Shards of Time

by Lynn Flewelling

  “I’ll go first,” said Seregil. “We can’t take any chances with you, Highness.”

  “I suppose not. Go ahead.”

  Seregil entered the tunnel and held out his torch. No immediate sign of serpents, but the ceiling was very low and the way was not straight, though here, too, the floor was shiny and smooth, worn down by the thousands of people who’d visited to this sacred place before him.

  The tunnel swerved this way and that, up and down several times. Seregil guessed he’d gone perhaps thirty feet or so when he saw light ahead and found himself in a chamber half the size of the antechamber, with a ceiling not much higher than his head. At the center of the room stood another small, crescent-shaped stool and brazier, but these, though similar in design to the others, were clearly ancient. The stool was black with age and the seat cracked in several places, but he could still make out the inlay of silver tracery that covered it. The brazier, like the knife in the library museum in Deep Harbor, was eroded by time and green with age. Instead of fire, a lightstone made from a large quartz crystal sat in the pitted basin, illuminating the smoke-streaked, unadorned walls. To his left, a small tunnel led away into deeper darkness, and there was stonework around this one. The center had been cut out by a skillful mason, but the outer edges remained, showing that it had been a rectangular tablet with rounded corners three feet by two.

  The oracle might have fallen silent, but there was still an air of the sacred and deep secrets here. Closing his eyes, Seregil could almost hear whispering voices and ancient chants. He wondered what dreams he would have if he slept here, and felt a sudden yearning to do that. Just then, however, Klia joined him. Thero and Alec followed close behind, and the room suddenly felt crowded.

  “Where’s Micum?” asked Seregil.

  “Here.” The tall man had to stoop a bit so as not to hit his head.

  “It smells odd in here,” said Seregil, sniffing the air. It was a flat, slightly metallic odor.

  “It can’t be dangerous or Zella would have warned us,” said Klia.

  Seregil sniffed some more. “It’s coming from this other tunnel, from the third chamber.”

  Thero pressed a hand to the stone wall. “I feel like I’m falling into time itself,” he whispered, echoing Seregil’s thoughts. “There was great magic here once. Fair and foul. Darkness and light.”

  “Foul?” asked Klia.

  “From a long, long time ago. I think—I think something bad happened here.”

  “Something that silenced the oracle?” Alec suggested.

  “Perhaps.”

  Seregil inspected the remains of the tablet more closely. The workmanship was of high quality, though there wasn’t enough left of it or any markings to tell how old it was.

  “It looks like someone sealed off this tunnel on purpose,” said Micum, joining him. “Maybe to keep out the vapors?”

  “Maybe.”

  Klia, meanwhile, was inspecting the stool. She ran a hand reverently over the seat, tracing the silver inlay with her fingers. “Can you imagine?” she murmured. “For centuries the oracles sat here, prophesying for the great ones.”

  “Very small seers,” Micum noted. “I’d have my knees up around my ears if I tried to sit on that. That’s sized more for a child.”

  “A child?” Klia went suddenly pale. “Shut away in here, year after year? Illior’s—” Clapping a hand over her mouth, she ducked into the tunnel the way they’d come and they could hear her hurrying away.

  Thero followed in dismay, leaving the others looking at one another in surprise.

  “I’ve never seen her react to anything that way,” said Seregil.

  “Could be the bad air,” Micum suggested.

  Alec started toward the outer tunnel. “We’d better go see if they need help.”

  But Micum put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “If you were Klia, would you want your friends watching you puke?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  Seregil stuck the end of the torch through a space in the metalwork of the brazier, pulled his tool roll from his coat, and took out the lightstone set on a knurled wooden handle. “Less likely to burn off our eyebrows with this,” he said, tucking the roll away.

  “True.” Alec retrieved his.

  Micum hunkered down to look into the tunnel and shook his head. “Damnation, I can’t fit through there. Guess I’ll wait up here. Holler if you need me to find someone skinny to send down to save you.”

