At the base of a great black cliff stood the building.
The four voors circled the lake once, then glided down to land next to the structure. A sharp stench of sulfur, vile but bearable, pervaded the atmosphere, and the air was humid and very warm. A light rain of ash fell constantly, whirled about the ground by erratic breezes. Small nodules of pumice crunched underfoot as the Archimage and her small companion alighted. The ground seemed to vibrate, and a low, almost musical roar mingled with the hissing of the fumaroles and the sound of rushing water.
“We cannot stay here long, Shiki,” Haramis decided. “I will try to hurry with my explorations.”
“Would—would you like me to accompany you?” he offered. “If there are demons guarding the place, as our legends say, I will gladly defend you with my life.” He drew his long knife from its sheath and held it up with both hands, so that the blade shone redly in the lava-light.
Haramis looked down at him, deeply touched. He hardly knew her at all, and he was surely more frightened than she. And yet she was certain that he had made his offer through friendship, not merely in fulfillment of duty.
She lay one hand upon his shoulder. “Dear Shiki, in the kindness of your heart, you have discovered that I am afraid of what I might find within this place. You must understand, however, that I do not fear monsters or demons or any other form of external danger to my life. This building was built by an Archimage like myself, after all. It is right that I enter and explore it. The unknown thing that I seek—that I will recognize when I see it—is dreadful to me because it pertains to my inmost heart and soul, and within that inner realm no one can accompany me but myself. Still, I would be happy to have you come with me as far as you can. But put away your weapon, my friend.”
He slipped his knife back into its scabbard. “We Dorok have a saying: A monster fought with a good companion is smaller than one encountered alone.”
But she only smiled at that, and approached the mysterious edifice with Shiki close by her side.
The place was made entirely of black lava rock, as was the cliff it merged with, and about the size of a barn, with a steeply slanted roof of flagstones that would shed both snow and falling ash. Only at the front, on either side of the narrow door, were there windows, deep set into walls nearly an ell thick and having many small panes set in leading. The door was of metal, with neither latch nor knob, and it refused to yield to her touch.
She drew forth her talisman on its neck chain and tapped the door gently, saying: “Talisman, protect us two from all harm and grant us access to this place.”
Immediately the door swung open. The area inside was utterly black. Haramis stepped inside and commanded illumination. At once a series of wall sconces lit, having as their light source the same type of flameless glowing crystal found throughout her Tower. Shiki trailed behind as she entered. The room was obviously the place where the exiled Portolanus had made his home. A robe of stiff fiber and a pair of worn sandals still lay abandoned on the floor, and a cape and wide conical hat of the same material had been tossed in one corner. In contrast to these rude garments, the furniture in the room was extraordinarily beautiful and sophisticated. A table, two chairs, a bed, and several cabinets and chests of an unfamiliar gleaming tawny material were fashioned in a style that Haramis had never seen before, all graceful curves without a sign of joints, as though the things had grown into their proper shapes rather than having been made by an artisan. The bed had pillows that resembled two huge soap bubbles, and blankets of very strong, gossamer-thin transparent stuff strangely luxurious to the touch, fastened somehow to the bed so that they could not be removed. Beside the bed stood a peculiar narrow cabinet made of a substance slick as polished bone but unyielding as metal, having on its slightly slanted top surface a large gray square and many smaller squares of different colors, each of these decorated with peculiar symbols carved in low relief. On the other side of the room, next to the table and chairs, was a waist-high blocky object with many rectangles of different sizes apparently drawn upon it. Ten circles smaller than a platinum crown were clustered within a frame on the front, and these also sported mysterious glyphs.
“Surely these marvelous things were made by the Vanished Ones!” Shiki whispered.
“You are doubtless correct. And now we will find out what the mysterious contrivances do.” She touched the odd bedside cabinet with her talisman and a simultaneous mental query, in the way she had learned when investigating other ancient artifacts in the Cavern of Black Ice. The talisman spoke:
This is a library. One consults it in the following fashion—
“Pray hold,” Haramis told it. She next touched the blocky thing near the table.
