by Max Anthony
“Which way?” asked Rasmus.
“Along here, I think,” said Viddo. “We’re not a million miles from the place we explored last time. Look – the rock is already turning again to that yellow type.”
His head may have been pounding, but it didn’t prevent Rasmus from having a bright idea before they set off. “Wait on a moment. I found a couple of identification scrolls in that chest back there.” He reached into the remains of his robes, relieved to find the rolled paper was still tucked away inside. “Which of our items should we identify?”
“I already know that my sword cuts through undead easily. What about your hammer, Jera?”
“It’s wonderfully light and seems to smash open heads without effort. I feel like there’s something more, though I’m not sure what it might be,” she replied.
“If it does its job, let us save the formal identification for the moment,” said Rasmus. “That leaves us with a couple of magical rings that we appropriated from the mummy’s tomb and this square cloth cloak thing that I lifted from the chest back there.”
Viddo had a look at the cloak, marvelling at how strong and light it was. The item was certainly possessed of magic. “I say we identify one ring and this cloak.”
“Agreed,” said Rasmus. He waited patiently while Viddo pulled out a ring, which he handed to the wizard.
A quantity of arcane mumbling followed, which sounded extremely exotic to Jera and Viddo’s ears. In truth, Rasmus liked to put on an accent when he spoke his magic, on order that he astound and amaze his audience. Every wizard was a showman at heart.
“One ring of spell reflection, suitable for all classes and one defensive cloak of mirroring, suitable only for thieves and wizards,” announced Rasmus.
“I think Jera should have the ring,” said Viddo at once. “With her inexperience, she is the most vulnerable to magical attacks.”
Jera didn’t object to this summation and silently accepted the ring, slipping it over her forefinger. “How often does it work?” she asked.
“One per day is the standard quota of spells which such a ring will reflect,” said Rasmus. “And it won’t reflect area spells, only those which have been aimed directly at you. So don’t go attacking anyone who’s about to cast an area death spell in the vicinity.”
“What about the cloak?” asked Viddo. Before the words were even out of his mouth, he realised that Rasmus should have it. “You take it,” he said. “You’ve not found anything yet and I’ve already got this sword. Besides, you look a bit silly with your arse on show and this cloak should cover things up nicely.”
Rasmus bowed to this logic and swung the cloak about his shoulders. He wasn’t sure if it was possible for something to have exactly zero weight - if such a thing could happen this cloak was there or thereabouts. It felt so light as to be practically non-existent and had the added benefit of ensconcing his buttocks in a pleasingly opaque shroud.
With their spoils partially divided, they set off again. Now that they were getting closer to their goal, Viddo felt much more confident that they would soon discover if the plan to summon Him Without Name was still in progress, or if the words they’d read in the undead wizard’s mansion described events which had happened long ago and would not be a threat to the people who lived on the surface. Having seen the legions of dead lain out with weapons by their sides, Viddo knew in his heart that there was definitely something going on. If it didn’t come to fruition now, it would in the next few years or decades. Gods and the undead had a lot of patience and they could wait as long as they needed to.
“How long until the undead find us again?” wondered Jera.
“I think they’ve got a lot of running to do in order to find another place to cross that fissure,” said Viddo, racking his brains to see if he had any memory of a place to cross. He came up blank.
“Could there be more of them on this side?” she asked.
“I am certain there are,” said Rasmus. “In truth, I am not sure how they are tracking us down so readily. The diamonds are not in themselves magical, but that doesn’t mean that the former owners don’t have a means of detecting their location. Whatever they’re doing it isn’t exact, else we’d find swarms of undead facing us at every step.”
“In fact,” said Viddo, speculating rather than repeating proven knowledge, “it seems certain that their search is working to our advantage, by gathering them into large, easily-avoided clumps and thereby stripping these corridors of wandering groups which might otherwise harry us.”
Rasmus disagreed but saw no value in voicing his opinion. He remembered the last time they’d come here, when they’d travelled through mile upon mile of the tunnels without seeing any activity. The wizard was fairly sure that this time they’d stirred things up quite a bit, likely dispersing the undead further through the underground complex than the creatures would otherwise have ventured.
After he’d walked a mile or so, Rasmus’ headache faded and he forgot about the bruises. At one point, he felt a lump in the material of his robes and for a brief moment thought that he might have something seriously wrong with his internals. His questing hand found not a protruding hernia, but a severed grey finger, which had clearly been lopped off during the fight at the bridge and had somehow found its way into his robes. He dropped it to the floor without giving it much thought and wiped his hands thoroughly on his robes in order to clean them. His skin’s contact with the soiled cloth likely made his hands dirtier, but mentally it made him feel better.
Around them, the colour of the rock had completed its transition from drab, monotonous grey, to a drab, monotonous yellow. The texture of the rock was different as well – Jera ran her hands over it as she walked. Having lived her entire life in the warm north of Frodgia, she was familiar with the permeable sandstone that was prevalent in many areas. The stone down here wasn’t soft and porous, rather it had a feeling of solidity and permanence, as if it were a different type entirely, or had been compressed by the trillions of tonnes of rock above it.
