by Clark Bolton
Until just then, Ich-Mek hadn’t taken the dragon-door as being literally for dragons. Looking up, he could see an enormous tier of the cliff, which was where Tass was indicating they should go. It was hardly higher up than the tallest tower of the temple, so he nodded his head in agreement.
As they struggled to get everyone safely to the tier, they saw immediately why monks were not so aware of the place. Four stone heads guarded the place, and Ich-Mek’s ring finger began to itch immediately.
“Monks don’t come here, right?” he asked Puc.
“No, Fu-Si,” Puc replied in disbelief as he stared at the heads.
“A door,” As-Cheen announced a she gestured toward the cliff face.
Both Tass and Ich-Mek couldn’t see what she was referring to, until she led them to a crevice. Here a tiny passage went in for several steps, ending in a door.
“No dragon,” Tass remarked.
“I suppose they land here…and transform,” Ich-Mek suggested nervously, before cautiously approaching the door.
He had heard that only dracomons could transform their shape, and hoped that was true as that would limit severely the number of dragons that could fit through the door they were looking at. It was as enchanted as the massive door below, and also contained an Owesek seal. In frustration he slapped the door after first trying to open it with a touch of his ring. He then sat down in the passageway and began to sulk.
“It’s a partnership,” he mumbled after several minutes while he stared at Puc.
Calling the monk over, he then had Puc touch his hand to the seal, while he did the same. Nothing happened, so in frustration he cast an unlock cantrip, then laughed hysterically at himself when that didn’t work.
They all settled near the cliff edge that looked down on the temple. Hours passed, and each idea that came into Ich-Mek’s head amounted to nothing. He accepted food from As-Cheen when she offered it, and watched as Puc and Tass also ate. He counted the slew of towers scatter below them, but gave up at fifty.
“Waste of towers,” he mumbled.
“They serve the spirit world,” Tass reminded him. “Each houses its own keeper that watches for evil.”
Ich-Mek could see Tass seriously believed this, but that didn’t stop him from telling Tass, “They don’t keep the birds out.”
Which was true, they could all see. Swallows nested everywhere, along with other birds. Long stains of bird droppings marked every tower and every crevice. Even the false windows had birds’ nests hanging from them.
“You know what would keep the birds out?” he asked as he looked at As-Cheen knowingly, who refused to indulge him by paying attention. “Cats! We should bring up cats.’
“Nooo!” As-Cheen objected loudly. “They would fall!”
“Yeah, but they might find other holes up here! Bigger ones.”
“No!” she reiterated.
“One cat!”
“One big one!” she snapped as she widened her eyes with her fingers again.
He chuckled, then went back to seriously thinking about cats again. This lasted until he caught Tass glaring at him. Puc didn’t seem to mind his actions, he noted.
“Why so many towers and cats, Puc?” he asked as he sat down to count towers again.
“They are sacred to the Lady of the Urn,” Puc replied.
“The towers?”
“No, Fu-Si, the cats.”
“Not just to kill useless vermin?” he asked as he gave Tass a sideways scowl for a moment.
Puc bowed low “They bring blessings also, Fu-Si.”
“Tower spirits bring blessings?”
“Yes, Fu-Si.”
He counted up to sixty towers now. They were arranged generally in spires of nine, but there were also single towers, and towers emerging from other towers. How could anyone ever search them all, he wondered. Then, casting a location spell, he concentrated on finding something hidden, and was nearly struck blind.
“Ahhhhh!” he yelled in frustration as he lay back to blink the tears from his eyes.
“Count them, would you, Puc?” he asked.
“There are sixty-seven, Fu-Si,” Puc replied immediately.
“Suppose you would know that,” Ich-Mek replied absently. “Wait…sixty-seven?” he asked as he sat up. “That means there is an odd one!”
As-Cheen and Tass paid little attention to his ramblings; only Puc seemed interested in what he was saying. There were sixty-seven boys in a form at Key-Tar-Om School, and sixty-seven girls. He himself was an odd-boy.
