by Bob Blink
“There’s the lake,” Asari said as he pointed, and Luzoke could see the sparkle of blue as the light reflected off the water showing around the edge of one of the hills. It was a long way down to the water yet, and the point they ultimately sought was at least a third of the way around the lake from where they’d first intersect it.
“At least it’s down from here on,” said Luzoke.
“That can be even worse,” answered Asari, knowing that Luzoke wasn’t an experienced hiker and had never spent a day or more on a steep downhill. “Watch your knees.”
By the end of the day, Luzoke understood better what Asari had been telling him. His legs were wobbly from the constant strain of having to retard his body’s natural tendency to pick up speed on the steep declines. He didn’t know which was worse, the rocky sections with rounded boulder after rounded boulder, or the thick loose sand that wanted to slip from underfoot when one put his foot down. He was stiff, sore, and tired, and they had days to go. Now he knew why Jolan had chosen to go back to Cobalo where he wasn’t wanted. Anything was better than this.
* * * *
Looking over his shoulder at the high mountains behind them, Luzoke marveled at where they’d been. He stood mere feet away from the edge of the vast lake. The small wind generated ripples laped at the pebbles in the dirt at the edge of the water, the moss and green grass growing up to within a few inches of the water.
Asari had agreed to stay put for a day and give his leg a bit of a chance to recover. He looked a bit pale, and Luzoke was afraid of infection, although the skin around the cut was still healthy looking and not particularly warm to the touch. A day’s rest should help, and their walk from this point would be mostly level. They could take it a bit slower than Asari might like, but they should get to the portal around the lake in three or four more days. Hopefully Jolan had already opened the one in Cobalo, so they could get Asari some help.
“Which way are we going to go?” he asked.
Asari pointed to the left. “I’d like to go the other way, but it would take a lot longer. I’ve gone the way we’re headed before, and I’ve never seen anything. Going to the right I’ve never seen over half of the way around the lake, so I expect anything we are going to find would be that way. It’ll have to wait. We don’t know how difficult that path is, and we should get the portal open for Jolan as soon as possible. He is probably sitting in Cobalo right now, a large ale in one hand and complaining how long we are taking.”
Luzoke grinned at Asari’s description. Jolan probably was in Cobalo, but who knew what the situation was there at the moment.
“I wonder if they’ll listen to him. He’s got a few enemies there.”
“Jolan has a way of getting your attention,” Asari remarked. “He’ll get them to listen. I just hope we don’t have a bunch of them up here trying to take over if they learn what is supposed to be here.”
“Any fish worth eating in the lake?” Luzoke asked as he walked along the shore toward a large rock that he jumped up on.
“Some, and a few that’ll return the favor if you give them the chance.”
“Seriously?” asked Luzoke looking at Asari and then back at the inviting waters of the lake.
“I’ve seen it happen. It’s not a lake I want to go boating on.”
They set out as planned two mornings later. Asari was marginally better, but his leg was stiff from not being worked. At least the path was relatively level, although they had to make their own way since there wasn’t a formal trail of any kind. They moved at a moderate pace, stopping for the night when they found a nice spot near the end of the afternoon.
The next afternoon they came to a long level patch along the lake with a tapered drop off to a valley on the other side. Trees had grown along the flat making it a very nice section of land, but something about the area didn’t seem quite right.
“My dad wondered about this,” Asari said as they crossed the quarter mile long expanse. “I’d forgotten about it until now. He wanted to investigate it, but we were supposed to be somewhere else, and we never got around to coming back.”
“What did he wonder about?” The land looked perfectly normal to Luzoke.
“Over here,” said Asari and he walked away from the lake so they could see the deep “V” of the valley. “He said it looked like a river should be flowing through there, that should start here at the lake. This wide flat section looked unnatural to him.”
Asari looked at Luzoke. “Do you feel like a bit of a climb?”
“You really shouldn’t.”
“It’s only a couple thousand feet. We’ve done worse, and we won’t have to come all the way back. I’d like to have a look down there.”
The way down was rougher than it looked from above, and wasn’t going to be much fun climbing back up either, Luzoke noted once they finally reached the bottom of the hill.
“If water has ever flowed here, it was a long time ago,” he remarked. “This doesn’t look like a streambed.”
Luzoke was right. The notch at the joining of the two hills looked no different than a thousand similar wrinkles in the land they were walking through. Still, Asari kept them walking along the base finally coming to a cluster of massive boulders buried into the side of the mountain.
“Look here,” said Asari, as he walked around to the front of the rock pile.
Luzoke followed, and found himself looking into a massive cavern that disappeared into the darkness of the hillside.
“A cave,” he said.
“Maybe,” said Asari. “Let’s have a look.”
Having had his share of dark places in Ygooro, Luzoke reluctantly activated his mage’s light and followed Asari into the darkness. The first twenty feet were lumpy and cluttered with debris and dirt, but then the floor of the opening flattened and smoothed out. The rock walls and ceiling were remarkably smooth as well, and the opening seemed to go straight back into the mountain.
