The Sorcerer of Wands: Azabar's Icicle Part 2

by Jem I Kelley

“Great! That’s… just great.”

  Aden froze. Keeping his voice low, he said:

  “There’s a beetle near your right foot.”

  Bliss lifted her boot and dropped it.

  “Not now.”

  Aden sighed, sometimes Bliss could be a pain.

  “That was the first sign of life we’ve seen since we’ve been here.”

  Bliss took a stone and scraped the insect from her boot.

  “Oh.”

  Aden inspected the crushed remains. The shell had been green and the creature perhaps the size of his thumb.

  “I think you got a knock-out blow there.”

  “You didn’t say capture it.”

  Aden bit his lip. Everything irritated him right now, and he was sure this was because of the heat.

  “No birds, no plants, no animals, no worms, yet this beetle. What do you make of that?”

  Bliss’s expression became blank.

  “You first.”

  Aden tried to fathom this strange world, but couldn’t. No sign of life except for one beetle, what did it mean. He drank from his water skin.

  “You know,” said Bliss. “I’ve been thinking. Now Gnashlok is in Haverland, we can give him our stall fund money. Pay him for information about this ‘Threat to Haverland’.”

  Gnashlok being in Haverland made Aden worried. He hadn’t thought about it much before now. Not with all the do with Grimus’s gang and Spud’s death. As he did now, he wondered to himself, why would the ogre be in the city now?

  “He wouldn’t snitch for the kind of money we can afford to give him.”

  Bliss hawked, then spat at the ground.

  “So how do we find out what the Threat to Haverland is? What if we sneak into the Dazarian embassy and look for clues?”

  Aden considered the idea.

  “Not a good idea. They’ve got dogs guarding the place. Ones with big teeth and good noses.”

  “Give them a steak, no problem.”

  “If we’re seen by anyone, we’re dead.”

  “Come on Aden! We can use the artefact.”

  Aden sighed. Everything seemed useless. Even defeating the threat to Haverland seemed useless. He recognised his malaise from Kurt’s descriptions of desert travel, and drank from his water skin again. This feeling of defeat is just a feeling, he thought to himself. It will pass when I’m out of this sun.

  “The artefact can get us out of trouble by taking us to the stone circle on this world, Bliss. But we’ll have to reappear back where we left, sometime. That’s how it works. The first press takes people to the circle its linked to, the second press to where the people were when they first pressed it. Which means it’ll drop us right back into trouble. I know what you’re saying, I reckon Sardohan’s up to something. But if we get spotted in the embassy and disappear using a disc, they’ll place guards there until we come back.”

  “Yeah, but other than that, it’s a good idea, yeah?”

  Aden found another dry sandwich in his haversack, and bit into it.

  Later, as they progressed, a tower came into view, to their left, a few hundred yards up a side valley. They went to investigate.

  The tower was a ruin. It sat on a rock outcrop overlooking the surrounding land like a forlorn giant: its spire long crumbled and the upper rooms open to the air. Blocks of stone littered its base.

  A doorway stood empty, hinges reduced to patches of rust. The interior was dim, looking from the outside. There was no noise.

  Aden poked his head inside and found an empty room with curved walls. A stone staircase ran to the next level, and one plunged into the ground near the door.

  He entered followed by Bliss.

  “I can hardly see the join on this stonework.”

  He slid his finger down the smooth surface. “Aren’t dwarves supposed to build like this?”

  Bliss gawped at the patches of rust at the entrance.

  “I thought dwarf stonework didn’t collapse.”

  “Perhaps the tower’s been around a long time. I mean a really long time.”

  Faded murals adorned the wall, like faint tattoos on an old sailor’s arm.

  Bliss squinted, striving to make out shapes.

  “Some sort of giant winged monster, I think, attacking dwarves or gnomes.”

  Aden peered at another mural on the other side of the room. “Dwarves are on my mural. They’re sitting at tables full of food.”

  Bliss moved around the wall, and her finger traced the faded artwork of another mural.

  “This shows a map of an underground kingdom.”

  The boy’s interest turned to the staircase sunk into the depths of the earth.

  “That’s the way to it, I reckon,” said Bliss, taking an unconscious step back. “If it’s grey dwarves, and if there’s any still down there, they won’t be friendly.”

  Aden frowned. This world wasn’t at all like he expected, probably because it wasn’t like any of the known ones. All the disc-worlds either had civilisations, or no intelligent life. Except this one, this seemed to have had a civilisation - once.

  “If the dwarves are still here they wouldn’t let the tower crumble.”

  Bliss inched forward and followed the line of the stairs down into the darkness with her eyes. She looked to Aden, her face sombre.

  “What now?”

  “Let’s head on toward the green squares. I can’t tell how many hours we’ve been gone. We can’t risk being late home.”

  Bliss strolled to the doorway and squinted up at the sky.

  “We haven’t been gone ten hours, that’s how long we’ve got.”

  Aden joined her.

  “Not ten, no. But anything from four to six hours. We have to play safe and assume six. Been better if we could have brought a fob-watch.”

  Bliss’s eyes widened.

  “That’d cost a small fortune. Even Hacknor’s is a… what do you call it?”

