all leave our bones bleaching in this jungle if we are not careful.’
‘Can you remember where Argentes fell?’ Teclis asked. There was an urgency in his voice too now. He was excited by the fact they were close to their goal.
‘It was a lot closer to the centre, I think, in a pyramid much bigger than these ones,’ Leiber said.
‘Then we’d better get moving.’
They made their way through the streets of Zultec, pushing through the undergrowth and hacking their way through the bushes when they became too dense. All of them were nervous now as well as excited. All of them feared that death might spring upon them from the shadows at any time, and all of them held themselves ready to meet that threat. It would be a terrible thing to be slain so close to their goal.
Tyrion studied their surroundings. It would be an excellent setting for an ambush. The jungle and the ruins of ancient buildings provided so much cover. The sound of the rain would drown out any stealthy approach made by aggressors, aided and abetted by the natural noises of the jungle itself – the chattering of the monkeys, the screaming of the birds, the distant roar of the big predatory carnosaurs as they sought prey.
He did not like this place.
It had an atmosphere to it that made him uneasy and there were very few places in this world that had that effect on him. He was an elf; he was used to living in places that had an aura of antiquity. But they had been built by his own people.
This was more ancient than any place in Ulthuan and it had not been built by anything remotely like the elves. Minds, alien almost beyond his comprehension, had conceived the strange geometry of the architecture. He could look at structures created by humans and dwarfs and he could see that they were the product of a sensibility at least close to his own. Such was not the case here.
These buildings have been created by beings that thought in a very different way, according to a very different system. There was a pattern here but he could just not tell what it was. He doubted that he ever would be able to.
It had something to do with numbers. The builders had obviously been obsessed by them. If he counted the number of statues on the sides of each building, as he found himself unconsciously doing, he got the sense that they fitted into some numerical pattern, although he could not tell what that pattern was. He suspected it had something to do with basic mathematical formulae, but he could not tell what that formula was.
Perhaps Teclis could; he had a gift for solving such puzzles. His mind was more flexible. Perhaps he could gain some insight into the minds of the alien creatures who had built this place.
Looking at his brother, he was sure that Teclis was gnawing away at the problem. He had a look on his face that Tyrion recognised; he was confronted with something that he did not und
erstand but he was determined to do so. If anyone could get to the bottom of this mystery, Teclis could. All it would take was time, and, being elves, they had plenty of that.
The humans’ expressions were very revealing too. Leiber resembled a man on the verge of religious conversion. He was very close to achieving some long-held dream. He looked excited and intense. His gaze darted around their surroundings, seeming to take everything in, as if he wanted to memorise every single detail of every single building and every single object that they encountered.
The other men simply looked scared and greedy and torn between those two emotions. They too were excited to be here, but would have preferred to be somewhere else. They were dwarfed by the sheer scale of their surroundings, by these monumental, crumbling ruins emerging from the sticky humid jungle.
If he felt out of place here, Tyrion thought, what must these humans be thinking? Their civilisation was much younger than the elves and they believed the ancient slann to be daemons, in the same way that they believed almost every race but themselves to be daemons or descended from them. They thought that this was a place in which they could lose their souls if they died here. Maybe they were right. Who knew what was possible with the magic of the ancients?
Tyrion was astonished by their bravery. He never usually gave much thought to courage. He never really felt much fear himself, merely some prodding instinct which told him that his survival was in question and that he had better do something about it.
What must it be like to live with an emotion that could leave you paralysed at the moment of maximum danger?
He knew he was unusual even among elves for his inability to feel fear. Teclis certainly knew what it was and his friends back home in Ulthuan did too. He sometimes felt that there must be something missing in him, when he could not share in so common an emotion.
Perhaps it was all part of the curse of being descended from Aenarion. Perhaps this was the legacy that his great ancestor had passed on to him, like the killing rages that sometimes overwhelmed him in the heat of battle. It was said that Aenarion had felt no fear, that he had been willing to risk his life without a second thought on behalf of his people and his friends.
Tyrion pushed that thought to one side; he did not like to compare himself to Aenarion in any way. Too many other people were already doing that.
Everyone told him how much he looked like the great statue of Aenarion in Lothern harbour although he had never been able to see the resemblance himself. And back home in the city of Lothern and in other parts of the kingdoms, there were already those who compared him to the legendary Phoenix King.
That he and Teclis had defeated the Keeper of Secrets N’Kari had made him something of a celebrity among the elves. And certainly their deeds since they had overcome that potent daemon had won them a great deal of fame.
They had travelled to the four corners of the world while still very young, searching for Sunfang and ancient magical knowledge. Tyrion had already taken a distinguished part in several famous battles. He had raided the coasts of Naggaroth and sailed as far as the Citadel of the Dawn. He had been victorious in scores of duels and survived numerous attempts on his life. He was talked about in every corner of Ulthuan and many places beyond wherever elves gathered.
He had already heard himself mentioned as a potential candidate for the next Phoenix King even though Finubar’s reign had only just begun less than two centuries ago. It was a truism of politics that the election of the next Phoenix King began with the coronation of the current one but it was one thing to listen to those platitudes, it was another thing entirely to find yourself the subject of one of them.
