Key to Magic 04 Emperor

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  "I would think that some vestige would remain, however small, my lord. Surely, some residue in the corners, if nothing else."

  The Lord-Protector distributed hard bread wrapped in waxed paper from a tin. "Think of the time involved, Quaestor. Nothing but the stone structure itself could withstand millennia."

  As the two continued to debate the possibilities, the discussion no more than a mental exercise to occupy the time, Mar turned his own thoughts to what they would discover on the morrow.

  With any luck -- well actually, with fantastically improbable luck -- the second text would be sitting in plain view, at an easily accessible, eminently safe location, and its retrieval would simple, straightforward, and quick.

  Regardless, no matter what obstacle or danger stood between him and the text, he would find it and return.

  Telriy and their child awaited him.

  FORTY

  As it turned out, Mar's luck was again non-existent.

  "By all the gods, it actually is a mountain of ice!" Lord Hhrahld exclaimed. "I had thought the description to be merely metaphorical."

  At Mar's quizzical look, the pirate explained, "I did, after all, receive an education before I went to sea, my lord king."

  Mar smiled, but still found it difficult to reconcile the cultured, insightful aristocrat that now was with the insane, bloodthirsty pirate that had been. Likewise, it seemed somehow impossible that the Gaaelfharenii had ever been something other than a grizzled, scared, tattooed renegade. "Good thing the Gaaelfharenii magic still works here."

  Lord Hhrahld tilted his head in acknowledgement but made no comment.

  The thought had occurred to Mar that the beneficial effects of the magic might have become permanent, but he knew of no way to test whether this was true. He did know that the ethereal connection between the two giants had not weakened here in the Waste. It was apparently immune to the magic dampening morass, and he had speculated that the bond existed in some ethereal environs outside that which produced his own magic.

  Eager to determine if his newly returned magic would fade once more, Mar had goaded the others to rise before dawn, reload their packs, and move on. With every step that the other men took, his control of the ether had improved and by the time the sun rose, he had been able to move along at a modest speed with only a moderate effort.

  About a league along the ancient olive road, the ruins and the sporadically placed reconstructed buildings rolled over a slight rise, and it was here that Mar and the rest had stopped to spy upon their destination.

  Below the rise, the land spread out in a vast vale and Wilhm's mountain, a huge, humpbacked cone of solid ice, colored gray, green, and brown by suspended impurities, squatted in the center of this, with falling snow and clouds obscuring its peak and melt water cascading from its flanks. Rivulets of slush drained around its base, cutting numerous narrow channels through the ruins and into the russet soil beneath. This collected on the southern side to form a good sized, oblong lake. Both ruins and road were submerged under the ice choked waves and presumably buried beneath the ice mountain as well. Even here, at a distance of two or so leagues from its base, the air was much cooler and a breath of dampness flavored the steady breeze.

  "Using rough estimates for the angle and the distance, I would say that it must be at least seventeen hundred armlengths high and as much as a league at its base," Eishtren said. "Had we a transit, I could determine its exact size and calculate its volume."

  "Why doesn't it just melt away in the heat?" Aelwyrd asked.

  "I would guess that it is continually replenished at the top faster than it can melt away," Lord Hhrahld told him. "There is a great magic at work here, one older than the underground river, for it must have been created to drain away the water."

  "It is not as impressive as I thought that it would be," Eishtren said, "with a name like The Mother of the Seas."

  Mar rolled out his hand and stump to make an uncaring gesture. "We have no way of knowing what all this looked like ten centuries ago when Khavurst was here. The mountain may have been bigger and the outflow larger."

  Lord Hhrahld rubbed his chin. "Well, come to think of it, if you look at it just right, you might say that the mountain somewhat has the shape of a woman's breast, and therefore could be, so to speak, a mother in the purest sense of the word. The seas of this world take life from it, in a manner of speaking."

  Eishtren cocked his head one way and then another. "I do not see it, my lord."

  Aelwyrd gave the old pirate a startled look. "You mean a woman's breast looks like that?"

