by Ian Graham
He did not know what he would find.
Yet he persisted.
Once the snow was cleared, he paused. The uncovered stone seemed ordinary. It was grey, and as smooth as the rest of the wall.
Ballas drew a breath, puzzled.
Then he noticed a patch of dark fungus sprouting from the stone. A cluster of thin, leaf-like growths. Using his knife, he scraped them away.
A marking was etched into the stone. It was simple in design. In the centre of a large circle, there was a smaller circle—about an inch across. Above this circle, and below it, and to its left and its right, there were more circles; each was half the size of the central circle.
Ballas faltered. The marking was familiar.
What now? he wondered.
Without understanding why, he touched the marking. Only with his fingertips, at first. Then he planted his fist against it, and pushed.
Nothing happened.
Cursing, Ballas pondered his next move. The marking was significant—he knew that much. It would lead him to Belthirran—but how?
Suddenly he found himself pressing his thumb upon the topmost circle. He had not willed the action. He did not know what purpose it would serve. Yet he felt he was acting upon some instinct. Some deeply hidden reflex.
Grating softly, the circle sank into the wall.
Ballas raised his eyebrows. He pushed his thumb against the circle on the right. This also sank into the stone. Hurriedly, he repeated the action on the two smaller circles that remained.
Then he pressed the central circle.
There was another grating noise. A harsh scraping of stone upon stone. And, from within the wall, a clashing, rattling sound, as if chains were slithering through iron loops … as if counterweights were falling and rising … as if an ancient mechanism had been triggered.
The grating noise grew louder.
The wall shook. Ballas wondered at first if he was shaking. If he was shivering so violently that it only seemed the wall quaked.
Then he saw a dark line at the wall’s base. A slender horizontal opening, growing larger. A panel of rock was sliding upwards. Very slowly, as chains clanked and weights dropped.
‘Sweet grief.’ Heresh’s voice startled Ballas. The young woman had followed him. Athreos Laike stood at her side.
The blind explorer shouted, ‘What is happening?’
‘I’ve almost found Belthirran!’ Ballas grinned wildly. A powerful ecstasy surged through him. His blood tingled, his heart pounded. ‘You don’t go over this bloody wall! You go through it!’
Kneeling, Laike touched the shifting rock. His lips moved noiselessly.
Something flashed at the edge of Ballas’s vision. In the distance, a blue light flared—then another. And another.
‘Wardens,’ muttered Ballas. Rising, he drew his dagger. The grating noise changed. The rock panel was sinking, the gap closing. Cursing, Ballas jammed his fist against the central circle. Chains slithered, weights dipped and lifted. The panel started rising again.
‘Laike,’ shouted Ballas, snatching the explorer’s wrist. ‘Keep your hand there, understand? Push at it—go on, push! If you don’t, the doorway’ll close. D’you hear me?’ He pressed Laike’s hand to the central circle. The explorer cried out, jerking away from the portal.
‘My hand!’ he shouted, thrusting it into the snow.
‘Pilgrims’ blood!’ snapped Ballas, seizing Laike’s wrist again. ‘Do as I tell you, and …’ His voice trailed off. Laike’s palm was burned, the flesh red—and crisp. The explorer trembled.
Three shadows moved closer through the blizzard. They wore black, Scarrendestin-blazoned tunics. Leaping to his feet, Ballas sprinted at the first Warden. The man seemed surprised by the attack. He reached for his sword, but Ballas had already slammed a knife into his stomach. The Warden gaped, his eyes widening. Ballas grasped the man’s sword hilt and drew the weapon. A second Warden moved to unsheathe his own sword. But as his fingers closed around the hilt, Ballas swung his sword savagely through the Warden’s forearm. The man’s hand seemed to cling briefly to the hilt. Then it fell to the snow, resting there like a pale, limp spider. Ballas thrust the blade into the Warden’s throat. As he fell, the third Warden ran at Ballas. The big man lurched aside, struggling to keep his footing in the deep snow. The Warden hacked down with his sword, aiming for Ballas’s shoulder. Ballas parried, clumsily. Sparks sprang from the clashing blades, gleaming through the falling snow. Grunting, Ballas heaved the Warden’s blade aside. Then he smashed his forehead into the Warden’s face. The man staggered, dazed. Ballas swung his sword edge down, into the Warden’s skull-top. The blade stuck: as the Warden slumped, the weapon was wrenched from Ballas’s fingers. Muttering, Ballas snatched up the fallen Warden’s sword.