Jera had never been a keen geologist and soon found herself thinking about how much she was looking forward to seeing her mother and father again. And Goosty the Placid, who had treated her like a much-loved daughter, perhaps even more than her parents had. Life in Frodgia could be harsh for many, and Jera knew that her parents had done their best, but it was hard for them having to work so long in order to pay for the things they needed. She dreaded to think how much they’d had to sacrifice to pay for her chain armour and the short sword she’d abandoned long ago. Jera felt guilty at her uncharitable thoughts, then remembered that she had already accumulated a worthwhile quantity of gold while in the company of these two worthy gentlemen. Rogues, came an inner voice to correct her. They’re a couple of rogues.
By the time Jera had broken away from her inner thoughts, the three of them were deep within what looked to be a residential area. Rasmus didn’t like the word residential when used in association with this place. It implied a certain normality that he felt was not applicable to the former occupants, who appeared to have been little better than genocidal savages. Viddo agreed with the wizard’s reasoning, but thought it much easier to stick to familiar words for the sake of practicality.
Some of the rooms had the comforts of home on display, with chairs and settees hewn from the stone. There were fireplaces and cupboards, beds and tables, all carved from solid rock. Whilst these furnishings were vastly uncomfortable, Rasmus and Viddo had already learned that the presence of such items implied wealth. Most of the rooms they’d seen here had almost nothing to break up the characterless stone walls and floors. Here and there were signs of the ancient script, which Viddo studied with interest. He pretended that he was looking for clues about the dead occupants, when in reality he was hoping to glean some information about their cuisine. Although he had no intention of ever settling down, he conceded to himself that if he ever chose to do so, he might like to open a restaurant. Viddo’s Ancient Gastronomy, he thought t
o himself with a smile.
Lost as they were in their thoughts, none of the trio immediately noted the coldness in the air. It wasn’t the same coldness that affects one’s skin, rather it was a coldness that affected the soul, making their feet feel leaden and their strides more laboured.
Viddo was the most perceptive of the three and he noticed it first. “Something’s not right,” he said. “I’m normally on my guard at all times in a place like this, but a part of my brain has just realised that it is being lulled into somnolence.”
“Somnolence?” asked Rasmus thickly. He’d been thinking about the times he used to sit reading his spellbook, with a big plate of chicken sandwiches. Boring times, but restful nonetheless.
“Can’t you feel it?” asked Viddo. “There’s something subtly oppressive in the air. It made me think about restaurants, when I should be concentrating on my surroundings. I could have walked past numerous secret doors and if we’d been unlucky, we could have fallen foul of many a trap.”
With an effort, Rasmus dragged himself away from his memories of spellbooks and sandwiches. The act of focusing told him how far away his attention had wandered. “Jera? Are you all right?” he asked.
Jera looked surprised at the sudden attention. “Yes, I’m fine, thank you. I was thinking about my days training. Such nice memories.” She looked wistful until she caught the stares of her companions, which spurred her into clearing her head.
“We must be on our guard against any more of this,” said Viddo, aware that he had no idea what this was, or indeed if it was anything other than their own distraction.
The residential area was extensive and Rasmus kept his mind clear by estimating how many people may have lived in this single area. His data was limited and incomplete, but he didn’t allow this to stand in his way. After much pondering on how many people might have lived in each room and how many rooms there might be in total, the wizard settled on a final figure of sixty-one thousand. He thought it to be a staggering number, all things considered, especially when he took into account that this was just one area of perhaps dozens. It was no wonder there were so many undead running about.
The underground complex was not infinite in extent and they came to the end of the residential area. Or at least, the orderly arrangement of similarly-sized rooms came to an end. There were still rooms, though these were larger and showed some variation in shape and furnishings. Each of the trio was aware of something in the background, buzzing at the extremes of hearing like an undead fly beneath a wizard’s hat. Jera was the one to mention it, bringing the attention of all to something they’d sort of noticed and tried to ignore.
“Viddo’s hearing is far sharper than mine,” said Rasmus. “If the sound is as faint to him as it is to us, we can be sure that we are hearing something different to plain old, mundane noise. It is like the magical emanations we sometimes get at the university, when a wizard’s experiment goes wrong and he or she tries to cover it up by adding layer upon layer of other magics to confuse anyone who tries to investigate who’s been breaking the rules again.”
“That sort of thing happens quite a lot, does it?” enquired Viddo.
“All of the time. The university actually employs squads of wizards to police their fellows and report any transgressions.”
“Poachers turned gamekeepers, eh?”
“That’s a very negative way of looking at it!” replied Rasmus. “We wizards are an inquisitive lot and without rules there’d be far more explosions and unexplained deaths than there might otherwise be.”
Viddo didn’t pursue the conversation further, aware that his profession wasn’t exactly draped in honour and civic virtue, especially when one considered that the Assassin’s Guild was an offshoot from the Thieves’ Guild. Not that Viddo had any love of assassins - quite the opposite in fact.