  The old Gaaelfharenii laughed and patted the boy on the shoulder. "No, lad, not at all and thank all the Gods that it does not. I mean that the silhouette ... well, suffice it to say that you will find out soon enough."

  Mar turned to other giant, who stood looking steadily at the mountain, his face expressionless. "Did you dream last night, Wilhm?"

  "Yes, my lord king."

  "What did you dream?"

  "I dreamed about the mountain."

  "Do you know how to get into the mountain?"

  "We must follow the road."

  "That will be a fine trick." Lord Hhrahld chuckled. "We need all only learn to breath underwater."

  "Actually, I could manage something if my magic was at full strength," Mar told him seriously. "As it is, we'll have to figure something else out. Let's get closer."

  At the shore of the lake where the road slid beneath the waters, the temperature was much lower, a refreshing change from the swelter of the Waste, but after a few moments Mar began to wish for a jacket instead of his thin shirt. A thin foam of ice slush had washed up among the rocks and sand of the shore and floating irregular chunks of adulterated ice were visible all across the thousand armlength body of water.

  "The entire lake must freeze over in the dead of winter," Eishtren speculated. He stooped and trailed a hand through the lapping waves. "The water is not much above freezing now."

  "A man could not swim very long in that," Lord Hhrahld stated. "Cold water has been the death of many a sailor."

  "It's not very deep. I can see bottom for at least fifty armlengths," Aelwyrd, standing alongside Eishtren, pointed out. "Maybe we could wade it?"

  "We're not going to try to swim or wade," Mar told them. "The lake is higher than it should be. The underground river and the road were built together, and they wouldn't have intentionally built the road under water. Something is keeping all the water from draining and we need to find out what that something is."

  After trudging north around the shore for perhaps a thousand armlengths, they discovered that that "something" was a landslip that had fractured a section of the olive stone drainage channel leading into the maw-like inlet of the underground river. The break, nearly at the middle of the hundred armlength channel, had allowed the collapse of a large mound of excavated rubble and this had tumbled into the channel and choked off half the flow. The frigid water gushed over and through the blockage, but the level of water held behind it was as much as two manheight higher than that leading away from it.

  "If we had a legion of engineers with all their equipment and mules," Eishtren said offhandedly, "and six months time to spare, we could build an earthen cofferdam and a diversion channel, and then clear the blockage."

  "The four of us could dig a ditch to divert some of the water," Lord Hhrahld said. "It would take a number of days, but if we could lower the level of the lake even an armlength, then we might be able to get down into the channel to work on the top of the dam."

  As the two continued to discuss the problem, Wilhm shrugged out of his pack and put it on the ground. Assuming that the young giant intended to sit and rest, Mar floated nearer the channel and attempted to use his resurgent magical abilities to budge some of the smaller chunks of rubble. He managed to stir a piece of stone about the size of his chest, but did not yet have sufficient control to break it free.

  He was still contemplating the rushing waters below
when Wilhm, stripped down to trousers and under tunic and entirely expressionless, walked up alongside him and stepped off into the channel.

  Yelling, Mar reacted instantly, surging after the Gaaelfharenii and stretching out his hand to try to grab him. Though he caught Wilhm's shoulder briefly, he might as well have tried to hold back a landslide. Wilhm plunged into the swirling water and vanished from sight.

  FORTY-ONE

  Hovering just above the surface, Mar had almost decided to dive into the rushing torrent after Wilhm, when the young Gaaelfharenii emerged at the base of the blockage, dripping but apparently undamaged, and climbed up through the cascading water to a point about a third of the way up the irregular slope.

  Grumbling about the unpredictability of magical giants, Mar zipped toward him, ready to upbraid, but Wilhm did not turn about to look or otherwise pay him any heed, but rather immediately started to grasp the larger blocks and hurl them up and out of the channel. At first, the Gaaelfharenii's pace was that of a normal man, but he steadily increased the rate at which he ejected the pieces until his movements were almost a blur.

