We climbed up to the passage Dancer had discovered, and after Aemir had retrieved and stowed his rope, we made our way down the stone tunnel.
It wasn’t perfectly round, but it was pretty close to it, and it was remarkably straight for a natural corridor which naturally sent off alarms in my head.
After at least two hundred meters of progress, the tunnel opened into a far less natural chamber. The room was cubical, and probably fifty feet on a side. The inner surfaces of the chamber weren’t perfectly smooth, but it was clear that a lot of work went into its construction. After getting a better look at the alcoves dotting the wall, the purpose of the chamber became clear.
“A ritualistic burial site,” Pi’Vari remarked casually, passing his light stick over the neatly laid bones inside one of the human-sized alcoves.
“Bone pit,” spat Dancer apprehensively, gripping his weapon tightly in both hands.
I shook my head. “I think it’s neither,” I said quietly as I moved to the center of the room. Standing there, on opposite corners of a six foot tall dais about twenty feet wide, was a pair of obelisks about ten feet tall. One had a large crack spiraling around it which ran most of its length, but it was more or less intact while the other appeared undamaged.
I walked carefully up the dais steps until I was standing between the two pillars. The arrangement of stones comprising the floor space between them confirmed my suspicion.
“It’s a teleporter,” I said. “The obelisks each perform a unique function; one sends, the other receives. This is probably part of a permanently linked system, with a similar apparatus on the other end somewhere.” The amount of knowledge I seemed to intuitively possess regarding magic and enchantments was really uncanny at times.
Pi’Vari came up the dais steps after me, while Aemir and Dancer remained at ground level. Dancer was clearly uncomfortable here, while Aemir was examining the old bones.
“The chamber appears to be thousands of years old,” Pi’Vari mused. “The water used to flow come from that corner,” he gestured toward a distant corner, where a pair of crypts had collapsed to reveal the continuation of the waterway which had brought us here. “There is no water here, however, so the diversion must have occurred further upstream.”
“Do the obelisks still function?” asked Aemir, who was still examining the bodies which had been laid to rest here.
I shook my head. “If I understand the principle behind them, then this one,” I pointed to the cracked pillar, “is the sender, and the other one receives. So we could return to this room if we found the other pair, but we can’t safely use this unit to transport ourselves to the other end.”
“Of course not,” quipped Aemir dryly.
I continued to study the runes engraved into the obelisk’s surface, hoping to find some indication as to the object’s origin or any other useful piece of information I might glean.
“Rather sophisticated for such an ancient structure,” commented Pi’Vari quietly as he also studied the runes on the obelisk.
I nodded. “It does appear that way,” was all I could muster.
“It seems to beg the questions of who built it, and what happened to them,” he continued, “to my knowledge, teleportation is incredibly draining. Moreover, the Empire is the only known entity able to produce stable teleportation systems, and it is a resource we have only had at our disposal for a little over a thousand years.”
“It does appear to be a mystery, I’ll give you that,” I agreed. “Can you decipher any of these symbols?” I asked hopefully.
Pi’Vari passed his light stick over the carved surface and squinted at the markings. “Some of the symbols appear to be pre-Verukian, but they failed to develop stonework this advanced. The age and craftsmanship would fit the Da’nelite artisans of the period, but they never ventured this far inland and their written language was hieroglyphic, rather than alphabetic like this,” he remarked casually. “Stationing ‘Death Watchers’ at culturally important sites like this was a common practice among the Da’nelites, as well,” he said, waving his hand at the hundreds of alcoves carved into the walls of the room.
I really didn’t know what he was talking about, but I hoped it meant he was getting close to an answer. “Your best guess, Pi’Vari,” I prompted and gestured toward the collapsed corner of the room, “we still have a tunnel to follow.”
Pi’Vari straightened himself and looked up and down the intact obelisk. “Two options,” he finally answered, “the first being that a previously un-catalogued civilization possessing these skills and written language built this room in secret, which still leaves us with the questions of ‘why’ and ‘who enchanted the obelisks’.”
I nodded in agreement. “And the second?” I asked, pretty sure that I already knew the answer.
Pi’Vari shrugged. “The second possibility is considerably less likely…” he trailed off slowly before taking a deep breath and continuing, “but far more complete in terms of clarity: these obelisks were commissioned by an Imperial Wizard, who coordinated their completion across the great distance which separated the Da’nelites and the pre-Verukian people nearly a thousand years ago.”
“If that were the case,” I countered with a raised finger, “then each of these obelisks would bear the patent and license markings issued by the Imperial Archives, not to mention the Imperial Sigil of the wizard’s city—which couldn’t be Veldyrian, since it’s only been around for four plus centuries.” I waved my hand up and down the obelisks. “I see no such markings.”
Pi’Vari hesitated before a smile slowly spread across his face. “As you say, Jezran; it is a mystery.”
I narrowed my eyes as I got the distinct impression that he was holding something out on me. “We can’t learn anything else here,” I said after a long pause. “We should continue upstream.”