“Which one is different?” he asked Puc as he began frantically searching for one that stood out.
Puc then graciously trailed along as he began pacing the cliff face, counting and categorizing towers. Neither Tass nor As-Cheen seemed particularly interested in the exercise, so he was surprised when As-Cheen waved to get his attention, then pointed to one.
“That one,” she said, before going back to sitting peacefully.
Ich-Mek stared at the tower for a while. It was on the large side, but not by much, he concluded. It didn’t look any different to him, and in fact had a matching tower he could now see on the far side of the temple.
“What’s different about it?” he finally had to ask.
“No bird poop,” she told him.
He looked to be sure. “I would never have seen that in a thousand years,” he admitted loudly.
__________________________
A wave of nausea hit Ich-Mek as he peered over the lip of the tower’s edge – so much so that he slipped and was painfully pinched by Tass’s rope that was tied about his upper thighs and waist. He hung suspended for a moment, trying to signal to everyone that he was okay while he spun slowly about.
“A stone head!” he warned as Tass started lowering him.
He waved off the motion, and then began levitating himself up again. “Thank the gods for this rope,” he muttered to himself.
Squinting, he then drove himself through the second wave of nausea until he was inside the tower. There he saw a low passageway leading down at an incline, and quickly stepped into it. He regretted it immediately as he was met by enormous cat eyes, not four steps from him.
“Carguar!…Sybarn!…Tybran!” he yelled.
The eyes withdrew out of sight, leaving him wondering the name of the cat he had just encountered. He tried next to counter the nausea of the stone head. With detection spells he was able to see the flow of arcane-energy, much as he had done before when climbing the cliffs above the temple. By inscribing rune-sets along the floor and walls, he managed to channel the energy away from a section of the tower.
“Come up!” he hissed down at the three faces looking anxiously up at him.
He warned them one by one of the cat as they climbed in to join him. It was As-Cheen who went down the passage first, which he found a bit horrifying. When she signaled it was okay to follow, he quickly did, and soon all of them were inside the temple.
The chamber was about thirty steps across, and most of it was raised, forming a single platform of stone. The lower part Ich-Mek quickly searched for signs of cat droppings, or anything else that would confirm what he had seen.
“Are we in, Tass?” Ich-Mek asked, as they tentatively explored the far side of the room.
“Yes,” Tass replied in a hoarse whisper.
A section of the far wall dropped away sharply and they could see down for some distance. Giant step-like features, akin to the tiers of cliffs above them, led down into a gloomy vaulted chamber. Ich-Mek could see a solid plane of enchantment between the first and second steps.
First looking for signs of the cats, he then slowly crawled out to the first ledge, then reached up to bring his hand near what he suspected was a ward of some kind. His ring began to influence it immediately, resulting in a soft ringing tone. The closer he moved his ring to the ward, the louder it got.
“It will call the cat, I think,” he told them as he crawled back.
“Which one?” As-Cheen whisper
ed.
He had a sudden desire to widen his eyes with his hands and yell, “The big one!” – but thought better of it. There was no longer a wall between them and the cat, and that was really starting to wear on them all, he could tell.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said insecurely as he pushed his hand through the ward. Somewhere off in the distance, a loud gong sounded.
They all prepared to flee at any moment, until several minutes had passed. Then Ich-Mek motioned to Tass to proceed. They all watched carefully as Tass lowered himself down to the next step, then followed him, one at a time.
They repeated this process slowly until they were far below the level of the tower. Off to the side now was a set of stairs, which Ich-Mek decided was best to levitate over to. Once this was accomplished they all felt a little better.
“Which way?” Tass asked with a concerned look at Ich-Mek. “Up or down?”
