by William King
He spoke the words of power and trailed his fingers through the moist air, flexing them in the way he had been taught by the Loremasters at Hoeth. As he did so sparks flared from his fingertips and his hands left trails of light behind them as they moved.
With those trails of light he sketched out the pentagram and the circle so that they shimmered around him. The mystical structure he had created sculpted the winds of magic around him, adding new layers to the spell, channelling the potent ambient energy. He shaped it with his hands and his voice like a potter shaping clay backing in Lothern. He built something that was like the eye of a daemon.
Once his tool was formed he closed his eyes. He could still see although he now saw from the point of view of the magical eye that he had created and he looked out upon a different world. It was no longer a place of light and darkness illuminated by the blaze of the Sun or the cold glimmer of the Moon. It was not a place where walls blocked vision. It was a place where he saw the patterns of magic, the souls of living things and the flows of magic itself. Stone did not block his sight but other things did – the remains of ancient spells of protection and warding, the static snowflakes created by the winds of magic themselves.
Looking around him he saw the golden glow of Tyrion’s spirit. A little way beyond that he saw the flickering greed and hunger of the humans. All around him small pulses of light represented lizards and birds and stalking jaguars in search of prey.
Somewhere far off in the distance he felt the gigantic, terrifying presence of a monstrous alien intelligence, a thing half-asleep but still vaguely aware of what was going on around it. This would be one of the great slann lords of Hexoatl, slothfully vigilant, watching over its ancient ancestral lands even as it dreamed. He knew he had best do nothing to attract its attention and rouse it to full wakefulness. There was a power in the thing that was close to that of a god.
With an effort of will, he moved his magical eye and his point of view shifted, passing through walls as if they were not there and rising into the sky above the city. He could not move the eye too far from where he was without breaking the connection and ending the spell that he hoped would have leeway enough to get what he needed done. He raised the eye as far into the air as he could and looked down upon the city like a bird would have if it could see the flows of magic.
The city itself channelled magic in the same way as the spell he had created. He saw pulsing lines of light laid out beneath him. He was not sure what the purpose of this vast magical structure had been but he could see that, though it had been intended to fulfil some function, it was no longer capable of doing so.
Parts were dead. The pattern was incomplete. Something had gone wrong. He guessed that the whole city was like one huge rune and parts of that rune had been defaced by the destruction of buildings and the way the city had become overgrown by the jungle.
Whatever it had once been intended to do, the city was no longer capable of it. All that functioned now were the remnants of that vast spell. It still trapped power in pools and he dreaded to think what the effect of that could be. Perhaps it was what was responsible for the riot of growth here. Perhaps it had changed and altered the living things around it, making them angry mutants.
Fascinating as it all was, it was not part of his purpose here to study the magic of the Old Ones. He was looking for a specific object, one not made by the builders of the city but by an elf. It would have a very different magical signature that would stand out against this background like a gem on black velvet.
He made his point of view circle until he saw something that made him hopeful, a glittering pattern of light somewhere in the distance. He moved his magical eye as far in that direction as the tether of the spell would allow.
His heart began to race. He was looking at something that definitely had an aura. It could be only one thing. All they had to do was march in that direction until they found it and one of the greatest works of one of the greatest mages in history would be within their reach.
It was then that he noticed that they were not alone in the city, that other sentient beings were present and that those beings bore no resemblance to either elf or human, but were something monstrous, alien and savage. The servants of the slann were out there, and they were most likely looking for him and his brother.
And there was something else that worried him. All around the place where the elven magic flared there was the glow of other, darker, more sinister sorcery. One of the pools where the magic channelled by the city had collected, had curdled and congealed into something inexpressibly loathsome that made him want to shudder.
He summoned the spell back to him, and opened his eyes. Tyrion raised an eyebrow.
‘I know where we must go,’ said Teclis. ‘Although there may be some slann in our way. And worse – Dark Magic too.’
‘Oh good,’ said Tyrion. ‘We wouldn’t want things to be too easy now, would we?’
Ahead of them, a monstrous ziggurat erupted out of the jungle. It was the largest they had so far seen and it was in somewhat better condition than the rest. It loomed over them like a mountain: gigantic, eternal, indestructible.
The rain had stopped, but water still dripped from the leaves as they pushed them aside. The moisture ran down the face of the humans like tears. Tyrion was soaked with rain as well as with sweat.
‘This is the place. I remember it,’ said Leiber. ‘This is where Argentes vanished and where we were attacked as we waited for him.’
For once Teclis did not mock him. The other humans looked reluctant to continue. There was something about the sheer scale of the place that intimidated them. Leiber sounded angry when he spoke, as much with himself as with them. ‘We’ve not got all day. There’s treasure in there. Don’t you want it?’
Up ahead, Tyrion could see that there had been hundreds of statues on every step of the ziggurat. Most of them were toppled over although he was not sure what had done it. It might have been an earthquake or a war or something else entirely, some magical disaster perhaps.
