Trying a different tack, she had explained her wife ran the finest equipment shop in Mythallen, and she was sure she would have something to attract the eye of a warrior in the city guard. Rochelle wondered how the marketer would have reacted to the truth that she had been trained by the Hand of Darkness Liberation Front, not the City Guard, but she had wisely kept that knowledge to herself and gently but firmly extricated herself from the woman's clutches.
* * * * * Once inside the library, Rochelle headed over to the area where she felt the Tenth Tower ought to be located, if it were solid and real: somewhere between towers five and nine - dedicated to the Secrets of Shadow and Life, respectively. There was, of course, nothing there. Nothing obvious at any rate. At a loss as to what else to do, Rochelle suggested they glance at some of the books on the nearby shelves, in search of anything that might give them a clue.
They had been there for a couple of hours and the sky outside was growing dark. Decorative, multi-coloured glow baskets brightened along the pavements, and the sunstone buildings began to emit the sunlight they had been absorbing all day, albeit in a more mellow and subdued way, more tasteful for the late hour. The library became quieter, as people left their studies for another day. There were night mages in Merlyon, of course, but they did not often appear much before midnight and the wee small hours of the morning. This gave Rochelle the advantage of thoroughly searching the rooms with impunity.
When she heard Artisho gasp from two rooms away, she ran back to him, thinking he had perhaps found something. She found him on the edge of his seat, eyes wide at the piece of literature in his hands. It appeared to be an example of a new kind of entertainment that the gnome had heard about but never seen. It used small boxes of colourful, sketched pictures, which animated the characters when viewed in sequence. The actual writing was minimal, restricted to something apparently called a `speech bubble` indicating to which character a section of dialogue belonged. It was called a comic book.
“Goodness me,” Artisho said, almost breathless, mopping his brow. “This really is most exciting! The Knights of Balance are guarding an important secret but it seems like events may require them to make a choice over sharing it with someone. I do hope they choose wisely. That is if any of them survive the coming battle against the chaos monsters. There are...rather a lot of them. Next week we'll find out if the Knights can defeat them, despite being so heavily outnumbered,” the old mage explained. “Oh I can't wait a whole week!” He wailed.
“Curious,” Rochelle remarked. “The story does seem, shall we say, quite contemporary.”
“You could say that,” Artisho agreed.
Rochelle turned the pages back to take a look at the front cover. The title read, Silver Saviours. “I've heard of several of these comic book titles, but I don't recall this one.”
“I'm not surprised -it hasn't been written yet.”
“Excuse me?” Rochelle wondered, confused.
“Shush, will you? I'm trying to read the second story.”
“There's a second story in there?” It didn't seem possible - there couldn't be more than two dozen pages in the whole comic.
“Yes, and according to the mage forums, there's even supposed to be clever plot link with the first story in some later issue.”
“Oh, I see. So what's this second story about, then? More Knights?”
“No, actually, this is about a poor silver dragon almost fatally injured in a flying accident and now she can't fly. Completely paralysed she is, poor dear.”
“A paralysed dragon?” Rochelle scoffed. “That's ridiculous!”
Artisho just shrugged. Rochelle shook her head to clear the cobwebs. “Look, Old One, we're supposed to be searching for a way into the Te-” She lowered her voice when another library user wandered past. “The Tenth Tower,” she continued in a whisper. “It's important. We don't have time for comic books.”
“One should always make time for entertainment,” Artisho disagreed. “It keeps the mind fresh and you never know when you might learn something.” Rochelle opened her mouth to object, but the old man raised a weathered, gnarled finger to silence her. “Time and tide wait for no-one, but sometimes time requires us that we wait for it. We're in the right place - you know we are. But we can't get in. Why not? Why can we not find what we're looking for? Because it's hidden, that's why!”
“Well obviously, but-”
“-But why hide it in the first place? Why hide anything at all?” As counter-intuitive as it was, Rochelle decided there was only one philosophically valid answer to that question. “You hide something with the intention that it be found,” she stated. “If you want something to never be found, why not simply destroy it?”