Four more Wardens appeared. Behind them, bursts of light blazed out. One after another, so many that Ballas couldn’t count them.
Ballas ran towards the Wardens. The first two fell easily. Ballas half decapitated one with a single blow. He impaled the other on his sword point. The third slashed his sword towards the big man’s stomach. Ballas deflected the blow. The Warden tripped, and Ballas slammed his knee into his face. The man’s head jerked backwards, vertebrae popped. The fourth Warden took a step forward. Then he hesitated.
Ballas glared at him. ‘Lost your nerve, eh?’
The Warden turned to run—but Ballas hurled his sword like a spear through his back.
The big man ran back to Laike. The rock panel had closed completely. Kneeling, Ballas pressed the small outer circles. They sank effortlessly into the stone.
‘Why do they burn Laike,’ said Heresh, ‘yet you—’
‘Shut up,’ snapped Ballas. He didn’t care about the reasons.
He pressed the larger central circle. Within the rock wall, chains rattled, weights rose and dropped. The panel trembled. Then inched slowly upwards.
For a few heartbeats, Ballas watched it rise.
‘Sweet grief!’ shouted Heresh, pointing.
A dozen Wardens were approaching. They were a quarter of a mile away, but running closer, as fast as the deep snow would permit. At the front there was a shorter figure, garbed in a woollen robe. Under its hood, its face was snow-pale.
Something twisted in Ballas’s stomach.
‘The Lectivin,’ he grunted.
Nu’hkterin ought to have been hindered by the snow. Yet he moved with an animal grace. In his hand, he gripped a white short-bladed sword.
‘Be quick!’ Heresh urged Ballas.
Ballas pressed harder on the central square. Yet it made no difference. The mechanism ran at only one speed.
He gazed at the panel as it gradually rose.
Then he looked at the Lectivin. It bounded closer, its movements almost pantherish. He could see its eyes now, each one a blood-scarlet pool.
When it was forty yards away, Ballas looked at the panel. The opening beneath was just large enough to squeeze through. Beyond lay darkness.
As if thinking the same thought, Heresh grabbed Laike’s shoulder.
‘You first,’ she said, guiding the explorer towards the opening.
‘No,’ said Ballas, seizing Laike’s arm. He yanked the explorer away from the opening.
Heresh stared at him, wide-eyed. Bracing a hand against her chest, Ballas pushed her away. The woman stumbled, but did not fall.
‘What—’ she began.
Ignoring her, Ballas half rolled, half dragged himself through the opening.
With the central circle released, the door started to close.
The chains rattled loudly. The shifting counterweights made a noise like dull thunder. Ballas lay in the darkness, watching the opening dwindle.
Heresh stooped, trying to crawl through.
Already the space was too narrow. Soon it was just a two-inch-high horizontal band of snow.
Ballas glimpsed the hem of a brown robe. There was a rasping noise. A noise that Ballas recalled from the sewers. The noise of the Lectivin’
s thwarted rage.
There came a thin whistling sound—as of a blade cleaving air.
Heresh cried out. Blood splashed the snow.
The panel closed completely.
Ballas was in darkness.
Chapter 21
He swore the world
Would become his plaything,
and his people Would rule, and the human world
Would be naught but a memory …
The chains clashed, the counterweights echoed—then fell silent. There was a thud as the panel slammed shut. The air shook, for a moment. Then grew still.
Ballas sat upright, blinking.
He was in a large cave. The cave roof was shot through with veins of red stone, like that which marked the rock wall’s face. They glowed, pouring blood-tinted light into the cave. But they were not strong enough to dispel every shadow. At the edges, the cave sank into blackness. The ground—a mass of jagged rocks—was darkness-swamped: it was visible only as a thickening of the general gloom. Ballas couldn’t see how large the cave was. Yet every movement conjured a thousand echoes. Even his heart, thudding sullenly, seemed to resonate.
