"That's a cheering thought," Thetheru said.
"Oh, it's just a legend," Shandiph replied.
"We thought that the great old magicks were just a legend," Thetheru returned.
"If the crypts are so extensive, how can we hope to find these magicks we seek?" Karag asked.
"There are signs," Shandiph replied.
"Signs? You mean that these carefully hidden things, too dangerous to leave where they might be misused, can be found by following signposts?"
"Not exactly. The signs can only be read by means of an enchanted glass."
"Where do we find this glass, then?"
Shandiph reached down to a pouch on his belt. "It's right here," he answered.
"Let me see it," Karag asked.
"Not yet," Shandiph replied.
Karag started to protest, then caught sight of Thetheru's smile and thought better of it.
They finished their repast in silence. As Deriam drank the last of the wine, his servant reappeared with a double armful of prepared torches and with four lanterns.
The torches were distributed evenly among the four wizards. Karag suggested that Deriam's servants accompany them, but Deriam overruled the notion immediately. "That is beyond their duties," he explained.
"Besides, we want to keep the whole thing secret," Shandiph added.
Accordingly, the servants stayed where they were, while the wizards made their way through Deriam's kitchen and down the stairs into his wine cellars. From there they descended another flight into a fruit cellar, where a trap door opened to reveal a ladder leading down into utter darkness. The light of the lanterns did not reach the bottom.
With the torches bundled on their backs, the four descended, Karag first, followed by Deriam, Shandiph, and Thetheru. The ladder swayed beneath their weight but did not break or fall. After what seemed an incredibly long time, they finally came in sight of the bottom.
When they stepped from the ladder, they found themselves on a flagstone floor buried in a thick layer of dust. At Shandiph's suggestion they lit one torch apiece to provide additional light.
They were in an immense chamber of stone; their footsteps echoed from the bare walls, which even the light of torches and lanterns combined revealed only as vague and distant patches amid the all-encompassing darkness. Three of the four stared about in uneasy surprise at the room's extent; Deriam remarked casually, "I haven't been down here in a long, long time; I'd forgotten just how big it is."
"Where's the door to the crypts?" Karag asked.
"We are in the crypts, Karag," Deriam replied. "This chamber has a dozen doors opening on various rooms and passages."
"Which way do we go?" Thetheru asked.
"I haven't any idea," Deriam answered.
Shandiph carefully placed his torch and lantern on the stone floor and fumbled with the pouch on his belt. He brought out a small sphere of yellow glass and held it up to his eye.
After a long moment he said, "I see nothing."
"What do we do now?" Thetheru asked.
"Pick a direction at random," Karag suggested.
Deriam shrugged, and led the party to the wall of the room, choosing his route by walking forward in the direction he happened to be facing.
The wall was bare stone and faintly dusty.
"Now," Deriam said, "I propose that we walk along the wall until we find one of the signs Shandiph mentioned."
No one objected, and the foursome moved along the wall.
Almost immediately, they came to an open doorway; Deriam looked at Shandiph, who shook his head. They moved on.
A second doorway was passed, and a corner of the room. At the third doorway Shandiph asked, "Does the pentacle above the door mean anything?"
"What pentacle?" Thetheru asked, holding up his lantern. The stone lintel was blank.
"I think we've found it," Karag replied.
Shandiph lowered the glass from his eye and stared at the lintel in puzzlement. "I still see the pentacle, though," he said. "Don't you see it?"
"There is nothing there, Shandiph," Karag replied.
"We see nothing but bare stone," Deriam added.
Shandiph looked at the glass, then back at the stone. "I thought I had to look through it," he said. "It appears I was wrong." With a shrug, he led the way through the door and into the passage beyond.
The passage was more of the dull gray stone, huge blocks of it stacked together without mortar, forming a corridor ten feet wide and twelve feet high. It sloped downward for a hundred yards or so and then ended in a T-shaped intersection. Karag had moved into the lead and now stopped, unsure which way to turn.
"The pentagram is on the left," Shandiph said as he came up. Karag immediately turned left, and the party advanced.
Following Shandiph's directions, the foursome made their way deeper and deeper into the crypts, through corridors and rooms that ranged from mere cubicles to vast caverns, up and down ramps and stairs, across bridges that spanned seemingly bottomless chasms, and past doors of wood, iron, and brass that stood ajar or were tightly sealed, with no discernable pattern. The first torches burned down to uselessness and were discarded, and the lanterns dimmed and died as they wound onward. There was no light save what they carried, and the only sounds were their own footsteps, their own breath, and occasionally the distant dripping of water. In one room they found a spot where drops of water fell and saw that it ran from the tip of a five-inch stalactite clinging to the low ceiling, to land with the smallest of splashes on a stubby projection from the floor. The chamber they were in was not a natural cave, but man-made; the water came through a crack between the stones of the ceiling.
The second set of torches died, and the third was lit; Deriam began complaining of the stupidity Shandiph had displayed in not bringing food and drink. Karag came to the Chairman's defense, pointing out that he had no way of knowing how long the search would take, while Thetheru remained silent. When Deriam demanded that the Amagite choose a side, he ended the argument by saying, "I'm too busy trying to remember our route."