“Perhaps you intend it to be found only by yourself,” Artisho proposed. “That may be your intention, but you cannot guarantee that result. To create a method by which you can find what you've hidden, is to create the possibility that others may find a way to duplicate or circumvent that method. A man might place his wealth in a locked chest for which he has the only key. But a thief could steal the key or pick the lock, or break open the chest by force. Even if you introduce magic, there is no such thing as absolute security. No, if you want it never to be found, you must destroy it. If you hide something, you must intend that it be found.”
“Very good,” Artisho commended. Then with a stern look, he tapped his staff on the stone floor and demanded, “But the application, the application!” “Well, we are searching for the knowledge of the Ancients, knowledge that is hidden. They must have had a good reason for hiding it and part of that reason must have been the intention that it be found when the time is right.”
“When the time is right,” the old man echoed. “As I said, time and tide wait for no-one…” “…but sometimes time requires that we wait for it,” Rochelle finished. “Yes, I see. Now, we're talking about magic here, so it's sensible to assume that the `right time` must involve some kind of magical trigger. But thanks to that Nullmagic spell, I'm effectively Magically Dead.”
Artisho winked, “Maybe that's part of the trigger.” The druid's eyes widened. “What a fascinating concept!” She said, trying hard to keep her voice down amid her excitement. “Through the millennia, people must have tried searching for the Tenth Tower using all kinds of clever magic. I bet it’s never occurred to anybody to try it with no magic whatsoever. That would make me different to all the other people who have searched before, but there must be something more, an external trigger.” Just as quickly, her face fell. “And we have no idea when that will happen.”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the library lights flickered wildly, and a quick glance out of the window revealed the same was happening in the streets. Books and other items that were being held in mid-air with simple levitation, crashed to the ground, along with food and drink and household goods all across the city. Most frightening of all was that Merlyon's magical shield, normally invisible, was suddenly creating multi-coloured light shows in a shell-like dome surrounding the city. All over, people cried out in fear, shock and pain as they felt their own magic drained to feed the city - an emergency measure that had not been used in living memory. Many grew nauseous or faint at the violation, but Rochelle, having no connection to her magic, remained unaffected. In the room where she stood, a door shimmered into existence in the north-east wall.
“Right about now would be by guess,” Artisho suggested, facetiously. Doubtless, Rochelle decided, had it been Eilidh standing there, she would have considered all that was going on around her and questioned the wisdom of entering a door that did not exist a moment ago. Considerations of how she might get back if it disappeared once more would have entered her head. Perhaps she would have demanded some answers from Artisho, the ridiculous old man who really didn't seem all that strange just then.
But Rochelle wasn't Eilidh, so Rochelle simply dived through the door with the same wild abandon that had got her into so much trouble in the past.
* * * * *
“So, Bunny,” Phaer said, when faced with a crossroads in the tunnel network. “Which way?”
The young woman shrugged. “You tell me.”
“Me? How should I know? You teleported us here.”
“Teleported? I'm not that kind of mage, that's a Fire mage spell. I'm a Shadow mage.”
“Whatever,” Phaer dismissed irritably, having no wish to discuss the intricacies of magic. “No, I don't think you understand,” Bernice persisted. “I'm a sorceress - I deal in illusion. Hopefully, my illusion of teleportation was as convincing to the rest of your people as it apparently was for you.”
“Illusion of teleportation? What are you saying?” He asked. Then, with his bad feeling growing inside him, he demanded more slowly and forcefully, enunciating each word, “Bunny, what have you done?”
“You remember that magical device I took from Z'rcona, back in Marina Fells?”
“The orb-type thing?” “Yes, that's it,” Bunny confirmed. “On the way here, I started to worry about it. I can't be sure, you understand, but the more I examined it, the more it seemed to be a bit like the tracking devices my father used to pin on all of his creations, whenever he let us out of our cages. I never liked it then and I don't like it now.”
