The others accepted the decision and nodded their compliance, but the festive mood was gone and none felt like talking much. They finished off the wine then fell asleep in hammocks of woven wool slung under heavy tree branches.
They felt well rested after sleeping comfortably and without fear of predators for the first time in days. A slight brightening in the level of the surrounding darkness was enough to wake Maude in time to leave within the established timeline. She roused the others from their slumber then began donning her armor, and the others soon followed suit.
They made their way across the swaying walkways to the lift. Despite the early hour at which they woke, the treetops were already bustling with activity as elves went about their own routines. Maude bribed a few of the elves with coins of gold to lower them to the jungle floor after they looked disinclined to help the strangers.
Fortunately, the elves performed the task for which they had been paid, although the ride down was at such a rate that the lift actually bounced on the vine when it was brought to a sudden halt a few feet above the ground before being lowered the rest of the way. Maude led the way through the jungle just as the sun’s light began filtering through the canopy enough to give them some measure of visibility.
Just as Maude was thinking that they should be drawing close to their goal, bright rays of late afternoon sunlight shined through the trees just up ahead. Thirty minutes later, the party stepped out of the jungle and into a circular, grassy clearing. Stepping out from under the oppressive weight of the dark jungle was akin to having just been freed from a dungeon in Maude’s mind.
The amount of open ground was as impressive as it was mysterious. It constituted a wide strip no more than two hundred yards deep that ran parallel to where they stood as if an incredibly wide road had been cut through the jungle. On the far side of the grassy road, the forest resumed its domination of the land. The only thing that captured their attention more than the highway was the stone monolith that jutted just above the tops of the trees about two miles away.
“I think we found our ruins,” Maude informed her group.
“Do you think this road was made by someone?” Malek asked. “It’s awfully straight. And if so, why does it run parallel to the temple and not to it?”
“It ain’t a road,” Borik blurted out. “It curves very slightly, and by the same degree in both directions. I’ll bet my beard it’s a circle, like a big grass moat and the ruins are the castle right in the middle.”
Maude studied the clearing more and saw that Borik was right. She could just make out the minor curvature, and only because the dwarf had pointed it out to her.
“Let’s go, the temple’s not going to come to us,” Maude commanded.
The adventurers crossed the open ground in minutes then felt the suffocating gloom wash back over them as the trees and the late afternoon stole away the light like a miser hording his gold. It took another thirty minutes of walking before the object of their search came back within view. A hundred yards ahead of them lay not a jumble of ruined buildings as they had expected, but a massive step pyramid that occupied a huge patch of ground and rose hundreds of feet high.
A thick carpeting of leaves crunched under their feet as they approached the massive ziggurat. Even Borik stood in awe at the construction of such a colossal structure made from gigantic stones, each as big as a carriage. Dark green creepers climbed the outside of the pyramid in a quest to reach the top and bask in the light that shone above.
As they approached the pyramid, the ground abruptly slanted beneath their feet. A massive slab of stone suddenly dipped down, one end sinking below the level of the ground while the other jutted up into the air behind them. The carpet of dried leaves slid down into the inky blackness that opened below them, carrying the hapless explorers down with it.
As soon as the party’s weight left the end of the stone slab, a hidden counterweight brought the raised end back down and reset the trap once more. Maude and her group’s stomachs lurched as they fell into the dark, empty air and plummeted into a deep void. A scant second later, they landed in an ignominious pile, their fall cushioned by what felt like a thick pile of leaves and detritus.
“Is everyone all right?” Maude asked.
Everyone but Borik gave an affirmative. “I heard something snap when I landed, but I don’t know what. I may be in shock and just don’t feel the pain yet.”
“Tarth, make a light,” Maude ordered.
The wizard’s soft voice uttered a short arcane word and a floating glowing orb of light instantly illuminated the chamber. It hovered above the wizard’s head for a moment before it popped like a soap bubble, sending tiny fairy-like motes of light darting about the room.
“Oopsie,” Tarth twittered and tried again, and this time the orb stayed.
Just as she suspected, about two feet of dry leaves covered the floor of the chamber. Malek quickly examined the dwarf for any signs of injuries.
“You definitely broke several bones,” the cleric declared grimly. “It looks pretty bad.”
Borik’s face went pale at the news and waited for the inevitable agony to set in once the shock wore off. “You can fix it though right?”
Malek shook his head. “I’m sorry, old friend, but it is far beyond my skills to do anything about it.”
“Oh ya cursed fickle gods! You let me be eaten by a shark, almost hanged for trying to kill an old man, forced to fight in a stupid undersea arena, buried by thousands of tons rock, haunted by ghosts, and now you drop me in a hole to die!”
Borik ranted and cursed the gods, their mothers, and accused them all of every aspect of questionable parentage he could think of.
“Are you done now?” Malek asked as the dwarf wound down his tirade.
Borik let out his breath. “Yeah I’m done. I’m done, done, done, done for,” he moaned and lay back looking at the ceiling some thirty feet above them.