  Mar, watching the stones rocket away to crash down far from the channel, eased back lest he be struck by a random toss, but stayed near enough to give aide if Wilhm should need it.

  "My lord king!" Lord Hhrahld shouted down from the channel wall. "Should we attempt to descend into the channel as well?"

  Keeping one eye on Wilhm, Mar flew back up to where the other three stood watching.

  "No, I don't want anyone else down there if the dam gives way," he told them. "I don't want to have to try to get more than one out."

  "The flow is already much greater," Eishtren pointed out. "It looks to me as if he is weakening the dam in the exact spot needed to cause it to collapse. Perhaps we should withdraw our intrepid giant before it does, my lord king."

  Mar turned both eyes on the laboring Gaaelfharenii. Indeed, as the quaestor had said, Wilhm had already opened a large breach in the center of the dam and a great outpour had burst out. Grumbling again, Mar flew back, stopping just out of the flood now blasting into Wilhm.

  "Wilhm!" he shouted over the gush of the water. "Climb back out now!"

  Not turning, Wilhm replied with a strong, "Yes, my lord king," but made no move to obey. Then, peering intently at the structure of the blockage, he said, "There is one more piece."

  The Gaaelfharenii reached both hands into the cavity he had created, submerging everything but his head in the process, strained for a moment or two, then snatched out an oblong section of granite about the size of Mar's head and held it aloft triumphantly.

  As the entire dam began to shift, Mar flew into the shower of spray splashing from Wilhm's torso, wrapped his arm and stump around the Gaaelfharenii's trunk-like bicep and willed his brigandine to haul the two of them upward, pouring so much flux into it that the seams began to pop and crackle with spurts of crimson and almond sparks.

  For a second or two, it seemed as if his diminished magic would be unable to raise the both of them, with Wilhm's legs dipping down into the burgeoning deluge, but gradually they did rise free of the water and over to the side of the channel. There, Eishtren, Aelwyrd, and Lord Hhrahld rushed over to catch hold of Wilhm and ease him to the ground.

  "Wilhm," Mar scolded sternly, "don't ever do anything -- and I mean anything -- without asking me first. Understand?"

  The younger Gaaelfharenii nodded his head once, ponderously. "Yes, my lord king. I will not do anything without asking you first." Then he just stood there dripping.

  "Wilhm, go put you outer clothes and armor back on. Wait, on second thought, let your trousers and tunic dry out first."

  "Yes, my lord king." Wilhm continued to stand in the same spot.

  Mar sighed. "Aelwyrd, take charge of Wilhm, would you please?"

  While the recruit led Wilhm off to find a sunny spot out of the wind, Mar joined the quaestor and the pirate at the lip of the channel. The blockage had been completely swept away and a full flow of water coursed through.

  "How long will it take to lower the level of the lake?" Mar asked the two.

  "Considering the volume involved, at least a day," Eishtren guessed. "Maybe two."

  "And that is provided that the tunnel can accommodate the increased discharge," Lord Hhrahld added. "If there is some other constriction that we cannot see, then the tunnel will backfill and the lake will take longer to drain down."

  Fortunately, the level of the lake did begin to diminish rapidly without apparent disruption and when they returned to the olive stone road, they were able to walk about fifty paces further along it than they had before. The retreating water had left a layer of slimy silt on the road, but it was already drying rapidly beneath the midday sun.

  Mar elected to follow the contracting shore, rather than retreat to dry ground and wait till the road was completely clear, so that by nightfall, they were half again closer to the base of the mountain of ice. As the lake shrank, its outline became narrower, with the shoreline to their right moving east. Since putrid looking muck covered the revealed ruins and lakebed, they scrapped a big circle of pavement mostly clear of mud for their camp, had a quick meal and turned in for the night.

  By midmorning of the next day, the entire road was clear all of the way to the mountain with only a few shallow runnels cutting across some of the lower sections. Bisecting a loop of the lake as a series of short bridges linked by causeways, the road made a slight turn to the east to run almost due north and swooped under the ice in a twilit tunnel defined by isolated archways of the same olive, seamless stone.

