Chapter Fifteen
1 May 1767
Antediluvian Ruins
Westridge Mountains, Mystria
“I hain’t never seen the like.” Nathaniel stared up at the edifice carved into the side of the mountain. The arches over doorways were formed by squids linking tentacles. More tentacles dangled from atop pillars. Even the way the stones had been carved to sluice away rain water had a tentacular pattern. Nathaniel had never much taken to the sea and sea life, and was more than happy nothing squidlike inhabited lakes and rivers.
Even odder than the general theme of the architecture were the two figures decorating the twenty-foot-tall and half-opened bronze doors. Age had imbued the doors with a green patina, but they didn’t appear to be weathered nearly enough for having existed under the water for more than a couple of years. The nearby mud didn’t have the sour stink of age, either. Given that he’d never heard of the place in Shedashee tales—and some of them recounted events centuries old—something definitely strange was going on.
The figures were male and female, right and left as one looked at them. The female, on the lean side, had ample curves to her and wasn’t wearing much more than the bronze patina. Aside from her being nearly naked, she could have walked down any street in Temperance Bay without attracting a considerable amount of notice. Her strong jaw, noble nose, and deep-set eyes suggested she’d be a hatchet-faced crone by the time she got old, but in her youth, she definitely presented a handsome image that any man would be happy to have enter a dream.
The male, on the other hand, would have attracted notice and most of it hostile. Despite being clothed in something falling halfway between a fancy gown and the sort of vestments Bishop Bumble wore on high Holy Days, there was no mistaking the fact that the man was skinny to the point of looking consumptive. If there was an ounce of fat on him it was because he pulled it out of some animal’s carcass and tucked it in a pocket. His long-fingered hands rested on the head of a staff. It rose to the middle of his belly, making it a bit longer than a gentleman’s walking stick. Though it wasn’t easy to see, the stick had a squidlike thing worked at the head, and that design matched the ring on the man’s left hand.
His face and expression concerned Nathaniel more than anything else. He had more chin than he did nose, and that wasn’t because his jaw was particularly strong. His nostrils tended more toward slits, and his nose looked closer to that of a bat than it did of the woman. Sharp angles defined his face, including cheekbones and peg-teeth seen between half-opened lips. His ears sharpened and his hair had been pulled back tight to his head. Had the patina been any thinner, Nathaniel would have assumed he was bald. The eyes, sunken back, projected a venomous glance.
Owen started up the steps. “Not the welcoming type, are they?”
“I reckon not.” Nathaniel bent over and wiped a finger on the Temple steps. “No grit here, no mud.”
Kamiskwa pointed to a rough semicircle that ran around that end of the courtyard and then on up to the mountainside. “A dome protected this place. I can feel the residual magick and see traces of it still.”
Makepeace crossed himself. “I reckon I’ll not be going in. I’ll just keep watch out here.”
Rathfield looked at him. “I would have hardly thought you susceptible to cowardice.”
The Virtuan drew himself up to his full height. “Don’t take a coward to recognize that this here is an unholy place. The Good Lord wants me going in there, He’ll give me a sign. Until that point I ain’t seeing why I should risk Perdition right here and now.”
Nathaniel smiled. “Ain’t no reason you should. Fact is, I was gonna ask you and Hodge to stay out here to keep an eye on things. See anything, fire a shot and we’ll come running.”
Hodge nodded and Makepeace moved off in the direction the footprint had pointed toward.
Owen stepped up first and entered the Temple, with Kamiskwa close behind him. Rathfield and Count von Metternin went next, and Nathaniel brought up the rear. He kept his rifle cradled in his arms and forced himself to watch their backtrail. He checked on the doors, visually measuring the opening, and dreaded seeing them close.
The doorway opened into a tall and long corridor carved from the native granite. At least that’s what Nathaniel wanted to believe, but he couldn’t see any chisel marks. As with the statues outside and the settlement’s building blocks, everything had been joined seamlessly. Just the way Kamiskwa kept to the middle of the corridor, as far from the walls as he could, suggested he was feeling magick coming off the stones. Nathaniel didn’t want to be thinking about what kind of power it would take to have shaped what he saw.
Owen rubbed his nose. “Dry, musty air; not at all what I’d expect.”
