“Not as defenseless as we’ll be if we cook to death before they get here.”
No one could argue that, and soon all of their armor was strapped securely to their horses, but they wisely kept their weapons close at hand. The land was relatively flat with the exception of a few sand dunes, so they continued their march well after sunset before making camp. There was absolutely nothing to burn, so there was no fire that night, but fortunately, the nights were warm this time of year. Earlier or later in the season and the desert evenings would be bitterly cold.
Traveling was relatively smooth and uneventful. The land was an arid badland, not a great sandy desert like the one that lay on the other side of the mountains. The terrain posed no real pitfalls or hazards except perhaps some deep cracks in the hard baked ground that could make a horse stumble, but the animals were naturally adept at avoiding that as long as they did not push them to a quicker pace.
After that first miserable day of traveling, the party decided to do most of their journeying after the sun went down, hiding from the scorching sun under canvas lean-tos during the hottest times of the day. The land became rougher as they approached the Redstone Mountains. Huge boulders were strewn across the parched ground as if a group of titans had been tossing them around for sport.
In the light of day, they could see that the mountains contained a series of spurs, draws, and canyons that made navigation difficult. Fortunately, they were not trying to find a pass through the mountains, but if the temple was in one of these box canyons it was going to be hard to find.
Maude had purposely headed almost due east from Sandusk before following the mountains south, and as long as it was not in one of the canyons or draws, they should cross right in front of it. Maude called a halt shortly after midnight.
“We’ll go ahead and camp for the night and leave out again just before dawn. We should be pretty close now, and I don’t want to risk passing by it in the middle of the night,” Maude said.
Borik grumbled about traveling in the heat but mostly under his breath since he knew Maude was right. They made camp in a narrow cleft in the shear-sided mountain. It was eerily quiet in the desert. The only sounds were the ones their horses made, an occasional lizard scrambling across the rocks, and Borik complaining about the stupid warm water they were forced to drink and the stupid warm beer at the inn.
Maude woke everyone just as the starry night sky began to turn a dark blue over the tops of the mountains. After a quick breakfast of trail bread and stupid warm cheese, according to Borik, they resumed their trek south. Just before noon, Maude called another halt and waved the others up.
“Do you see that track of sand just ahead of us and heading out toward the west?” Maude asked.
Malek and Borik squinted where Maude was pointing.
“I think so,” Malek replied dubiously. “What do you think it is?”
“It looks like men rode in from the west and are heading in the same direction we are, either that or they came from the south and then headed west toward Sandusk. Let’s get a closer look.”
The party walked their horses closer and stopped just before the disturbed trail of sand.
“I don’t see any horse prints, but they wouldn’t last long out here anyway. The wind would do a good job of covering them up in a short amount of time, but the sand has definitely been disturbed,” Maude explained.
“You think someone is looking for the temple too?” Malek asked.
Maude nodded. “We know others are looking for the same thing we are. We have to assume that they made these tracks and are ahead of us. Let’s suit up and move quietly from here on out.”
The party strapped on their armor and continued south. Maude’s theory proved accurate when they found some hoof prints on a patch of hard ground, but it gave no indication of the numbers. They knew it was more than one, but how many more was impossible to tell. They continued following the faint trail for another three hours before it headed into what was either a canyon or a deep draw. The trail also continued to go south as well.
“You think maybe they made camp in the canyon there and then went south?” Malek asked.
“Possibly, either that or they split into two groups,” Maude replied. “Let’s see where this canyon goes first.”
A short ways in, the canyon took a sharp left. Around the bend, they saw the end of the box canyon maybe three or four hundred yards ahead. Maude reined in short and motioned everyone back around the bend.
“What’d ya see, Maude?” Borik asked as they all dismounted.
“I saw our temple at the end of this box canyon,” Maude whispered.