The main bulk of the structure was completely intact and that was hardly surprising. It was built of blocks of stone, each of which must have weighed tens of tons. The creation of this pyramid must have involved magic or the labour of tens of thousands of slaves.
He tried to imagine putting together this gigantic building in the sweltering heat of the tropical jungle. He tried to imagine it being built by the savage lizardmen who had attacked them earlier. It was difficult to believe that such creatures could have been capable of architecture on such a scale but he knew that such thoughts were deceptive. Once the slann had been the greatest of races, the master magicians of the world, the mightiest scholars, the chosen servants of the Old Ones, or so the most ancient legends claimed.
Look at them now, he thought – degenerate troglodytes barely capable of making stone tools. And yet this same people had once been masters of the world. It was alarming to consider that something similar might happen to his own people one day. Perhaps it had already started, this process of degeneration.
He thought about Lothern, with its empty palaces and its streets deserted by night. It was not so hard to imagine that one day it too would be overgrown and tumbled down, and that strangers might wander through the ruins overcome by a sense of melancholy and loss.
Perhaps one day, all that would be left would be the humans and their enemies, the beastmen of Chaos. Perhaps they would fight wars over the crumbled ruins of metropolises built by people who were by far their superiors. Perhaps all of this was merely a foretaste of the way the world would end.
They began to make their way up a massive staircase in the side of the ziggurat. There were both steps and ramps and it was easier to walk on the ramps because the steps had been placed at distances that were awkward for the human or elf stride.
Eventually they came to a massive arched opening and Teclis stopped, considering. A
fter a moment he nodded and pointed through the archway.
‘We go down here,’ he said. All of them paused. The humans were plainly reluctant to go down into the darkness within the pyramid and Tyrion could not exactly blame them for that.
A strange smell of rot and decay, stronger even than that which brooded over the jungle, emerged from the entrance like the stinking breath of some undead giant. It felt like entering the mouth of a huge monster, a thing that might devour them. The ziggurat had an unearthly, evil, inhuman presence. It seemed to be waiting like some gigantic beast of prey.
‘We have no light,’ one of the men said. It should have sounded pathetic but it did not. They were all afraid and none of them wanted to admit it. They were close to their goal and Tyrion sensed that this in part was what caused their reluctance to proceed. They were as afraid of what they might find as they were of any guardians. They were afraid that they might be disappointed and that their golden dreams might turn out empty. It would be a brutal blow after all the hardships of getting here.
Teclis gestured. A ball of light sprang into being around his clenched hand. He flexed his fingers and the ball of light drifted away, floating around like a will-o’-the-wisp, illuminating the shadowy interior with a dim yet adequate light. He repeated the process until each of them had his own personal floating lantern. This display of magic made the humans even more uneasy. Tyrion could not see what else there was to be done under the circumstances though. It would take some time to collect the right sort of wood to make torches and it would be so wet that getting them lit would involve magic anyway.
‘Ready?’ Teclis asked.
‘I am, brother,’ said Tyrion. The humans nodded reluctantly but still did not move. They needed someone to give them a lead and it looked like he was elected for that duty. He shrugged and moved through the archway.
‘These lights are going to make a stealthy approach impossible,’ he said with a smile, hoping to lighten the situation.
‘I think anything down there would know that we were here anyway. They could probably smell us. It is said that some of the skinks can track like dogs. They use their tongues instead of their noses but the results are the same,’ said Teclis.
‘One of the joys of travelling with you, brother,’ said Tyrion, ‘is that you’re always so full of interesting facts.’
That got a feeble laugh from the humans and warily the party entered the pyramid and descended downwards into the darkness.
The ceilings in the corridors were so low that in some places Tyrion had to stoop. They were wider than he would have expected but lower. He suspected that it had something to do with the way that the lizardmen walked. They kept their heads much lower, even if their bodies would have been longer than those of a human or an elf lying stretched out on the ground.
‘Which way?’ Tyrion asked.
‘Follow me,’ said Teclis. Tyrion would have preferred to take the lead, but this seemed like a wise time to defer to his brother and his magic. He prepared himself to spring forward at the first sign of danger.
He sensed it would not be long before it showed itself.
Chapter Five
‘We need to be careful here,’ said Teclis in Reikspiel. ‘This ziggurat was the central temple of Zultec. This means that we are moving into the heart of the most sacred area in the city.’
‘Why is that important?’ Leiber asked.
‘Because they did not want infidels to come here into the most holy shrines. Before this city was abandoned I believe the slann laid spells here to prevent that from happening and there may well be physical traps too. And there is something else present, something I don’t like at all.’
Tyrion could see that, if anything, the morale of the humans had dropped still lower. They had thought they merely had to fight the degenerate remains of an elder race. Now they were being told that they would have to face dangerous magic and deadly traps too.
‘What are we talking about here?’ Tyrion asked. He switched language to keep the humans from understanding the nature of the discussion that he was having with his brother. ‘Daemons? Fireballs? Strange runes that summon deadly clouds of poison?’
