by David Hair
On the ground was a broken life-size statue of a robed male, marvellously wrought in cream and golden marble. The finer features of face and clothing had been smoothed by age or damage.
‘Is it an Aldar?’ Jesco squeaked.
‘I think so. It looks like the Church did get here first, a long time ago,’ Varahana said regretfully, as if she weren’t a church-woman herself. ‘After the Mizra Wars, all images of the Aldar were smashed and their dwellings comprehensively looted, then abandoned. No one was permitted to live in the raths.’
‘Who’d want to live in such dark, creepy places anyway?’ Jesco muttered.
‘Oh no, once they were full of light and colour,’ the Mater replied, gazing about avidly. ‘They were beautiful.’
There were four exits from the courtyard and they had entered from the southeast. To their left, another stair descended, perhaps to the sea-shore, judging from the sound of the waves. The path to their right was blocked, but the path they wanted: opposite them and exiting the chamber to the northwest, seemed open.
‘Let’s go forward,’ Raythe decided. ‘Vidar, mark our path, please.’
The next corridor became a stair, ascending through the rath. They began to find rooms: most were empty, but some contained the rotted debris of centuries-old furnishings. Then Jesco exclaimed and bent to pick up a square copper coin.
‘An Aldar ravok,’ Varahana proclaimed, pointing out the crowned head on the reverse. ‘They’re rare now.’
Jesco grinned, until Raythe added, ‘Some say they’re haunted.’
The Shadran stiffened and dropped the coin – which Raythe neatly snatched from the air. ‘They’re also worth a small fortune at home,’ he chuckled, pocketing the coin and winking at Jesco. ‘Cheers, my friend. Too kind.’
The passage took them past a stairway going up that was mostly blocked by a rock-fall, then in a large chamber they discovered the desiccated bones of a huge beast that Vidar identified as a shingar lizard.
‘Shingars can grow more than eight feet long – they eat people,’ Jesco noted. ‘And I’m the tastiest person here.’
‘Excellent: if one appears we’ll feed you to it,’ Raythe replied.
‘These’re very old bones,’ Vidar rumbled, ‘and there’s not even a smell of dung here. This place is deserted.’
‘Except for ghosts,’ Varahana put in lightly, grinning at Jesco.
With that reminder, their banter died away and they pressed on, shuffling through the darkness and dancing shadows thrown by Raythe’s praxis-light. Despite education and experience, they’d all heard tales of old Aldar at their grandmothers’ knees: about vengeful, inhuman wraiths with poison breath whose mere touch could draw the soul from the body. Such stories weren’t easily dismissed in this ancient emptiness.
‘How did there just happen to be an Aldar haunt, right where the road ended?’ Jesco wondered.
‘The Aldar built strongly and in tune with nature,’ Varahana replied. ‘It’s probable that the coastline here is anchored by this rath and that its presence protects the hills behind it. Off the coast of Magnia, there are rath ruins that are now islands because they’ve remained intact while everything around them eroded into the sea.’
‘Who exactly were the Aldar?’ Jesco asked suddenly. ‘I heard they were eight foot tall and came from the stars. The tales say they had wings, and eyes that could burn a man in an instant.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ Varahana replied. ‘They were men like us, and they used the mizra to make their lives easier, until it turned on them and destroyed them. They were arrogant slave-masters who warred for pleasure.’
‘So do I,’ Jesco said slyly, then he mock-gushed, ‘Oh, sorry – I thought you said “whored for pleasure”.’
Varahana gave him a prim look, but the wonder of the place quickly stole her attention back. ‘Of course I’m glad the Aldar are gone,’ she said, adding longingly, ‘but I would dearly love to see one.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Raythe advised as they entered the next chamber. ‘What do we have here?’
His light revealed another courtyard with a dried-up pool and fountain in the middle, but this one had a domed canopy, an actual skylight to the world above. The dome was mostly intact, except where vines hung through the occasional broken pane of coloured glass. There were small piles of rotting leaves and silt mounds on the cracked stone floor underneath, but most remarkable was an almost intact statue a dozen feet tall presiding over the space. Four arms were spread wide, but they had all been broken off at the elbows, and the head, now just a shattered lump of marble, sat at its feet. The statue was of a slender female with winged feet, her robe tied with a snake-girdle.