  The tunnel was much narrower and shorter, making it necessary to proceed on hands and knees. After a few feet it pitched down quite steeply. Coming back would be a bit of a scramble, but obviously people had managed it.

  Seregil slid the last few feet and ended up lying on his belly in a shallow puddle of very cold water. “Less chance of snakes, at least,” he muttered, climbing to his feet just in time to get out of the way as Alec slid out of the tunnel.

  “Damn!” Alec sputtered in surprise.

  Seregil chuckled and offered a hand. “You looked like a calf being born.”

  “Thanks for that,” Alec grumbled, taking his hand and pulling himself up. They were both soaked and dripping, and the cave was cold. “The smell is definitely stronger here.”

  “There must be a natural vent letting in vapors of some sort. If you start to feel dizzy or odd, let me know, and I’ll do the same. They can be unhealthy.”

  “I will. Let’s have a look around.”

  They both held up their lights and gasped.

  “Illior’s Light!” Alec exclaimed softly. His hushed voice echoed in sibilant whispers around the chamber, underscored by the plink plink of dripping water.

  The chamber was much larger than the other two, so much so that their lights didn’t reach the far wall. What they could see, however, took their breath away. Zella’s brief description had not prepared them for this.

  The walls were alive with drawings, done in charcoal, chalk, and ocher.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Alec, walking farther in, light held aloft.

  “Neither have I.” Seregil approached the nearest wall to examine the drawing of an elk. Beside it was a pair of lynxes with tufted ears and spots on their backs. They were walking side by side along the wall, one visible behind the other. The artist—or artists—had had a good eye and a deft hand, rendering the images with a minimum of strong, flowing lines and clever shading that made each animal look almost real. Seregil moved along the wall, wet boots forgotten, finding more and more beautifully drawn animals: deer, owls, otters, snakes, more cats, turtles, fish, eagles, hummingbirds, and gulls, even an octopus. Here and there were partial handprints, where the artist had perhaps rested a hand as he or she paused in the work. Farther on was a whole span of ocher handprints, thirty or forty at least, and all the same size. Each showed a missing ring finger; they’d all been made by the same person with his left hand. Seregil held his own hand over one of them. The print was larger and the uppermost ones were above Seregil’s reach. A tall man, this artist.

  “Seregil, look at this.”

  He turned to find Alec surrounded by the pale nimbus of his lightstone, fifty or so feet away, standing before a veritable forest of dripstone formations. Here was the source of the dripping water. Crenulated columns of wet, glistening limestone formations twice as tall as Alec reached up toward the long tapering fingers that hung from the ceiling. Color was hard to make out in the light, but they were striped light and dark with various minerals.

  Seregil splashed across the cave to join him and their combined lights revealed more fantastical shapes—a lump on an outcropping of stone that looked like a dragon’s head; a wide, striped ribbon of stone hanging above them like a giant slice of bacon; others that looked like drapery; and tiny pale pipes like hollow wheat stalks. Many formations on the floor of the cave and up the walls had been recently broken, carried off no doubt by the workman who’d first found this place. The whole back wall of the cave was obscured by the formations, and a
thin glaze of whitish stone had dripped like thin icing over the paintings on the wall there. There was also evidence of a small cave-in. Rubble still lay in a heap at the foot of the wall, though it appeared that a good amount had been removed.

  “It’s beautiful!” Alec whispered. “The paintings, this. All of it.”

  “It certainly is.” Seregil kept his voice low, too, out of respect for the sacredness of the chamber. “A leak must have developed, letting water in to make these formations. Judging by the size of them, and how they’re covering some of the drawings, it was a long, long time ago, but after the art was done, obviously.”

  “Look at that!” Alec walked between two of the dripstone columns, beckoning Seregil to follow. Just beyond lay the strangest artifact of all. A stone pillar about three feet high protruded out of a layer of dripstone, like a candle in a pool of its own wax, and on it was a skull facing to their right, toward the part of the wall that had fallen away. Both skull and pillar were glazed with a glistening layer of the icing-like stone; tiny stalactites hung in the eye sockets like prison bars.