After staking the horses out, the party crept forward, hiding behind the many large boulders that lay strewn about the narrow fissure. Borik peeked around the side of the boulder while the others looked over the top of it. The end of the box canyon had a façade of carved stone blocks and tall fluted columns.
Standing to each side of the large opening stood a colossal statue carved out of the same ruddy stone of the mountains. The statues were of a man and a woman at least sixty feet tall. The man looked like a warrior wearing armor and wielding a huge two-handed sword, its tip between his spread feet, his hands resting on the pommel. The woman wore robes and had long, flowing hair with a holly wreath encircling her head like a tiara. A badger or some similar creature stood protectively at her feet.
Darting from boulder to boulder, doing their best not to make any noise, the group crept closer to the entrance where they saw two guards standing to each side of the open passageway. One was short and somewhat fat, the other enormously tall and broad, a veritable giant of a man. Thanks to the thick columns, large boulders, and the pair’s constant bickering the party was able to sneak up to within forty or fifty feet of them.
“How are going to get by them?” Malek whispered.
“There’s just two of them. We can rush em and take em down without trouble,” Borik suggested.
Maude shook her head. “They could shout a warning and alert someone inside, and that big one could easily count as two by himself.”
Maude turned to Tarth. “Tarth, can you cast a spell to put them to sleep or immobilize and silence them?”
“Of course, Maudeline.”
The elf pulled out some fibrous piece of plant material from some unseen pocket of his robe, quietly chanted a few elven words of magic, and blew the object in his hand toward the pair as the magic consumed it. Instead of the bickering brothers falling asleep, they started quacking, first in confusion and then in fear.
“What did you do, Tarth?” Maude hissed angrily.
“Oops, I must have accidentally grabbed duck grass instead of dream lily. I will just use some sand this time, it’s easier.”
The two quacking men fell back against the wall and slid down fast asleep once Tarth recast his spell. Maude led her group past the two unconscious guards and into the gloomy halls of the temple. The massive opening narrowed to stone block halls of slightly more normal size, although they continued to be quite spacious. The walls contained a great deal of bas-relief carvings, particularly around the arches that were set about every twenty feet down the hall.
Several corridors branched off from the main passage, but Maude felt it prudent to keep moving straight and not take any unnecessary turns. The halls were vast and the temple enormous. Getting lost within its halls was a real concern.
“This thing is huge for a temple,” Maude remarked.
“I think it was more of a monastery than a temple. Set this far out you would not get many people coming to worship except for those who lived here,” Malek replied.
“This place is as big as a city. I’m glad it’s not occupied. Pretty quiet so far,” Maude remarked.
“Yeah, that pyramid was quiet too until we picked up that stupid mask,” Borik reminded them.
Maude prayed that the main passage led to what they were searching for; otherwise, it could take days to explore the place. Borik was the first one t
o notice that the floor began sloping downward, its angle of decline increasing the farther they went. Within minutes, the downward slope was readily apparent and soon became a ramp.
The passage ahead opened into a huge room of fluted columns extending from floor to ceiling. The ramp led almost to the center of a large room sunk thirty feet below the passage they had just exited. There were several empty pedestals surrounding a large circular carving that looked to be an enormous globe. On the right side of the globe was a carving of the sun, on the left side a moon, at the top there was a star, and at the bottom was a carving of what looked like ocean waves. In the center of the globe was a frieze of a tree just below a fifth pedestal.
Five more pedestals stood arranged in a circle around one of the fluted columns near the far wall opposite the bottom of the ramp. The upper ceiling and the tops of the columns were lost in darkness.
“Something tells me that this is where we need to be,” Maude thought aloud.
“I don’t see any boots, just a few statues, and they don’t even look like gold, just carved rock,” Borik groused.
“Let’s take a closer look at the statuettes,” Malek suggested.
The party stepped around the carving, having learned early in their career to never step on anything built or carved into the floor, and examined the statuettes. There were five in all, three female, two male. Each one was only about a foot tall.
