by Max Anthony
They continued on their journey. Rasmus idly noted that Viddo had eschewed his left-right-left method of navigation and remained unerringly on the main path towards the centre of the town. He thinks that anything worth stealing lies ahead, thought the wizard. And who am I to argue with this conclusion?
The street they walked was clearly leading directly towards the large temple in the centre of the city. It was still some distance off, and by now both companions had begun to feel at ease in this mysterious place. Rasmus found that if he looked upwards and squinted, he could almost imagine himself to be in any other city at night, in any of the other continents he’d visited in his long and chaotic life.
“It’s quite peaceful really, isn’t it?” said the wizard.
“I know what you mean,” said Viddo. “I’ve often asked myself if I prefer the tranquillity of a quiet evening, or the hubbub of a busy street.”
“And what have you concluded?”
“I don’t know. If you ask me now, I might say I prefer the tranquillity. If you ask me next time we’re in a busy city, I might say give me somewhere with a dancing girl on every corner. I feel that I’ve earned the right to vacillate on the matter.”
“I think I prefer the tranquillity, myself,” said Rasmus. “Whenever I find myself amongst a lot of people, there’s always someone who keeps jostling me, or trying to push me out of the way so that they can get to wherever they’re going a little bit quicker than they otherwise would have done. I can’t abide being jostled and occasionally if they’re rude enough to me, a spell just slips out and I might find I’ve turned them into something unpleasant.”
Viddo nodded. Rasmus was generally calm and laid back, but if you pushed his buttons in the wrong way, he could rapidly turn into a thoroughly angry man. And when Rasmus was angry, nearby objects tended to get destroyed, even though the wizard might later regret his loss of control.
“Look, these poorer dwellings are behind us now,” said the thief. “Should we have a quick look inside one of these two-storey houses, to see if they have any contents worth our time?”
“Might as well. It’s not like I have to be home in time for supper or anything,” said the wizard.
At that point, both of them realised that they were stuck a long way from a place that they could purchase – or steal – food and water. Rasmus’ backpack with its pie and water skin was a long way away, and they both thought it unlikely that the hungry soldiers would have left the food unmolested.
“We should probably get a move on,” said Rasmus. “I need to eat in order to cast my spells at full capacity. Not that I’m expecting to have to do much in the way of magic down here. Let us hope that half-dozen wasted spells that you tricked me into casting earlier don’t come back to haunt us.”
“I can’t thieve at peak efficiency without food either,” said Viddo, ignoring the verbal barb about his inappropriate japery. “It’s surprising how far the noise of a rumbling belly carries when one is trying to remain concealed in the shadows.”
The requirement for food was important for both thief and wizard since without it they would both eventually die. However, their stories describing a correlation between their food intake and their ability to work at their most efficient were outright lies.
“Let’s have a look in one building,” said Rasmus. “Then we can make haste to that temple-thing ahead. I’m sure we’ve both concluded it to be the most likely source of that which we are looking for.” That which they were looking for being something worth filching.
“I agree,” replied Viddo. “This place is really far too interesting to leave. It’s a shame that our time here is to be so limited.”
He entered the nearest two-storey building, with Rasmus close behind. This building was definitely more opulent, if opulent was a word that one could ever attribute to an empty building made entirely of stone, that was completely devoid of soft furnishings. They found themselves in a large room, with higher ceilings than the smaller dwellings. Viddo instantly assumed it to be a hallway, and it had three doorways leading away, in addition to the one through which they’d entered. The furniture was still lacking, but the walls and floors were clearly smoother and more polished.
“It might be that the smoothness of one’s walls and floors was a sign of status,” said Rasmus, plucking an idea out of the air.
“I’ve heard of stranger things,” admitted Viddo. “In parts of Buntenhur, a lady is judged on the quantity and quality of her bloomer collection, even though it is deemed the height of bad manners to display said bloomers in public. If these people were judged on the smoothness of their walls, then I would not think it especially unusual, all things considered.”
Viddo looked through the left-hand doorway and Rasmus looked through the right, both seeing things of slightly more interest than they’d noticed in the smaller houses.
“There’s a stone table in this one,” said Viddo. “And some low stone pillars that might have been for seating.”
“Not a good place to live if one suffered from piles,” said Rasmus to himself. Then he called out. “There’re some stairs leading up from this room. Nothing much else to mention.”
Viddo looked into the straight-ahead room. “I’ll bet this was a kitchen!” he said. “Look, it’s got cubby holes carved into the walls.” He went deeper into the room. “And some sort of stone hinges!” he exclaimed. He took a hold of what was undeniably a hinge and moved it back and forth, finding that it travelled silently and easily. I imagine that if stone is the only thing they had to work with, they had become quite competent in using it to make everyday things like hinges, he thought to himself.
“If there are hinges, that means that there must have been doors on them at some point,” said the wizard, poking his head into the room. “If the doors were really made of wood, this place must be thousands of years old in order for everything to have rotted away to nothingness.”