“This isn’t natural,” observed Luzoke unnecessarily after they’d walked a couple of hundred feet. “It’s always stays exactly the same size everywhere, and it’s far too straight.”
“And suddenly ends,” observed Asari as they came to a solid, absolutely smooth wall that cut across the whole of the cave opening. He reached out and touched the stone, finding it cool to the touch. He pounded on it, but it was thick and solid, and his hands generated no sound.
“Can you sense anything with the power?” asked Asari.
“Nothing,” replied Luzoke. He tried to push and pull on stone, but he couldn’t move it at all. “I can try to blast it with a beam, but I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”
Asari shook his head. “Let’s wait. This is something that has to be man made. Let’s show it to the others and see if they have any ideas. Maybe Tilano is hidden behind there.”
They camped at the mouth of the “cave” and made the horrendous climb back up to the lake the next morning. It took three more days to complete the walk around the lake finally arriving at the campground Jolan and Asari had used long before. The stone portal waited silently as always.
“Shall we see if this works?” said Asari eagerly.
Chapter 94
For the first few days after their friends had departed to pursue the various assignments they had jointly agreed upon, Rifod and Nerila did exactly as Asari had predicted. They hadn’t had enough time alone in months and they took advantage of the beauty and solitude of the oasis for a chance to simply enjoy each other. For five days they never left the oasis, leaving the underground library vacant and unattended. They swam and made love, and slept long hours in each other’s arms. There was plenty of food, nothing to bother them, and they let go of the pressures that had built up over time. Eventually they began to feel guilty, and reluctantly when they found themselves awake on the sixth day they both knew that it was time to return to the task they had chosen for themselves.
For the next two weeks they paged through every book in the little office where th
ey had found the handwritten reference to Tilano, but there was nothing else to be found. Their initial hurried check before the others had left had been correct. Afterwards they returned to the main area and started a systematic search of the rest of the small library. There was no way they could read every volume. That would have taken months, if not years, but they could scan the books and see if they even related to the subject of the Lost City of the Mages. Once again they came up empty. It seemed that their staying behind was a waste of time.
“It’s not here,” Rifod said in disgust after another long morning with nothing to show for his efforts.
Nerila nodded. She had come to the same conclusion. “I’m going back to the books on the portals. Maybe I can at least find something useful there. Jolan was hoping we could find the means of opening the portals for large numbers of people. I would like to know if we can turn on the whole system, although that would be dangerous right now, and I wonder if there is any way to remotely turn on a portal.”
Rifod started poking around in the underground, having totally lost his enthusiasm for the library. He had decided there was nothing useful to be found, and was now mainly killing time until their friends could open one of the remote portals and they could join them. He and Nerila had already agreed that they would start their own trip home on horseback if the portals didn’t open in another two weeks.
When they had found the library adjacent to the portal, interest in exploring the other buildings had waned considerably, especially since the preliminary look had indicated all pathways were blocked or led to empty and destroyed rooms. Rifod made the long circle, passing through the glass walled tunnel Jolan had made, and then into the basements of the buildings that formed the loop back to the library. It was in one of these he found the doorway that had been mostly buried under piles of rubble. When he forced the doors open, he found a long, open, very wide walkway that seemed to stretch forever. Even with his mage’s light projected down the opening, he couldn’t see the far end.
Excited by his find, he ran back to get Nerila. They decided it was worth investigating, and the next morning they started down the long walkway to see what they might find. Perhaps it was foolish without the others close at hand as backup, but they had become used to the underground, and this place had lasted a thousand years. It was unlikely it was going to collapse now, just when they found it.
From what they could tell, the walkway had been an underground thoroughfare that ran the length of the city. Perhaps it was designed to allow the citizens access to the various parts of the city in poor weather, or perhaps it was simply more convenient than the area above, avoiding the bustle of wagons and carts carrying goods. Whatever the purpose, it had been built well and had survived the destruction of the city.
There were frequent stairways headed to the upper levels, but most were blocked with sand and rubble. They found several that led to buildings that were partially intact, but seeing nothing of immediate interest they continued on to see the extent of the find. They had walked almost a half-mile when they came upon the second library. While the topmost floor was badly damaged, there were four lower levels with tens of thousands of books. There were more books here than either had ever seen. Somehow they would have to start some kind of search, but the task was far too immense for just the two of them.
“We were lucky not to have found this first,” said Nerila looking at the incredible treasure in front of them. “We could have spent months here without finding a thing relating to Jolan’s search.”
Three days later they were still trying to understand the filing system used. There were whole sections written in the old language, as well as a whole floor of technical volumes. There were sections of spells that would have to be checked carefully at some point, but they had not yet found anything related to their search. They had just entered the portal next to the original library with the intent to return to the oasis for the evening when Nerila pointed to the symbols floating in the air.
“There’s a new one.”
“Do you want to try it?” asked Rifod.
“Let’s wait and see. If it is one our friends have opened, I suspect we will have company soon enough.”
