by Randy Nargi
“What?” Talessa Kreed exclaimed. “You’re half dead, sir. This is a folly. We must return to the surface and then, when you are strong enough to travel, we will journey back to Malverton.”
“I have come too far, madam. I will not give up now.”
“You’re mad!”
“Ah, but you are wrong. There is but one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.”
She turned to Bander, eyes flashing. “Talk some sense into your employer!”
Bander shrugged. “I do what I’m hired to do.” Inwardly, he smiled. They were all playing their parts admirably well.
“I admire your dedication, Mr. Grannt,” Mortam Rowe said. “And what if I were to make you an offer of employment myself?”
“I would not be inclined to entertain it,” Bander said. “You’ve asked us a lot of questions, but we still don’t know who you are, what you want, and why you are here.”
“Surely Valthar or Eton Sward must have mentioned that there were others collecting aonae. Our employer is a mage—much like the late Mr. Sward. He is quite generous, by the by.”
“And who is your employer?” Bander asked.
“Ah, that would be telling. He values his privacy far too much to allow such a disclosure. But I will say that he would be most intrigued by this treasure trove—as you put it.”
Valthar looked down at the ground and then back up at Mortam Rowe. “Well, since Eton Sward is no longer a part of this enterprise, I may consider another alliance. Especially in light of the circumstances.”
“Excellent.”
“Tell me what you had in mind, sir.”
As Mortam Rowe prattled on to Valthar, Bander found himself looking over at Keave. The man had seated himself cross-legged on the ground and was fooling with some sort of small wooden figurine. He appeared to be bored by the proceedings.
Bander walked over and nodded at Keave. “You are a skilled fighter.”
“I know.” He didn’t look up from his figurine. It was a carved dragon.
“I’ve fought a lot of men,” Bander said. “You might be the best.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“I didn’t say that you were.”
Keave finally looked up. “Then why are you talking to me?”
“Mr. Grannt,” Mortam Rowe called. “We have come to an arrangement, Valthar and I.”
“Have you now?” Bander asked, as he walked back over to where Valthar, Talessa Kreed, and Mortam Rowe stood.
“Your share is the same,” Valthar told Bander. “As is yours, Talessa Kreed. From this point on, you will follow Mr. Rowe’s directives as though they were my own. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Kreed?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, Rowe, have you and your primitive friend located an exit to this damned chamber of trees? Because that’s your first task.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Keave led them on a twisting route between trees, through the stone forest. Valthar was still too weak to walk, so Bander carried his friend. But with every step, Bander felt his heart jump. One wrong move might trigger the guardian statues. He pictured them coming to life and flinging everyone back down into that abysmal chasm.
But Keave moved confidently and unerringly, never pausing, and seemingly at random. It was like they were traversing a maze—a maze that he was completely familiar with.
“How does he know where to go?” Talessa Kreed whispered.
“No idea.”
“I think I figured it out,” Valthar said. “If you’d stop bouncing so much and walk a bit more gracefully, I could be sure!”
“No one has ever accused me of being graceful,” Bander said.
“And, you missy, if you could hold the light up a little higher. Stay to my left. Yes, like that.”
They continued winding their way deeper and deeper into the stone forest.
“Ah, yes,” Valthar said. “Not too difficult, once you know the trick.”
“Which is…?” Bander asked.
“See the butterflies carved into the trunks?”
Each tree had a single butterfly adorning its trunk at eye level. Some were on the side facing them; others were on the opposite side.
“They’re not butterflies,” Keave grunted. The sound of his voice surprised them all. “They’re moths.”
“Indeed,” Valthar continued. “Well, then. Mark the direction that each moth is turned.”
As they walked, Bander noticed that some of the moths faced to the left. Others faced to the right.
But Keave always walked in the direction the moth faced.
“They’re like arrows!” Talessa Kreed said.
“Exactly,” Mortam Rowe chimed in.
“But how did he know?” she asked. “Keave, have you seen such a thing before?”
“No.”
“Mr. Keave is quite good with patterns,” Mortam Rowe said. “He has an uncanny ability in that regard.”
“Well done, then,” Valthar said. “If Sward had been half as observant, he’d still be with us.”
After a quarter hour, Bander noticed that the trees began to thin. Shortly after that, they came to the farthest end of the cavern. There was a man-made passage, leading down a short flight of steps towards the west.
“Let us rest for a moment, and get our bearings,” Mortam Rowe said.
“Put me down, you oaf!” Valthar struggled in Bander’s arms until Bander eased his friend to the ground.
“I suggest no one venture down those stairs until I check them for traps,” Bander said.
“But, of course.”
The rest of the group milled about while Bander prodded and probed the steps, the walls on either side, and the ceiling. “I don’t see anything,” he announced.
Valthar decided he no longer wanted to be carried, so the five of them walked down the few steps into a low, wide hall. As Bander held the illuminated spear aloft, he saw that the room ran for about thirty feet and ended in a small arched passage on the west wall. Cold air billowed from the passage and Bander could feel a marked difference in temperature even from where he stood. The hall was low and wide and every footstep echoed throughout it.