‘Is this an Aldar?’ Vidar growled. ‘See, I told you they weren’t human: it’s got four arms.’
‘No, it’s one of their goddesses,’ Varahana replied, her scholar-self utterly intrigued. ‘Perhaps it’s Kiiyan; she was the most revered. The dying prayed to her for mercy in the afterlife. The extra arms were symbolic of her attributes. They would have held lanterns or flowers or the like.’
‘Ki-ee-yan,’ Jesco pronounced the new world reverently – he collected gods to pray to in battle. He bowed and intoned, ‘We mean no harm here, Great Lady.’
Raythe snorted and advanced further into the room, wanting to examine a plinth in front of the fountain, where a stone box had been smashed open. He tentatively prodded a copper disc glinting among the wreckage, and for an instant, a faint red light pulsed beneath his fingers – and a moment later, a panel in the wall collapsed inwards, revealing a gaping rectangular-shaped hole behind them. The crunch of the falling stonework echoed through the chamber.
They all jumped in shock, raising their weapons as the sound reverberated through the silent ruins and dusty air washed over them. Raythe glanced again at the copper disc, but the faint glimmer he’d thought he’d seen was gone. Although the new opening exuded menace, nothing else stirred.
‘We should go,’ Jesco suggested. ‘This whole place could collapse on us.’
‘No,’ Varahana replied, ‘just think: whatever’s down there has never been looted. Imagine!’
‘I am imagining and that’s why I think we should leave.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ Raythe said. ‘They’re all dead and gone. But we should investigate. If we’re going to bring the caravan through here, we need to know it’s safe.’
Jesco groaned, but Varahana grabbed Raythe and pulled him forward, as he had the light. Vidar followed, his craggy features wary, but resolute.
Raythe and Varahana shared a look of mutual intrigue, then together, they stepped through the broken arch. ‘Look,’ he said, examining the broken seals, ‘see this? It was closed from the inside.’
‘That’s not good,’ Jesco squeaked, sounding very different from his normal assured self.
‘Aldar royalty were buried with their chief servants,’ Varahana lectured. ‘They were expected to seal themselves in with the body.’
‘Cheery,’ Jesco said. ‘Raythe, just saying: when you die, you’re on your own.’
Raythe laughed and moved into the passage beyond, where stairs led them deeper into the earth. There were cracks in the plaster, but they could still make out the remains of a mural in which multi-armed Aldar gods vied for supremacy, or doled out judgements in courts filled with tall, slender, pale people – the Aldar themselves, perhaps? The gods all wore masks, some fierce, others serene, variously coloured in primal red, white, black, blue or green, while the Aldar had pale, narrow faces.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ Varahana breathed. ‘Look; that’s Kagemori, the Death God in the demon mask; and Kiiyan with the doves. And the Jade Emperor in the emerald dragon-mask . . . Dear Gerda, I’ve never seen such a large Aldar mural.’
Gazing at the red-eyed, black-masked Kagemori, Raythe shuddered. The Death God was in the process of beheading a supplicant, while fiery beast-men feasted on the carcases of those already judged and found wanting. ‘What are w
e walking into?’ he asked Varahana.
‘I don’t know,’ she confessed, drinking in the mural avidly, trying to commit it to memory.
Further in, the barbaric murals grew ever more disturbing, showing dismembered bodies at the feet of executioners, and the wretched faces of the condemned: who had tanned, human faces.
Vidar, examining the opposite wall, growled, ‘Look at these.’
‘It shows the Paradise-Hall of the Jade Emperor,’ Varahana exclaimed as they examined a courtly scene in which Aldar musicians played for performing dancers. Then she moved to the next panel and laughed aloud, the sound echoing merrily in the near-dark. ‘Well,’ she exclaimed, ‘they were unashamed sinners, clearly.’
They all studied the scene, in which most of the guests in the Jade Emperor’s palace were naked and engaged in the sorts of things that priestesses of Deo and Gerda frowned upon, even for reproductive purposes.
‘There’s rumping in Aldar heaven?’ Jesco snickered. ‘I want to go there when I die.’
‘Jesco, that’s blasphemy,’ Vidar warned, offended more on Varahana’s behalf than his own.
