by P D Ceanneir
‘I know what you mean,’ said Debbdil, ‘she has an ageless quality about her.’ The Wyvern snuggled closer to Tia and put her hands in-between her own knees to warm them.
‘Are you cold?’ Tia asked. Debbdil nodded and felt the other girl put her arms around her.
‘Was my hug not good enough then?’ said Havoc with a faint look of hurt on his face.
‘It was fine, my Lord, but Tia is just as warm. Anyway, I think that men need no excuse to put their arms around a woman, even one as innocent as I,’ she fluttered her eyelashes at him and he chuckled.
‘I am much warmer without my armour on,’ he said innocently. Debbdil blushed and waved a hand in front of her face.
‘My Lord, you have me all aflutter,’ she said. This time it was Tia’s turn to laugh.
‘I think not, little minx! With or without his armour on, I believe the Prince cuts a fine figure and you and the other Wyvern Filial have often said as much.’
Havoc looked at them with amusement. Debbdil blushed and Tia giggled as she caught his eye.
‘I see that I’m going to have to have my wits about me when the Wyvern walks by,’ he said with a grin.
They pressed on, climbed some more stairs and resting every fifteen minutes until they found natural light stream through a wide crack in the rock face above their heads.
‘Daylight,’ said Vul’yoi and Havoc marvelled at how the word meant the same in either of their languages, yet they still could not understand one another. The small girl squeezed through the gap and the rest followed.
They entered into a cave with a bountiful lush garden of some sort. Daylight streamed down from large holes in the cave roof that must have been ancient sinkholes; there were dozens of them pitting the high roof. Plant life reached up to the beams of light, most were trees that produced fruits and Vul’yoi picked some to give to them.
‘Oh, that is beautiful,’ said Tia as she bit into a large pear shaped fruit that was a red as an apple, ‘you must try this, my Lord.’ He did, and as she said, it was beautiful, sweet, and juicy. He never realised how hungry he actually was until he started on the second one.
The garden stretched for some distance into a narrow valley and they walked over a natural dirt path consisting of old dried leaved trodden into the damp sand by many feet for many years. Every plant here bore fruit, Havoc was no gardener, but he learnt enough from his mother to see that every bush and tree carefully planted in neat ordered rows, giving enough room for neighbouring plants around them to grow.
‘Do you think she planted all of this herself?’ asked Tia.
‘This amount of work and tending will require plenty of people to look after it,’ said Havoc. ‘Maybe she is part of a tribe, but where are they?’
As they walked, Havoc noticed that the area of fruit grove they now walked through had been part of a collapse that must have happened many years ago. Sand and rock, along with other minerals and bricks from the citadel’s buildings, must have fallen in from the surface and filled up one end of the cavern. Over the eons the desert rains must have flattened it out and washed new nutrients down to this subterranean level. Vul’yoi and her people found it useful to grow their produce because of it.
It seems, mused the Blacksword, that the old Assassi Oasis is not quite dead.
After a time, they passed through branches heavy with fruit as they followed the path. Most of the fruit was ripe and rotten on the ground, too much food, and not enough people to eat it.
Vul’yoi stopped at the top of a steep slope that formed the edge of the collapse. It led down to an open area devoid of plant life, but instead scarred with water channels for irrigation. The cave roof opened into a crater mouth letting in more sunlight that sparkled off the water, turning it into a deep blue. In the centre of the channels was a raised flagstone path that followed the edge of the cave walls.
‘Wow, this is amazing!’ said Debbdil, ‘it looks old.’ Havoc had to agree, everything about the irrigation channels spoke of knowledge of engineering that he thought Vul’yoi and her people, if there were any, could not have made. The walls of the channels raised high above the current water level, although most of them had collapsed from disrepair; some of it obviously used to water the fruit grove.
‘Who made this, Vul’yoi?’ he said to her as he pointed to the channels. She looked at him without understanding then waved them onward as she took them further along the pathway. They followed it until it bent at right angles to the channels and then Vul’yoi stopped to point off into the distance.
