They were delayed a couple of times. The first time, a gray panther attacked them. The beast was the size of a horse, and at the Alpha Stage. It strongly resembled its namesake, apart from its chitinous carapace. Glen quickly dealt with it. Hadjar and Einen didn’t interfere. They were certain that the Baliumian would be able to handle one Alpha. Glen cut out the animal’s core so eagerly that it was clear he didn’t want anyone else claiming his prey.
The second time, the squad almost lost its trump card — the boy. He’d managed to mistake a venomous snake for a root. Fortunately, Hadjar’s reaction time was excellent, and the snake had been within seventy steps of him. Hadjar waved his hand just in time, sending a ghostly blade flying. It killed the snake just a couple of inches from the boy’s palm. Karissa took the snake’s decapitated head with her, explaining that she needed its venom for a potion. No one else knew anything about alchemy, so they didn’t argue.
After three hours, they reached the lake. Hadjar had no doubts that this was exactly what they were looking for. It was almost the same as in his dream. The only difference was that, instead of a coniferous forest, a jungle spread out along the shore, and there was no fire or log lying near it.
“What is this anomaly like?” Hadjar asked.
“See for yourself.”
Tilis picked up a dry branch from the ground and threw it into the lake. It didn’t encounter any resistance at first. However, as soon as it was above the water, a sand cloud suddenly appeared in the air. Several tendrils of sand shot out from it and wrapped themselves around the branch for a moment, leaving behind... a void. The branch had simply disappeared. Hadjar felt such powerful flows of energy in the sand cloud that he suspected even Traves himself wouldn’t be able to withstand its pressure.
“By the Evening Stars,” Hadjar whispered.
Einen, after hearing him use the locals’ curse, glanced at his friend, but said nothing. Hadjar had wanted to say ‘demons and gods’, but after remembering his Master’s words, had decided that he would never again mention them unless it was absolutely necessary.
“Well,” Ramukhan began issuing orders, “everyone knows their duties. Let’s start. We don’t have much time.”
While Karissa was pinning all sorts of talismans on the boy, the others were also busy. Hadjar, Einen, and Glen stood in a triangle formation around the rest of the squad. Tilis placed amulets and talismans at their positions, creating a rather powerful veil. Salif was sitting with his eyes half-closed, rummaging through his bottomless memory.
“Don’t take any unnecessary risks,” Ramukhan instructed the boy. “Dive into the lake and see what’s down there. If you don’t find anything, immediately swim back up. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Got it,” the boy nodded.
Hadjar watched the boy who didn’t like him going to his death. Despite the fact that the feeling was mutual, Hadjar still felt like what was happening was wrong. The young boy shouldn’t have been risking his life in place of adult warriors.
“May the Great Turtle cover him with its carapace,” Einen whispered.
Once he stepped outside the veil’s boundaries, the boy stopped. He probably wanted to turn around, but didn’t. Instead, he took the same ladle from before in his hands. He probably thought that Hadjar hadn’t seen him watching his training and mimicking the sword’s movements with the ladle.
As the boy approached the edge of the lake, everyone’s breathing quieted. Tilis bit her lip. She wasn’t overly worried about the boy, but rather, about the outcome of their journey. What was Mage City’s library to a witch or sorcerer, after all? An immensely vast source of coveted knowledge and skills.
The boy walked up to the lake. Hadjar felt like he was practically the same as the branch the witch had thrown. He moved slowly, step by step. No sand cloud appeared over the lake. The boy stopped half a step from the water. Squeezing his ladle, he hesitantly looked at the water’s surface. Then, exhaling sharply, he took a bold step forward. As he did so, a sand cloud formed over the lake.
“Demons!” Glen roared and was about to rush over to the boy, but he was stopped by Ramukhan:
“Everyone, stay right where you are!”
The boy, unable to hear what was happening behind the veil, turned pale. Terrified, he froze in place and instinctively lifted the ladle in front of him. The seconds stretched out. They seemed so long that entire empires could’ve risen and fallen during them.