  Mar delved the archways to confirm his suspicions and then told the others, "There's a spell in the arches. I think it repels the ice."

  Eishtren walked over to one of the simple, square columns. "You must be correct, my lord king. There is a span of space between the stone and the ice all the way around. The ice is as smooth as if it had been poured into a mold."

  "There is no diminishment in the ether here," Mar said. "The morass stopped abruptly about fifty paces back. Something in the mountain must protect these spells."

  Aelwyrd asked, "Shouldn't the air coming out be really cold?"

  "It should be nearly freezing, recruit," Eishtren replied, "but it feels warmer than the exterior. That must be more magic at play."

  Lord Hhrahld looked into the tunnel. Though not completely dark, the depths faded into a bluish-green haze. "Only one way in and only one way out, as far as we know now. If there is trouble of any sort, we could find ourselves trapped."

  Mar frowned. "Wilhm, did you dream last night?"

  "Yes, my lord king."

  "Do we go into the mountain?"

  "Yes."

  "Do we still die in the mountain?"

  "I did not dream that last night."

  "Do we come back out?"

  "That is not in my dreams."

  "How far do we have to go into the mountain?"

  "All the way."

  Mar pondered the ice tunnel. If Oyraebos' text was not inside the mountain, then it could be anywhere in the expansive ruins. Were that the case, then finding it might be impossible. However, it seemed reasonable that whoever had hidden it had intended that someone eventually find it, and that that entity would have placed it such that it could be found in a straightforward manner. Of course, the logic of his deductions could be erroneous, but the only way to learn for sure was to proceed.

  He waved the others into the tunnel.

  Eishtren ordered Aelwyrd to count paces aloud and when the boy reached two thousand, three hundred, and six, the tunnel widened into a hall defined by a row of larger archways. At the center of this, a ramp led down into blackness.

  "Quaestor Eishtren, let me have one of your arrows," Mar directed, inciting Aelwyrd to dash up to him and present one the armlength long shafts, fletched end first. Mar studied the feathers and then the steel barb, and then flipped the latter up. Concentrating, he ignited the steel, wrapping the resulting bright o
range ethereal flames in a sphere of confining flux. He handed the torch to Aelwyrd, asked for a second arrow, and then created another.

  Holding this torch steady, he asked, "Everyone ready?" Receiving nods all around, he moved down the ramp.

  The room below was square, featureless, and also composed of the olive stone. Mar had expected thick dust, if not clutter and silt, but there was none. Another ramp, the mirror of the first, led down from it. The room at this second level was identical to the first, as was the third, fourth, and fifth, but the room on the sixth level had a cased opening that took up nearly all of one end. Through this they found a tube-like corridor with walls covered in a pale blue tile that opened up both to the left and the right. As soon as they entered this, white light sprang from curiously flat, flameless lamps mounted down the center of the ceiling. Seeming to exude a bluish-white glow from their entire surfaces, the lamps showed that the corridor extended in each direction for twenty armlengths. Both branches ended in apparently identical, perpendicular cross corridors. Here, again, there was no dust or refuse.

  "Looks like we no longer need these." Mar concentrated on his arrow-torch, tightening the suppression flux until the flame extinguished, then did the same for Aelwyrd's.

  "The exit looks as if it were added after this was built," Eishtren pointed out to Aelwyrd. "See how there is an irregular seam here where the tile of the corridor meets the olive stone?"

  "What specifically should we be looking for, my lord king?" Lord Hhrahld asked, gazing right, then left. "A crypt? A reliquary? Some hidden chamber?"

  "Frankly, I just don't know," Mar admitted. "The clue left with the first text said only 'Seek ye foremost The Mother of the Seas.' For whatever sadistic, nefarious, or whimsical reason, the author was intentionally cryptic. We'll just have to search the whole place."

  "Right or left?" the old pirate asked.

  Mar shrugged. "Wilhm, do your dreams tell which way we should go?"