by Guy Antibes
Pol had hoped he would be getting another Shinkyan nugget, but he had been told about the situation Shira described on the first night they met.
“Condition then. It still killed my…” she looked at Pol, “…our father.”
“So, shall we talk about the Source?” Paki said, rubbing his hands.
Fadden glared at Paki. “Not here.” He smiled and turned to Mora. “Where can we get supplies for a little excursion into the Penchappies?”
“I can take care of that. I have a cart at the back of my house. Tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you. It will be more discreet that way. Now, I think we should just enjoy each other’s company. Can you tell me how you came to visit Teriland?”
The conversation ended later that night. The inn even served a light dinner while they continued to talk.
Pol slept on a rug, close to the fireplace in Mora’s house. Shira and Loa shared a bed upstairs, and Fadden took over a craft room where Mora made Teriland-style trinkets to sell. She admitted that she sold more to Terilanders than to Gekelmarans.
Mora had already left when Pol rose. He yawned and stretched. His body ached from the hard floor, but being in his older sister’s house made him smile. A real sister, he thought. They would never share the experiences of siblings growing up, but to know he wasn’t alone in the world made him happy.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-Three
~
The rain looked like it had finally stopped. Low clouds drifted across the higher elevations of the mountains as they followed Mora into the foothills. Pol and Shira took turns obliterating their trails. There were plenty of signs of horses moving up and down the narrow road, but the rain had softened those tracks.
Mora looked comfortable riding ahead, leading them toward the Source. She admitted that she hadn’t traveled in these hills for the past few years, but she was very confident about knowing the way.
Pol had changed out his colorful oilcloth cloak for a black one. It wouldn’t do to call attention to their search. Now they were no different from the treasure seekers, although they didn’t search for riches.
“It is a day to the south. The Source is beneath a spire of rock,” Mora said. “My step-father brought me here once, too. My Father and my step-father liked my mother, but were friends. My mother married my step-father after my Father left, before I was born.”
Pol didn’t say that his mother had already married King Colvin when Cissert approached Queen Molissa. They were both orphans at this point.
“It was just after our last trip out here. He was a roofer and died slipping off a roof in Sakima. I was fourteen and began making crafts for my stall on the road.” Mora smiled. “I made more money than my father ever did.”
“And you began to meet each traveler, hoping your father would return?” Shira said.
“Yes. I never thought of him as a magician. I wanted him to return so badly, I suppose I blocked that from my mind. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have tried, knowing he would have succumbed to the curse.” She looked sad, but brightened up. “I’m glad I did, because now I have a brother!”
Her mood swings matched Pol’s own. In some ways her happiness was very contagious, but both of their stories were filled with pain. Pol knew Mora had survived as well as he had.
Pol jerked his head up and did some locating. “A column of men in single file.” He pointed to the south, just ahead of them. They were probably taking the same path.
Mora looked flustered. “What can we do?”
“Get off the road,” Fadden said. He trotted ahead and rode up the slope, probably following a game trail, Pol thought. That’s what he would do.
“Shira, you and I will need to do quick work on our tracks.”
She nodded, and they went to work.
“They are getting close,” Pol said. He heard a shout up ahead. “You follow the others. I’ll lead them on a chase.”
“No.”
Pol slapped the rump of her horse and quickly obliterated her tracks.
“There’s a treasure hunter!”
Pol turned around and began to ride back along the way they had come. He located to see another column coming up from behind. He stopped at a stream that crossed their trail and took the horse gingerly down the hill through the water.
He found a tiny track going southwest and covered his tracks as he left the stream and found a thicket. He dismounted and tweaked an invisibility spell. Pol waited for the Goons to give up. He guessed the Terilanders were too weak to object to the priest-warriors running around on their land.
He located again and saw three of the Goons following the path of the stream. Pol stroked his horse’s muzzle until the men finally turned around and met with the rest of their band. They all headed north.
Pol followed the game trail. It intersected another that led east where he found the original path. He didn’t know where his friends had gone. They were out of his location range, so he continued south. The mud was stirred up from the Goons, so it was easy for Pol to blur his tracks.
He thought back and decided that the enemy, for he thought of them that way, consisted of two ten-man squads. That was probably too many for his group. He continued to ride until he picked up six dots ahead. Although he wanted to join up with them, he still mixed up the mud.
They had made it back to the main trail, but Pol noticed they were off their horses. He saw them through the trees and found out why they had stopped. A camp had been destroyed, and the treasure hunters were all killed.
“Goons did this,” Paki said through clenched teeth.
Pol noticed that three of the six men were burned. At least one magician had accompanied them. Their bodies were hacked, and even the horses had been slaughtered.
“I’d like to bury them, but maybe on the way back,” Fadden said. “There is no reason to kill people and leave them to rot.”
“Yes there is,” Pol said. “It’s a warning to other treasure hunters. The cathedral will pay for this.”
“Save your anger, Pol,” Shira said. “We still have to find the Source, and then make it back to Fassin.”