“Good, because the bones you broke aren’t yours,” the cleric informed him.
“What!” the dwarf shouted and bolted upright.
Malek roughly rolled the dwarf over and showed him the skeleton of what was once some animal that had sprung the trap just like they had and died a very long time ago.
Borik’s face turned red with rage once more. “You knew it wasn’t my bones all along and you let me think I was dying? What kind of cleric are you?”
“I would be less worried about what kind of cleric I am and more worried about what you said to the gods if I were you,” Malek advised. “They don’t care for people cursing their mothers and accusing them of copulating with farm animals.”
Borik’s mouth opened and closed rapidly as he silently fumed and tried to compile a sharp retort.
“If you two are quite finished, let’s try and find a way out of here,” Maude suggested.
The party examined the room they were in with the aid of the magically conjured luminous globe. The chamber was perhaps thirty feet across and deep. The floor was covered in leaves, bones of various animals, and numerous colorful feathers from what appeared to be large, flightless birds that had also fallen prey to the trap door above. Maude, Borik, and Malek examined the walls for any sign of a door or release that would open a hidden passageway, but they found nothing.
Borik tried to climb the walls, but the stones were smoothly hewn, set without mortar, and provided absolutely no handholds. The tilting stone slab created a near perfect seal that made it impossible to try to hook it with a grapnel. After over an hour of careful searching, Tarth suddenly shouted, breaking the silence and startling the others.
“Ah, there we go!” the elf burst out joyously.
“Did you find a way out, Tarth?” Maude asked eagerly.
“Even better. I finished my hat!”
All eyes slowly turned and stared at the wizard. Perched atop his head was a hat made of numerous, multicolored feathers that he had sat and woven together while everyone else was busy searching for a way out. Tarth preened under
the scrutiny of his comrades.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked, begging for their acclaim.
Borik gave the elf his best scowl. “It looks like some freakishly-developed mutant chicken roosted on your noggin and is trying to get your stupid elf head to hatch!” Borik shouted.
Maude sighed and gritted her teeth before she spoke. “Tarth, can you do anything to get us out of here?”
Tarth sucked his teeth, aggravated by the obvious lack of enthusiasm for his colorful creation. “Very well, Maudeline.”
The elf used his keen eyes to scan the room for a few moments then sashayed up to one of the walls and studied it intently. He cleared his throat before chanting:
“Release us from this gloomy prison
Trapped beneath your stony prism
Open this wall oh so weathered
Thank you for my gift of feathers”
The elf then pushed lightly against the wall, which immediately swung open on cleverly hidden hinges with a deep grating sound.
Borik shook his bearded head in disbelief. “Are you telling me that your stupid hat was the key to getting out of this trap from the beginning?”
“No, but wasn’t it fun!” Tarth cried, gleefully clapping his hands and bouncing on the balls of his feet.
The dwarf’s face fell slack in disbelief. “I’m going to kill you, Tarth. If we get out of here alive, I am going to kill you. I am going to smother you with a pillow while you sleep, tie you up in a gunnysack, and throw you into the harbor,” Borik promised in a tone devoid of all emotion.
Tarth patted Borik on the head as he walked past the dwarf and through the now open door. “You’re so silly.”
Borik clenched and unclenched his fists several times while he imagined them wrapped around Tarth’s skinny neck, and then fell in behind the rest of the group.
They party stepped out of the pitfall and into a long, stone corridor. Borik took the lead, wary for further signs of snares or ambush. The passageway ran straight for about a hundred yards before ending at a two-way intersection.
“We should be under the pyramid now,” Borik whispered.
“Which way should we go?” Maude asked the dwarf.
Borik looked both ways but the passage continued in darkness beyond the range of Tarth’s conjured light in either direction. “I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference either way, so I say we go right.”
“Lead the way,” invited Maude.
The party walked carefully down the passage, alert for any sounds of occupation, but they heard only their own breathing and footsteps echoing down the stone hall. Minutes later, Borik saw a patch of blackness at the edge of the light to their left that indicated another corridor or room just ahead. The passageway continued straight, but on their left, a massive room spread out before them. The party stepped cautiously towards the center of the colossal chamber.
The room was huge, at least a hundred feet on each side. The Tarth’s light was just able to cast its glow far enough for them to see that several open doorways along the walls led to chambers or more passageways. Tile covered a great deal of the floor. Much of the tile was blue, depicting the sky. A massive twelve-pointed sun laid out in yellow and orange tile dominated the center of the room. As they drew nearer the walls, the light reflected off hundreds of thousands of small colored tiles laid out in a mosaic of almost unimaginable size, detail, and complexity.
Malek studied the amazing mosaic that wrapped around the entire room. “It appears to show part of the history of the people who built this pyramid.”
Malek had Tarth follow him with the light until they found what appeared to be the beginning. “These figures here must be the people that once lived here,” the cleric pointed out, indicating the bronze-skinned, dark haired humans depicted in the montage.
“It looks like there was a series of disasters, famines, and plagues.”