“Especially considering who's probably monitoring!” Phaer pointed out. “Precisely,” Bunny concurred. “Anyway, I hit on a way to use it to my advantage in my plan to get you out. In my experience, when you break objects of magic, they tend to go out with a bang. So when we were out there with your people sufficiently backed away, I used my vampire speed to throw the thing as hard as I could at one of those hard, jagged rocks.”
“Hard, jagged rocks?” Phaer breathed, eyes growing wide a s an old memory took shape. “Yes, that's right,” she grinned. “It certainly made for a good cover! And I even fooled the person standing right next to me?” She whistled. “I know I'm good, but sometimes I'm even better than I think I am,” she preened.
The ranger couldn't contain himself any longer; he reached out, grabbed the sumorityl firmly by the shoulders and demanded, “Bunny, in the name of the Abyss, stop playing games and tell me straight: WHERE ARE WE?”
The sumorityl did not take kindly to being manhandled in such a way and had to fight her natural instinct to let loose her vampiric form. “Let go of me,” she growled, green eyes smouldering.
“Not until you start taking this seriously and tell me exactly what you did back there, because if my suspicions are right, we are in real, serious danger!”
Picking up on Phaer's genuine fear, Bunny relaxed a little. “Alright then. Serious explanation coming up,” she promised.
Phaer let her go and waited impatiently.
“Here it is in simple, non-magical terms. It may have appeared that I teleported us away - that was the idea but in reality, I didn't take us anywhere by magic.”
“Then where are we?” Phaer repeated. “I've told you before, a thief never goes in anywhere without having a back way out. Before rescuing you, I searched around a bit until I found one. The rocks gave it away - they looked so out of place and from what I know about dark elves, nothing in their world is ever allowed to be out of place.”
“True enough,” Phaer allowed. “The rocks marked an entrance to this network of underground tunnels - my back door. Destroying that orb created a diversion so I could slip us both down here. I figured that there must be another way out, someplace, and I was hoping you might know where it is.”
Phaer collapsed against the tunnel wall, heart beating rapidly. He felt his skin go so pale in terror, the halfelf wondered if he’d turned transparent. “Out of the frying pan, into the fire,” he breathed.
“What's the problem?” Bunny demanded. “What are these tunnels?” Phaer didn't answer, but just said, “Come on, we have to move quickly. The sooner we get out of here the better!” Without pausing to see if Bunny would follow, he set off at a pace down the left hand tunnel.
Apart from a half-step hesitation at some junctions, their pace only quickened with time and even Bunny found herself completely turned around, unable to determine which direction was which after the innumerable twists and turns they had taken.
“What are we running from?” she insisted on knowing as she strained to keep up. Still no answer. “For the gods' sake tell me!”
Phaer rounded on her. “Will you keep your voice down?” he hissed.
“If you tell me what's going on,” she replied, defiantly, “I will.”
Rolling his eyes, the ranger relented in his attitude, if not in his running speed. It seemed it was time for another dark elf history lesson. From before the time of the Ancients right up to the end of the Mage Wars, the dark elves had been fond of what they termed `sports`. They usually involved `testing` the `lesser races` to prove dark elf superiority. As one might expect, the tests were not exactly fair. One of their favourite sports had involved throwing captives down into the constructed tunnel maze and letting them try to escape. Wagers were placed and then the whole event was relayed magically onto large, smooth viewing walls. To make things more interesting, the dark elves provided the captives with extra incentive in the form of large, ferocious and very hungry carnivorous beasts freely wandering the maze. The captives were forced to escape or be eaten. Of course, on the rare occasion that a captive managed to get out of the tunnels, they were hunted down and executed by dark elf rangers. After all, according to dark elf psyche, if a captive survived the test, it did not disprove their inherently inferior nature...it just meant the test was too easy and their captive probably cheated. Therefore they deserved to die.
“But since the fall of dark elf magic,” Bunny pointed out, “there could be no way for them to watch the show.” “Quite true,” Phaer, agreed, “and so those sports have been abandoned. Even essentia l regular tunnel maintenance has been impossible since the fall of magic - remember that cave-in a while back?”
