“Why haven’t you tried to examine them? Maybe they’d be less frightening if you let them see the light of day?” she suggested.
It was a completely rational suggestion, but at that moment I couldn’t bear the thought of looking any closer at what lurked in the back of my mind… much like every other moment. Still, I knew I had to eventually face them, otherwise I’d go mad from dreams I barely understood. “You’re right,” I admitted.
She stared at me for a long minute.
“What, right now?” I said, flabbergasted.
“Is there a better time?”
“Certainly not in the middle of the night,” I replied. “I’m still not sure I’ll ever sleep soundly again after what I just dreamed about.”
“Tell me about that then,” she said reasonably. I hated it when she was reasonable.
I spent the next ten minutes describing my dream-memory as well as I could. Unlike an ordinary dream, which would fade upon waking, this one remained crystal clear. When I finished she gave me an odd look.
“I’m not sure how to feel about you dreaming about strange women,” she said.
“I don’t think it was my dream,” I answered. “I mean it was my dream, but I think it was really someone else’s memory. It’s just stuck in my head somehow… and Lyra wasn’t a woman, exactly.”
“Now you’re referring to her by her nickname,” Penny teased, “but you certainly described her as a woman. You kissed her.”
“Someone else kissed her,” I protested, “I’m just remembering it, and yes, she’s female… sort of, but she isn’t human.”
Penny’s eyes narrowed for a moment, “She didn’t happen to look similar to Elaine did she?”
“No,” I said, mildly irritated, “she looked nothing like Elaine. She had silver hair, so white it seemed to shimmer, and her eyes were a light blue, like ice.”
“That seems a bit unusual.”
“No, all the people of her grove had hair and eyes like that,” I remarked without thinking, “Their ears tapered to soft points as well.”
“Her grove?” asked Penny.
“She was one of the She’Har,” I answered, and then I realized that more information was coming out in my replies than I was consciously aware of. Unfortunately, the realization caused my mind to clamp shut in fear and nothing more was forthcoming.
“So who was it that knew her?”
I stared at her for a moment, confused.
Penny sighed. “I mean, whose memory were you reliving? Who was it that she kissed?”
It was the obvious question, but unfortunately I didn’t have a good answer. “The problem is that when I’m remembering, I only remember what happened and what they were thinking. Most people don’t think about their own names, or other useful details… like what year it was or where they were located, so I’m left guessing,” I explained.
“But if you followed the memories far enough, you would probably eventually get those details… wouldn’t you?” insisted my lovely wife.
“Most likely,” I agreed. “I just haven’t been able to force myself to do it. Plus there are so many… I can’t be sure, but I get the impression that the memories span thousands of years and hundreds of different people’s lifetimes.”
“Surely it couldn’t all be bad,” said Penny.
“You’re right, it probably isn’t, but there’s something really bad in the middle of it all. Every time I try to recall the reason why I have these memories… and I know that that fact is in there… every time I try to get close to it, I find something else,” I told her.
“What about other things? Like Illeniel’s Promise, or Illeniel’s Doom… you mentioned those before, can you get near those memories?” she asked.
“They’re all linked together,” I said. “I try to stare it in the face, but my inner self instinctively flinches away whenever I get close.”
“Well this woman Lyra, if she really is one of the She’Har, then your memories are at least two thousand years old,” she noted.
I didn’t respond. Closing my eyes I held Penny to me and tried to block out the dark song that seemed to persist around me at all times now. I had begun hearing it shortly after bringing Walter back from the brink of death, but it had only gained in volume since then. It seemed to portend something dark in my future. “I need to find out what these memories mean, but I have a side trip I intend to take first,” I said at last.
“Side trip?”
“I need to explore the ruins of the Gaelyn household, near Agraden.”
“You’ve waited almost a year since Marc’s death, why now?” said Penny rationally.
I didn’t have a good answer though, just a hunch. Whenever I thought about seeking the heart of my memories, or Illeniel’s Doom… the dark song grew stronger. I had an intuitive feeling that whatever I found would lead to my ruin, or perhaps even my immediate demise. “It feels safer,” I admitted, “And if I can find a way to convince Gareth Gaelyn to help us, it will gain us a mighty ally.”
Penny giggled at my choice of words. “A ‘mighty ally’, eh? I think I’ll stick with the one I already have. I’m married to the most powerful archmage in all the world,” she teased, “perhaps in all of history.” She was attempting to distract me from my dark thoughts.
“I don’t think there’s any way we can know that…,” I said modestly.
Penny leaned in close to kiss me before responding, “Of course there is.”
“Oh, really?”
“Definitely,” she said, letting her hands roam.
My breath caught in my throat for a moment. “That isn’t my staff,” I informed her.
“I beg to differ sir,” Penny replied flirtatiously, “… like a mighty oak it grows!”
I snorted with laughter and began to choke, “I can’t believe you just said that! Do you know how corny that sounded?”
“You should be grateful for my witty bedroom banter,” she answered, before kissing me again.
I was still laughing, “You can’t see the forest for the tree.”
She snickered into my neck, “And you say my jokes are bad.”
We told one another bad jokes for several minutes before we were finally unable to continue, having run out of good, or even bad lines. We had better things to occupy ourselves with anyway.