Every ten yards or so a pair of statues had been placed to support the walls. They alternated male and female, repeating the figures from outside, save that all of them held a glowing stone ball about a yard in diameter. The stone looked similar to those used to build the settlement, and yet was a thin-enough shell that Nathaniel imagined he could see shadowy creatures swimming through the interior. He took comfort in the fact that he didn’t see anything at all squidlike, but he didn’t enjoy the fact that something lived inside those stones.
Halfway into the structure the corridor widened, quadrupling in size to create a cavernous room. Statues continued at regular intervals, now freestanding pairs back to back, holding more lights. At the far end they discovered a raised dais, an altar and a tabernacle structure, the latter of which lay open. Something had once resided in there, but since the Temple’s interior showed no sign of decay, Nathaniel couldn’t begin to guess how long the tabernacle had been empty.
Nathaniel smiled at Count von Metternin. “You seen its like in Auropa?”
The Kessian frowned. “For scale, yes, but…” He pointed to vast expanses of blank wall. “Any cathedral would have murals there and in the ceiling vaults. In the building outside the water washed images away, but here they should have been intact.”
Owen shook his head. “Maybe the water didn’t wash things away. Maybe they were all rendered in magick. Kamiskwa, can you feel it?”
The Altashee brave nodded slowly, and Nathaniel recognized how much conscious control his friend was exerting. Only seen that a time or two, when he’s been in powerful-bad pain.
“Yes, it is magick. The walls tell stories.” Kamiskwa exhaled slowly. “What you would see in a painting, the magick makes you feel. Over there, it must be a battle. I can feel the wounds. Screams are whispers, but they are there.”
Rathfield turned and stared toward the panel Kamiskwa faced. “Impossible. You would have to be touching that to get any magick sense from it.”
“The Shedashee, Colonel, they don’t exactly cotton to the rules of Norillian magick.”
“Do you, Woods, feel what he feels?”
“No, but that don’t mean what he feels ain’t true.” Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed. “You just think of him as someone what was born to magick the way you was born to reading Norillian. You had to learn and got good at it. I ’spect iffen we done learned the right magick, we’d be feeling the same thing. And if we learned more we’d be seeing and hearing and maybe smelling what was coming off them walls. Ain’t something I’d be looking forward to, mind, but I reckon it could be done.”
Rathfield chuckled. “I envy you the innocence of your world view, Woods. This couldn’t have been raised by magick.”
“And you know that exactly how?” Nathaniel looked around. “I seen some darn good masons working in Temperance Bay, and hain’t nothing they done been even close to this. That the same in Auropa, my lord?”
“I am forced, Colonel, to agree with Mr. Woods.”
“But the Church, gentlemen, instructs me that such uses of magick are quite impossible.”
Owen laughed. “And you would know if they had decided that you needed know whether or not it was possible.”
“Careful, Strake, you approach blasphemy.”
“I reckon, Colonel, it ain’t blasphemy he approaches, but common sense. We know this ain’t natural. We cain’t see no sign that masons did this. Kamiskwa says he can feel the magick, and we ain’t got no cause to question his judgment. That leads toward a powerful conclusion. You need to think on this, Colonel…”
“Yes, Woods?”
“Mayhap be that your Church done told you what they thought was true, but this here settlement and what it represents is outside their knowing.”
Rathfield folded his arms across his chest. “It is a point worth considering.”
“Well, here’s another two. Ain’t but one entrance here, and that strikes me as peculiar. There has to be other ways in and out. And the other thing is this: we don’t know what made this place, but we know it look powerful magick. That being so, I’m of a mind to wonder, just what in the name of Heaven was powerful enough to melt the city out there.”
The latter thought sobered them for a moment. Nathaniel moved off and started looking for anything like a door or perhaps a place where a door had been sealed over. He found nothing until he met Owen over by the right side of the dais. “What have you got?”
Owen, on a knee, traced a fingernail along an almost invisible seam in the floor. “It’s fitted flush. I cannot find anything to open it. Magick would seem to make sense.”
“I hope not.”
Owen frowned. “I don’t follow.”
“Perhaps I do, Owen.” Count von Metternin ran a hand over his jaw. “Supposing Nathaniel’s observations are correct, likewise that what Kamiskwa is reporting is correct. We would have a settlement that was created through the use of magick. Imagine for a moment what it means for a people to see magick as so common and so simple to do that they use it in preference to manual labor. Imagine a people who, instead of splitting wood with an ax, just touched a tree and had it fly apart into a cord of wood.”
“More to the point, my lord, I ain’t noticed no fireplaces or chimneys here, and we know they didn’t need no lanterns, candles, or torches for light.”