“How can you tell the length of time by the pictures?” Maude asked.
“In seminary school we were taught various ancient writings and lore interpretation. You can see that this figure here is shown as an infant then again as young boy. By comparing his height to that of one of the adult figures, you can see that he is perhaps ten years old now, indicating a passage of time of about ten years,” the cleric explained.
Maude looked quizzically at the depiction. “How do you know that the infant and the young boy are the same person?”
“Look closely. Each figure of significance is indicated by a small glyph,” Malek told her, pointing out the tiny identical symbols on both figures.
“I’m impressed that you noticed that and are able to make sense out of all of this,” Maude said, giving him a rare praise.
“I’m surprised you actually learned anything while you were in seminary,” Borik grumbled.
Malek looked at the dwarf crossly. “Of course I learned things. What do you think I did all day?”
Borik answered the question with a bushy raised eyebrow.
Malek opened his mouth to argue and defend himself, but thinking back, found very little to support his defense. “Anyway, it looks like whoever this child is, he is going to figure in as a very prominent figure in the near future,” Malek continued.
“A short time later, maybe two or three years, there was a major cataclysm. You see here that fire rained down from the heavens for several days, killing thousands of people. You can see the priests down here praying and beseeching their gods who are shown up above hurling down the fiery stones that are destroying homes and crops.”
The party looked and saw the fierce gods, rendered several times larger than their human followers, in tile twenty feet over their heads with fierce expressions on their faces.
“After the cataclysm,” Malek continued, “the priests constructed a monument as a token of their fealty and devotion. Tens of thousands of tribe members and possibly slaves from other tribes worked nonstop, even through the night by torchlight, constructing the pyramid.”
Malek paused, tapping his chin in thought. “What I don’t see, and what has me very curious, is where they got the stone to make it. I did not see any cliffs or mountains that would provide a site for a quarry, nor does it show how they carved and shaped the stone.”
“That’s true,” Borik put in. “The quality of the stonework is on a level with dwarven work.”
Malek set the mystery aside and continued his narrative. “We see our young friend here studying to become a priest himself. Years pass and he is finally a man and initiated into the priesthood. At least eight more years has passed, if not more, and our pyramid is only partially completed. Many more years pass, and our young priest has become a very prominent and powerful member within the ranks of the priesthood.
“He has risen to the highest ranks of the priesthood and is now the most powerful figure in the city, and at a rather young age. The construction of the pyramid continues even to the level of neglecting many other aspects of their culture and civilization. They barely permit enough farmers and animal herders to feed their population and starvation is still prevalent. Scholars, musicians, poets, and any other occupation not deemed essential to life has been extinguished. Those who once prescribed to scholarly or cultural works have been relegated to work on the pyramid.”
The cleric shook his head in remorse for the loss of what were once a culturally rich people. “There are now only four professions in what was once a vast and diverse culture. You were either a priest, a farmer, a soldier who also worked as taskmasters for the pyramid under the control of the priests, or you worked on the pyramid. Even children were forced to contribute to the construction. They brought food and water to the workers until they were strong enough to do manual labor. Hundreds of people died every year just working on the tribute to their gods, not counting the thousands still dying from disease and starvation.”
Maude looked at Malek in disbelief. “How could they afford to keep throwing their people into this grindstone of a project?”
> Malek pointed at renditions of several obviously pregnant women and young girls. “As soon as a girl was old enough, she was required to take a mate and produce children. The rate of death during childbirth equaled that of the deaths from accidents building the pyramid itself. Orphaned children were placed under the auspices of the priesthood where older women past childbearing age raised them until they were old enough to contribute to the pyramid’s construction.
“Our young head priest is now old and the pyramid is finally completed, but the hardships still persist. He has decided that the pyramid has proven insufficient to placate the angry gods and…” Malek’s eyes went wide and his face visibly paled as he translated what came next.
“He has ordered that random members of their society must be sacrificed to the gods in hopes that their blood will stop the plagues and disasters and turn their fields fertile once more. At first, he sacrifices the old, feeble, and those who he sees as not contributing to the empire. Then he turns to raiding other cities, capturing thousands of men and women then sacrificing them atop the great pyramid.”
The cleric choked down the bile that rose to the back of his throat as he sees what comes next. “He believes that the gods are still displeased and decides that there is no way to placate them. Therefore, instead of trying to please them, he has figured out a way to supplant them. He has decided that he and several of his most loyal priests will transcend to immortality, challenge, and vanquish the gods and become gods themselves.
“Every man, woman, and child of the city is brought before the temple and marched to the top in a massive macabre parade. From one full moon to the next, the priests cut the throats of the people, spilling their blood down every side of the pyramid. The people are sacrificed as fast as they can be brought to the top, their lifeless corpses thrown over the two sides not used to reach the top. The priests must work in shifts as they continue killing their own people, and eventually the entire structure is covered in blood. Blood flows down every side of the pyramid and saturates the ground around it.”
The Sorcerer's Torment (The Sorcerer's Path) Page 38
