by Bob Blink
Luzoke marked the location on his map, and looked in the direction of the third doorway. They wouldn’t be exploring the building inside. He could see that the doorway was filled with sand, and this was the reason so much had accumulated in the hallway. The room beyond might be partially or completely filled, there was simply no way of telling without digging, and they’d all agreed not to start digging until they had completed the survey.
There was no other option than to continue down the next segment of the hallway and see what they could find. After another walk of a thousand steps they came to the next tower in the sequence, and this time they found the third hallway opened into a very large structure. Rifod had seen something down the hallway that continued past the tower, and they walked down that first to check what he had seen. Fifty feet past the tower the wall was smashed in and the entire path blocked by a solid wall of sand.
Returning to the large room they had just taken a glance at a moment before, they took a break before starting to explore. In the center of the room was a very wide staircase headed upwards, but whatever was above also looked to be buried in the sand. The stairs were covered in loose sand and rock, and the pile extended to the ceiling totally blocking the entrance to the upper level.
They spent the next two hours exploring the first floor, going through the rooms and checking for anything that might be useful. It looked as if the people who had lived here were more advanced than Cobalo was at present, which agreed with the current theory that civilization had lost much of its technology in the Mage Wars. After more than a thousand years they were just approaching where the ancients had once been in terms of technology, although in the field of magic they were far behind the capabilities of the mages and wizards of that time.
One thing that surprised the team was finding signs that people had lived here after the collapse. Whatever had caused the destruction, there were clear signs that people had made at least temporary quarters in the large structure, making a place to cook and setting up a sleeping area. One area was clearly set aside as a bathroom. It was impossible to tell if the city had been buried in the sand at the time they had stayed here, or how long they had lived in the ruins. It had clearly been a very long time ago and there were no sign of bodies, so they had decided to move on at some point.
The team found one hallway that took them a couple of hundred feet to a second building a bit southeast of the large building they had first entered. The second building was badly crushed, and once again mostly filled with sand and completely impassible without some kind of effort.
They had been down longer than planned, and reluctantly made their way back to the surface to tell the rest of their friends what they had found.
The next day was much like the first. Jolan’s team made the first trip below the surface, and continued past the building they had found the previous day to the next tower. There was no third doorway at this location, so they simply continued on until they reached the third tower structure from their starting point. While there was a third doorway, they found they couldn’t enter because the doorway was plugged solid with dirt and sand. That left only continuing along the hallway until the next intersection.
The turn after the third tower was slightly sharper than the ones at the previous towers giving Jolan the feeling they were now headed nearly south, or almost straight out into the desert. It really didn’t matter because after a long walk of almost twenty-five hundred steps without finding another tower they came to a portion of the hallway that was smashed and impassable. There were no other places to check. Every pathway along this side of the city appeared to be cut off and would require excavation to move forward. Even more distressing was the fact that it wasn’t just the sand, but that the structures themselves were badly damaged which meant any digging could well bring tons of sand flowing into the area. They would have to plan carefully if they decided it would be necessary to continue in this area.
After lunch Luzoke’s team returned to the building they had found the previous day and continued their explorations. They were a bit concerned by Jolan’s findings earlier in the day because this building was the last area that appeared open on this side, and so far they had found no way open beyond the outer walls. It was Nerila who found a set of stairs headed downward inside a small doorway near the center of the building. Hopefully the three explorers made their way further below the surface and found a small storage area with a single wide tunnel headed off to the north.
They followed the tunnel until it opened into a large underground room in what had to be another building, and searched around until they found a set of stairs headed upward. Carefully they made their way upwards, concerned about what they might do if they found a closed door at the top and had to decide on taking a chance against the area above being filled with unstable sand and dirt. They needn’t have worried. There was no door at the top, and the room above was open and mostly clear like the first level of the previous building. There was just no way at the first level to move between the structures. They made a quick scan of the area, and then decided to return to the surface and report what they had found thus far, especially after seeing what was at the east end of the current building.
“A dome of sand just hanging suspended above a large open area with one of those mysterious stone structures situated in the middle of the room?” asked Jolan when they reported in.
“A large area, perhaps two hundred feet in diameter, all free and clear of sand and dirt. It’s just like someone had been there earlier in the day. The sand above and along the sides is clearly held back by something, but it’s not a magical field. We went right up to the edge and felt it. You can’t sense any magic, but you can feel a resistance that you can put your hand through and actually scrape at the sand. If you pay attention you can feel something faintly as you enter the area, but if you weren’t thinking about it you probably wouldn’t be aware.
“So the thing is active?” asked Jolan. “The others I saw appeared totally dead.”
“This one appears dead as well. It’s like others I’ve seen before and now I wonder if there is the same kind of field around those and I just didn’t notice,” said Rifod.