  Seregil held out his lightstone to illuminate it better. It was definitely a real skull, and the dripstone coating was thin enough for them to make out the intricate black-and-silver designs that covered it and the blackened metal boss on the top of the head, probably capping whatever was fixing the skull to the pillar.

  “What in Bilairy’s name is that?” Alec murmured.

  Seregil shook his head. “Nothing I’ve ever seen.” He leaned closer, studying the face. “This was an Aurënfaie man, I think. See how the cheekbones arch, and these fine ridges above the eyes? They’d be heavier on a Tírfaie skull.”

  “What’s a ’faie skull doing here?”

  “It probably had some ritual function, given its placement and these markings.”

  “Do you know what they are?”

  “No, but Thero might. We’ll have to get him down here.” Seregil’s teeth were chattering; the chill of the cave and his soaked clothing were becoming problems.

  “What was this place, and what does it have to do with the oracle?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Remember the sea temple where—” He paused and took a breath. Where Nysander died. “Where we killed Mardus? That was a Retha’noi sacred spot predating the coming of the Hierophant. Maybe this was, too, when the drawings were done. Come on, it’s—”

  Suddenly they both heard a deep sigh just behind them. When they looked, however, there was no one there.

  “You heard that, right?” asked Alec.

  “I did.”

  “The wind?”

  “Down here? I don’t think so.”

  They heard it again, right between them. Gooseflesh prickled on Seregil’s arms as the cool air went colder around them.

  “I’d rather see a ghost than hear one,” Alec whispered.

  The sigh came again, this time with a hitch at the end, as if the spirit was about to cry.

  “Hello?” Seregil whispered, searching empty air. “Who are you?”

  A choked sob answered, and what might have been a whisper.

  “I didn’t quite get that. Can you tell us who you are? Can you show yourself?”

  For a moment he was certain he saw the darkness behind Alec thicken, but nothing came of it except another ragged sigh.

  “Seregil? I think maybe we should go.”

  Together they splashed back across the cave, and Seregil had a very distinct feeling of being watched.

  It was no easy task to get up the steep tunnel again, but they made it and found Micum waiting for them.

  “Your voices echoed,” he told them. “I only heard bits and pieces, but it sounded like you found something interesting.”

  “Someone,” Seregil replied, wet, shivering, and unsettled.

  “A ghost?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think it was a man’s voice, don’t you?” asked Alec.

  “I think so.”

  “It wasn’t just that, though,” Alec told Micum. “The inner cave is incredible! There are ancient drawings and dripstone formations, and a skull on a post.”

  “I wish I had your build. I’d like to see that,” the big man replied. “Whatever workmen were looting down there must have been built like you two.”

  “It could be that larger adults aren’t supposed to go there,” said Seregil. “Given the size of this stool, maybe Klia was right. Maybe the oracles here really were children.”

  “How is Klia?” asked Alec.

  “I was waiting for you,” said Micum. “Let’s go see.”

  They found Klia sitting under a tree at the edge of the clearing with a very concerned Thero hovering over her. The sun was sinking behind the hills, and the shadows lay long across the little courtyard around the altar. Klia’s escort stood at a distance, looking uncomfortable. Zella stood near the entrance to the cave, hands clasped under her chin and her expression a study in concern and guilt.

  Alec brushed by her and went to Klia. “How are you feeling?”

  “Something must have disagreed with my digestion,” Klia replied, looking pale and chagrined. “I can’t recall the last time I threw up.”

  “Perhaps it was the chamber,” said Zella. “It’s known to affect some people strangely.”

  “Because of the vapors?” asked Seregil.

  “That, and some claim to hear voices. Some faint for no reason.”

  “And you allowed the princess to go in there without warning?” Thero cried. “What were you thinking, woman?”

