All heads turned towards the elder sorcerer as he stalked across the marble floor towards them.
“Your student is fatigued and you are but one against us three,” Magus Bauer said contemptuously.
“But how many of you spent the time readying your spells today in preparation for battle, hm?” Devlin asked confidently as a fiery shield erupted around him and arcs of raw power danced between his spread fingers. “I will testify as to Dondrian’s illicit activities. I have long known of his betrayal and duplicity.”
Devlin looked at his former student. “Go and find what you need, I will take care of this.”
Azerick gave his former master a nod of thanks and bounded up the stairs despite his pain and fatigue. He searched the headmaster’s desk first then went to the bookshelf behind it. He pulled out a thick tome that looked far older than the others did. Azerick immediately saw that slips of paper marked several places in the large volume.
He flipped to each of them, quickly reading the entries in their entirety before skipping to the next one. The third entry marked in the tome spoke of precisely what he was looking for. It described the location of Dundalor’s helm in some ruins in the desert just two days ride across the border of Sumara.
The last entry spoke of Dundalor’s boots just three days ride southeast of a town called Sandusk. Without a map, Azerick could not be certain but he felt confident that this town would serve as a good staging point for both pieces of the artifact.
Azerick took the book but not for himself. He used the power of his staff once more to drift down to the hall below through the cavity he had created in the floor. Devlin still faced the three archmages in a standoff, neither side really wanting to engage in a battle.
“Dondrian marked the locations of at least two pieces of Dundalor’s armor in this book. There may be more evidence that he sold this information to enemies of the crown in his rooms,” Azerick said as he handed the tome over to Devlin.
“I will see that the magistrate learns of this and will personally assist with the investigation,” Devlin assured his young protégé.
With this newest information firmly secured in his memory, Azerick departed The Academy and retrieved Horse.
“Milord, what was that awful din in the Academy halls?” the groom asked excitedly when Azerick returned for Horse.
Azerick looked down from Horse’s tall back. “That was the sound of the headmaster’s retirement.”
“Must have been one heck of a party,” the groom said, scratching his head in wonder.
CHAPTER 15
Maude’s Marauders arrived in Sandusk late last evening. It was one of their less pleasant journeys in the last few years. They found Sandusk aptly named when one of the frequent sandstorms blew in late this morning, turning the formerly bright morning into a brown, dusty twilight. Maude had been eager to continue on to the temple after a bath and a night’s sleep but several locals had talked her out of leaving for at least another day. They said they could feel the sandstorm coming and even Maude reluctantly agreed that something was making the fine hairs on her arm stand up.
The party rode out the storm in the common room of the inn in which they were staying. The inn had a vestibule system in place, a system often used on military command tents so that one door could be opened during the night while the second door remained closed so no light would spill out from the open door. That door would then be shut before the second door was opened.
The Sandy Bottom Inn did not use the system for light discipline however. It was in place to try to control the amount of sand blown in with each customer coming or leaving. Even with these precautions, dust quickly covered every surface and one could feel the grit wash down their throats as they drank their beverages of choice.
The shear boredom of waiting out the storm was momentarily alleviated by the local bully picking a fight with another local man over a seat at the bar even though there were several open stools available. After the bully sucker punched the apparent trespasser and pitched him halfway across the common room floor, he sent several leering looks Maude’s way, followed by a look of contempt after Maude gave him a rude hand gesture and used her thumb and index finger to indicate that he lacked in sufficient equipment to interest her.
The tough likely would have made a scene but even with his two cronies, he was not interested in tangling with three well-armed individuals. Of course, there was also Tarth but it was unlikely that anyone saw him as a threat whatsoever. Besides, there was plenty of easier prey in the inn and he and his cronies passed the time making the other locals miserable.
It was late afternoon by the time the sandstorm finally blew itself out. Maude decided it was too late in the day to start out for the temple so they slept one more night at the inn before heading out just before first light. A layer of fresh sand covered the street that ran through Sandusk, sometimes a foot deep or more where buildings and other obstructions allowed it to pile up like a snowdrift.
The party rented a camel to use as a pack animal to carry extra food and, most importantly, water. It was perhaps a six-day journey round trip but they carried enough for two weeks if rationed properly and they did not share too much with the horses. No one in the party was familiar with camels, but the man they had rented it from talked them into taking the camel instead of another horse since it did not need to consume nearly as much of their precious water during the trip.
Maude could understand that sort of reasoning, but quickly started to wonder if the man had not played a joke on them. The camel was the crudest and most cantankerous beast she had ever seen, including the dwarf. It made a mule appear absolutely biddable by comparison. It even spit a huge sticky glob of some foul goo at Borik when he took a switch to the creature’s flank to get it moving. The glop struck him square in the chest and splattered into his beard where its pungent scent still lingered.
Since that moment, Tarth always maintained a twenty-yard berth around the spitting, grumbling beast lest it ruin his robes. The elf was bundled in light fine linen robes of tan, white, and gold with a white towel-like head covering streaming just past his shoulders, secured with a gold band in the shape of a striking cobra, coiled tightly around his head replete with a silk veil.
As much as Maude wanted to scorn the vane elf’s fashion-minded ensemble, she had to admit it looked light and airy. As the sun rose higher in the sky, Tarth’s getup was becoming even more appealing as she and the other metal armor-wearing people in her party began baking from the intense heat and chafing from the sand.
“I think it is time to doff all this metal before we overheat and pass out,” Maude suggested.
“Gonna be defenseless if we run into anything hostile,” Borik grumbled.
“Not as defenseless as we’ll be if we cook to death before they get here,” Maude returned.
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 to be had 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 flat land posed no known 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 so long as they were not pushed to a high rate of speed. The land was also an arid badland, not a great sandy desert like the one that lay on the other side of the mountains.
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 gro
und 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 so they followed the mountains south, and so 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 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 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 towards the west?” Maude asked.
Malek and Borik squinted their eyes at what Maude was pointing at.
“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 towards 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,” Tarth replied.
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 towards 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,” Tarth explained and recast his spell.
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 quickly 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 for now, Maude felt it prudent to keep moving straight and not take any unnecessary turns. The halls were vast and the temple enormous.
“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 that 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 to 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 carving of a tree just below a fifth pedestal.
Five more pedestals were 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 in helplessness.
“I think these four are the carvings of the gods but I don’t know what the other female statuette represents,” Malek supplied.
“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 impatiently.
“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 nicely.
“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!” Borik snarled.
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,” Maude growled back.
Borik stamped his feet in a circle, kicked, and head butted one of enormous columns before stamping 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 towards 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 nicely into Tarth’s ear while a smile spread across the elf’s narrow face. “Because if ya don’t—,” Borik suddenly 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.
The Sorcerer's Legacy (The Sorcerer's Path) Page 31