“Okay, now what?” Borik asked grumpily.
Malek and Maude shook their heads.
“I think these four are the carvings of the gods, but I don’t know what the other female statuette represents,” Malek said.
“Tarth, do you know what any of this means?” Maude asked the elf.
“Of course I do, Maudeline,” Tarth replied airily with a wave of his hand.
“Then why don’t ya tell us, ya lame-brained, pointy-eared halfwit!” Borik demanded.
“Because you did not say please,” Tarth replied with sniff, crossed his arms, and pointed his delicate nose in the air.
“Tarth, would you please tell us what it means?” Maude asked.
“I want to hear him ask me nicely,” the elf said, pointing his chin at the dwarf.
“I ain’t gonna ask that nimrod nicely for anything lest it’s ta go jump off a cliff!”
Maude bent down, grabbed the dwarf by his beard, and looked him in the eye. “You ask Tarth nicely, or so help me I will bury you up to your thick, hairy neck in the sand and dip your beard in honey.”
Borik stamped his feet in a circle, kicked, and head butted one of enormous columns before stomping over next to Tarth. “Bend down so ya can hear me, because I ain’t repeatin’ myself.”
Tarth bent at the waist and lowered his head.
“Closer,” Borik ordered, crooking his finger at the elf.
Tarth bent down further and cocked his ear toward Borik’s mouth.
Borik put his hand on the elf’s shoulder and cupped his mouth with the other next to Tarth’s ear.
“Tarth, would you please tell us what we’re supposed ta do,” Borik whispered into Tarth’s ear while a smile spread across the elf’s narrow face. “Because if ya don’t…,” Borik wrapped his stubby hands around Tarth’s slender throat and began squeezing and shaking him like a terrier, “I’m gonna choke the life outta your worthless moronic body, so help me!” Borik shouted as he shook Tarth so hard his head wrap fell off.
“Borik, let him go!” Maude and Malek both shouted as they pried the dwarf’s fingers from around the elf’s throat.
“Are you all right, Tarth?” Maude asked as the wizard gasped for breath and rubbed his bruised neck.
“I’ll be fine, Maudeline, thank you,” Tarth replied with a glare and a hiss at Borik.
“Can you please tell us what all this means, Tarth?”
“I would be delighted,” Tarth said and sashayed over to the statuettes. “Oo, this is going to be fun,” he squealed in delight, clapping his hands, already forgetting the dwarf’s abuse.
“Malek was correct; these four are the gods with whom humans are most familiar. The fifth one is known mostly to the older races like elves and dragons. She is the All Mother. She created the world and the other four gods.”
Tarth picked up the flawless crystal statuette of one of the women. “I’m the All Mother,” Tarth intoned in a deep, ethereal, feminine voice. “I created the moon, the stars, and the planet. I watch over all of my creations, but I must not interfere in the affairs of gods and mortals.”
Tarth carried the statuette over to the pedestals surrounding the large globe and placed it at the one near the top symbolized with the star.
He returned to the statuettes and picked up one of the male figures carved out of turquoise. “I am Serron, god of the seas. I created the oceans and the creatures that dwell within them. I am a capricious god, bringing life with one hand and destroying it with the other,” Tarth intoned in a deep, rumbling voice and placed the statuette on the southern pillar.
The elf returned to the statuettes and selected another male figurine of pure amber. “I am Solarian, god of morning, hope, and light. I shine my brilliance down upon the world so that the seas and the lands stay warm and thrive beneath my radiance,” Tarth droned in a clear and regal voice and set the figure on the eastern pedestal.
The elf picked up one of the two remaining female figures, the one carved from jet-black onyx, and walked toward the western pillar. “I am Sharrellan, the goddess of darkness, evil, and foul deeds. I am jealous of my brother’s luminous presence, so I claim half the world for darkness. I shall fill it with creatures of the night; cruel, ugly, and savage,” Tarth whispered in a soft but sinister tone and placed it on the pedestal.