They all gasped at what they saw. At the far end of the cave, bathed in sunlight, stood a black five-tiered pyramid, square at the bottom and tapered to a point at the top, it was so tall that its tip just poked out of the opening of the sinkhole crater above it. Water surrounded the pyramid. This obviously fed the channels and the path they were on was the only way to the structure.
‘By the gods!’ said Havoc as he looked at the smooth walls of the pyramid. It’s five separate levels diminished in size until it reached the point at the top and was made entirely of black granite.
‘Who made this pyramid?’ Havoc asked the girl.
Vul’yoi shook her head, pointed at Tia and Debbdil and then herself, and said “Vul’yoi...daylight” in turn. Then she pointed at Havoc.
‘Korzac neivich,’ she said with a sad look on her face.
Tia and Debbdil looked confusedly at Havoc. However, the Prince nodded at her.
‘I think she is explaining to us that the Korzac creatures come out at night,’ he said looking up at the sunlight streaming in through the nearest sinkhole and judging that half of the day had gone.
‘Why did she call you a Korzac then?’ said Tia.
‘Probably because the creatures are male,’ he shrugged.
‘The leader of the nomads called them Brethac...’ but before Tia could finish the sentence, Vul’yoi became very animated and pointed towards the pyramid.
‘Brethac!’ she said, ‘Brethac Ziggurat.’
Powyss’s arms were screaming in complaint. He had been pulling on the chain pulley for half an hour now and this only got them half way up the lift shaft. The little chain links were all rusty and that made the going harder, although the weight of the eight of them inside the lift was not helping either, there was not much room to move his arms.
The girls and Lord Ness stayed close to the edge of the box because the edge of the metal framework was more solid than the weak flooring in the centre; however, Powyss had already put his foot through the floor on two occasions and he had nowhere else to stand because the chain ran down the middle of the contraption. Luckily, whoever made the lift had the common sense in fashioning a large pulley wheel or cog at the top, so every time he pulled the chain the lift lurched up about twelve feet. Nevertheless, they still had a long way to go and it made Powyss realise how deep down they actually were.
After a while, Lord Ness took a turn and Powyss held the torch. Every hundred feet or so they came to a dark opening with a wooden platform, they declined getting off the lift, mainly because the platforms were rotten and they just wanted to get to the top and see daylight.
‘The whole of the shaft is quite dry,’ said Lord Ness, ‘see on the walls there. There is guttering to take away excess water.’
The Ri was right, Powyss could see a spiral of deep gutters running at an angle around the shaft.
‘This would suggest,’ went on the Ri, ‘that there is a body of water above us.’
‘So the water table is not below us?’ Lord Ness nodded at the commander’s question. ‘So how did the old oasis dry up?’
‘I hope when we reach the top we will find out.’
After a time, which seemed like an age, one of the Wyverns shouted excitedly that she could see daylight. Sure enough the light, though dim, shone down the shaft and got brighter as they inched higher. Several more pulls on the chain and they reached the surface, but found that they were still trapped inside the shaft.
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br /> They were inside a large structure that was made of huge slabs of black granite, perfectly cut into rectangular bricks. Openings that ran around the building allowed sunlight to break through on five levels. The lift shaft enclosed them in the same black brick, but every so often, they found openings of thick glass windows that allowed more sunlight in. However, the light seemed distorted by the water on the other side of the windows and this water was deep, they had no choice but to keep climbing. The inside of the structure was festooned with unkempt plant life; this in turn made the water murky when the leaves fell into it and rotted. As a result, they could see very little through the cloudy water, but one of the girls jumped in shock when she thought she saw something large swim by the glass. Powyss and the Ri missed it and assumed that everyone was getting claustrophobic and paranoid in such a tight place. After the stressful events of the previous night, they could not blame them.
When the next window came into view, they could tell by the light that they had nearly reached the surface because the water cleared slightly to give them better visibility.