Aside from the constant droning sound in their heads, there was nothing to concern them. No undead appeared in their hordes and no trapdoors fell open beneath their feet. The corridor ended at a room, into which they continued on the basis that it must contain something of importance if it had an entire passageway dedicated simply to reaching it. The ceiling of this place wasn’t unusually high, at seven or eight feet. The walls and ceiling were lined with light globes, allowing them to see that the dimensions of the room were great, at perhaps one hundred yards to a side. There were no pillars to support the roof. If humans had made this room, it would have collapsed before they’d finished it, but the adventurers had long since stopped wondering at how the ancient people had managed to perform such feats with stone.
There were low, rectangular blocks of stone everywhere, lined up precisely so that they were horizontal to two of the walls. These blocks were closely-packed and served no apparent purpose until Jera sat upon one.
“Benches!” she said. “This is a waiting area of some sort.”
“They could seat thousands in here,” said Viddo. “I wonder what it could have been used for.” He looked around the room, expecting to see a representation of Him Without Name carved into a wall for the worshippers to prostrate themselves before. There was nothing of the sort and all of the walls were as plain as could be.
There was a wide exit doorway in the distance, directly opposite the one through which they’d entered. They made towards it, having quickly determined that there was no point in dallying in this particular chamber.
“Stone is the bluntest of implements and the most basic of tools. Yet here we see such great use of it,” said Rasmus, waxing lyrical about the sights around him.
“Give me a variety of materials any day of the week,” Viddo replied. “I find much of this place to be drab beyond belief.”
“Me too,” said Jera. “I prefer to feel the sun on my back and to see the beauty of my town as I walk amongst its streets.”
“If you feel that Gargus is beautiful, just wait until you see Trilbus!” said Rasmus. “Now that is a sight to behold.”
“I hear the fireballs in the university quarter are especially beautiful on a clear winter’s eve,” said Viddo.
Rasmus steadfastly refused to answer this blatant attempt to bait him and the three of them approached the doorway. It was arched and with narrow pillars to either side – the first example of ornamentation they’d seen in the room. There were black steps behind the arch, leading steeply upwards.
“Look – the stone is completely black on the other side,” said Rasmus. He approached the doorway and reached through tentatively, as if he expected there to be an eternal magical force shield blocking their path. There was nothing and he was able to press his hand onto the smooth, shiny surface of the walls on the other side. The steps were made of the same material.
Viddo stepped through and onto the bottom step. He, too, pressed his hand to the surface and gave it an experimental rub. “Obsidian,” he said. “It’s a glass, not a stone. Beautifully carved and polished.”
Jera stared at it in wonder – the black glass continued to line the stairwell, as far up as she could see. “I’ve seen obsidian in necklaces before, and even in some ancient arrowheads in the Gargus museum. Nothing like what’s here,” she said. “Is it solid, do you think, or is it just a veneer?”
“I have no idea,” said Viddo. “I’ve never seen anything like it though. Anyway, we need to go this way, so let’s get on with it.”
They began up the stairs. They’d have likely been treacherous when wet, so it was lucky that there’d never been any rainfall here and they all had ample grip. The treads were high and the steps narrow. This combination made the ascent harder than it might have been and both Jera and Rasmus had to pay great attention to their feet. The balls of light had been helpfully provided here as well, allowing them a long enough view ahead that they could just about see the distant top. The buzzing sound they’d all become accustomed to changed to a thrumming vibration which gradually increased in intensity the further they went.
“I think we’re getting close to the artifact,” said
Viddo, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Whatever it is, its power must be incredible for us to have felt it from so far away.”
The steps ended up ahead and they approached with a greatly increased caution.
21
The steps took them into an enclosed room, only a dozen feet to each side. There was light from the globes and narrow passages went away to the left and right. There were more steps ahead of them – this time the stairwell was hardly wide enough for two abreast and the steps looked even steeper. Everything was made from obsidian and even with its high polish, it seemed reluctant to reflect the light and the room was oppressive and gloomy.
“It looks like we’re in the middle of a solid block of obsidian,” said Viddo. “I have no idea if this is a natural formation or not. It seems unlikely to me.”
“Which way should we go?” asked Rasmus. He had started to feel that they should get a move on.
Viddo shrugged. He’d got them into the general area, but he didn’t know the precise location of where they might find an artifact. “Up is always good,” he said.
With no better plan in mind, they started up the opposite steps, with Jera in the lead, followed by Viddo and Rasmus. The steps went upwards for a time until they reached a small landing. From here, they doubled back upon themselves and continued to climb. They were completely enclosed and if any of the three had suffered from claustrophobia, they would have been very keen to escape the confines of the stairs.
After six such flights, the steps ended in another of the small rooms. There were two more passages leading to the left and right, though this time there were no steps opposite. In their place, was a series of openings, through which shone a sickly red light. The ever-present vibration was stronger now and none of the adventurers wished to experience it at a greater magnitude than they felt at present. The lure of the windows was great - they crouched low and crept to the openings on the other side of the room.