“Son of a bitch,” Salif smiled.
The boy opened his eyes, saw that the sand cloud wasn’t moving, and took a step forward. Then another, and another, and then, insolently waving his hand at the squad, he ducked beneath the water.
The wait was agonizing.
“Why didn’t we check if there’s anything under the water?” Glen asked.
This time, they didn’t tell him to shut up. The squad members looked at each other and almost sighed in unison. They hadn’t really thought to check if there was anything dangerous inside the lake... The sand cloud above the surface was inactive, but nobody knew what monsters might be lurking beneath the water.
“In any case, now we know how to get around the anomaly.”
Hadjar looked at Tilis and said nothing. He didn’t agree with her... He was convinced that the anomaly was just a trap.
“We need to decide who’s going in next,” Ramukhan had already turned to Hadjar when a splash sounded from the lake. The boy, with that same insolent smile still on his face, emerged from the lake and walked over to them. Once he was back under the veil, he sat down on the ground and stretched out his legs.
“Don’t keep us in suspense, boy,” Glen snapped. “What’s down there?”
“The lake,” the boy answered smugly, but, after seeing Ramukhan’s warning gaze, added, “There is no bottom.”
“What do you mean? How can it not have a bottom?”
“Well,” the boy shrugged. “It has a bottom, but it’s unusual. It’s something like a gap. There’s a desert under that gap. I think I even spotted mountains, but I’m not sure. The bottom was rippling.”
“There’s a desert,” Ramukhan repeated, “under the water. Instead of a bottom?”
The boy just nodded.
“Well, that means we’ve at least found the entrance.”
Hadjar didn’t ask why the sorcerer was so confident, but remembered his words.
“Now we need to figure out a way to get past the anomaly.”
The other squad members didn’t argue, and everyone was silent as they tried to come up with an idea. The solution came from an unexpected source.
“What’s the problem?” The boy asked. “If you could make me a mortal, then it’s surely possible to make all of you mortals as well.”
Karissa pulled out the snake’s head from her bag, looked at it pensively, and said:
“Perhaps I can make the poison I need with this.”
“Are you planning to poison us?” Glen nearly turned pale when he heard that.
“It’ll just be a small dose,” Karissa replied, “and for half an hour, we’ll lose contact with our sources and the World River.”
“In other words,” Hadjar sat down on the ground, “we’ll become mortal.”
Chapter 381
Three hours later, Karissa’s potion was ready. In a small, faded pot, a sandy, greenish brew bubbled. Its smell was very familiar to Hadjar. He even jerked back when he felt the familiar scent floating through the air. Einen grimaced as well. Only Glen looked from one practitioner to another confusedly.
“This is the poison they cover the thorns on a slave collar with,” Hadjar explained.
“You’re mostly right,” Karissa nodded. “I used completely different proportions and a different composition.”
“But the essence is the same?” Glen asked. “Are we going to have to drink slave swill?”
“You can stay behind,” Ramukhan cut him off angrily and was the first to scoop up the contents of the pot with a bowl. Before the first dro
ps could fall on his lips, a thin female palm stopped his hand.
“Wait, Ramukhan.” Tilis squinted and looked around. “I suggest we all swear an oath first.”
Crickets and crackling firewood filled the air of the warm evening with noise. The squad members looked at the witch in surprise.
“What kind of oath?” Karissa tilted her head to one side slightly, and her hand slowly inched toward her book.
Tilis glanced at her compatriot and turned away. Underworld City seemed to have its fair share of problems. As in any other country, they also had their own factions, and these often resorted to betrayal, intrigue, and bribery. Maybe the fairy had been right when he’d said that justice didn’t exist in any of the worlds where people lived...
“You said drinking this potion will seal off all our abilities.” Tilis’ voice sounded calm and didn’t waver, but her eyes flashed. “We’re going to Mage City and we’ll clearly encounter not only dangers along the way, but also various temptations. I don’t want to end up with one of your spells hitting me in the back, Karissa, just because we both might end up liking the same scrolls.”