Looking down the partially open stairs, Ich-Mek could see a glowing light that pulsated occasionally. Upward he saw nothing but faint sunlight, which was coming in from one of the false windows high on the many-layered ceiling. He assumed some enchantment let the sun in through the stone.
“We have to find something to open the door,” he whispered to them.
Even Puc agreed with this suggestion, and so Tass led them up the stairs. It ended in another ward, which blocked access to small steps that continued up.
“Owesek!” As-Cheen warned as she pointed to the many Owesek seals that formed a kind of arch over the steps.
Goosebumps rose on his arms and legs, as Ich-Mek studied the ward. It wasn’t the same as the last one, he was sure. Reaching out to place his ring close to it, he was amazed to see that the ward parted, as if it was alive and avoiding his touch.
He stepped carefully through, then helped the others to pass. The single room the steps led to was only maybe fifteen steps across, he guessed. In it there was a long shelf, almost like a table built into the wall. A second table had long sheets of rice-paper laid out on it – these looked as if they had been placed there just the day before. There was also a bookshelf, which contained a few scrolls but for the most part was empty.
The workmanship was beyond anything he had seen outside the Regent’s palace. The edges of everything were of black beveled stone, and the surfaces were a bone-white. A square bowl sat on the long table, and beside it an ornate quill holder, complete with an inkwell and quill.
A piece of rice-paper lay next to the bowl and had names written on it. All were crossed off, except the last two. With a racing heart, Ich-Mek tried to read the last two names. He didn’t recognize them though, and when he asked Puc to look, the monk indicated he didn’t either.
“More names,” Ich-Mek muttered as he looked at the scrolls on the bookshelf, “and they are all crossed out.”
It was then that he noticed they all had dates beside them, and possibly the person’s location. Some were noted as being in Ibu-Jek, while others had strange, foreign-sounding locations listed. His heart leaped when he went back to the paper on the table and read the dates on the last two names.
“About four-hundred thirty-four years ago…I think.” He then gestured for Puc to take a look.
“Yes, Fu-Si,” Puc whispered.
“About when the last dragon-mage was here,” He suggested to Tass, who nodded his head in agreement.
Ich-Mek then had Puc help him search through the scrolls on the bookshelf for more dates. The oldest they found was some eleven-hundred years ago, but there were others that were written in a different format.
“A different dynasty, Fu-Si,” Puc said as he showed him the dates. “Master Neeq may know how to interpret these.”
“Older, maybe,” Ich-Mek acknowledged before turning his attention to the table containing large sheets of rice-paper. “Maps!” he exclaimed. “Good ones!”
It didn’t take them long to discover names written on the maps in various locations. Soon they were able to correlate some of them back to the entries on the scrolls. Most maps looked to be of Ibu-Jek, and nearby nations, but one in particular seemed to depict lands across a wide sea. This map had many illustrations on it, including dragons, and mountains of ice floating in the sea.
Ich-Mek left the maps to Puc, as he turned his attention back to the mysterious bowl. It was filled with something, he realized when he dared to touch it softly. Oil maybe, he thought; whatever it was, it wasn’t water. The bowl glowed powerful magic, though nothing else in the room did. Wondering now how much time his companions were willing to give him, he began testing the enchantments on the bowl.
“Why do this?” As-Cheen asked nervously. “This is not a key.”
“No…but I would like to know why this room is here, before we go down.”
He noticed that the oil in the bowl seemed to ripple at his words. It hadn’t done that before his last statement, he was sure.
Ich-Mek stepped closer to the bowl, then glanced at his friends apprehensively, before stating forcefully, “What lies below.”
The light that shone from the bowl was almost blinding in the gloomy room. Letting his eyes adjust, Ich-Mek could then see strange and confusing images reflected in the oil: a pillar of stone seemed to rise up out of nothingness, with some kind of transparent barrier standing between it and the surrounding stonework, making it shimmer and waver.
He stood back and let the image fade. Realizing it was some kind of scrying device, he decided to keep from activating it again until he had figured out what best to search for.