‘We know that the Aldar had quite different mores,’ Varahana said loftily, though her eyes were twinkling. ‘Sexual congress was not considered sinful, and they were quite—’ She had stopped before a panel where the lovers were clearly both female. She coloured and completed her thought. ‘Erm . . . quite liberal.’
‘No wonder they’re all burning in the Pit,’ Raythe drawled sarcastically. ‘Let’s move on, shall we?’
‘You’ll notice the nobles were paler of skin,’ Varahana said as they descended the next flight of stairs. ‘Pale skin implied a life free of toil. The Aldar believed only those of noble birth ascended to Paradise; lesser beings were reincarnated, seeking betterment. That’s why their primary religious symbols were the Sacred Wheel and the Uros, a snake devouring its own tail.’
‘Reincarnation,’ Jesco mused. ‘I’d like to come back as a queen.’
‘I think that’s already happened,’ Varahana quipped, and the Shadran burst out laughing.
‘You’re quite fun, for a priestess,’ he said. ‘How seriously do you take your vows?’
Varahana threw him a forbidding look. ‘As seriously as I take my rank.’
Only a virgin could aspire to be a mater.
‘Just asking,’ Jesco replied, batting the ridiculously long, thick eyelashes over his big, lustrous eyes. ‘Really, I’m enquiring on behalf of a friend. Fur-clad man, tall, bit of an animal.’
Vidar gave a small growl of warning.
‘See what I mean?’ Jesco laughed. ‘You have an admirer, priestess or not.’
‘I’m going off you rapidly,’ Vidar told him, while Varahana gave them both a rather nonplussed look.
‘Enough,’ Raythe interrupted testily. ‘Let’s keep our minds on the job, shall we?
Varahana gave him a grateful look and, preening unconsciously, pushed forward.
The passage switched back in the other direction as it descended. Now the murals were depicting an undersea realm presided over by a blue-masked goddess with tentacles for hair, but they weren’t in good condition as they’d suffered from water seepage through the rock. This tunnel ended in an archway and a small chamber beyond. Outside the chamber lay two slumped-over skeletons wrapped in cloth that fell to dust when Varahana touched it. She made the sign of Gerda over them and breathed, ‘Rest, faithful ones.’
‘Kragging idiots,’ Jesco sniffed.
‘They likely had no choice, and their families would have been rewarded for their sacrifice,’ the Mater replied, her voice sad, before suddenly blurting, ‘Dear Gerda, this really is an Aldar tomb – I am in Paradise!’
She skipped into the next chamber, Raythe followed, his praxis-light illuminating a minimally adorned oval space, a dozen feet in diameter. Within lay a larger-than-man-sized coffin, the lid covered in dust. According to Varahana, the mural on the sides depicted the Jade Emperor and Lady Kiiyan, receiving the homage of a kneeling, masked warrior.
Varahana went to the box, which was surely a sarcophagus, and brushed the dust off it with her hand, then she gasped and recoiled. When Raythe stepped to her side, he saw the lid was glass and with the dust smoothed away, they could clearly see a being in sumptuous robes, wearing a demonic mask. The corpse’s visible skin was dark with age and desiccation, the fingers just bones, but gold gleamed from a ring on his right index finger.
‘It’s the man – or woman – in the mural,’ Varahana breathed, pointing at the kneeling drinker. ‘See, it’s the same mask. This must have been an Aldar king or queen, to have such a tomb.’ Her voice was awestruck. ‘I’ve heard that Aldar skeletons remain intact for millennia, but in their campaign to eradicate all memory of the Aldar, the Church burn them. To find an intact tomb like this is incredible.’
‘They say the Aldar could be man or woman at will,’ Jesco breathed. ‘Imagine that.’
Varahana looked at him. ‘You know that’s just an old wives’ story, don’t you? It’s based on bad translations of old texts. The Aldar didn’t use gender-specific terms like “he” or “she” in their writing and they never appeared unmasked before a human, so the story grew that they had no gender. It’s all bunk – and that’s a fact.’
‘Facts are overrated,’ Jesco replied. ‘I prefer my own sweet fantasies.’
Varahana waved him off and went back to studying the entombed Aldar. ‘This is magnificent, Raythe,’ she said, studying the scroll-work embossed on the side, then sounding out symbols: ‘Bu-ra-ma-na-ka . . . Buramanaka. Loosely, it means “Devouring Wind”.’
