Chapter Thirteen
1 May 1767
Westridge Mountains, Mystria
In the highest valley, rising from the sediments of what had been a deep and forbidding lake, lay an unearthly settlement the very sight of which froze Owen’s blood in his veins. The scale of buildings mocked that of even the grandest place in Temperance, and rivaled that of palaces and Parliament back in Norisle. Though the walls surrounding the town had been largely destroyed—melted from the way they sagged between towers which resembled half-burned candles—details remained here and there to hint at great artistry.
The expedition had taken three days at what they called Little Elephant Lake to catalogue specimens and smoke as much of the mastodon meat as they could. They hid tusks in a small cave for retrieval on their return trip. Rathfield had protested at the delay, but only half-heartedly. Thousands of animals had died when the dark wind rose from that lake. The sheer magnitude of the slaughter demanded exploration.
And then they moved on and discovered something even stranger. Owen had been in the lead when a treefall gave him a clear view of the city. Even at dusk, as they approached, its terrible majesty slowed their steps. Kamiskwa visibly hung back. Nathaniel moved up with Owen. Rathfield, who had asserted leadership in other times where enthusiasm had flagged, did not push past either of them and stripped the deerskin scabbard from his musket.
Makepeace broke the silence. “I may not be knowing what it is, but I know it ain’t holy. And I ain’t afraid of saying this is about as close as I want to get in the dark.”
Nathaniel agreed. “I reckon we should set up camp over yonder, up by that outcropping of rock. Me and Owen will look around a bit, then join you.”
The Altashee grunted. “Cold camp.”
“Much as I might be wanting fire, I ain’t thinking I want a beacon.” Nathaniel unsheathed his rifle. “Let’s go, Captain Strake. I reckon the Prince is going to want to know all there is to know about this place.”
Owen took a deep breath, then shucked his pack. Hodge offered to carry it to their camp. Freeing his rifle, Owen fell into step with Nathaniel. As much as he didn’t want to be going any closer to the strange ruins, he took a perverse joy in the fact that Rathfield retreated to set up camp.
Did you leave your courage behind in Rondeville, Colonel? Owen blushed the second the thought occurred to him, but didn’t find himself particularly sorry for having thought it.
“I hain’t never seen nothing like this.”
“Nor have I.” Owen pointed to a single tower that had somehow escaped destruction. “There are towers that high in Launston, but you can see where the stones are fitted together. Here, no seams, no mortar.”
“And the color, milky white like a blind man’s eyes. Little bits of color where the sun is touching the top there.”
“Like an opal.” Owen shivered. “There, at the tower’s base.”
The closest thing he could think of to remind him of the statue at the tower’s base was gargoyle, but somehow that didn’t seem right. The sediments, which had dried and cracked, revealed little bits of the statue. It had been carved of a pale green stone and had a massively bulbous head that sagged back away from deep, empty eye-sockets. The creature’s face had no nose, just a pair of vertical slits, and no ears. While dirt covered the lower half of the face, stone tentacles emerged as if some obscene parody of a moustache or beard.
“I reckon that when the Good Book talks about graven images, this is what them prophets and all had in mind.”
The two men moved toward the north, giving the half-buried statue a wide berth. From their new vantage point they looked into the city. Most of the buildings had the same seamless construction, and were quite modest. Two of the three larger buildings had sustained significant damage. A third, set into the mountain’s flesh on the western side of the valley, was by far the largest and appeared intact. In fact, the center of the settlement appeared to be much lower than all of the surrounding area, and buildings leaned toward it as if being drawn down into it. Even so, the stresses that would entail had not cracked any stone.
Owen had only enough sunlight left to make a basic sketch of the settlement. He chose not to draw the statue. He told himself this was because it was largely hidden, but he knew it wasn’t true. It would take more time to sketch it than he wanted to spend around it.
Owen and Nathaniel made their way to the camp. They supped on smoked mastodon meat, which benefited from the applewood they’d use dto smoke it, though it still tasted gamey. Rathfield set up watches, and they all agreed to his schedule. No one believed they’d be sleeping much. Makepeace read Scripture aloud—Hodge and Rathfield chose to listen.