‘It could be any of those,’ Teclis said. ‘There’s something odd here. I think this whole city was built to be a sort of giant collector of magic and that this temple was its focal point.’
‘And?’
‘And I think something has tainted the power, made it corrupt. It may be why this place was abandoned.’
‘I still don’t see what kind of threat that might imply,’ said Tyrion.
‘Where magic flows strangely and is tainted by Chaos, there is the chance of all sorts of strange manifestations. Think of what happens in the Annulii, of all the monsters and mutations that emerge from those glittering mountains.’
‘You are saying we might encounter something like that?’
‘I am saying we might encounter things that are much worse.’
The humans were becoming restless because the two elves were spending so much time talking in their own tongue. They looked suspicious.
Teclis switched back to their language. ‘I want you to all move very slowly and pay very close attention to what I say. If there is any inimical magic here I will see it and I will tell you what to do. I don’t want anybody running ahead and setting off any traps. Is that clear?’
Tyrion did not think there was much chance of that. He was fairly sure that his brother’s words were aimed at him. Teclis did not want him heroically striding into hidden dangers.
That was fine with him. He knew that his brother’s magesight was much better than his own and that Teclis was far more likely to discover any subtle spells in operation in the area.
‘Shall we go?’ Tyrion asked. ‘I am keen to see Sunfang.’
‘Just make sure your enthusiasm is not the death of you,’ Teclis said. ‘I only have one brother and I am not keen to lose him.’
‘I am not any keener to be lost,’ said Tyrion. ‘Let’s go.’
The inside of the ziggurat was a huge maze, clearly designed, or so Tyrion thought, to confuse any intruder. Teclis did not seem troubled by the way the corridors fitted together though. He clearly saw a pattern to it and Tyrion asked what that was.
‘It was built according to slann geomantic principles,’ Teclis said. ‘Most of the central chambers of slann temple cities are laid out according to the same pattern. I’ve seen the maps in the library at the great Tower of Hoeth.’
‘So you’re following the layout of a map that you can remember seeing once upon a time. You don’t actually know whether this city is laid out according to the same principles?’ Tyrion was speaking in elvish again. Just the fact that he was doing so was a cue to make the humans uneasy, but he could not help it. He thought they would be even more disturbed if they knew what he was actually talking about.
‘I have not gone wrong yet, have I?’
‘There is a first time for everything, brother.’
‘I’m sure it will give you some satisfaction when it happens.’ There was a brittle nervous edge to his brother’s words that told Tyrion that his twin was not quite as confident as he liked to appear.
‘It would give me no satisfaction whatsoever for you to be wrong. I very dearly want to find that sword. And I would like to have it soon.’
‘Don’t worry, we are very close indeed. I sense a powerful aura of magic just ahead of us. Be ready! If there are going to be any traps, they will be here.’
The corridor ended in a massive stone wall. It was etched with the strange pictoglyphs of the slann and even Tyrion could sense the magic in it. It was too heavy to be lifted by mere strength and too thick to be broken through even with a battering ram. It looked like they had come to a dead end.
‘Whatever it is, it’s beyond this wall,’ Teclis said.
‘I knew you were
going to say that,’ Tyrion said.
‘You seem to be developing a gift for prophecy. Perhaps you would care to use your powers of divination to reveal how we are going to get through this. No? Then pray have the good grace to remain silent while I work out a way of doing so.’
Teclis paused in front of the wall. The mass of the thing, the sheer thickness of it, did not trouble him. What bothered him was the magic woven into it. Powerful spells converged here. Magic flowed all around him. It had a strange taint to it. Some kind of energy that he did not fully understand was part of it, along with the unmistakable spiritual taint of Chaos.
Something was being done to the winds of magic here. Some alien element was being added. He was not sure to what purpose but he was certain that it was happening.
He concentrated on seeing the whole thing with his magesight. His vision of what most elves would call reality receded. Now he was looking at the world painted in the bright, vivid colours of the winds of magic. He could see currents of power pulsing through the walls and knotting together like nests of writhing snakes. It seemed clear to him that one purpose of the spells here was to control this great doorway, for that was what the wall was. It was a doorway blocking the entrance to whatever chamber held Sunfang.
Argentes had somehow managed to penetrate into the heart of this pyramid. He had got past this barrier. Teclis doubted that he had done it by magic although he could not be sure. None of the information they had collected pointed to Argentes’s party having a mage with them, but that did not mean it was not so. Leiber did not know everything and there were many reasons why a mage might have kept his gift to himself among humans, not the least being a wish to avoid a knife in the back.
He was speculating too much. There was most likely a much more simple explanation. Perhaps the sword bearer had entered the secret chamber by a different route and if they circled round this maze they would find a different method of entry. Or perhaps there was some secret passage through the walls that the sword bearer had known about but they did not. It was said that the temple cities of the slann were riddled with such things. Or maybe the doorway had closed as part of an elaborate trap.