This is a kitchen unit. It includes an assortment of containers and implements and will cook food, heat or chill it, and store it in wholesome condition indefinitely. One opens the compartment containing the utensils—
“Pray hold,” said Haramis. She touched an object the size of a large chest. Its top immediately sprang open, revealing glittering polygons and circles arranged in incomprehensible patterns.
This is a musical creator that can reproduce the sounds of any instrument, and orchestrate them according to the composer’s will—
“Pray hold,” said Haramis.
She went to an inner door, which opened easily. Lights went on as she stepped into an enormous room that apparently took up most of the space within the building. Ranks of open shelves reaching to the high ceiling were arranged with narrow aisles between, and the shelves were crowded with oddly shaped mechanisms and boxes of all sizes. The shelving and their contents were furred with a layer of dust nearly half a finger-span thick, and here and there were clean empty spaces revealing where some object had been removed.
Haramis and Shiki began to stroll the aisles, looking upon the devices and marveling. From time to time the Archimage touched a machine with her talisman and identified all manner of amazing things—every imaginable kind of tool, horrific weapons, strange scientific apparatus, devices for manufacturing (but of course these lacked the raw materials that would have made them useful to the exiled sorcerer), machines that would teach, entertain, and even heal.
“How wonderful!” Shiki exclaimed. “Portolanus must have been very sorry not to be able to take all of these things with him.”
“I think we should thank the Lords of the Air that he did not,” Haramis remarked grimly. “Heaven only knows how the larger devices were brought here in the first place.”
As they made their way toward the cliffside wall of the building, she again consulted her talisman: “Is this truly the secret storage place of some Archimage?”
Yes.
“Who built it?”
The Archimage of the Land Drianro had it built after the original storage place used by previous Archimages of the Land was engulfed in a lava flow and became no longer usable.
“Tell me when Drianro lived, and why this place was not used by the Archimage Binah.”
Drianro was born two thousand three hundred and six years before the present day. He died suddenly, neglecting to inform his successor, the Archimage Binah, of the location of this cache of ancient artifacts within the Inaccessible Kimilon.
Haramis caught her breath. The talisman, reading her mind as it often seemed to do, gave the answer to her next unspoken question:
The Archimage Binah lived one thousand four hundred and eighty-six years, and held her sacred office for one thousand four hundred and sixty-four of those years.
“By the Flower! And am I fated to live so long?”
The question is impertinent.
Haramis’s lips tightened. How often had the talisman chided her with that wretched phrase when she asked a question it could not answer! But in an instant she forgot her vexation. Wonderment reasserted itself as she gazed about at the thousands of mysterious contraptions, and she questioned the talisman again. “All of these things … were they considered potentially harmful, that they had to
be banished here?”
Some of them the Archimage Drianro only considered inappropriate to the indigenous culture, while others he deemed hazardous.
“Are the devices magical, or only machines?”
They partake of an ancient science some would deem magical.
“But is there true magic?” Haramis demanded.
The question is impertinent.
“Bah!” cried Haramis. “When will you ever stop mocking me when I seek to get to the heart of the matter? To the very essence of my duty as an Archimage?”
The questions are—
“Pray hold,” she interrupted in exasperation, and let the wand drop on its chain around her neck.
Shiki had listened to her dialogue with the talisman with his mouth wide open and his eyes glazed with incredulity.
“Do not be scandalized, my friend,” she remarked tartly. “Magic can be awesome—but it can also be dreary and frustrating, especially to those forced to learn its ways without a teacher. I came here hoping to remedy that very lack.”
Shiki smiled uneasily. “Did you hope to find a magical book or machine that would instruct you?”