Owen momentarily wished for moonlight, but then decided having a dark sky was better. The city would glow in moonlight, like a ghost from some ancient time. The mountain’s peak eclipsed a wedge of the night sky, which prevented the towers from being silhouetted against stars. He hoped that not being able to see the city would help him relax, but he could feel it lurking there, as if it were an infection in the earth, giving off heat.
He decided it was best that he had no light, for he would be compelled to note all of his observation in his journal. He certainly would make complete notes, as he had at Little Elephant Lake, but were there light he would have put down more of his feelings—admitting to fear and dread. While he was not worried about such admissions casting aspersions upon his manhood, he wasn’t sure he wanted them set so raw on the page. He had, after all, promised Bethany Frost he would let her read what he wrote.
Fear of what she would think of him didn’t give him pause. She had seen him at his utter worst, and had gotten him through it. She had edited the memoir of his previous adventures, and had even suggested cutting or modifying certain passages she felt might be open to misinterpretation. She had read more of his adventures than anyone else save for Prince Vlad, and had protected his interests through her editing.
But here he could protect her, for nothing he had seen before had ever felt as wrong as this place did. He didn’t want her terrified. The second that thought burst into his brain, he had to smile. If he had told her that, she’d have scolded him. She was much stronger than she might have appeared—and much smarter. But in many ways he felt that what the dawn would reveal was something against which intellect could provide scant armor.
Though he had not thought he would be able to sleep, when he finally stretched out, he dropped off immediately. He didn’t wake up until the first rays of dawn painted themselves against the gray spearhead of the mountain summit stabbing into thin clouds above. He sat up immediately and the world swam, as if he’d drunk far too much the night before. He remembered no dreams, and found that fact as unsettling as he did his companions’ pale complexions.
Nathaniel reached his feet first and hefted his rifle.
“’Pears to me that this here place is a mite unsettling for all of us. Colonel Rathfield was sent out here to find Postsylvania. I reckon that still needs to be done, but I also figger that this here place needs some going over. I hain’t got no book learning, but I’m thinking that those what does among us hain’t seen none of this before, neither.”
Every one turned toward Count von Metternin. The small man smiled, but opened his hands. “You do me credit, my friends. I have traveled extensively, at war and in peace. I have read the Remian historians and attended lectures by those who have traveled to places I have not. Though my glimpse of this place was brief, I know of nothing like it.”
Nathaniel nodded. “Colonel?”
Rathfield shook his head. “I recall nothing like it, Woods.”
“No disrespect intended to anyone else, but I reckon that’s as good as we’ll do on the book-learning front. So what I propose is this. We start looking this place over, but we do it the way Prince Vlad would do. And I reckon we can start with anything you’ve noticed already.”
Hodge raised a hand. “Look around. I don’t see any sign of beavers, and there were a number at Little Elephant Lake. They should be here, shouldn’t they?”
“Good point, Hodge.” Nathaniel scratched at his jaw. “Fact is, I don’t see no birds’ nests, no dead fish, no signs of raccoons or bears or anything else scavenging here. No claw marks on trees, neither. I don’t reckon much lived up here.”
Kamiskwa stood, his expression as hard and eyes as tight as Owen had ever seen. “It’s the magick. Very bad magick. I can feel it.”
Owen looked at him. “Like the heat from an infection?”
Surprise lifted the Altashee’s brows for a second. “A bit more than that, but yes.”
Nathaniel nodded once, strongly. “Good. I reckon you’ll want to be making notes, Captain. Let’s start in. Once we learn something gots some heft to it, we can figger if this is more important than Postsylvania and plan accordingly.”
Their survey produced a great deal of information that led to speculation, the contemplation of which introduced a tremor into Owen’s handwriting. The statue, when excavated, showed a man crouched beneath the figure, wearing the tentacled monstrosity as a mask. Lettering ran all the way around the statue’s square base. No one had seen anything like it and none of them could decipher it. The serpentine lettering seemed to shift when he stared at it, frustrating any attempt to make an accurate record of the words. At least, it did before Owen had Hodge cover the writing up, then only reveal a handful of letters at a time.
And while he was writing, Owen checked often to see if the infectious heat was coming up from his facsimile, but it was not.