“This is cheery,” Talessa Kreed joked.
“Reminds me of a killing chute,” Mortam Rowe said. “For cattle.”
“I don’t like it either,” Valthar said.
Bander did his best to check for traps and they slowly crossed the hall. There wasn’t much to see until they arrived at the arched passage at the far end. As they drew closer, Bander noticed that an array of runes was etched all around the edge of the doorway. He had no idea of what they meant.
“Keep clear of this,” Bander said.
“We have to go through,” Mortam Rowe said.
“Not quite yet.”
The arched doorway and the passage beyond was a just half a foot taller than Bander and maybe a yard wide. It continued west for four or five feet then widened a bit and stretched into the darkness.
“Any idea what these runes mean?” Bander asked Valthar.
“I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“Nor I,” Talessa Kreed said.
“I see bones,” Keave said.
“Where?” Bander asked.
“There. On the other side of the doorway.”
Bander held his light as close as he could to the passage without breaking the plane of its front surface. He could barely make out some white shapes at the edge of the darkness.
“You sure?”
Keave nodded.
“I found something,” Valthar called. He stood a dozen paces back and he was pointing at something on the north wall. “I believe it’s a concealed door. See this gap here?”
Mortam Rowe took out a blade and poked at the wall. Bits of dried mud flaked off and Bander could start to see the outline of a door. He borrowed Talessa Kreed’s dagger and worked on the other edge of it. Soon they had exposed the entire door.
After a bit of poking and pushing, Bander located a loose brick which acted as a switch to release a hidden latch. The door swung inward.
Bander used the spear to push it completely open, revealing a rough tunnel curving back west. The air was cool and stale and it seemed like this particular door had not been opened in a very, very long time.
“Well?” Valthar asked.
“Do you have any spikes?” Bander asked Mortam Rowe.
“No, I’m afraid we don’t. Are you concerned about the door closing of its own accord?”
“Something like that.”
“Keave will scout ahead, then. Won’t you my friend?”
The ape-like man nodded and, without warning, stepped into the tunnel.
“You need to check for traps,” Bander called after him, but Keave paid him no mind. He just strode in and disappeared around the corner.
Bander listened for any sign of misadventure, but the tunnel was silent. A few minutes later, Keave returned.
“Just a small room. A dozen feet away. Big metal crank in the wall. Nothing else, really.”
“Crank?” Mortam Rowe asked.
“Like a wagon wheel. A little smaller though.”
Bander decided to see it for himself. He followed the tunnel around the curve where it opened up to a small chamber. There was an iron crank wheel set in the west wall. Just like Keave had described.
He returned to the main hallway and slowly paced to the arched passage. It seemed about the same distance as the crank room.
“That wheel might have something to do with this doorway.”
“That would make sense,” Mortam Rowe said. “Perhaps it operates a hidden door.”
That gave Bander an idea. He used the butt of his spear to tap around the inside edge of the passage within the arched doorway to the north. The stonework seemed to give a little, so he struck it harder and harder. In a crumble of dust and dried mud, the wall flaked away.
“What is it?” Valthar asked.
Bander pushed the illuminated tip of the spear into the hollow. He saw a long horizontal screw as thick as his leg running back to the north. It was connected to a set of big solid iron gears—which probably were turned by the crank in the wall.
“Rowe, go back there and turn the crank!” he called.
A few moments later, Bander watched as the screw turned and extended out towards him.
“It’s projecting out into the doorway,” Talessa Kreed said.
“Yes. Likely, it’s designed to open this door.”
“Open how?”
Bander instructed Mortam Rowe to continue to turn the crank and soon the screw protruded all the way to the opposite side of the arched doorway.
“Keep going!”
The screw dug into the wall opposite it and whole sections crumbled away as if they were made of plaster. Bander aided the process by hammering away using the hilt of Fenrue’s sword.
Behind the broken wall was a tall cavity, a yard wide—and inside that was an immense stone wheel, held in place by some sort of mechanism at the bottom.
“A trap!” Valthar exclaimed at his shoulder.
“Or just a very large door,” Talessa Kreed said.
“But to what purpose?”
Bander inspected the stone wheel again. “I have no idea, but whatever it is, it’s engineered to keep something very strong from coming this way. I suggest—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Keave leapt through the doorway. The idiot!
Talessa Kreed gasped and Bander pulled her away from the doorway. He expected some sort of trap to be sprung—most likely the big stone door sealing them off. But everything was still and quiet.
“That was extremely stupid,” Bander said.
Mortam Rowe circled back into the main hallway and gave a half shrug. “We may be proceeding a tad slowly for Mr. Keave’s taste.”
“If he wants to get himself killed, that’s fine with me,” Bander said. “As long as he doesn’t take the rest of us with him.”
On the other side of the doorway, Keave held something up. “It is a bone. There’s a lot of them!” He tossed an upper arm bone back through the doorway and it clattered to the ground near Bander’s feet.