Nodding, Rifod selected the oasis, and moments later they stepped out of the portal next to the waterfall. Sitting across from the stone structure was Jolan with someone they wouldn’t have ever expected to see here.
Chapter 95
“Well, I’m not particularly surprised that Jolan had a hand in everything ya say,” said Morin. “I knew when I first met him that there was something unique about him.”
Morin and Ronoran had become quite comfortable with each other after many days of travel together. Ronoran knew all of Morin’s immediate family by name, even though he had yet to meet any of them. He’d been filling Morin in on Jolan’s and Asari’s adventures since they left him on their trip to Carta, at least those things that were generally known and that Ronoran was certain Jolan didn’t want kept secret. This man was a friend of Jolan’s, and Ronoran was sure the things he was disclosing to Morin would have been told already if Jolan had been around often enough for him to tell Morin himself.
The trip had taken them through the tunnel and then across country to Ekine, following the new road. The road had been in existence for many years, but it had been upgraded and improved because of the need to speed goods from the tunnel at the port city of Jidan to Carta. No longer did they have to take the longer route through Honlt. At the moment they were approaching Morin’s home in Slipi, having made a detour from his initial route to Carta. It would mean the goods he carried would arrive a bit later than planned, something that rarely happened when Morin was transporting something, but he was eager to see if Jolan was right and the magical ring might be able help his wife.
Had Jolan been along he would have been very surprised by the changes in Seret. The country was now on a war footing, and Queen Iril was taking the threat to the country very seriously. The roads were busy with wagons loaded with goods and raw materials. With winter coming on, Seret wanted to be ready for the following spring. It was unlikely that Ale’ald could complete their invasion of Kimlelm before the snows set in, but over the winter Seret’s leaders expected Ale’ald to establish themselves and spend the time preparing for the next advance come spring. That advance would most likely be into Seret. The long unprotected border with Kimlelm had no mountains, with only the Lasayss River to slow the advance of the enemy. It wasn’t a barrier that Ale’ald would allow to stop them for very long.
With the help of Angon and the many mages that had come to support the war effort, Seret was building fortifications around the key cities and at key points along the border. Communications and monitor stations were set up, although of late there had been a determined effort by the enemy to interrupt the communications. Seret intended to be better informed about the positioning of Ale’ald’s forces. They weren’t concerned about an invasion via the southern mountains as had happened in Kimlelm. Not only were they warned of such a possibility, but both Seret and Angon had major forces in place to protect the trade route and the very important cities near the new tunnel. This was essential if the flow of goods were to continue at the current rate. Without those supplies, Seret was in grave peril.
Seret had suddenly become more receptive to the mages and many were openly calling for more direct involvement of the mages in the general war. It was Ale’ald’s use of magic on the battlefield that was allowing them to win. The lever action rifles Ale’ald equipped their troops with were faster firing, an advantage that was offset by the sheer numbers of troops that Angon and Seret could bring against them. The battles would have probably been a stalemate as they had in wars past had it not been for the destructive use of the power that had turned many of the battles to Ale’ald’s favor. Despite the number of wizards that had been killed, Ale’ald seemed to still have an abundance of them to support their troops.
“Ingari will be happy to see ya,” Morin
said to put Ronoran at ease. “She’s always happy to see a new face. Brings in some news of the rest of the lands, something she doesn’t get enough of now that she doesn’t travel with me anymore. She’ll be especially happy to hear about Jolan and Asari. Yashy too.”
Ronoran wasn’t so sure. He suspected Morin’s wife might rather have some time alone with her husband after his being gone so long, especially if she wasn’t feeling well. Still, Jolan had said that they were a very open family, and took to strangers. He and Asari had almost been adopted as true family members, and he remembered Asari talking fondly of their travels as well.
Morin guided the wagon off to the side of the street between a couple of trees into a very large fenced compound and onto a patch of ground covered with gravel. There was one house just off to their left, and at least three others further back from the road. Morin had told Ronoran that he shared the place with his brother and that both his nephews stayed here as well, but he hadn’t considered that they might each have their own homes. Already people were flowing out of the two nearest structures.
“Papa!” yelled a teenaged girl that Ronoran guessed to be Yashy from her age and the description he’d been given on the road. Following right behind her was an older woman, hair already graying, that Ronoran was sure was Morin’s wife. She moved much slower, and looked as if she were in some level of pain, yet a smile still lit up her face.
Each of the family threw a look in Ronoran’s direction, and in some cases a quick nod, but the focus was mostly on the arrival of Morin, who hadn’t been expected for some days yet. It took a bit of time for the large group to gather and then be introduced to Ronoran. Interest picked up when Morin announced Ronoran was a friend of Jolan. Even more interest was raised when Morin said that he’d had a drink with Jolan less than two weeks before, and that he was now a mage in good standing with the College in Angon. Ronoran winced a bit at this, since their status was somewhat undetermined at the moment, but didn’t think it wise to say anything about those troubles.