“No. I am looking for something more special. And since it has not condescended to show itself to me, I shall have to command it.” She lifted the talisman again and spoke in a loud voice: “If there is a contrivance in this place that will let me communicate with other Archimages living in the world, then reveal it!”
They heard a small sound.
It was like the vibration of a crystal glass struck by a fingernail, high, pure, and ringing. Haramis looked wildly around her at the ranks of shelves packed with enigmatic objects. Where was the sound coming from? It began to fade even as she tried vainly to pin down its source.
Shiki had torn off his leather cap so that his upstanding ears with their frostbitten tips could listen more keenly. “This way!” he cried, and dashed away with the Archimage close on his heels.
They were moving along that part of the wall farthest from the entrance, which was of raw lava-rock and obviously part of the cliff-face. Shiki finally fetched up at a spot that looked no different from any other, pointed down at the floor, and said: “Here!”
Haramis tapped the dusty rock surface with the talisman. Again the note chimed—and a section of the floor became as transparent as thin smoke and then vanished, leaving a hole over an ell in diameter, impenetrably black in its depths. Musty air gushed forth from this, stirring the dust of the storage chamber and making Haramis and Shiki sneeze.
She ordered that the inside of the hole be lighted, but nothing happened. It remained completely dark, and there was no more wind from it, but only the musical note still sounding faintly in their ears.
Haramis addressed her talisman: “What is this opening? Where does it lead?”
This is a viaduct, and it leads to where one is summoned.
“Am I summoned to enter it?”
Yes. The Archimage of the Land is summoned to the Archimage of the Sea, for an instructional sojourn of thrice ten days and thrice ten nights.
Haramis let out a long breath. Her face was radiant. “This is what I expected—what I hoped to find! Thanks be to the Triune God!”
She would have stepped into the viaduct opening at once, except that Shiki piped up forlornly: “What about me? Shall I wait here until your return, White Lady?”
Haramis was ashamed of her thoughtlessness. She addressed the talisman sternly: “I cannot leave my good servant Shiki alone here in this awful Kimilon for thirty days. And there are also our faithful lammergeiers to consider.”
Shiki the Dorok is summoned elsewhere, where his presence is required, and he shall enter the viaduct ahead of the Archimage of the Land. The four voors that bore you here have already taken wing for home.
“Ohh!” cried Shiki. “We are marooned—just like the evil wizard!”
“Hush,” Haramis chided him. “We are nothing of the sort … Talisman, where are you sending Shiki?”
Where he must go.
“Oh, you maddening thing!” Haramis exclaimed. Then calming herself, she said to Shiki: “Try not to be afraid. I am certain that the talisman means no harm to either of us. I—I can only presume that there is some place where you will be usefully employed while I am engaged in my studies, and this place is not with me, and that is why we must be separated. Will you go forth bravely into the viaduct, and do whatever the talisman bids you?”
The little man bowed his head. “It is your talisman, and I am your servant, White Lady.” He took one of her hands and kissed it. Then he settled his leather cap firmly atop his ears and stepped into the dark opening.
There was a very loud bell-sound, and Shiki the Dorok disappeared. Haramis called after him, but there was not even an echo of her voice, only the lingering reverberation of the chime.
Now it is my turn, she said to herself. And then a sudden terrible thought struck her. Had Portolanus also been summoned?
Had he been summoned twice?…
Was there some purpose in the Threefold Sceptre, and the individual talismans that formed it, that lay far beyond anything she had ever dreamed? She experienced a powerful yearning to seek the advice of her triplet sisters, to tell them all about this mystery, to ask them to lend her their strength and resolution as she stepped into the unknown. Valiant Kadiya! Loving, steadfast Anigel!
And I am the faltering one—who should be the leader.
No, she decided. I will not add to their burdens in order to lighten mine. I will cease this cursed wavering and follow the example of good old Shiki …
She took hold of the talisman with both hands and stepped into the hole called the viaduct. For an instant she was enveloped in suffocating darkness, hanging suspended in a void. Her brain seemed to explode painlessly with a huge, musical throb.