Valthar examined the bone. “Could be hundreds of years old.”
“The passage continues,” Keave called. “No traps.”
“Shall we?” Mortam Rowe grinned.
“There’s a reason those bones were on the other side,” Bander grumbled. But nonetheless he stepped through the passageway into a narrow hall beyond. The dirt floor was littered with the remains of four people—judging by the number of skulls. Their clothing had long since rotted away, but there was no sign of any weapons or metal objects.
“Prisoners?” Talessa Kreed asked. “Could this be some kind of dungeon?”
Valthar said, “I doubt it. Remember, we’re beneath a temple. There is some religious significance to all of this.”
Fifty feet to the west, the narrow hall turned abruptly north and then gently curved back west and then south.
“We’re descending,” Bander said. The hallway seemed to be a large spiral.
“That much is obvious,” Valthar replied.
The air grew colder and colder with every step down.
“What’s this?” Talessa Kreed held her torch close to the wall. It illuminated faint lines painted on the wall.
“Pictures,” Keave said. “They’re on the other wall, too.” He raised his own torch, and Bander could barely make out the image. It was a large mural depicting a mountain. Possibly with a river running along its base. He couldn’t discern much more than that.
“Valthar?”
“I’m no scholar of ancient art. Sward would have been able to tell you what this is—if you hadn’t allowed him to die on us.”
“Does anyone recognize that constellation?” Talessa Kreed asked.
“Constellation? Where?”
She pointed at a pattern of faint dots that could have been stars in the night sky, or just a splattering of ancient mud. But no one could identify the pattern.
They continued to wind their way down deeper underground, Keave leading the way and heedless of any danger. After seven full revolutions, they reached the bottom of the spiral and the passage straightened and leveled out.
There were no murals or paintings on these walls—which were made of plain dark stone blocks that seemed to suck up the light from their torches.
This passage ran due north and ended in a single large stone door, engraved with a glyph a yard tall. The symbol looked like two triangles stacked point-to-point, one upside down over the other.
“Now, this I recognize,” Valthar said.
“What is it?”
“Why, this is the symbol of the Nave of Time,” Valthar said. “We have arrived, my friends.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bander was surprised that the door opened so easily. He had been checking it for traps by prodding it along one edge when the stone door suddenly pivoted inwards—gliding soundlessly open.
“Careful!” Valthar said. “This is the most important room in this entire complex. And the most dangerous.”
“How do you know that?” Mortam Rowe asked.
“I have seen similar rooms in other temples—all over the world,” Valthar said quietly.
They all crowded into the doorway, craning to get a glimpse inside.
The first thing that Bander noticed was the glow. It seemed to emanate from the ceiling which was rough and uneven. Almost like it was covered with some sort of moss or dense plant. The soft light illuminated the entire space evenly so there were hardly any shadows. It looked odd and unnatural, to be sure.
The room itself was extremely long—stretching over a hundred feet to the north, yet it spanned only twenty-five or thirty feet wide. And all the walls were covered with murals. Unlike the images painted on the spiral corridor, these were vivid and lifelike. Bander had no problem making t
hem out—although there was something peculiar about them.
The artfully painted mural on the left-hand wall depicted a rocky coastline surrounded by water. An island, to be sure. A low hill rose up in the distance and the detail was so great that Bander could discern a number of blocky stone structures in the distance.
The mural on the wall opposite showed a great expanse of sea, churning with the onset of a storm. Dark clouds rimmed with lightning swirled on the horizon. The effect was so lifelike, Bander expected to hear the far-off boom of thunder and feel the wind on his face.
To the north, the two murals seemed to converge. Bander could barely make out a rocky cave on the water’s edge—a hundred feet or more north of where he stood. It took him a moment to realize that the east and west walls were not perpendicular. They actually ran at an angle and converged at the north wall. Very strange.
“Do you see what I see?”
Valthar nodded, but didn’t say anything. An odd expression played over his features as he stared down at the ground.
Bander followed his friend’s gaze and saw the silvery rails, sunk into the ground. They looked like mine cart tracks running to the image of the cave on the north wall.
“What is this place?” Talessa Kreed asked.
Valthar turned to face the group. “It is a trap.”
“You said it was a treasure room.” Mortam Rowe’s expression darkened.
“I didn’t say what the treasure was. It very well might be our lives.”
“You are trying my patience, sir!” Mortam Rowe said. “Explain yourself.”
“I do not explain—I explore.”
Why was Valthar goading Rowe? It didn’t make sense.
“Perhaps we shall find out on our own,” Mortam Rowe said.
“Listen,” Bander said. “Sward warned us about the Nave of Time. The danger here is great.” He looked pointedly at Keave. “You can’t just rush in.”
“We don’t intend to,” Mortam Rowe said. “Do we, Mr. Keave?”
Without warning, Keave grabbed Talessa Kreed and pinned her arms behind her back. Bander reacted immediately—lunging forward with his spear.