‘Nice,’ Jesco drawled. ‘Clearly a lovely fellow, fond of children . . . for breakfast.’
‘We should burn him,’ Vidar growled.
‘Never!’ Varahana exclaimed. ‘This is a treasure beyond price.’
‘Shouldn’t a priestess be exorcising this place?’ Raythe asked, amused by Varahana’s passion.
‘Exorcism is rot; it’s just window-dressing for commoners,’ the mater replied, trampling over centuries of Church tradition. ‘Dear Gerda, I could learn so much from examining the skeleton, and his clothing and gear – look how well preserved it all is in there. If we leave it and someone else finds it, they’ll likely destroy it, and who knows what knowledge will be lost for ever? Raythe, can we take it with us?’
Raythe looked from the priestess’ excited face to the dead Aldar’s mask and back. ‘I understand, Vara, truly I do. But think of the practical issues. How could we transport it safely? It would crumble the moment we tried to move it. And possessing one Aldar artefact is illegal – think of how we’d suffer if we were caught with an actual corpse! Even researching them is forbidden except under Church guidance.’
‘I know, believe me,’ Varahana murmured, then she brightened. ‘But I’m the Church out here.’
‘I’m not sure Archmater Elymas would sanction grave-robbing – and even if we did manage to get it back to camp intact, there’s no way we could transport it further without damaging it – just the movement of the wagons will wreak havoc. And if anyone found it, there’d be utter panic.’ He studied the chilling corpse, then gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Those rings are valuable. You can take them.’
Varahana looked stricken. ‘But the mask—’
‘Not that,’ Raythe insisted. Aldar masks had an uncanny reputation.
Varahana sagged, but she didn’t argue. ‘All right, if you insist.’ She turned back to the coffin, found the latch and unclipped it, then gripped the side and lifted.
Fear . . .
‘Did you hear that?’ Raythe asked. It sounded like someone had whispered the word ‘fear’ – or maybe it was ‘Vyre’? But no one else had reacted, and he instantly doubted his ears.
‘Hear what,’ Jesco squeaked, ‘a ghost?’
‘No,’ Raythe replied, engaging his sorcerer’s sight and looking around. ‘There are no spirits here.’
Varahana made the sign of blessin
g over the dead Aldar, then reached in and pulled the rings from the bony fingers. Handing them to Raythe, she said sternly, ‘These are not for selling.’
‘I know,’ he told her, handing them back. ‘Keep them, to remember this place by.’
She positively glowed in response, then turned back to the mask and gazing longingly at it, started, ‘Can’t we—?’
‘Aldar masks were sorcerous artefacts,’ Raythe reminded her.
‘Then we should smash it,’ Jesco chimed in.
‘That wouldn’t be enough. I know they require specific rites to render them inert.’ He shut the glass lid and let out his breath. ‘We should re-seal this tomb,’ he said. ‘We don’t want anyone else down here – especially as they’ll see that it’s recently been disturbed.’
Vidar frowned. ‘Let’s make sure there’s a path all the way through this hill before we get too far ahead of ourselves. That’s why we’re here, remember.’
‘Good point,’ Raythe agreed. ‘Onwards.’
When they got back upstairs, he called upon Cognatus to hide their disturbances, then, using earth magic, he did his best to repair the shattered stone seal. Even after applying the spells, it remained cracked and weak, so he traced the rune Visu – the eye – to conceal it with illusion. ‘That’ll have to do,’ he told them. ‘As long as no one actually leans against it, it’ll remain hidden for years.’
Varahana looked ready to cry, but Jesco was clearly relieved to be moving on.
The next passage ascended in a series of switchback ramps into more formal areas until they emerged into a burnt-out entrance hall with giant double doors partially broken and open to the elements. Birds were roosting in the upper decorations of the columns and there were all manner of leaves and twigs and old bones, the accumulated debris of centuries. The ceiling had partially fallen and the air stank of rot and decay.
Jesco, sweating profusely, hurried to the doors and climbed through, returning just a few moments later to report a clear paved road and a wooded valley beyond. ‘Looking back, the entrance is clearly visible,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think anyone lives out here. I can’t see any trace of cooking fires in the valley below.’