Once inside the tunnel, it was clear that it had not been created naturally. It was perfectly cylindrical from the top all the way to the bottom, where it had a groove worn into the center of the shaft through which water had apparently run. But that channel was dry now.
The tunnel wound for a few hundred yards before once again opening into another cavern, only this one was partially natural and partially man-made. The sound of running water was clear as we entered the chamber.
As we exited the tunnel, the wall to our left was made of smooth, solid stone which appeared to have been hewn meticulously by hand. The only problem with that assessment is there was simply no way to transport all of the debris from such an effort out of the cave system without leaving significant evidence, of which we had found none.
“Magic did this,” I said as I approached the wall, inspecting it more closely.
“Indeed,” Pi’Vari agreed, “there is little doubt that this surface was created using magical means.”
I backed away in silent amazement. The wall was thirty feet tall and over a hundred feet long. There were no doors, windows, or features of any kind to be found on its face, save for a giant crack running down the middle of it which extended across the floor of the cavern where that floor joined the wall.
“Jezran,” said Pi’Vari, trying to get my attention, “look here.”
I made my way to where he was kneeling and found what he was looking at. In front of the crack in the wall were two distinct piles of thin bits of rubble, and on closer examination these piles appeared to have at one time been statues. We finally had the connecting piece we had been seeking.
The figures were originally over eight feet tall, had bat-like wings, four arms ending in long, bony fingers and tails which resembled scorpions. It appeared they had once been hollow carvings representing the creatures which the Coldetz soldiers had referred to as ‘flyers.’
“Some sort of sentry,” I mused. “It’s reasonable to assume that whoever opened this chamber did so against their recommendation.”
Pi’Vari chuckled lightly. “Indeed,” he agreed, “however, it is impossible to determine whether or not this was
done at the exact same time, so it must remain a well-conceived hypothesis.”
After finding nothing of further interest in the piles, we continued our search of the cavern. The water was flowing from the side of the room opposite to our entry tunnel, and nearly all of it was now running down into the crack which extended from the stone wall across the floor.
“Now we see why the water was diverted,” remarked Aemir as he carefully studied the various natural stone pillars in the chamber. “These pillars are like the teeth of a great beast,” he said apprehensively.
Pi’Vari airily waved his hand. “Those were formed by the gradual flow of water, which deposited the minerals forming their structures over thousands, or even millions, of years,” he explained. “Rest easy, for there is very little in the way of food for any beast they might belong to, in any event,” he assured him haughtily.
Aemir shook his head in apparent wonderment. “In my homeland water is a scarcity, but here it is in such abundance that it can work wonders such as these uninterrupted for millions of years,” he said wistfully. “Wars are fought over what you would consider to be an insignificant spring, and thousands die to defend this precious resource.” He reached out and touched a damp stalagmite next to him and closed his eyes reverently.
Dancer had made his way up the crack along the wall during our conversation, and when he reached the top he shoved his light stick into the opening. “Open here,” he barked down to us as he disappeared into the hole.
“Dancer!” I snapped, finding myself increasingly tired of his reckless dashes into the unknown. “Get back here!”
The little man’s head popped out of the hole in a familiar fashion. “What?” he yelled, bringing his light stick out and holding it behind his head.
“I need to know if the hole is large enough for everyone,” I said impatiently.
Dancer shrugged. “Blankets make Aemir fat,” he quipped, “but fit.”
“Good, then tie the rope and we can all come up,” I ordered.
Dancer muttered something under his breath, probably in his native tongue, which sounded a lot like a harsher form of German, phonetically—at least to my untrained ear. I didn’t understand a word the little man said in that foreign language, but I’m pretty sure he was bemoaning our limited mobility.
After a few minutes of preparation, we climbed through the incredibly tight hole and came out the other side. The wall itself was just a little over a meter thick, and the crack was no more than half that large at its widest point. What we saw when we had assembled on the other side was enough to assure me that we were on the right track.
This chamber was massive, larger than any underground chamber I had ever been in, and I had toured a few large caves in my life. There was a faint, greenish glow permeating the cavern and its contents well enough that we probably could have gone without the light sticks and kept our footing, but we kept the sticks firmly in hand anyway.
The cavern was at least five hundred yards across, perfectly dome-shaped without any stalactites or stalagmites that I could see. But there were plenty of formations on the floor of the cavern, and they were definitely not natural.
The room was filled with hemispherical, perfectly smooth and featureless stone domes which were arranged in rows and columns. They were about fifteen feet tall and twice as wide at the base, and their domed shape almost perfectly matched the dimensions of the mountain itself, as well as the chamber in which they were located.
My herald moved to the nearest one, and with his glow stick he illuminated a red pattern on the cream-colored surface of the stone. It hadn’t been carved; it simply appeared to be a natural pattern of the stone, which was impossible given its complexity and perfect geometry. Pi’Vari raised an eyebrow and moved to the next one wordlessly.
When he found another complex design on the next dome, this one sky blue in color, he took a step back and lowered his light stick to his side. “I believe I know what this is,” Pi’Vari said quietly as he cast an almost fearful look around the chamber.
I cocked an eyebrow and turned to him. “What do you think it is?”