"I hadn't thought of that," Deriam said after a moment of silence.
"I've been too busy finding our way forward," Shandiph said.
"Can you lead us back out?" Karag asked.
"I'm not sure," Thetheru admitted.
"Maybe we should turn back. Do we even know what we're looking for?" Deriam asked. "How will we know these wonders when we find them? Have they really survived for three hundred years in this damp darkness?"
"Darkness wouldn't hurt anything," Karag retorted.
"But we don't even know what we're looking for," Thetheru said.
"I assume that we'll find a few chests somewhere," Shandiph said, "and perhaps a shelf of books."
"I hope so," Deriam answered.
They were discarding the last of the fourth set of torches when Shandiph, who had moved on ahead while Karag lit the new torch from the stub of his old one, called out, "I've found something."
"What is it?" Karag called.
"This door has the pentagram sign on it, and another pentagram inside the first."
"Is it open?"
"No. It's locked."
The other three came up to join him and found that the Chairman was standing before a large oaken door bound in rusty iron; he was pulling and pushing at the great iron handle. The door did not move.
"Whatever we're looking for must be in there," Karag said.
"How do we get in?" Deriam asked.
"Break it down," Karag suggested.
Shandiph and Deriam looked at each other; Deriam shrugged, "Let him try; he's the strongest of us."
The other three stepped back, and Karag took a short run toward the door, slamming his shoulder against it.
Immediately, he was flung back against the far wall of the corridor in a shower of pure white sparks.
He lay stunned on the dusty stone. Thetheru said unnecessarily, "It must have a warding spell on it."
"I never saw a war
d like that," Deriam replied. He was blinking, trying to help his eyes readjust to the dim yellow torchlight after the vivid brilliance of the sparks.
Shandiph looked at the door for a moment and then said, "I suppose they wanted to be sure that no one who just happened along could get in. We are the rightful heirs, though, so there must be some way we can annuli the wards."
"There was no mention of this in your directions?"
"No. You have to understand, I know very little more than you do. When I became Chairman I was given the seal of office and a box of charms, and taught a spell that would tell me what each charm was for when the need arose; that spell told me that the yellow glass would show me the way through the crypts, but it said nothing of this door."
"Did you bring the other charms?"
"No. That shouldn't matter, though; I know what almost all of them do. Besides, if one was needed here, the spell should have told me before I left Kholis."
"Perhaps the spell has become muddled over the years."
"Aal and Amera, I hope not!"
"Is there some hidden instruction in the pentacle, perhaps?" Thetheru asked.
Karag was climbing to his feet once again. He said nothing, but stood unsteadily, staring at the door.
"Did you bring any magic besides the yellow glass?" Deriam asked Shandiph.
Before the Chairman could answer, Karag said, "I can see the pentagram now."
"What?" The others turned toward him in surprise.
"I can see the pentagram. But you said there was another pentagram within it, Shandiph, and it's not a pentagram, it's the Council seal."
"It is?" Shandiph also stared at the door; to him it still appeared to be a pentacle inside a pentacle. A possibility occurred to him, and he reached inside the neck of his tunic to pull forth the golden medallion that he as Chairman of the Council of the Most High, wore at all times. He placed it against the center of the pentagram and announced, "I am Shandiph, heir to Hemmaron, Chairman of the Council of the Most High, chief among the wise and first among equals!"
Nothing happened.
In desperation, Shandiph reached out and pushed once more at the iron handle. The door swung open.
The chamber beyond was utterly black, and the light of the torches did not penetrate. The four wizards stared into it for a long moment, none daring to step into the unnatural darkness.
"I think that magic is called for," Deriam said at last.
Shandiph nodded. "Hoi, khiri! I'a angarosye t'aryo ansuyen, o mi alekye i zhure Leuk!" he called. "Hear me, spirits! I am an agent of the lords of demons, and with this talisman I invoke Leuk!"
The room was suddenly flooded with golden light, and the four stared in astonishment.
The chamber was perhaps thirty feet wide, but so long that its far end could not be seen in the conjured light. The walls were lined with shelves of books, row after row of chests, hundreds of pegs from which hung amulets and talismans of every sort, and racks which held scepters, staves, orbs, jewels, swords, daggers, cups, plates, goblets, spears, stones, carvings, statues, sacks, pouches, jars, phials, and a hundred other implements and objects. More chests were lined up down the center of the room. Many objects glowed or glittered, and soft rustlings could be heard.
Directly before them stood an immense reading stand carved of some dark, rich wood, which held a great black-bound book.
Everything was brightly and clearly lighted for fifty yards of the room's length, but without shadows and with no apparent source of light.
"How did you do that?" Thetheru asked Shandiph.
"You mean the light? I learned a little theurgy years ago; it's a simple invocation. If you mean the door, I didn't do anything except what you saw. It must have been ensorcelled to recognize the seal of office."
"What is all this stuff?" Karag demanded, astonished.
Shandiph shrugged. "How should I know?" He stepped forward and looked at the lone book on the stand. "I think that this must be here where we see it for a reason." He opened the book at random and let the front cover fall back against the stand.