“Well, we won’t participate in your squabbles,” Glen grunted, pointing at himself, Hadjar, and Einen.
“Can you really trust the barbarian and islander?” Tilis arched her left eyebrow. “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll find rare resources for cultivation in there, or even valuable weapons and artifacts?”
Glen was about to reply, but then just closed his mouth with a frown.
“That’s what I thought” Tilis nodded. “So, I propose that we all take an oath of blood that none of us will harm the others until our mission ends.”
The witch’s words sounded very reasonable. Up to this point, they’d been a single group, but not overly dependent on each other. They hadn’t encountered a situation where everyone had been in danger.
“I didn’t expect this from you, Tilis.” Karissa, showing her respect, saluted the witch in the desert manner. “I think we really should make such an oath.”
Hadjar and Einen looked at each other. The islander’s look screamed ‘Trap!’
“I don’t really like having to do this,” Tilis’ eyes narrowed, and she turned pointedly away from Hadjar, “but we have no other choice.”
She had no other choice... Even without Einen’s suspicions, Hadjar would’ve known that there must be some sort of ‘hidden layer’ to the suggestion. Nevertheless, this was one of those situations where, even if one knew it was a trap, they had to step right into it because there was simply no other choice.
Karissa took the dagger first. She ran her hand over it and said:
“I swear that, until we complete our mission, I won’t harm anyone here.”
It was a simple and not very lengthy oath, which actually limited one’s ability to set a trap. Judging by how Karissa passed the blade to Tilis, she also didn’t trust her. Tilis, snorting, grabbed the weapon and slashed her palm. She uttered the same words and handed the dagger over to Hadjar. Hesitating for a moment, he took the oath as well, using the exact same wording.
Soon, everyone except Salif and the boy had taken their oaths. They decided to leave the two servants behind in the camp. Karissa gave them a special talisman that controlled the veil and a report for Paris. If the squad didn’t return in five days, they would need to activate it and send a message to Underworld City.
“Well, I hope for success with the gods’ help,” Glen uttered a popular Baliumian saying and was the first to walk out from beneath the veil. He wasn’t brave, he’d just drawn the short straw.
When the Baliumian came to the edge of the lake, the sand cloud appeared above the surface. Glen, squinting in apprehension, dived into the water. No sand tendrils followed him.
“It’s your turn,” Tilis said maliciously, holding out the bowl of poison.
Hadjar silently took the poison and drank it in one gulp. He felt as if a red-hot branding iron had been shoved down his throat and the molten iron was now leaking into his body, causing such a storm of unpleasant sensations that it was difficult to stop himself from vomiting. After a moment, Hadjar felt his meridians and nodes become clogged. He instinctively tried to break these seals, but immediately realized that he couldn’t. The energy simply wasn’t moving through his body.
“Your Inheritance can help,” Einen whispered as he walked toward the lake.
Hadjar didn’t understand what the islander meant at first, but then he mentally reached for the little black dragon. It woke up and displayed its full readiness for battle. At the same time, the frozen energy in his meridians stirred. It struck the seals on the nodes and they cracked. Hadjar immediately halted his Call. The little dragon snorted in displeasure at the absence of battle and fell asleep again.
After unwinding his turban and handing the sleeping Azrea over to Salif, Hadjar followed his friend. Approaching the edge of the lake, Hadjar looked at the sand cloud. He felt tense, but he wasn’t afraid. His first step was quickly followed by the second and, finding himself waist deep in the water, Hadjar ducked down. After the stuffiness of the desert and the humidity of the jungle, the lake’s coolness was pleasant.
After swimming for about fifty yards, Hadjar understood why the boy hadn’t been able to clearly explain what was waiting for them inside the lake. First of all, the lake was unusual: it had no algae, no fish, no other living creatures at all. Only absolutely smooth, gentle slopes that looked like they’d been carved out of white marble.