  Zella fell to her knees, hands still clasped. “I am so sorry, Highness! Such occurrences are rare—”

  “It’s all right.” Rising, Klia went to Zella and offered her hand. “I’m fine.” She cast a glance at a cluster of bushes a few yards away that were spattered with vomit. “Someone should clean this up. This grove is sacred.”

  “I’ll see to it as soon as we reach the encampment,” Zella assured her.

  “What did you two find, Seregil?” asked Klia.

  Seregil described the cave, and the noises they’d heard there.

  “I wonder if it was the voice of whoever belonged to that skull?” said Thero.

  “I’d say that’s a good bet,” Seregil replied. “Whoever it was, he wasn’t much of a conversationalist.”

  “I must get down there soon,” said Klia.

  “Next time,” said Thero. “I’ll take you back to camp.”

  To Seregil’s surprise, Klia made no objection as Thero offered his arm and walked with her to where the horses were tethered. She was still pale.

  Alec watched them go, brow furrowed slightly. “I’ve never seen her like that.”

  “I don’t wonder,” said Micum, looking thoughtful.

  Seregil raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  Micum shrugged. “I think I’ll spend the night in the palace, having a look around. You see more ghosts in the dark, right? Or have you two had your fill of spooks for one day? You came up out of that tunnel pretty fast.”

  Seregil snorted. “All I need is to dry out.”

  “Me, too,” said Alec. “I think I’m actually getting used to ghosts.”

  They set off the way they’d come and Seregil found himself riding beside Zella, who still looked shaken by Thero’s remonstrance.

  “Tell me, what was the state of the innermost cave when it was first opened?” he asked.

  “Just as you saw, I suppose. I went down once, but I didn’t like the feel of the place,” she replied.

  “Really? I found it very beautiful.”

  “As you say, my lord.”

  “There’s recent damage there. Someone’s been taking souvenirs.”

  “That’s strictly forbidden. I’ll speak to the foreman.”

  “There had been a stone tablet blocking the entrance to the innermost tunnel. Did Toneus break it down?”

  “He had it removed. It’s stored back at the palace.”

  “I’d like a look at it whe
n we return.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know how long ago it was blocked?” asked Seregil, struck by how uninterested she seemed in the matter.

  “No, my lord. The place had fallen into disuse years ago, and as you pointed out earlier, the Plenimarans had no respect for the place. I imagine they blocked it up to keep the faithful from using the caves.”

  “Are there many faithful left?” asked Klia, overhearing.

  “Not during the occupation, as you might imagine. The locals seem to have little use for the place.”

  “If I may, Your Highness,” said Seregil, “I think it might be better if the inner caves remain off limits for now, given the damage Alec and I saw.”

  “A good idea,” said Klia. “I’ll have guards posted there when we get back to camp.”

  By the time they reached the gate into Menosi again Klia appeared to have fully recovered but Thero still insisted on riding back to camp with her.

  “Honestly, I’m fine!” she told him. “You’re needed here.”

  “They can spare me for an hour. I’ll see you back, look in on Mika, and be back here before dark.”

  “Take Sedge and some of his guards with you,” Klia told Seregil and the others. “I don’t want anything happening to you.”

  Micum pulled the amulet the wizard had made for him from the neck of his shirt. “No dra’gorgos will bother us so long as we keep these on, right, Thero?”

  “You should be safe, but be careful all the same. I’d rather you went in there later, when I could be with you.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Seregil told him.

  KLIA was quiet as they rode back toward the camp and Thero left her to her thoughts, not wanting to embarrass her in front of the others by treating her like an invalid.

  By the time they reached camp the sun was nearly down. Torches and braziers were already being lit. A soldier directed them to the large tent set aside for Klia, and Thero followed her inside.

  A young servant woman sat by a small brazier inside, but Klia dismissed her. When the girl was gone, Thero closed the tent flap and cast a silence spell on the tent. Klia sank down on the cot and rested her head in her hands.