Pages flipped over without his touch; when they stopped, he read aloud, "This book is the true compendium of all arcane knowledge gathered in this room, compiled to guide those who come after us in the use of our arts."
"Useful," Deriam remarked.
"How can one volume explain all this?" Thetheru asked, gesturing at the thousands of books and tens of thousands of other objects.
Pages turned, and Shandiph read, "This book has been enchanted and will answer your every question. Speak, and you shall be answered; ask, and you shall know, that the glory of the Council of the Most High may be reborn upon the earth." He smiled. "So much for secrecy," he said. "It appears that our predecessors didn't expect it to last forever."
"Shandiph," Deriam said, "this is all too much for me. What are all these things? This is far more than I had imagined we would find."
A single page turned, and Shandiph read, "Gathered before you is every magical spell and power known to our members at the end of this Twelfth Age, save those thought too minor to waste space upon, and those that have been withheld by the power of the gods or reserved for the continued use of the Council's master."
"I think this is more than we can handle," Thetheru said. "I think we should contact the rest of the Council before we go any further."
A thick sheaf of pages flung itself over with an audible thump, and Thetheru looked at it in surprise. "I didn't ask a question," he said.
"The Greater Spell of Summoning has been embodied for your use in spheres of red crystal, stored in the first chest on your left," Shandiph read. "The shattering of one of these crystals in the heart of a well-drawn pentagram will bring you instantly whomsoever you shall name aloud while the smoke is thick."
"The thing dares to advise us!" Karag exclaimed.
"We should use it, though," Thetheru said. "Where is chalk for a pentagram?"
A page riffled over, but Shandiph did not bother to read what it said, as Deriam announced, "There is already a pentagram here, on the floor, inlaid in gold."
The other three looked, and Deriam was correct; a thin layer of dust had hidden the golden star.
Shandiph was already on the way to the chest indicated by the book by the time Karag and Thetheru had convinced themselves of the pentagram's reality. He opened it and found that a dozen identical spheres of red crystal, each the size of a clenched fist, were arrayed in a tray at one end. The rest of the chest held an assortment of other fascinating devices, but he resolved to leave those for later. He picked out a single red globe and, with a careful toss, flung it into the center of the pentagram. It shattered spectacularly when it hit the floor, and an impossibly thick cloud of red smoke billowed forth.
"Chalkara of Kholis, Derelind the Hermit, Miloshir the Theurgist, Herina the Stargazer, Veyel of Nekutta, the sorceress Zhinza, the mage Ranendin, the Baron Dor of Therin, Kala of Mara, Sharatha of Ilnan," he recited quickly.
The smoke continued to roll outward in a solid, spreading mass, with no sign of thinning; Shandiph continued his listing. "Kubal of Tadumuri, Haladar of Mara, Sherek the Thaumaturge!" He was beginning to have trouble remembering which other councilors had been at Kholis. "Amarda the Blood Drinker! Linder the Nightwalker!"
Vague shapes were becoming visible in the seething red cloud, which had reached out far enough to surround the original party of four. "The Seer of Weideth!" Shandiph added. There were still one or two others, he knew. "The wizard Alagar…" Were there still more?
The smoke showed the first signs of dispersing, and it occurred to him that he need not restrict himself to those who had attended the meetings. He remembered one more who had been at Kholis, though, and named him first, saying, "Phamakh the Wise!"
Abruptly the red fog thinned and vanished, and the room was suddenly crowded. Every person he had named was present, jammed together in the area around the golden pentagram; all were looking about themselves with varying mixt
ures of surprise and fear.
Shandiph realized that he had missed an opportunity to settle Shang's fate definitely once and for all by summoning him as well; or he might have called for someone who could provide a firsthand account of recent events in Dыsarra. He considered using another of the crystal spheres, but decided against it.
There was a sudden babble of voices as the new arrivals all began to talk at once; the only question that was decipherable in the confusion of noise was one that was repeated by several speakers, though the pages of the guidebook riffled wildly in trying to answer every startled query.
"Where are we?" was the one question that could be understood.
"Fellow councilors!" Shandiph called. "Your attention, please!"
The questions ceased, the book's pages lay still, and the entire group turned to face him.
"You are in the vault where our ancestors placed much of their magic for safekeeping; you were brought here by an ancient spell because we felt that the unexpected wealth of this lost magic was more than we four could handle by ourselves. If you will look around you, you will see that there is far more here than was anticipated; every single thing in this chamber is magical, it appears, and every book here contains arcane knowledge. As may be determined by the ease with which you were brought here, using a single, simple device-beware that you don't step on those shards of glass-much of this magic is extremely potent by our standards. We thought that all of you should have some say in the management of this treasure trove."
"You thought so, Shandiph, you and Thetheru," Karag said. "We four were appointed as representatives, and I see no need to waste time in further debate. We were sent to find powerful weapons to use against the overman Garth, and there are undoubtedly powerful weapons here around us. I say that we should find them, using that guidebook, and then go and deal with this overman and his magic sword before he becomes any more dangerous than he already is."
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