Its bottom was sandy at first, but then turned into a huge circle of yellow light. The rest of the squad members looked like black dots floating over this gigantic ‘frying pan’. Swimming closer, Hadjar barely held back the cry of surprise that would’ve filled his lungs with water. The bottom really looked like the boy had described. It was like the other surface of the lake. Behind it, or perhaps under it, there was a desert with mountains and dunes. It was as if Hadjar wasn’t actually in the lake, but frozen in the sky about a hundred yards above the desert and ten yards above the nearest dune.
Hadjar looked at Einen, and the islander gestured for him to go ahead. With a nod, Hadjar was the first to dive in, or maybe jump down, or was it up? One way or another, the silence of the lake gave way to the whistling of the wind, and the underwater dusk was replaced by the midday desert sun.
Curling up, Hadjar landed on the very edge of the dune and slipped on it, then jumped and rolled down. Unable to control his inertia, Hadjar rolled for a few more yards, then stopped and lay on the sand.
He looked at the place from which he’d fallen, or emerged, but saw nothing besides the blue sky. The remaining members of the squad emerging in the desert simply appeared in midair and also ended up gliding along the dune.
Five minutes later, they all gathered at the foot of it.
Chapter 382
“Damn,” Glen rubbed his neck and looked up, “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
“Of course!” Tilis snapped.
Karissa looked reproachfully at the witch, but didn’t reprimand her. Instead, she said to the Baliumian:
“This is the land of the ancient civilization that was destroyed by the gods for violating the laws of the Heavens and Earth. I think we’re going to see a lot of things here than you’ve never seen before, Glen.”
“Thank you for explaining things to me, light of my eyes,” Glen said, bowing to Karissa in his usual manner.
“Let’s go.” Ramukhan got up and looked around.
“But where do we go?” Einen asked.
It was a good question. The landscape was the same as in the Sea of Sand. Except for the unfamiliar, brown stones sticking out of the dunes.
“Besides,” Tilis reminded him, “we’re still under the influence of the poison. Going anywhere right now would be suicide.”
“Tilis is right,” Ramukhan nodded. “We’ll wait until the poison wears off, and we’ll make a plan in the meanwhile. Don’t forget, we have three days before the comets
converge in the sky and all the other searchers rush here.”
Hadjar and Einen exchanged glances and agreed not to break their seals using hand gestures. The Underworld citizens didn’t need to know that there were Inheritors among them. Still, both of them thought that the witches and sorcerer probably knew who they were regardless. Besides, Hadjar was sure that they had only gotten a small head start and that Sankesh would soon find one of the other entrances to this place. Hadjar presumed there were several of them, anyway.
During the twenty minutes before the potion’s effects wore off, they discussed their plan. It was difficult to come up with anything useful. There was no map of the region. All the legends Salif had told them had had only some fragmentary information, which had been hidden behind allegories, embellishments, and metaphors.
By the time the poison wore off, they decided to head toward the mountains. If they were lucky, they would find the city gates (unfortunately, they didn’t know how to open them without Serra) along the way. If not, they would at least get to observe the territory from the high vantage point.
“I don’t trust them,” Einen whispered as they marched at the rear of their formation. Glen was at the front, as usual.
They moved so slowly that the friends were now bored rather than hot. The witches and sorcerer could barely endure their exhaustion and the heat. By the Evening Stars, something was rotten about this true path of cultivation if a person on the edge of becoming a true cultivator was unable to withstand the scorching sun.
“We already know not to trust the magic users,” Hadjar said.
The islander shook his head. He was dressed all in white, like a mummy. He had brought the battle attire of his people with him. “I don’t trust any of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think the witches and the sorcerer are all united, and your countryman is part of their group as well.”
Einen didn’t say their names. No matter what languages a person did or didn’t speak, they would still be able to pick up on their own name being used.
“Why do they need us, then?”
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