The air was dry, stale. The air of a coffin. Or a mausoleum. Ballas wondered how long it had been, since the panel last opened. How long since daylight, and fresh air, had swept through.
The cave was cold—the type of hard cold found in church buildings. In cathedrals. And also, he realised, in dungeons.
Muttering, he stood.
If the cave did connect Druine to Belthirran, there had to be a second panel, in the opposite cave wall. A doorway, leading to Belthirran.
‘I am almost there,’ he said. ‘Pilgrims’ balls, but I’ve almost found Belthirran.’ He spoke only in a half-whisper. Yet the words echoed, rustling under the cave roof like a colony of bats. The effect ought to have disturbed him. Instead, he felt utterly at ease. Inside this cave, he was safe. He was beyond the Church’s grasp. He laughed—and these echoes rolled wildly, maniacally, through the dark space. He stopped thinking about Belthirran for a moment. Instead, he considered the Pilgrim Church—and the efforts they had made to kill him. He thought of the Penance Oak. Of the Wardens on the river bank. And those in Granthaven—and elsewhere. He thought, too, of the Decree of Annihilation: of the bloodshed it had caused, and how its failure would anger the Church. He wondered if the citizens of Druine would realise that he had escaped. That he had thwarted both them and the Church. Surely, the Church would not tolerate such speculation. They would claim to have killed the fugitive. To have obliterated him so vigorously that nothing remained—not even his bones.
Ballas started walking, picking his way over the loose stones. The cave’s size surprised him: it took him several minutes to reach the far side. Here, the walls slanted to a broad juncture. In the red light, he made out a wall of stone. It bore no markings. No sigil like that outside, on the panel. Nor a vein of red stone. He ran his fingers over it, feeling for any gap or imperfection that might imply a doorway. The wall was uneven: a cluster of dips and edges, all seemingly random. He pressed his ear against it, listening—listening for sounds of wind, of the blizzard blowing … blowing, he realised, over Belthirran.
There was nothing.
Swearing, he stepped back. ‘What now? How do I get through?’
He wondered if there was a way out at all. Perhaps there was but a single way into the cave. And a single way out. Or perhaps—perhaps there wasn’t a way out at all. Maybe he was trapped.
He felt a surge of anger. And frustration.
Then Ballas calmed himself. There had to be a way out. The cave was not an accident: someone had built it or, if it had already existed, had chosen to use it for their own purposes. The panel was not a natural feature. Someone had put it there. Surely, those ancient peoples, who had travelled freely from Druine to Belthirran … surely it was their doing. The cave was a route from one realm to another. Therefore, there had to be a second doorway. Otherwise, the first doorway did not make sense. Otherwise, the sigil-engraved panel had no purpose.
But then—where was this second doorway?
Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something. A square recess had been sunk into the floor, holding what seemed to be a mosaic. Striding over, Ballas saw that a number of stone cubes—sixty or seventy, he guessed—nestled inside the recess. Each was no bigger than a dice. Upon the upper face of each, a rune had been carved, each one a mix of loops, whorls, straight lines and sharp angles. Ballas did not know what each of them represented. Yet they looked vaguely familiar. Plucking out a cube, he found that each of its six faces bore a different marking.
He stared, confused.
What was this? A game? A puzzle?
He returned the cube to the recess. It fitted perfectly among its neighbours. Yet something was wrong. To Ballas’s eyes, the overall effect—the general pattern of runes, from one cube to the next—seemed incorrect. Moreover, it jarred his nerves. It gave him feelings of nausea. Frowning, he turned over the cube that he had previously held. A different rune—a vertical line, capped by a diamond shape—was exposed. This seemed better. His queasiness lessened—but only slightly.
Muttering to himself, he turned over another cube. And another. And another.
This new arrangement pleased him. But not much. The configuration of shapes still made him bristle. Earnestly, he turned over a few more—including the first cube: here, inexplicably, he re-exposed the sigil that had irritated him. Now he found it soothing. The effect was strange, yet pleasing. He manipulated cube after cube.