“An even better point, Nathaniel.” The Count shook his head. “They might use magick to warm themselves instead of such large structures. Magick might cook their food for them, much as an apothecary invokes magick to create tinctures and unguents. For us, of course, doing that is very difficult, but if it is not for them…”
Owen stood slowly. “Magick of that magnitude would make them very dangerous.”
The Count smiled. “If we are lucky, they are long since dead. Perhaps this was an outpost of Aliantis, which slipped beneath the waves eons ago. It would explain the decorative motif they enjoy.”
“Nice thinking, but I don’t reckon that’s it. I don’t reckon they’s dead.”
Owen frowned. “Why not?”
“Well, there was a bubble what was keeping this Temple safe whilst it was underwater. And them doors, ain’t no way the man what left the track we found could have pushed them open. Then there’s that empty tabernacle and this here passage below.” Nathaniel scratched at the back of his neck. “Imagine what ever it was built this place went and laid itself down for a nap after something melted the settlement. The earthquake might have waked it up. It comes up, don’t see nothing, ain’t sure if it is safe, so opens the doors, opens the Temple, and maybe even puts something in that tabernacle there that the Colonel’s giving the once over.”
The Kessian arched an eyebrow. “Bait?”
“Something on that order. It just waits and someone comes along and takes the bait. And our thing waits, most likely to see if whatever melted the settlement is still out there. So that bait would attract it.”
The three of them began to look around the Temple. Hair rose at the back of Nathaniel’s neck. If something had set a trap, they were square in the middle of it.
He put fingers to his mouth and whistled. Rathfield and Kamiskwa came at a run, shifting their course as the other three moved toward the entrance. “What is it, Woods?”
“We’re getting on out of here. Ain’t nothing good coming from this place.”
Irritation flashed over Rathfield’s face, but vanished in an instant. “Very well.” It seemed clear he didn’t want to spend more time in the Temple alone, but he clearly had a desire to see more. “I suggest we return to camp, then explore in the afternoon.”
Nathaniel didn’t say anything to that until they reached camp. “I reckon Makepeace has it right. That there is an unholy place. I figure whoever left that track done come in, found something valuable, and headed out. If that track is right, he’s heading west, maybe to Postsylvania. I’m thinking we need to be finding out what it was he took.”
Rathfield shook his head. “There are mysteries here to be solved, Woods.”
“I don’t reckon we’ll be the ones a-solving them, unless you’ve a might more magick than you let on. I ain’t sure there’s that much magick on this side of the ocean ’cepting among the Shedashee.”
Kamiskwa, who sat back against a rock, facing away from the settlement, nodded. “None of the Shedashee will come here. I won’t again, and I will undergo kenatomis before I return home.”
Rathfield frowned. “What?”
“Cleansing ritual. Bath for the soul.” Nathaniel nodded. “I’m thinking sweating out the evil of this place ain’t a bad idea, neither.”
Owen snapped his journal shut. “Not only do I think we need to follow whoever left that track in the mud, I think we need to send word back to Prince Vlad about what we have found.”
Rathfield shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”
“I think it is.”
“Think all you like, Strake, but this is my expedition. I forbid it.”
Count von Metternin sat down on the ground rather unceremoniously. “I do fear, gentlemen, that this whole ordeal has greatly fatigued me. I do not believe my system, which I thought much stronger, can take more shocks. I feel the need to return to my home. I hate abandoning you and, with no disrespect intended, Colonel Rathfield, but your orders do not pertain to me. I would also take Mr. Dunsby with me, as I have need of his skills. There would be no objections, correct?”
Rathfield blinked, his jaw opening and closing several times in rapid succession. “I really cannot… I…”
Owen cut him off. “I’ll have a message or three for you to carry back to my wife, if you would be so kind, my lord.”
“My pleasure, Captain Strake. If any of you would entrust me with your messages, I would consider it a sacred duty to carry them for you. We shall fetch some of the ivory and samples for the Prince on our way.”
Rathfield’s mouth closed for a moment. “I will remind the rest of you that I am in charge here. I will permit Dunsby to go, only as a courtesy to you, my lord. But from this point forward, I expect my orders to be carried out without question, and immediately.”
I already know one secret you got. ’Pears there might be another one. Nathaniel smiled. He wasn’t much of a one for following orders, but he did enjoy a good hunt. And before we’re done, I’ll have your secrets, Colonel. Every last one of them.