Pol nodded. “We will.” His blood boiled at the wanton killing. His good feelings for Wissem had instantly vanished. “I will expose them for the hypocrites they are. Their red book of teachings does not permit this kind of act.”
“I believe you,” Fadden said. He looked at Mora, still in shock from viewing the carnage. “Further south. Can we leave now?”
Pol took her reins and led her away from the scene farther along the trail. “Take a few deep breaths, and then we can move on.”
She nodded and took the breaths. By then all of them had reassembled behind her.
They didn’t encounter any more ‘examples’ along the trail. Camp that night was a somber affair, far off from the main trail. Shira and Loa took Mora and spent the evening chatting about things that were probably better left to them, Pol thought. They ate a cold breakfast and returned to the trail. There were fresh hoof prints. It looked like another squad to Pol.
They checked their weapons, and Fadden made it clear to Mora that she was to head to the center of their party if they were attacked.
Pol led the way, with Fadden in the back. Both of them would be constantly using their locator sense. They found another camp of treasure hunters butchered just like the last. With the kind of animosity the Goons showed, there would be no quarter given in a fight.
“There!” Mora pointed up-slope to a rock column higher than the surrounding ridge a mile away. “My mother said that my father was certain that the Source was by that rock formation.”
Fadden found a faint trail between two large rocks. Pol felt they had been placed there, but who knew what the terrain looked like thousands of years ago?
He let Fadden lead as Shira and he spent more time making sure their departure from the trail would go unnoticed. Pol fixed a few branches their horses had broken. The brush repairs wouldn’t last more than a few days
before the leaves would dry, but they needed any help they could muster.
“This has got to be it,” Mora said as they moved up the trail.
Pol leaned over to Shira. “Are you ready for whatever we learn?”
“Are you?” Shira said. “The truth may be painful. I’m expecting that. The aliens died out, after all.”
“Except for the Sleeping God,” Pol said.
“Especially the Sleeping God. My people do not revere the old ones.”
“Does that mean you don’t like me anymore?”
“Oh? You’re not so old, so I decided to make an exception,” Shira said.
They moved forward in companionable silence until they saw their group stopped ahead. The rock Mora had pointed out was at the top of a cliff.
“What is the problem?” Pol said.
“We have arrived,” Fadden said as he dismounted and tied up his horse. “But I don’t see a cave. No wonder it has never been discovered.”
Pol took care of his horse, and then walked in front of the rock. He used his magical sense to see through the surface of the cliff. “There is a large metal plate behind the rock, but it looks like the bottom is three feet below the surface.”
“Back to our gardening days?” Paki said, grinning.
“Hack away.” Pol looked down at a funny little rock poking out of the ground, and then used his magical sight. “This covers a metal post.” How could he get to it? Using magic would probably drain his power, and he didn’t want to waste the time.
“Does it lift up?” Shira said.
“What?” Pol said.
“Can you lift it up over the post?”
“Could it be that easy?”
Shira shrugged. “You can try.
Pol looked down and smiled when he could see the metal went down further into the dirt. “We will have to dig.”
The ground wasn’t that hard. Pol used a shovel that he had brought and began to dig. Shira took her sword out and poked it in the ground to loosen the dirt. By the end of the day, the bottoms of the metal door and the post were exposed.
“We will camp here tonight,” Fadden said. “We’ve removed enough dirt to flatten out the space.”
They ate a cold dinner and would do the same for breakfast. Pol had a difficult time falling asleep with the prospect of learning about his ancestors beckoned a few paces away.
Pol woke up early and tweaked the rock back and forth until he could feel the magic draining. “It’s still stuck,” Pol said. “I’m not strong enough to pull it out.”
“We are,” Paki said.
Kell and Paki began to twist the rock, while Pol used the shovel as a lever at the bottom where the rock shroud was exposed. All of a sudden the rock gave, and the three of them were able to pull the column’s cover off. They all stood looking at a square metal post.
Kell said. “I’ve never seen a material like this.”
“It’s the same metal as your amulet,” Paki said.
“And the sleeping chamber in the cathedral,” Shira said.
“Thousands of years,” Mora touched the post. “I’m the first to touch this.”
Pol let her just stand and think for awhile. She finally stepped aside while Pol worked at opening a sliding cover on the top. “Look at this. It looks just like the indentation that’s on the coffin,” Pol said.
“Chamber, I like chamber better,” Shira said.
“Chamber, then.” Pol took his amulet off and gave it to Shira. “You can open the door.”
Shira put the symbol on the plate and nothing happened.
“Use mine,” Mora presented her own to Shira, but still nothing happened.
Pol took his amulet back and tapped it on his lower lip. “Maybe it requires an alien to activate. Try it Mora.” Her amulet didn’t work either. “That leaves me.”
Pol put the amulet down and placed his hand over it. A low rumble shook the ground as the rock cover slid up into the cliff’s face. “I guess I’m a truer descendant than anyone.” Just as his mother had told him, he thought.
“You are a bit more inhuman than anyone else. I should know,” Shira said.
All the others just looked at the other door.