‘Ahh! What in the name of the gods is that?’ this was from Powyss and all of the women yelled at the same time. Lord Ness stopped their ascent to get a better look out of the next window. On the other side of the glass was a white haired albino girl, very naked and by the look on her face, she did not seem to care. She smiled and waved a webbed hand at them, then quickly swam away.
‘Well you don’t see something like that every day,’ Powyss quipped with a smile.
They must have built the pyramid deeper underground than Havoc first realised. It was deep with large volumes of fresh water with no sign of the bottom and covered in wild vines that grew upwards to the sunlight towards the diamond point at the very top of the pyramid. The door to the entrance they walked through now was destroyed and gone. At one point, the door must have slid open on grooved runners because they were in evidence, dirty with rust and sand, they had buckled under some extreme pressure from within at some point in the past.
A wide weed-covered stone bridge, with no side walling, took them to a black brick shaft that went all of the way up to the top. More bridges and steps criss-crossed their way upward in a spider web of walkways. Water trickled down from a wide platform far above them. Havoc stopped and stared at the platform; where was the water coming from? He could not see any pipes or ducts.
‘Doesn’t look like much of a temple to me,’ said Tia, and Havoc had to agree with her. The whole building looked like it had another function of some kind.
Vul’yoi hummed a tune as she wandered ahead of them. She was looking into the depths of the still water far below then. Then again, thought Havoc, it was not that still. There were ripples here and there and as he peered closer, he could see white forms gliding just under the surface.
‘We are not alone,’ he said and Tia and Debbdil looked down.
Heads broke the surface, white haired and female; they called up towards Vul’yoi and she spoke with them in her childish tone, her voice lilting and musical, the others spoke the same way and all of them pointed towards the black brick lift shaft. At the same time, Havoc saw, beyond the dirty window, a chain moving from side to side.
‘Vul’yoi has plenty of family here, but as far as I can see they are all female,’ mentioned Debbdil. Havoc was not listening, he approached the glass window and noticed a grey leaver off to one side; he withdrew SinDex and pulled the lever. The window shot up into a recess in the wall above.
He looked down the shaft and saw Powyss and Lord Ness looking back at him.
‘What kept you?’ said Havoc and gave them a cheeky grin.
‘Son, am I glad to see you!’ said Powyss, armour clanged as he hugged Havoc, ‘we thought you were a goner for sure.’
‘Ah well, you know me, never one to stay underground for long.’
Lord Ness surprised the Prince by hugging him also and giving him a big smile.
‘The Blacksword told us you were “gone”,’ he tapped the side of his head.
‘He was right, but I will explain later.’
The Ri nodded and then turned towards Tia. He was always a man that never missed much as he looked down to her waist to see that her belt, that depicted the symbol of her order, was gone.
‘Mistress Tia,’ he nodded his head towards her, ‘I see you are well.’
‘As are you Master Ri,’ said Tia.
‘She saved my life,’ said Debbdil, as if saying this would go some way to smoothing the tension between the Rawn and the Ri.
‘As is her duty as a Rawn Master, my dear,’ he paused for a second. ‘Commendable all the same.’ Tia smiled; it was not much of a compliment from the Ri, but Tia treasured it anyway Debbdil nudged her and smiled in acknowledgement of a favour given, she then went off to talk to the other Wyvern Filial.
‘Who is this?’ Lord Ness asked as he looked at Vul’yoi, who was standing some way off and looking at their interaction with some keen interest.
‘She calls herself Vul’yoi,’ said Tia.
When she said the word, all of the girls in the water chanted “Vul’yoi” and tapping their chests.
‘Although it could mean them all, collectively,’ Tia realised.
The Vul’yoi in the water dived down and then turned with graceful ease, swimming like dolphins, undulating bodies moving in unison and with incredible speed. They broke the surface of the water and rose twenty feet into the air, landing on the bridge where they all stood.
Each of them was the same in looks to their original Vul’yoi; the same height and same shape of body. Even their voices were the same as they chattered in their own language, dozens of them crowded around the group, smiling and touching them as they hummed and talked in a lilting, musical voice.