Pi’Vari exhaled slowly before replying, “I believe this is a burial site.”
I furrowed my brow suspiciously. “Humans couldn’t craft such perfect structures without the assistance of magic,” I began, “and even with it, the amount of power needed to do something like this even over hundreds of years is beyond the ability of free wizards.”
My herald nodded. “I agree; humans could not craft this. But humans are not what is buried here, Jezran,” he replied, “so I doubt humans are responsible for the creation of these structures.”
I felt my jaw slacken as I realized what he meant, and I quickly estimated that there were nearly three hundred of the stone mounds. “Has the Empire ever discovered anything like this?” I asked, hoping the answer was ‘yes.’”
“The Empire has never even heard of anything like this, Jezran,” he replied quietly, “at least, not to my knowledge.”
That was good enough for me, as Pi’Vari was by far the most learned person I had ever met, either here or back home. “So…each of these contains the body of a god?”
Pi’Vari nodded slowly. “If I am correct, Jezran, then it is without question the most significant archeological find in the history of Veldyrian…and perhaps the entire Empire.”
I looked out over the vast tomb and wracked my brain, trying to conceive of a way he could be wrong. Everywhere I turned, it seemed like I was digging myself deeper and deeper into the path of the Empire when all I wanted was to escape their clutches.
“I thought gods essentially dispersed when they died unless they were killed by another god, in which case their essence could be partially or completely absorbed by the god who killed them?” I challenged him meekly. I wasn’t hoping to disprove him, but I was curious why he would think this place could be something which had never been recorded in over six thousand years of Imperial history.
Pi’Vari nodded. “That is my understanding as well,” he admitted, “but each of these mounds bears the sigil of a god. And this location, combined with the obvious geometric similarity to the mountain we are essentially beneath, suggests a religious design and purpose. Whether the physical remains of their respective gods are here or not is less important than the fact that someone organized and executed such a remarkable feat.”
“You may be right,” I said, “but even if this is just a symbolic resting place of so many gods, why are there no guardians?”
I heard Aemir draw his scimitar behind me upon hearing my query, and Dancer looked more than a little nervous as well as he gripped his spear tightly.
Pi’Vari shrugged. “It is possible that the steward of this site is no more,” he suggested as he walked slowly between the domes. “Imperial wizards have slain literally thousands of gods in the last six thousand years, the most recent of which was at the hand of Arch Magos Euripides to close the Twelfth Gods War a decade ago. Perhaps one of those gods was charged with tending this place?”
“I guess the more important questions,” I said as it dawned on me, “concern the broken barrier to this chamber: what caused it to crack, and who may have been behind it?” I stopped and saw another clearly visible sigil on the surface of the dome nearest me, this one silver and vaguely serpentine in shape. “What uses are there for a dead god’s body?” I asked as we continued down the row of mounds.
Pi’Vari examined the dome opposite the one I was next to for several minutes before answering. “That is impossible to say,” he finally replied, “since we really do not even know exactly how they form, or of what they are composed besides massive amounts of raw, magical, energy.”
Something caught my eye in a row to my right and I moved to examine it. I had barely taken a step before I knew what it was. “Pi’Vari,” I yelled a little louder than I had intended, but thankfully there was almost no echo, “come look at this.”
Dancer and Aemir rushed to my side, wi
th Aemir placing himself between me and what I had spotted. Pi’Vari took his time, as usual, but when we were all assembled we looked silently at the dome standing before us.
The dome was unremarkable compared to the others—except for the fact that it had a hole large enough for even Baeld to fit through without stooping. The hole was oval-shaped, and our light sticks clearly illuminated the interior of the dome.
Not wanting to take any risks, I cast my Third Eye spell and scanned the interior of the dome. There were the echoes of powerful magics still resonating within it, and they were unlike anything I had ever seen. They weren’t confusing or dangerous to my sanity like the encrypted scroll I had failed to crack on the journey here, but they were utterly foreign. The colors weren’t segregated like I was used to and unlike Imperial magic, there was no discernable geometry to their slowly fading structures.
Still not satisfied that it was safe, I expended the energy to erect my cobalt blue defense field and stepped in, motioning for my entourage to remain outside. Defense fields are a simple matter for an Imperial High Wizard to call upon; they’re one of the only forms of magic which don’t require licenses to use, and even the most powerful versions are simple to summon—if more than a little difficult to maintain under duress.
Once inside, I could more clearly see the interior. The cascading energy patterns ran this way and that but they hadn’t responded to my entry at all. The inner surface of the dome was dark but reflective like a mirror, making the room appear far larger than it actually was which would have been disorienting if not for my Third Eye spell.
In the center of the room was a human-shaped slab, and only when I saw it was I overcome with a sense of déjà vu, like I had been here before. During my dream attack on the perpetrators of the assault on Coldetz, I had been in such a room although it had appeared much, much larger in the dreamer’s mind. There were also no star patterns on the ceiling which I recalled from the dream, but the human-shaped altar was unmistakably the same. There was also a seemingly endless amount of faintly glowing writing on the altar, but I couldn’t read any of it.
Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) Page 9