From the report Luzoke’s team had brought back, the path to the room where the structure was situated was clear and free from any special danger beyond the fact they were underneath tons of sand and dirt that might be unstable. The whole team decided to go down and have a look before calling it a day.
“You didn’t explore beyond here?” Jolan asked Luzoke.
“We just entered the room briefly, went over and checked the structure to see if it was like the others, then went back topside to see you. I’m not sure what else is here, but it looks like a hallway on the far side that heads south again.”
It was a little strange and worrisome to see all that sand sitting suspended up above, but since it had probably been there over a thousand years, it was unlikely it would come falling down all of a sudden. Unless they triggered something that might release whatever was holding it up. They’d have to keep that in mind as they continued probing around down here.
There was indeed another small walkway, but it ended in a building that was once again filled with sand, blocking their way. Since it was late, Jolan suggested they return to the surface, and think about how to proceed. On the way back, he made his own checks of the directions and distances they traveled. Once up above he sat off alone and made a composite sketch of all they had learned.
“I can’t be certain how carefully I reproduced the scale on my drawing, but given the distances between several key locations, I think the last building we were in is within a few hundred feet of the place I most want to go.”
“That would mean we have to dig,” said Ronoran. “Some of those buildings don’t look very stable.”
“Every other place ends in a dead end as well, which means we have to dig somewhere. We either have to dig down below, or see if we can find where we are and dig from above.”
“It might be smart to work from above,” suggested Luzoke. “With your map I’ll bet we can find our way to a point directly above this place.”
“Probably, but I have an idea I’ll like to try first. I’ll go down alone, but if it works it might not take as much effort as we all think.”
“What are you going to try?” asked Asari. He’d seen Jolan pull off some interesting tricks, and felt bad that he was of little help at the moment.
“Sand is basically silicon. That means it can be made into glass. I think I can apply pressure to push an arched tunnel of sand up and out of the way, then heat it enough to create a couple of inches of hard glass on the inner surface of the tunnel. Cool that off, and I’ll bet the glass will support the weight of the sand and give us a simple tunnel we can walk through. If we don’t have to go far, it shouldn’t be that hard.”
“You and me,” said Luzoke. “I’ll make the field to hold back the sand, and you do the heating and cooling.”
The next morning despite some expressed doubts by the rest of the team, Jolan and Luzoke headed down the steps to the underground once again. When they reached the room where they’d been stopped by the sand the previous day, they surveyed the area, and decided the best chance lay in making a pathway that cut straight through the middle of the room to the far side.
“Are you ready?” asked Luzoke as he stared at the pile of sand.
“Try and compress the sand as much as possible rather than simply push it up against the weight above,” Jolan said. “Pushing on it could cause pressures in places we don’t want.” Jolan took another look around him wondering if this was as good an idea as he’d thought when he was sitting under the open sky, but Luzoke was already starting.
Jolan watched as a small round hole appeared at floor level at the bottom of the pile of dry sand. It pushed back into the pile and remained even though it seemed that sand should fall down and fill in the small void that now must extend all the way to the far wall. As Jolan watched the hole started growing in size, forming an arch as it did so. The sand was being compressed, and Luzoke had placed a shield in the sand up above and was limiting the movement allowed as he pushed from below. The hole grew slowly larger, and while there were a few disconcerting creaks and groans from the structure around them, after a number of stressful minutes, Luzoke had created a tunnel they could walk through.
“Fire it,” Luzoke said finally.
Jolan used his fire in a controlled manner to create the high temperature required at the boundary of the compressed sand. He allowed the heat to melt the silicon and form a liquid layer of glass on the outside of Luzoke’s shield. The heat was held away from them by the shield, and after he was convinced the glass was thick enough he used magic to extract the heat and cool the glass until it reached a temperature where it would no longer flow. There was still a great deal of residual heat that was going to make it hot down here for a while, but if the tunnel would hold, they could simply let it cool slowly at this point and come back tomorrow.
“Let the shield go slowly,” Jolan advised, and Luzoke gave him a look that said he’d already considered that.
Minutes later they were looking at an unsupported tunnel with shiny inside walls. The heat radiated from the hot glass wasn’t as bad as Jolan had thought, but they would give it the rest of the day and then see if it held as he hoped. If not, it would be time to do things the hard way.
Chapter 86
The next morning Jolan and Luzoke went down early to see if the tunnel they had created still survived and was holding back the sands. The glass had cooled considerably as the cool air of the underground sucked away the heat that had been created. As Jolan had hoped, the thick rounded glass was doing a superb job of supporting the weight from above. He’d read once that a sphere of glass could survive to incredible depths in the ocean, and had hoped some of the same principle would be at work here.
The two men walked the length of the incredibly smooth tunnel, the glass wall having taken its shape from the field created by the power leaving an extremely uniform surface. Part way along the length Luzoke pointed to something behind the glass, causing Jolan to stop and look carefully.