‘Are they are all female?’ remarked Powyss in wonder. ‘Are they aware of the Brethac?’
As one group, the Vul’yoi chanted “Brethac” loudly.
‘I think the answer you are looking for is, yes,’ said Havoc, ‘though they call them the Korzac and don’t seem to be afraid of them.’
The Vul’yoi then chanted “Korzac” and pointed to the men in the group.
‘I think I get the picture,’ said Lord Ness, ‘I wonder if the Vul’yoi and the Korzac have some sort of bond with each other?’
‘Yes, but, my Lord, these girls are gentle, harmless and not too bright,’ remarked Tia. ‘They must be totally defenceless against the Korzac.’
‘Yet here they are in this haven, maybe the Korzac are forbidden to come here, or decline to hurt these strange, child-like, women.’
Some of the Vul’yoi were pulling them out of the pyramid and pointing to the grove of fruit trees, while others were collecting woven baskets to carry food.
‘If you are hungry there is plenty of fruit here. That is all they seem to eat,’ Havoc said and was struck with the stark contrast between the fruit-eating Vul’yoi and the cannibalistic tendencies of the Korzac.
When they reached the stand of fruit trees, Lord Ness turned around and got a better view of the pyramid.
‘The Vul’yoi call that the Brethac Ziggurat,’ said Havoc, ‘I thought the temple of the Dark Force of the Earth was destroyed?’
‘It was,’ said Lord Ness, ‘that is not a temple.’
Havoc nodded. ‘I thought as much. It has another purpose and I want to find out what it is. There is a platform near the top with a source of water coming from out of nowhere. I think the answer lies there.’
If the prince’s curiosity about the pyramid was enough to be getting on with, then the appearance of more of the Vul’yoi was just spooky. Hundreds more seemed to arrive out of nowhere as they settled down to eat a variety of fruits. The native girls were hungry and dove straight into the offerings while the more reserved Wyvern picked at the odd shaped produce.
The Vul’yoi made a special effort for the men, serving them first and totally ignoring the women. They stared at the men, captivated by their looks and body sha
pe.
‘I don’t think they see many men around these parts,’ said Powyss, as three of the albino girls sat close to him and allowed their hands to wander.
‘No need to be shy, Commander, you have had three wives, you know,’ taunted Havoc.
‘Yes, but not all at the same time,’ Powyss said, as he kindly removed the thin white hands from travelling too far up his thigh.
Lord Ness remained standing as he ate his apple, staring across the water channels towards the pyramid. Havoc joined him.
‘Perhaps, your Majesty, you could enlighten me of your adventures post-storm?’ the Ri asked in an off-hand way.
Havoc explained to him about the strange experience he had inside the Muse Orrinn and his meeting with the sea goddess, Kwi-Aqua.
‘It seems I cannot die so long as the Muse Orrinn acts as some sort of “Holding Area” for my soul,’ continued the prince. ‘The storm was also a construct of Earth energies controlled by the Brethac Order, that much we already surmised, but the goddess told me that one of them was capable of allowing the Earth Daemon’s power to control the storm. How? I do not know. She calls this “Acolyte of the Dark Force of the Earth” a very dangerous man. Not only does he control the Brethac Order, but apparently, he is someone known to us.’
Lord Ness frowned. He looked disturbed at this piece of news, yet remained silent.
‘My Lord, someone with skill to channel Earth energies such as we have seen in the storm must be a powerful Ri. We already know about Varix, Fowyn and Nestor…’
‘Those three,’ cut in Lord Ness, ‘are strong Ri, but do not have the skill to do as you describe. Even I would find it taxing.’
Havoc sighed. ‘Then who?’
Lord Ness shook his head and remained staring at the temple. ‘I shall fathom this information later.’ He pointed down towards the base of the structure. ‘These irrigation channels must go under the fruit grove,’ said the Ri, ‘I wonder where they go to? These Vul’yoi have done a wonderful job in making another oasis to live in.’