Then he stopped.
This is a foolishness,’ he said. ‘I’ve not got time to be pissing about with this bloody thing …’
Yet the compulsion persisted. Ballas worked quickly, rearranging the cubes. He could not understand why; he did not know what purpose it would—or could—serve. Yet it seemed an important task. Some instinct forced him onward. The cubes clattered under his large fingers. He worked dexterously, as if he had performed such an activity many times before.
The cubes click-click-clicked, their noise echoing through the cave.
Suddenly there was silence. Reaching out for a cube, Ballas paused. He stared at this cube, and at those around it.
Everything appeared in its proper place. Every rune that had to be visible was visible; and every cube was locked into the correct part of the recess. To Ballas’s eyes, the runes made no sense. If there was a pattern, he could not see it. Yet he no longer felt agitated, no longer suffered a nervous urge to alter them. It was as if a piece of discordant music had become harmonious.
He got to his feet.
And felt a flash of rage. He stared resentfully at the recess. Why on earth had he wasted time on such a pointless endeavour? He had to get out of the cave! He had to find Belthirran! Yet instead, he had become preoccupied by a jigsaw.
‘You are a pissing idiot,’ he told himself.
He heard something: a faint rattling noise. He looked down. Inside the recess, the cubes trembled, as if shaken by a hidden hand.
Ballas stepped back, surprised.
The rattling grew louder as the cubes shook with greater ferocity.
Then there came a grating sound—as of stone sliding against stone.
The recess moved. Slowly, awkwardly, it split into four sections. Each corner inched diagonally away from the other. Around it, the cave floor quivered, the stones sliding away to make room for the dividing recess.
The shifting parts exposed a hole under the recess. A sphere of smooth, transparent stone, as large as a man’s head, nestled inside. It seemed fashioned from glass. Ballas stretched out a hand to touch it—
Then hesitated.
In the ceiling, the red-stone veins glowed brighter. The change was sudden, unnerving. Their dull light intensified. Shadows shrank as the entire cave became visible: it was big enough, Ballas thought, to hold a village. The walls were irregular; some force had blasted them into a jumble of juts and creases and edges. Ballas sensed that
the cave had not been created by a gentle, gradual action—such as millennia upon millennia of spring-water trickling through. Rather, an aggressive, instantaneous force had engendered it: something as brash, as ferocious, as a volcanic eruption.
The light grew painfully bright. Then it tightened into a single shaft, lancing down into the recess … into the sphere.
Within the sphere, a tight ball of light appeared. It gradually expanded, seeming to blossom like a rose, until it filled the sphere … until the sphere itself blazed red.
The shaft vanished.
Ballas stared numbly. He reached out to touch the sphere; as his hand grew close, the red light shone through it, silhouetting the bones and tendons within. When his fingers were an inch away, a second shaft of light sprang from the globe, surging toward the ceiling.
Ballas looked up.
Something was carved into the dark rock. Something Ballas recognised. Something he had seen, months before—and then he had been there, when his luck had darkened and he had committed the crime for which the Wardens had arrested him.
It was a circle, thirty feet from side to side, crafted from some translucent gleaming stone—pale blue diamond, it seemed. At its top, bottom, left and right points, there were red globes, similar to that inside the recess. In the centre there was a blue gemstone, as large as Ballas himself. Through its depths, golden sparks floated, each a bright, clean splinter of light.
Monument, thought Ballas.
The recess-locked globe’s light split into four beams, each sinking into one of the Monument’s outer spheres. They pulsed, as red and angry as a summer moon. In the recess, the sphere paled, became translucent. After moments, the sphere was as it had once been: a colourless globe.
Ballas looked up at the Monument—
Then he staggered as a tremor shook the cave. The ground tilted and there was a far-off roaring sound. And a grating noise, as if stones were being torn in half. Groaning, Ballas fell to his knees. The noise filled his ears, pounded his skull. Slabs of stone dropped from the cave roof. Striking the ground, they burst into shards. Clouds of dust swirled up. The big man swore—then coughed, as dust clogged his throat. The cave trembled, more stone crashed down—