In fact, he lacked sufficient knowledge to come up with any sort of definitive answer about the decomposition rate of wood. He’d have needed details about the resin content in the wood, the dampness of the atmosphere and a knowledge about any of the wood-based parasites that the denizens of this city might have had to contend with. As it happens, this particular city had indeed been built several thousand years prior to the arrival of these two individuals.
“Thousands of years?” said Viddo with a low whistle. “Some of the oldest cities on the surface have existed scarce more than two thousand years since they were founded.”
“Early man, do you think?” asked Rasmus. “Or something else?”
“I wouldn’t like to guess,” said Viddo. “Written history is still a fairly new concept for many of the places in Frodgia I’ve been to. Most of the people in Weshnia haven’t even heard of paper, let alone seen a sheet of it.”
“Let’s have a look upstairs,” suggested Rasmus. “I’m really quite glad I saw this cave,” he said, leaving quickly before Viddo could correct him.
Upstairs was almost a mirror of the floor below in terms of its room layout. The stone furniture was slightly different, with one room having two raised platforms, each about a foot higher than the floor.
“Beds!” said Viddo in delight. “And some of the worst-looking beds I’ve ever seen! Can you imagine turning on for the night on one of these monstrosities? I’ll bet everyone living here had back pain, neck pain and other pains that I can’t even think of.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for sleep just yet,” said Rasmus. “Look over here. A toilet!”
After their earlier conversation on the subject, they were both faintly eager to learn about the conveniences in the city. The answer was not especially interesting, but was slightly more interesting than stone cupboards without doors and horrendously-uncomfortable stone beds.
“It’s just a hole in the floor,” said Viddo in mild disappointment.
“Leading to a chute that dispenses the waste product out onto the streets below,” said the wi
zard, crouching on all fours in order that he could see further down the hole. For a reason he couldn’t quite fathom, he held his breath in order that he might avoid inhaling any lingering vapours from when this house had been occupied and its privy in use.
“This is all valuable knowledge about how these people lived,” continued Rasmus. “A fascinating insight into a people long ago dead and long ago forgotten.”
“I suppose,” said Viddo.
As they were about to leave the building, something caught Viddo’s eye in the last of the upstairs rooms that he’d only spared with a cursory glance. There were the ever-present light balls up here, but they cast their glow in such a way that he’d overlooked the markings at first.
“Look at that,” he said. “Over on that other wall in that room.” He pointed, to direct the wizard’s stare.
“It looks like…writing?” said Rasmus, asking a question when he hadn’t really meant to.
They entered the room and formed a cluster of two about the etchings on the wall. They covered most of one wall and were of uniform size, comprising many variations of a square shape. They’d been scratched onto the surface with whatever tool these people had used to shape the stone.
“You’re a wizard,” said Viddo accusingly. “Any idea what they mean?”
“Nope. I was never very good at languages,” said the wizard. “I’d have thought it was more a thief’s area, to know languages and things, so that you might learn the whereabouts of hidden treasures and so on.” He was clutching at straws and they both knew it.
“These don’t appear to be letters, so much as an expression of a concept,” said Viddo, with remarkable accuracy. “Look, you can also see drawings of objects as well. They’re truly excellent in their detail. Do you have a spell or something that you can cast to translate them?”
“Nope.”
“Can you summon a being of great knowledge that might be able to read them for us?”
“Nope.”
“Can you call forth the spirit of one of these people, so that we might commune with them?”
“Nope.”
“Can you do anything useful, beyond burning down buildings that you’ve got no right to be burning down?”
“I have been occasionally known to utilise lightning or blizzards,” said an unrepentant Rasmus.
As the wizard was making his excuses, something clicked in Viddo Furtive’s brain. The thief did have something of a skill for languages. He wasn’t sure if it was because of his thief’s background, or if he was just one of those lucky people whose brains are able to decode unfamiliar signs and symbols. He stared at the wall, with his tongue poking out to one side in concentration.
“I think this is a diary of some description,” he said. “It details what appears to be decades at a time. Either the people who lived here were very long-lived, or these records were maintained by many generations of the same family.”
“What do the words say, then?” asked Rasmus. “Presumably not what they had for lunch? I imagine it would have gone cold by the time they’d managed to inscribe the menu into the stone.”
“No, nothing so banal as their lunchtime favourites, though I wouldn’t have minded knowing,” said Viddo, who considered himself something of a talented chef, though his octopus casserole recipe had yet to be widely adopted by the restaurants of the world.
He pored over the sharply-defined etchings for a further time, rubbing his chin in puzzlement. “I think it’s a sort of countdown,” he said. “I believe these are numbers. They start off very large over here where the writing begins, and you can see them change here, here, here and here. They’re getting smaller.”
“How very strange,” admitted Rasmus. “Is this a calendar, do you suppose?”
“Hmmm,” pondered Viddo, still bobbing up and down as he examined the carvings. “Aha!” he said.
“What is it?” asked Rasmus in excitement.
“See this big, ugly face thing over here?” asked Viddo.
“Yes, I do,” said Rasmus.
“Don’t you think it looks a bit like you, but with a beard?”