“Yes, and I don't suppose they could capture fresh ferocious magical monsters, either.”
“Your point?”
Bunny rolled her eyes. “You're talking about something that ended during the time of the Ancients. Any nasty critters that were left down here are long since dead and gone to dust!”
“Bunny, you may be absolutely right,” Phaer said. “But you might also be absolutely wrong.”
“Oh great, a riddle! We're running from mortal danger and you give me riddles! Are we running from mortal danger or is this just a fantastic workout?”
“There was one particularly nasty test called the Basilisk Snare.”
“Basilisks?” Bunny exclaimed, increasing her pace. “They're real?” “I'm not sure,” Phaer admitted, “and believe me we don't want to find out. Remember all t his business with sports and testing is myth wrapped up in legend. I have no idea whether such creatures exist, or ever did exist, but I'd rather not take my chances.”
“You'll get no argument from me,” Bunny agreed.
“That makes a change.”
“Charming!”
“There's one other thing I think you should know,” Phaer said.
“What's that?” Bunny asked, fearing the answer. “For the last couple of hundred yards, there's a sound that's been bothering me. I wasn't sure at first if it was just my imagination. Now I'm sure it’s not. Bunny,” he said, “there is something down here with us, something very big...and the way the air moves through these tunnels...it's got our scent.”
Chapter 14
Knight Scout Leader Lady Tanya Nightingale was nervous. She was nervous because her dapple grey mare was nervous and a good Knight should always trust the instincts of a well-trained mount. There was no good reason that she could detect why the rest of the company should not pass this way, if they chose, but perhaps her horse had a good reason. She motioned to two of the three male Knights under her command, and they immediately kicked their horses into a trot, flanking wide and moving ahead a little way out of sight, whilst remaining easily within earsh
ot. The four horseback Knights made little more noise than the breeze that rustled through the trees. The mounts were trained for stealth as much as their riders were, so they took great care over where they trod, never so much as snapping a twig.
Still having no good reason to do otherwise, the quartet continued to head for the high ground. It was for this that they had come - the unique vantage point that these peaks offered. So far they had only rumours and second-hand testimony about the large force of chaos creatures in the vicinity; the Knights needed to know for certain. The scouts had been sent out to bring back reliable reports upon which battle plans would be laid. Tanya met the prospect of joining the war with caution and, yes, even a little fear, though her training kept that closely in check. Fear, if properly channelled, could be an ally in battle. There was nothing quite like a healthy fear of death to keep the eyes sharp, the mind clear and the reflexes quick. It was not at all an irrational fear. After all, fear of death was the natural flip side to a strong desire to live, and there was nothing more rational than that. She was prepared to lay down her life if the situation demanded it, but life was not a thing to be sacrificed lightly.
She pushed such thoughts to one side, admonishing herself to focus on the present and do her job. This was not Tanya's first time in command of a Scout unit, but it was still early days and she was eager to prove worthy of the promotion.
They had not travelled much further before she noticed a change in the slight sound of their horses' hooves upon the ground. A little way on and the sound changed back. Curiosity piqued, she whistled the stop and regroup signal. When the four were back together, she instructed the men to ride around the area a little way, listening intently for sound changes. They continued at this task for several minutes before Lady Nightingale signalled cease. Dismounting, Tanya used her artistic skills to make a rough sketch of their immediate surroundings. Next, she combined the observations of her fellow Knights with her own, to shade in the areas of sound change. The result confirmed Tanya's suspicions: the new sound she had first noticed was a kind of hollow sound and the pattern she had just sketched indicated the existence of underground tunnels. The precise geometric pattern of said tunnels ruled out the possibility that they were a natural phenomenon. No, what they had here were artificially constructed underground passageways - perhaps a maze of some sort. Well, her orders had been to search for `anything out of the ordinary` and this seemed to qualify.
Consequences (Majaos Book 2) Page 14