  Aden pictured the gold backed case, and the small hands of Hacknor’s timekeeper.

  “Heirloom.”

  Chapter 47: the Glass Buildings

  They trudged for ages, and eventually the shimmering green, visible from the mountain ledge, came into focus. A gradual shock formed in Aden’s mind as he realised what the green was.

  At a safe distance the friends found a rock, shaped like an anvil, to hide behind and rest.

  “That's fields of crops inside glass buildings,” said Bliss.

  Aden wiped the sweat from his face, to stop it running into his eyes. The heat continued to weigh down on him in waves. “Hard to tell for sure, but it does look like that.”

  Bliss lay next to him.

  “Buildings made of glass though, Aden. Think of the cost! Even the rich people on our world have never made buildings totally out of glass. It would cost a fortune, all that glass, and big panes of the stuff too. Each sheet must be gigantic.”

  Aden poked his head over the rock, and stared at the ranks of misted glass buildings in awe. He’d never seen so much glass. All the houses in the poor district had unglazed shutters, meaning that on rainy days to stay dry, you had to sit in dark rooms. The merchant district wasn’t much better. Even the Rich district couldn’t compare, he realised. The rich had windows but they were formed from lots of little panes of glass whose thickness was uneven. The best Aden had seen in Haverland, which didn’t even come close to what he saw here, was the stained glass windows of the Cathedral. Even they were made out of lots of little pieces of glass, but at leas the glass was consistently flat and well shaped.

  The glass panes he stared at now were of an impossible size. Sheet after sheet of them, in building after building. Another thought came to him - why put crops inside buildings made of glass?

  “I didn’t expect this, did you?”

  Bliss shook her head. No.

  “What about that dome thing?”

  Aden stared at the domed building whose upper ramparts stood visible above the glass buildings that lay before it. He was sure
this was the pale thing they’d spotted from the mountain ledge.

  “No idea. It might be a church or something.”

  Bliss lifted her body higher, and scanned the area.

  “What shall we do?”

  Aden felt a tingle in his bones as he stared at the strange buildings. Nothing like this existed on his world. What strange magic or technology would be needed to make glass like that?

  Bliss spoke again, her voice was tinged with anxiety.

  “Where are the gardeners? The crops would have grown wild if they weren’t cared for, wouldn’t they? There must be gardeners.”

  Good point. Aden’s gaze swept across the glasshouses and the lanes between them. He saw no movement. “But who and where?”

  Bliss’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Dwarves?”

  “Maybe? But if its Dwarves, why do they look after their glasshouses, but not their towers?”

  Bliss rubbed her curly hair nervously. “Don’t know. It’s odd. Do you think it’s safe for us to go and have a look?”

  “If we don’t, we’ve got to do that walk all over again if we want to come back here.”

  “Why?”

  Aden frowned, dropped back behind the rock and turned to his friend.

  “It’s like I said. One press of the artefact button takes you to the stone circle on this world. The next returns you to where you were when you first pressed it.”

  Bliss’s brow furrowed.

  “If we press the artefact now and it takes us back to the Haverland roof, why doesn’t it take us here again the next time we press it.”

  A droplet of sweat ran down Aden’s calf and he almost smacked it in frustration. He forced himself to calm down. The heat seemed to be boiling his brain, making it difficult to think straight.

  “Because the stone circle up on the mountain is the fixed destination point. That’s where it takes you to when you first press the button. Then, next time you press the button, the artefact returns you to where you came from when you first pressed it. It doesn’t matter if in the meanwhile you’ve walked one yard or ten thousand yards. It’ll still return you to where you where when you pressed it the first time. For us today, that’s our roof. Next time it could be Haverland park. Either way that first press always takes us to the stone circle. The only way we could get the artefact to take us here is if we used another artefact to get us to this world from Haverland, then we walked here, then we pressed our artefact. That would then make the first press of the artefact be from here, it’d take us to the stone circle in the mountains and the next time we pressed it, it’d take us back to where we stand now.”

  Bliss wiped her sweaty face with the sleeve of her shirt, itself sodden and wet. She looked confused by the explanation. “Let’s just explore the place now we’re here, shall we?”

  Aden nodded.

  “Let’s be careful.”

  They pushed themselves to their feet and approached the nearest glass building. They saw no one. A path led between this building and the one beside it.

  Glass buildings steamed with mist, how bizarre, Aden thought. The mist obscured objects within, just the colour was obvious – plant green.

  He walked down the path and as he did so took off his gloves and put them in his haversack; Bliss did likewise.

  “Lets find the entrance.”

  He saw a door.

  About six feet high and wooden, a round handle perched at waist height; there was no keyhole.

  “I guess a lock doesn’t make sense if you’ve got glass walls,” said Bliss.

  Aden inspected the buildings nearby. There were no broken or missing panes of glass. The glasshouses were well cared for. He returned his attention to the one beside him. Ten foot high, he guessed. Ten foot easily, maybe more.

  He put his hand to the handle. The door opened easily releasing a wave of heat. He found himself in an alcove where another door stood. The alcove contained gardening implements arranged neatly in a rack. There were hoes, spades, forks, rakes.