He smiled. Perhaps he was deceiving even himself. Perhaps he had believed them all along. Perhaps this was the reason why he was seeking Aenarion’s sword. It would be another link in the chain that connected him with his ancestor in the public mind, and in politics that could be a very important thing indeed.
He admitted it. It was certainly possible that one of the reasons he was here was to advance his political career.
What young male did not dream of becoming Phoenix King?
In most of the cases it was an empty dream but Tyrion knew that this was not so for himself. He had the potential to be a candidate backed by one of the great merchant houses of Lothern. If he acquired sufficient acclaim from his adventures, that would count for a great deal with many others who had some say in the process of selection. After all, had not Finubar himself built his reputation on his deeds in the Old World?
He shook his head; it was funny how these ideas intruded into your mind in the strangest of places. Here he was in the ruins of an ancient city that had been destroyed while Lothern had been a collection of small wooden huts around an empty bay and he was thinking about the consequences of his actions here when he got back home.
He forced himself to concentrate on his surroundings. None of these speculations would matter if he was cut down by some monster’s blade here in Zultec.
They passed on through the shadows of the titanic stone buildings, under the glare of massive stylised heads that looked as if they were modelled on some bizarre combination of human, daemon and toad. They moved along massive causeways which ran through gigantic ponds, in whose murky waters strange and frightening shapes swam.
A shadow fell upon them. Looking up Tyrion saw a monstrous bat-winged flying lizard pass overhead. It screeched once as if in warning and then soared off, rising on the thermals until it was merely a distant point that vanished into the clouds. Tyrion wondered why it had not attacked them. Perhaps it was not hungry. Or perhaps it was spying on them for the benefit of some unseen master.
‘I see an opening here,’ said Teclis, pointing to an entrance that had appeared in the side of a crumbling step pyramid they had just passed. ‘Let us get out of the rain and I will try a divination.’
The humans looked worried, as if he had just announced he was going to summon a daemon. Tyrion hoped there was not going to be any trouble.
Chapter Four
Warm water tumbled down the sides of the ziggurat and poured over the lip of the entranceway. It ran down the back of Tyrion’s neck and beneath his jerkin as he passed through. He cursed inwardly. It was difficult enough to maintain his gear in these tropical conditions, getting it wet was only going to make that harder.
Inside the gloomy chamber it smelled of mould and rotting leaves and ancient dampness. A snake slithered out of the light of Teclis’s illumination spell. Tyrion reached up and touched the ceiling. It was low enough for him to do so easily.
The stone was chill and wet and blotched in places with some sort of fungal growth. This place had been built for a race shorter than humans or elves. He would have suspected dwarfs had something to do with its building if he had not known better. The stonework had some of the monumental quality he associated with the sons of Grungni. Massive blocks had been placed together with great cunning to make this structure.
It was the carvings in the stone that told a different tale. One look at them and anyone could see that this place had not been built by the dwarfs.
Pictograms had been chiselled into each stone block, depicting oddly square-looking humanoid lizards going about their incomprehensible business. They were of all different sizes. Some were obviously rulers, carried around on palanquins by ones who were obviously slaves.
‘Fascinating,’ Teclis said. For once there was no irony in his tone. He was genuinely interested in this alien artwork.
‘I am just glad to be out of the rain,’ Tyrion said. He spoke in the human tongue. Given their unease, he saw no reason for making the humans any more uncomfortable than they already were.
‘Be grateful you are not in the Old World, yer honours,’ said Leiber. ‘It would be cold there as well and you would most likely take fever.’ He paused for a moment and made a face at his own foolishness. ‘Of course you would not. Yo
u are elves. You are immortal.’
‘Not immortal,’ said Teclis. His tone was sour. ‘And some elves suffer from diseases.’
‘I believe you, yer honour, but let’s get on with finding this treasure of yours. None of us is getting any younger.’
Teclis nodded and gestured for the humans to stand back. All of them did so as quickly as they could and all of them wore the worried expressions of humans who knew they were about to be in the presence of sorcery.
Tyrion wondered whether his brother was making a mistake exposing the humans to his magic in this way. They were uneasy enough as it was from the constant expectation of attack. This might push them past the breaking point. He stared hard at Teclis but his brother was already in a world of his own, preparing. He had that inward look that he always wore when getting ready to cast a spell.
Tyrion came to a decision and shepherded the humans out of the chamber and deeper into the pyramid. They looked at him with something between resentment and gratitude and then found their way into another cavernous chamber within the slann structure.
He told them to stay there before returning to where his brother was performing his magic so that he could stand guard. As always, he felt the need to do so. This time in particular, he had a sense of impending danger.
It was just this evil place, he told himself. That was all it was.
Teclis barely noticed that Tyrion had entered the room. His mind had sunk into a trance and he was reaching out with his soul to touch the strange, alien realm from which magic flowed.
He would have liked to have inscribed a pentagram and a mystic circle and all of their associated runes on the floor, but it was too wet and damp for that. And, of course, he had already passed beyond the stage of needing such props in order to work magic. They would have made casting a spell easier but that was all.
He could achieve what was needed simply by uttering the proper incantations and making the correct gestures to bind the winds of magic to his will. Eventually, if he worked at it long enough and practised hard enough, he would be able to work the spell without even needing chants or hand movements.