He finally retrieved the last statuette, a woman carved in exacting detail from jade. She wore a loose robe with the same holly wreath crown as the enormous statue outside. Tarth picked it up and tilted it from side to side like a child playing with a doll.
“I am Ellanee, the beautiful goddess of nature, creator of all the trees, plants, and little animals. With a sprig of puss willows I created the fuzzy little bunnies, with a tuft of cotton I created the silly little squirrels—,”
“And from the nuts I created the idiot, lame-brained elves,” Borik interrupted.
Tarth glared at the dwarf. “From all the animal poo I created the dwarves, which is why they are so smelly and like to live buried under the ground. With the light of my beloved Solarian, my creations grow and flourish, without him I am incomplete.”
“Will you get on with it?” Borik shouted when Tarth started making the statuettes of Ellanee and Solarian kiss.
The elf stuck his tongue out at the grumpy, impatient dwarf and went to place the last figurine on the last pedestal.
“Get ready for the next part,” Borik warned.
“What part is that?” Maude asked.
“The part where we fight for our lives as hundreds of spooky things run out and try to kill us,” Borik answered.
“I think you’re getting paranoid, but let’s stay on our toes, people.”
Tarth placed the statue of Ellanee gently on the last pedestal. The sound of stone grating against stone echoed through the vast chamber as one of the huge fluted columns began to sink slowly into the floor.
“Ta da!” Tarth shouted in celebration.
Another stone slab began protruding from the wall toward the descending column. The column stopped its descent at the same instant the stone slab touched its side forming a perfectly aligned bridge perhaps twenty feet over their heads.
“Are the boots up there? I don’t see them,” Malek asked.
“Oh they’re up here all right, and I thank you very much for figuring out how to get them,” a deep voice called down to them.
The adventurers looked up and saw a man almost fully encased in the blackest armor any of them had ever seen. At the upper limits of their view, scores of men with crossbows stepped forward, nearly surrounding the entire chamber from a balc
ony-like hall fifty feet up the walls.
“See, told ya so,” Borik said softly.
“I’m afraid none of my men are terribly pious and were unable to figure out what exactly needed to be done to locate the boots, but I feel like kicking myself for a fool now that your elf friend explained it,” General Baneford said as he walked across the bridge and out onto the column to retrieve the boots.
“Get ready to run up the ramp,” Tarth whispered.
“However, as much as I appreciate your help, I did promise someone to kill you all, and I am a man of my word. Archers!”
“Now!” Tarth shouted, and the entire chamber filled with a thick impenetrable fog.
The adventurers sprinted up the ramp as crossbow bolts clattered against the stone floor behind them. Two of the quarrels even got hung up in Tarth’s fluttering robes as they fled up the ramp and down the passage. They could hear the shouts and pounding of booted feet not far behind them as they made their hasty retreat. A few soldiers burst out of the passageways ahead and to the sides of the corridor they fled down in an attempt to cut off their retreat.
Maude barreled into them, sweeping them to the sides with a feral growl and mighty swings of her sword, but they were slowing them down and allowing the larger force to gain on them.
“Maudeline, keep running no matter what!” Tarth shouted from the rear of the fleeing party.
“What are you thinking, Tarth?” Maude asked as she cleaved through the helm of another soldier who tried to block her path.
“Just keep everyone running!” the elf commanded forcefully, stopping in his tracks and turning to face their pursuers.
If Maude could have seen his face, she would have witnessed the vapid, perpetually distracted haze disappear from his eyes and take on a look of complete focus and determination. She would have seen the powerful, fearsome, elven wizard he once was so many centuries ago.
Tarth raised his arms and shouted out the mystical words of elven magic. It almost sounded like he was singing a beautiful yet destructive lament, causing the entire mountain to begin to rumble then shake as if sobbing from the sorrowful song.
The Sorcerer's Path Box Set: Book 1-4 Page 99