“Bones,” he agreed looking through the surface at the white material partially hidden in the sand on the other side.
“Human, I think,” said Luzoke.
If so, the bones were the first indication they had found of human remains since they had come. It wouldn’t be possible to tell if they had died when the city had been destroyed, or had lived here and died afterwards. After more than a thousand years the skin would have all disappeared and the skeletons would simply be piles of dried segments. Perhaps an expert archeologist might be able to make some sense of them.
They’d come to the far wall and could see part of a doorway. Most of one edge was behind the wall of glass and rather than disturb the tunnel itself, they used careful touches of the power to dissolve part of the building wall to gain entrance. Inside was a disappointment. Rather than the type of building Jolan had expected to find, there was a very large structure that appeared to have been some kind of military barracks. There was a great deal of old and ruined equipment and places for several hundred soldiers to sleep, but nothing they could see that was applicable to their search. Several possibilities were open to investigation, but everything to the south seemed plugged with dirt and sand with cracked or crumbling walls. Hopefully Jolan’s sketch based on their wanderings underground was flawed and their target was back the other way, or they had a major problem. Everything suggested they wouldn’t be going further south by any underground route.
It took another five days of searching, following false leads and coming back to the surface to report yet another dead end. Finally, Asari discovered a partially collapsed doorway into another hidden tunnel, and they emerged into a mostly intact building which contained thousands of books. Many had been tossed onto the floor by whatever had destroyed the city. The shelves that had been attached to the walls still stood, although many of the books along two of the walls had been dumped from the shelves. Those along the other two walls remained on the shelves. Bookcases along the central areas had fallen, tipped into each other, or in rare cases still stood. Most of these books were in piles at the base of the shelves.
“Another library,” said Asari.
“A small one from what it seems,” said Ronoran. “There’s a lot less here than in the one we searched back at the college.”
“Unless there are more levels,” suggested Jolan.
They looked, but were unable to find any stairways that led down. The single set of stairs that led upward didn’t uncover more books, but instead a large domed area up above which might have been a meeting area or a place to read. The walls were covered with numerous glow bulbs of a very different design than they were used to. A few were able to be started, which filled the room with a warm bright light. It was the closest to sunlight they had ever seen down in these depths.
“Look out there,” said Jolan after he’d wandered around peering out one of the two windows that were still intact for some reason, and not covered by sand on the outside. He’d expected to see nothing but dark when he looked outside, but the light escaping from the room plus that provided by his mage’s light provided just enough illumination for him to see something familiar.
“That’s the structure with the dome field,” said Ronoran in surprise. “And there’s the first tunnel you and Luzoke had made.”
They had made two more small ones in the past couple of days, but Ronoran was correct. The one they could see in the faint light was the first one they had made. Somehow in all the wanderings they had made a bit of a loop and had ended up in a building that was partially under the dome of protection from the stone structure. From outside they hadn’t noticed that there was a window that was open, but from here it was easy to see outside. Jolan wondered if there were other such openings they’d missed.
“Can’t we simply cut a hole
in the side wall below and have a direct path?” suggested Asari.
“Let’s try,” said Jolan, and they hurried back downstairs where he was able to create a new entrance through a blank wall. They had to go through a bit of sand that had accumulated outside, but they now had a far more direct path which bypassed all the twists and turns they had used to get here. The path to the library was now a relatively straightforward walk along the route they had found in the first couple of days.
“This reminds me too much of the days we spent under the library at the College,” suggested Luzoke as he looked around at the piles of books lying everywhere. “How do we know what to look for?”
They had all gathered in the library. Jolan was certain this was the place they had sought, now it was going to be another sorting through the materials like before.
“To start, this place is a lot smaller than where we searched before. It is probably a lot more organized if we can figure out how they had things sorted. True, the books are in piles on the floor, but should be grouped by subject. I am not sure what we are seeking either, but it has to be something related to the Nexus, or some kinds of spells that can help us defeat the wizards or contain them. I think we should look for anything that points us toward Tilano, the City of the Mages. That is where some of the most important discoveries are likely to be found. This might only be the start of our search. I hadn’t expected to find anything like this. It’s a good thing Rifod and Nerila are here with us.”
While everyone else looked at the room with a certain distaste, the two librarians saw a wealth of knowledge that had laid undisturbed or censored for over a thousand years. What treasures might be hidden here? Jolan was certain they could be happy rooting around in the books for a long time.
* * * *
Jolan and Asari had just returned to the base camp with the supplies they had gathered over the last day and a half. The available food near the entrance to the underground was severely limited, and they needed to make periodic trips up into the foothills to restock. The Mage’s Box didn’t keep food cold, but it was as fresh as the moment the lid had been closed, and was filled with several kinds of fresh meat, a good supply of fruits, and several kinds of roots they all found edible. While they had been hunting and gathering, the rest of the team had continued to search through the materials below.