Then immediately she felt matter beneath her feet. Shifting pebbles. It was still dark all about her, but she knew that it was only nighttime, not some magical banishing of light. As her eyesight slowly accommodated she saw that there were even stars, barely discernible in a sky that seemed flooded with a peculiar dark red glow. And a noise, the lapping of small waves upon the shingle, gently rustling to and fro. A sharp breeze bearing a breath of profound chill touched her face.
A seashore.
Out in the water enormous things were floating, glimmering like ghostly ships but more immense than any man-made object. They were as big as islands, as big as small mountains, and each had a faint greenish or electric-blue phosphorescence. The little waves were edged with a foam that was luminous, too.
And now the red-black sky was changing. From the far horizon a beam of pearly opalescence grew up—and then others materialized slowly until there were five in all, wavering like spectral fingers. They widened, became a bright fan of pink, white, and green light, then expanded into luminous draperies. The sky-light shone on the gigantic icebergs offshore and lit up the strange landscape behind Haramis, a desolate expanse of barren treeless hills, occasionally patched with gleaming snow. The wind was rising.
“Where am I?” Haramis whispered.
On the shore of the Aurora Sea.
So that explained the fantastic light in the sky! It was the aurora, a rare natural phenomenon she had read about but never expected to experience, seen only in the far northern parts of the world. The ever-changing colors were so glorious that she nearly forgot why she had come …
But you must not do that, Haramis. You have so much to learn.
She uttered a sharp cry. The one speaking without words was not her talisman. “Is it the Archimage of the Sea?” she called out. “Where are you?”
Follow the Way of Light.
The aurora’s splendor was brightly reflected in the sea now, and in one particular place near where she stood it almost seemed as if the water were solidifying, turning to a firm surface that sparkled like clear ice strewn with a million tiny diamonds. As she watched, the icy patch lengthened, extending out from the shore t
oward the tallest of the glowing icebergs.
Will it hold my weight? Haramis asked herself. She shivered in the keen wind, then extended one foot. The ice gave forth a gentle tinkling but remained solid. She took another step. On either side of the narrow glittering path the black waters rippled; but the Way of Light itself was as firm as iron.
Drawing her Archimage’s cloak around her, Haramis began to walk out to sea.
11
“If this mapsheet you scrawled up is true, Lady,” Captain Ly Woonly said to Kadiya, “we’re likely only a couple o’ leagues or so from the place where your magic talisman got dropped.”
Kadiya and Anigel, having just awoke, had hurried up onto the deck of the Lyath when summoned by the vessel’s master. They found that the ship was moving slowly southward along the ragged shore of Council Isle, keeping well away from the land.
For the past three days, ever since Lyath had begun to thread her way through the Windlorns, a lookout had been posted to watch for signs of the Raktumian pirates or hostile natives. But thus far there had been no other craft sighted on the waters, although smokes were visible from the many Aliansa village sites and a small group of aborigines was spied netting fish in the shallows.
Anigel’s talisman had proved to be of little use in tracking the pirate trireme through the maze of islands. The Queen could descry the big vessel well enough, but she found it impossible to pinpoint its position on the chart through simple observation; so many of the islands looked alike to her, and the chart was obviously none too accurate. Whether the pirates were ahead of them or behind them remained a mystery.
The talisman did confirm that there were large numbers of Aliansa natives watching the passage of Lyath from places of concealment. Since the Sea Folk on the various islands communicated with each other via the speech without words, they doubtless knew exactly where the pirate ship was. But the Aliansa refused to respond when Kadiya’s Wyvilo companions bespoke them; and while Queen Anigel could eavesdrop upon them through her talisman, she learned to her dismay that when the Sea Folk talked among themselves they used their own incomprehensible language, not the universal trade dialect based upon human speech that they had spoken during the abortive conference with Kadiya.