“Another cover,” Fadden said. He worked on it until it slid aside. “Pol, another performance, if you please.”
Pol smiled, but he was suddenly too nervous to be amused. “This one requires the other side of the amulet.” Pol flipped his amulet over and placed it on the plate.
They watched as nothing happened for a few moments, but then the door jerked and broke into two halves, with one sliding into the top and the other in the bottom.
“Someone needs to stay outside in case we don’t make it out,” Pol said.
“We will,” Kell said, holding Loa’s shoulder.
“I don’t want to go down there,” Loa said. Pol could see the fear on the Shardian woman’s face.
Kell just nodded and urged Pol to proceed.
“No one has to go in, except for me,” Pol said. He lit a magician’s light and stepped inside. Shira quickly joined him, holding onto his arm, followed by Paki with Mora clutching at his shoulders and closing her eyes.
“I’m the hostess,” she said in a small voice.
Fadden laughed and stood at the entrance.
“Are we just going to hold each other?”
Pol laughed with relief. “No.” He held out his hand with the light showing the way. After twenty feet or so, he heard a low whine, and then a light blinked on. Two rows of lights were inset into the ceiling. Metal covered the ceiling and the walls, but they walked on some black material that crumbled as they stepped.
“Something didn’t last very long,” Pol said.
They crunched their way further until they came to a chamber. Pictures were etched onto the walls behind low railings of the same metal.
“They were great artists,” Mora said.
“Those weren’t drawn. They are direct images. How did they do that?” Shira said.
Paki shook his head. “They were gods?”
“As far as we are concerned, maybe, but they just knew how to do things better. This metal is an alloy like steel. The floor underneath our feet didn’t last. That means they weren’t perfect,” Pol said.
“Much less than perfect,” Fadden said as he peered at the pictures. “These are scenes of the aliens and their slaves.”
Pol looked at the images on his side. The aliens, with faces clearly like the Sleeping God and the alien pattern inside of his body that came out when Pol first learned about face changing, were the masters.
Shira gasped. “Shinkyans. My people were the slaves.”
They continued to observe more scenes. There must not have been that many aliens. There were no great cities, just a few villages with strange stone buildings. There didn’t appear to be enough aliens to populate a small town.
“Look, they were farmers,” Fadden said. “I don’t see any pointed hats.”
Pol looked at the scene. He noticed a horse dragging a plow with no one around. Could he be looking at a Shinkyan horse? Did Demeron, his lost horse, originally get his powers from the aliens? “I haven’t seen any of the aliens doing work.”
“They would still have had to eat,” Shira pointed out.
In the next room using machines to make things in ways that Pol had never seen. “They worked metal, but where did they get it?”
The next room had more pictures, and that’s where Pol heard Mora scream.
“What is it?”
“Look at what they ate!”
Pol rushed to her side. His eyes wanted to reject what he saw, but the aliens were clearly cannibals. The Shinkyan slaves killed humans and prepared them for eating. That was plain enough to see in a series of panels. He felt sick all of a sudden. His heritage did this?
“And we helped. No wonder we left Teriland,” Shira said. “Slaves.” The words sounded bitter in her mouth. “It doesn’t matter what kind of farming they did, does it?�
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Fadden stayed in the room. “There are beasts in the pictures, so it wasn’t because they starved. The aliens just had a taste for human flesh.” He shook his head.
“There is one more room,” Pol said. A light flickered on when he entered the last room.
A huge round metal insert of a dark color seven feet in diameter, stood at the end of the chamber. The disk was surrounded with a faint, blue glow. A pedestal like the one outside stood in front of it.
“What’s that?” Paki said.
Pol didn’t answer his friend, but put his amulet on the pedestal and covered it with his hand. He could hear himself cry out as visions came unbidden into his head. Whatever was stored in the large disk filled his mind with images and words, alien words, but he somehow could understand them.
A consciousness, utterly alien, tried to implant itself into Pol. He wanted to withdraw his hand from the pedestal, but he couldn’t as he fought with the consciousness that tried to invade his mind. Pol fought with patterns of logic and images of his own. The battle consumed him until it dawned that he could go on the offensive. Words unspoken were exchanged between Pol and the alien mind.
He showed the alien everything he had learned in life. Back and forth they fought. Pol learned and felt things he had never experienced, and finally showed the mind the capsule of the Sleeping God. That caused the alien entity to pause. The mind focused on Pol’s image of the alien in the capsule and withdrew in horror. It began to blather nonsense and faded, faded, faded away.
Pol shuddered as the connection ended. Hands supported him down to the floor.
“Crackling floor,” he said. Pol opened his eyes. The blue glow had gone. The consciousness had given up, and for all intentions, it must have died.
His head pounded. “How long did I fight?”
“A quarter of an hour or so. You touched the panel and froze. The disk glowed and then it appeared that you did to, at one point. The light suddenly began to flicker until it went out,” Fadden said.
“It seemed like hours.” Pol put a hand to his forehead and tried to make sense of a jumbled infusion of knowledge impressed upon him during his struggle.