“Eh? Stop being cheeky, you sod,” said Rasmus. Then, “Do I really look like that?” Rasmus didn’t carry a mirror with him, since he wasn’t so vain that he needed to check his appearance every twenty seconds. Usually, the only time he saw himself was when he looked into pools of water, which he wasn’t in the habit of seeking out, having better things to do with his time.
“It doesn’t really look like you,” said Viddo, who enjoyed teasing Rasmus when the fancy took him. “I believe it’s meant to represent a death god.”
“A death god? How primitive,” snorted Rasmus dismissively. “You’d think that people would have learned by now.”
“Look about you,” said Viddo, taking a break from his translating. “Here’s a big underground city that is empty. Here are some writings that mention a death god. Do you not believe that we should at least consider the possibility that there was some sort of calamity which overtook the populace?”
“I am denying nothing!” said the wizard. “I can see well enough with my own two eyes that something is distinctly amiss here. It’s just that death gods pop up in the histories of many people. If such a god existed and had so much power, you’d kind of expect us all to be dead by now. On the surface as well as below it. If these people are gone, it seems much more likely that they left for somewhere a bit easier to live in. A place with food, for example.”
“I am inclined to agree,” said Viddo, having resumed his attempts to interpret the writings. “But over here, the numbers reach what I believe to be zero, and as you can see for yourself, there are no more carvings subsequent to that.”
“Perhaps they had been instructed to leave by the wizards in charge,” replied Rasmus, automatically assuming that wizards would be the ones in power. “And maybe this was the occupants’ way of saying farewell to their home.”
As speculative explanations went, it wasn’t a bad one, but it wasn’t correct. With nothing more to be gleaned from the writings, the pair descended the stone steps to the ground floor and left the two-storey dwelling. Now when they spoke, their voices had become hushed, as if they expected a death god to be hiding around every corner.
“I think we should take a bit more care,” whispered Viddo, with his back pressed to a wall as he looked suspiciously around him. To the eyes of Rasmus, the thief’s outline seemed to merge in with the stone, so that he’d have been easy to miss had one not been expecting to find him there.
“Most definitely. I have a number of spells remaining to me, but I don’t think that they’ll prove to be much use against a fully-fledged god.” Rasmus was an exceptionally accomplished wizard, but he didn’t fancy his chances if it came to a fireball-chucking competition between himself and a death god. Secretly, he reckoned he’d get a few spells off, maybe give the god a little bit of a kicking before said god eventually overcame his human opponent. Even more secretly, Rasmus would have preferred to die peacefully in a drunken stupor underneath a table in a tavern, rather than go down in a blaze of glory, duking it out with a vengeful god. It wasn’t that the blaze of glory didn’t appeal to him, but he didn’t care for the thought that his soul might get plucked from his dead body and used as a play thing for whatever pets the death god chose to torment his everlasting essence with. Rasmus wasn’t even sure if he believed in souls, but all things considered, it made sense to play it safe.
They had both started to call the large, central building a temple in their own heads, and they resumed their journey towards it, though this time Viddo skulked close to the walls and Rasmus did his best to remain in the shadows, keeping his brain sharp and ready to cast one of his plethora of spells should the unexpected choose to pop out from somewhere in the vicinity.
The caution did them neither good nor ill, and nothing threatened their inexorable progress towards the temple. The two-storey buildings become interspersed with a smattering of three-store
y versions, but neither of them wished to divert again.
“It’s a bit of a whopper!” said Rasmus, pointing ahead.
“The amount of effort required in its shaping is hard to comprehend,” replied Viddo. He knew that construction was probably not the correct term for how the temple had come about, since it hadn’t been made from blocks of stone, rather cut from the solid grey whole. It loomed above them, pyramidal in shape and with steps leading up the two sides that were visible. At its peak, it merged with the stone ceiling of the cavern in which this city hid. There were lights spaced at intervals all over the temple – enough to make out the shape and to get an impression of the details, but not sufficient that it was brightly illuminated.
“Looks like it’s in the middle of a plaza,” said Rasmus.
“It’s a temple – they usually are,” replied the thief. “Every high priest needs somewhere that the adoring masses can throng. It makes it easier to fleece them.”
“You are a born cynic,” the wizard informed him.
“Not so,” came the response. “I have seen enough of such temples to know how they operate. On the plus side, I have filled many a pocket with the coins of the worshipping flocks. It’s amazing how easy it is to steal from the distracted.”
“Didn’t you ever feel concern that you might get struck down from above by the god whom you were insulting?”
Viddo shrugged. “I’m still here, aren’t I? I must confess that I was a bit worried at first, but when I didn’t get forcibly introduced to eternal damnation, I just got on with it. The priests of the temples are thieves in the same way that I’m a thief, but we operate in different ways. At least I’m honest about it.”
Whenever Viddo used the word honest, Rasmus felt his hand rising of its own accord - he knew that it wanted to scratch his head in bemusement. His brain always managed to intercept the errant hand before it could reach the halfway stage of its journey, but the hand never gave up trying. However, the wizard did grudgingly have to concede that Viddo might have a point in what he’d said.