  “Close the other door,” he said. “So if anyone comes by they won’t suspect.”

  Bliss did so.

  They passed through the second door. The wave of damp heat which washed over Aden this time caused him to stagger.

  Rows of leafy plants towered over him and it was as if he’d walked into a foggy jungle. Cobs of red fruit weighed down branches.

  A smell like a woodland glade in deep summer, reached his nose.

  “Strewth. It’s boiling!”

  Bliss plucked a cob and put it to her nose where she sniffed it. The cob was made of lots of little fruits.

  “Smells okay. What do you think it tastes like?”

  Aden gripped a similar one on a branch, and felt a rubbery texture.

  “Could be poisonous. Let’s take one and find out when we get back.”

  “Find out how?”

  “I don’t know. Leave it near Munter and hope he stuffs it into his mouth.”

  Bliss’s dark face widened as she grinned.

  “Great idea.”

  She slid into the rows of plants, “I’ll put two in my haversack.”

  “Make sure you cover your footsteps when you come back,”

  Aden examined a wooden container in the corner of the field. Lifting its lid, he saw leaves, roots, and food scraps. The container was a compost maker. He put the lid down and joined Bliss who’d come back to the door, pushing two of the scarlet cobs into her backpack.

  “I think the point of these glass-buildings is to keep the water in. Outside, everything is bone dry. Without the glass, the field would dry out.”

  Bliss looked at Aden, and her mouth remained straight; however, a twinkle came from her eyes.

  “You figured that out without Disc-Academy training?”

  Aden headed out of the glass building after giving Bliss a clip around the head.

  They went to the next glasshouse and found a similar humid interior. A riot of bushes laden with berries, and trees with branches trained along wires sagging with fruit.

  Exploration of more glass-buildings followed, and more crops were found. Occasional sightings of birds and insects caused them to jump. Yet, not once did they spot any creature larger than their hand. Outside the glass buildings, they saw no life.

  All the while the friends grew closer to the domed building.

  “Let’s see what’s inside,” said Aden as they left a field of broad leaved vegetables. He stared up at the hulking dome, now less than one glass building from where he stood.

  Bliss looked from under the shade of her hat and frowned.

  “Have we got to? I don’t like the look of the place.”

  “We might find something inside which’ll make sense of all this.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “Take the artefact out of your backpack. If we’ve got it ready, we can be back on the roof in Haverland quick.”

  “Fruit and vegetables, but no treasure,” grumbled Bliss, retrieving the artefact and rearranging the contents of her haversack. “I think we’d be better off not having a scribe write up this adventure. Everyone’d laugh at us.”

  “The adventure’s not over. This place isn’t deserted. We might get a saga out of it yet. ‘The dome monster and Bliss and Aden’, the Bards will sing.”

  Bliss held the artefact in readiness.

  “Let’s go inside then.”

  Chapter 48: The Strange Dome

  The building was composed of two parts. A dome, the size of a great house, and a larger building which it sat upon. Both were constructed of finished blocks the length of an arm. Aden slid his fingers along the hot surface of the blocks. They were silky to the touch; and no mortar was needed, so fine was the join.

  The friends walked around the domed building. It stood in a square of paving stones some fifty yards from the nearest glass-building. There were no other types of structures in view. No houses or shops or stalls. Aden was sure that what they’d seen of this strange settlement was li
ke ten parts of a hundred part jigsaw: an incomplete puzzle.

  He found a door and beside this two windows. The windows were like the glass panes of the plant-houses, rather than anything he’d ever seen in Haverland. They were huge. Shutters on the other side of them prevented Aden from seeing what lay within the building.

  He inspected the door. It contained no keyhole. Crafted stone blocks clung to the square building beside the windows and formed a staircase up the outside wall, to the roof. On the roof, beside the dome, Aden saw a hoist and pulley. Clearly the inhabitants of this place lifted objects up to, or lowered things down from, the dome using the apparatus.

  Bliss craned her neck to follow Aden’s gaze.

  “Perhaps this place is something to do with grain and flour making, and not a temple?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough. Let’s try the door first.”

  Aden went to the door and knocked. It seemed a sensible precaution. If someone were inside the building, it wouldn’t do to walk straight inside without knocking first. A knock might be the oil which would smooth their first meeting with the people of this world.

  No noise came from inside the room.

  Aden knocked again, and when no reply came from inside, he gripped the handle of the door and turned. The inside of the room was bathed in darkness.

  Aden felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick as he peered into nothingness. His eyes adjusted slowly and as they did so he realised the room had light but it was weak in comparison to that of the burning sun.

  The friends edged forward. Aden noticed the wooden door’s thickness matched the length of his foot. It was the widest door for its size he’d ever seen. It fitted the door-frame perfectly: no gap.

  Aden passed into the room and Bliss followed.

  Bliss put a hand on Aden’s shoulder: “shouldn’t we shut the door?”

  “There’s no-one around.”

  “I’d feel safer.”

  Aden shrugged and pulled the door shut.

  The room contained a huge wooden vat from which the sound of splashing water could be heard; sticks set in wall-sockets which cast a dim magical glow; and murals which covered the walls.