Sitting against the far wall, he invited the others to do the same. “I can find things with that…maybe the key…but I don’t know if it’s safe.”
“Why the names next to it, Ich-Mek?” As-Cheen asked. “Are they mages?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Could be important people…monks, maybe.”
“We should go to the door,” Tass then interjected. “This is not for monks, and will not help us.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to look,” Ich-Mek replied. He could see everyone else wanted to leave the room, and so, reluctantly, he agreed.
The stairs they had first found led them down to a landing, then looked to continue. Here a large engraving looked to be proclaiming something. It took a moment for Ich-Mek to realize it was written in arcane-script. In huge symbols was the name Ustclostefey, and below it in smaller script was written a proclamation.
When Ich-Mek muttered the name, he got a strong reaction from Puc, who then implored him not to say it without reverence. “The name is of a god, Fu-Si,” Puc told him. “He is the one who records the names of the soldiers of light.”
Ich-Mek looked at him in confusion. “He is the founder of the Owesek,” he countered. “Believed to be the first mage. I found texts mentioning him in Key-Tar-Om.”
“No, Ich-Mek. Puc is right…do not say the name again,” Tass insisted.
Seeing no point in arguing about it now, Ich-Mek went back to reading the proclamation. Knowing the others couldn’t read it, he read it aloud softly.
Let the window of the monolith
Hasten the discovery of the
Wielders of light and darkness
Un-make or make, let the
Covenant stand.
“Is that the monolith?” As-Cheen asked when he was finished reading.
She was pointing to the many decorated columns that descended from high above; they contained various engravings of a monolith. Some showed a great hand writing upon the black stone with but a finger. Others had a quill in the hand, which showed it writing while the monolith sprouted upward like some kind of plant.
“The Owesek Covenant,” Ich-Mek proclaimed in wonder. “It’s in the oath I took.”
There was a long silence before Puc dared to ask, “What is this covenant, Fu-Si?”
“Don’t the monks of Shrindala know?”
Puc thought for a moment then shook his head. “I know not, Fu-Si.”
Ich-Mek looked around at the expectant face
s, and then admitted, “I don’t know what it is. My master never told me, and I don’t think Ober-Toss knew.”
Looking over the edge of the landing, Ich-Mek saw the source of the glow that surrounded them. It was far below and difficult to make out, yet reminded him of the etchings on the columns.
“We should find another way to go,” Tass suggested urgently, just as Ich-Mek took his first step off the landing.
“There is no other way,” Ich-Mek replied as he looked to Puc and As-Cheen for confirmation.
Seeing them nod in agreement, Ich-Mek began the descent. The stairs now began a wide spiral, and in its center he could see a monolith that appeared to rise toward them as they descended. When he came even to the top of it, he stopped to look. Besides glowing, it also wavered and shimmered as it had done in the reflection of it in the bowl.
“We are looking through a gateway, I think,” Ich-Mek told them with awe in his voice.
The black monolith was covered in tiny white etchings, which appeared once again to be names. Puc soon proclaimed he saw the same names as on the scrolls they had found in the chamber above. Ich-Mek asked him softly to record the final name on the monolith as he carefully removed ink and quill from his small pack.
The name wasn’t Ibu-Jek in nature, he was sure. “Runeholden,” he said softly, giving his best shot at the pronunciation.
After Puc had copied it, he carefully packed it away. Descending further down the stairs, they came to the base of the monolith. It seemed to pass into the floor, and since the stairs continued down they descended further. They then got their first glimpse of the interior side of the mammoth door Ich-Mek had failed to open from the outside.
“We still don’t have a key,” Ich-Mek proclaimed a he stepped off the stairs and walked toward the door.
To his left now was another descending set of stairs, with a glow similar to that of the monolith. Glancing in, he could see little more than the stairs, and several sets of landings, but guessed that the monolith might pierce the ceiling of the chamber below.