The intact tower provided a second set of revelations that set everyone on edge. A stairway spiraled up inside the walls all the way to the flat roof. The stairway had two sets of risers, with the smaller running right up the middle and adding two steps to the other set. The taller stairs rose eighteen inches between courses, while the smaller only six. Owen could take the larger steps, but not conveniently. Missing floor beams and planking hinted at tall ceilings and suggested that whatever used them stood ten or twelve feet tall. The lower steps suggested creatures smaller than men, but how much smaller he had no way to gauge.
More importantly, while the windows in the tower’s lower reaches amounted to little more than slits, up top they broadened and had a wide sill at the bottom. While that sill would provide cover against shots from below, the window width made no sense unless man-sized creatures were meant to move in and out. Owen ran his hand over the sill’s smooth, cold stone and could detect no scratches or other clues as to its purpose.
The need to accommodate giants became evident elsewhere, as did provisions made for smaller creatures. Large doorways opened into houses with no inner partitions or decorations. For all intents and purposes, they were warehouses into which creatures were marched and stored. The lake’s water had long since washed away any murals or other paintings. Though he looked closely, he couldn’t even find signs of where someone had scratched marks corresponding to days on the walls, or carved his name for posterity.
Count von Metternin found that odd. “I once heard that even in the Tombs of Kings in far Aegeptos, grave robbers scrawled their names. Men wished to be remembered.”
Owen sighed. “I don’t think these were men. I’m not even sure they had names.”
“Their names are here.” Kamiskwa ran a hand over the smooth stone. In its wake, letters glowed violet for a handful of heartbeats. Rendered in the same lettering as on the statue’s base, but more crudely so, they overlapped in some places, and in others had extra letters squeezed into place to correct an error. “But these are names that should be forgotten.”
Owen raised his hand to the wall and concentrated. He didn’t feel anything at first, then, in his fingertips, he caught the same tug as a nettle might cause when brushing the flesh. Nothing glowed as his hand passed over it. He pulled in all fingers but one and began tracing invisible letters.
Kamiskwa’s hand closed on his wrist with an iron grip. “Owen, stop.”
Owen blinked his eyes. He stood a dozen feet from where he had begun and could not remember taking a single step. “I don’t understand.”
“The winding path, you remember.”
He nodded. “I do remember the winding path. That’s what’s odd. I don’t remember what I just did here.”
The Altashee shook his head. “This magick is that much stronger precisely so you cannot remember.”
Count von Metternin’s eyes narrowed. “You will forgive my impudence, Prince Kamiskwa, but your knowledge of magick could be taken as a knowledge of this place and the people who were once here.”
Kamiskwa released Owen’s hand. “I wish I knew more magick and less of what these people were. To know less would be difficult, for what I know is echoes of whispers of stories half-heard in days long dead. None of it is good. Until I saw this place, I had no reason to believe any of the stories.”
“What do you know?”
The Altashee opened his arms. “There are creatures that come in the night to steal children and to crush and kill. Sometimes they are giants. Sometimes they are smaller fiends.”
Von Metternin smiled. “Not so unlike the trolls and goblins of my nation’s folklore.”
Owen frowned. “But I don’t remember you saying anything of lost cities like this in Kesse.”
“True, Owen, but then we have not drained our deep lakes. There are glaciers which could bury a thousand of these settlements and we would never know.” He narrowed his eyes. “These creatures appear to be very reliant on magick, and this may, too, be a part of why we have no ruins for them.
“In the Good Book we have the flood, which God used to wash away evil from His creation. What if this is a place that survived the flood? We could be standing in the last outpost of an Antediluvian civilization. I believe the Good Book even mentions giants on the earth. Mr. Bone would know. Perhaps we can consult him and…”
A gunshot rang through the ruins. The three of them sprinted from the giant house, and a second gunshot turned them west toward the edifice they had taken to calling the Temple. They ran toward where Hodge and Nathaniel knelt on one knee on a patch of dried mud.
There was no mistaking the clear moccasin print, now days old, in the middle of it.
Nathaniel glanced toward the Temple. “’Pears we weren’t the first to find this place, and those what was here before us, they weren’t of a mind to be scientific about their exploring.”