Chapter 37
“Explain to me why we’re here again?” said Dorian.
We stood on a low rise, overlooking the remains of the place that had once been the Gaelyn household. It was a desolate location, dry and rocky. It might have been uninhabitable but for the oasis that was only a few miles distant. The people who had lived there had probably relied upon wells that tapped into the aquifer that rose close to the surface in this region.
“This was the last thing Marc investigated before his death. He thought there might be leftover relics of their magic or even books. The magic protecting this place prevented him from entering before he died. I’m here to find out for certain,” I repeated, since my friend had obviously not paid close enough attention before, and then I added sarcastically, “You’re here because my wife thinks I need looking after.”
Dorian grinned, “You do take a lot of watching.”
“Is that what you were doing last night?” I shot back amicably. “It seemed a lot more like you were trying to see if you could induce a hangover.” The night before, we had visited Marc together, and honored an old promise to share a drink at his grave. It was something we had decided on as young men when we had had our first stolen taste of beer.
It had been a struggle to take the first drink. My treatment at the hands of Dorian’s mother a year before had been brutal, and the memory of that time still made me nauseous. After that I had managed to have a couple more, but I wasn’t able to do more. Besides I had had my hands full keeping Dorian from drinking himself into a blind stupor. The grief he found at our friend’s grave, combined with his natural inclinations, made it almost impossible for him to moderate himself.
He growled, “Are you going to badger me about that?” It was readily apparent that he was still suffering a few lingering after effects.
“It’s what Marc would have wanted,” I pronounced solemnly.
“What, the drink at his grave or harassing me about my overindulgence?” asked Dorian irritably.
“Both.”
He snorted. “Yeah, you’re right about that.” Shading his eyes, he looked down at the scattered collection of broken walls and tumbled stones that hinted at what must have once been a large group of buildings. “What do they call this place again?”
“Drakon Perket,” I answered, “It means ‘Dragon’s Nest’.”
“Not a very inviting name,” he observed.
It probably wasn’t meant to be, I thought. I could sense magic hovering in the air around the place, like a diffuse aura, encouraging visitors to stay away… to forget what they had seen. “It must be an enchantment,” I muttered to myself, “otherwise it would have faded by now.” I started to extend my shield to protect Dorian from its effects before I realized that it probably wouldn’t work on him anyway. His mind was utterly impervious to magic of that sort. “Let’s go down and see if we can find an entrance,” I told him.
“To what?” he asked.
“There’s a network of tunnels and cellars beneath the rock and sand. Some of it I can sense, and other parts seem to be shielded,” I replied. “Whatever is there, I want to know what it is.”
We walked down a gentle slope until we reached the center of what must have once been a large courtyard. Tumbled stone marked places that had once been walls, and a crumbling structure near the center looked as though it might have been a well, although it was full of rubble now. After fifteen minutes of careful searching, we still hadn’t found an entry.
“You’re sure there are tunnels and rooms down there?” said Dorian.
“Yes.”
“Because there’s no entrance,” he added.
“I think you’re right,” I responded, wondering where he was heading with this line of thought.
“Doesn’t make much sense to build it without an entrance.”
“Well the old one might be covered by fallen stone. I can create a new way down if necessary,” I replied.
“Oh,” said Dorian, “then why are we wasting our time looking around?”
I took a deep breath, “Are you like this at home?”
“Why?”
I had a hunch Rose might regret having him home full time if he completely quit doing patrols, but I decided to keep my opinion to myself. “No reason,” I replied, before walking in a new direction.
I found a location directly over one of the closest rooms beneath us. It was only twenty feet down, under an assortment of rock and sand. I briefly considered talking to the earth, to allow us to slip unhindered through the ground, as I once had with Rose. It was a short distance though, and talking to Dorian had left me with a bit of tension, so I decided to use my own power to create a more normal entry. “Step back a bit,” I told Dorian, and then I focused my will on the ground in front of me. “Grabol ni’targoth,” I said in a commanding voice as I exerted myself. The ground shook as I forced it open, tearing a hole in the earth and reshaping it to form a ten foot wide opening and a steep ramp downward.
My large friend stood next to me with his sword drawn. He looked menacing.
“What’s that for?” I asked, pointing to the sword.
“Just in case.”
“There’s nothing alive down here,” I responded. “Nothing close enough for me to sense anyway.”
Dorian ignored my wisdom. “You’ve been wrong before.”
Shaking my head, I led the way down. The room that my new entrance led to was full of rotten boxes and dry dust. The smell of mold was overpowering. It appeared to have been a storeroom once, and I’d have guessed that the contents had been food stuffs. Needless to say, they were no longer good.
Dorian started coughing from the foul air, and before I realized it a powerful but subtle wind swept down from above, threading its way through the room and into the tunnels, rapidly replacing the stagnant air with fresh. Damnitt, watch yourself, I mentally chided. That was the very reason I was supposed to have a mielte watching me. My abilities as an archmage occasionally manifested without conscious thought.
“Good thinking,” said my companion, grateful for the fresh air. Of course he didn’t realize that my self-control had slipped.
“You’re welcome,” I said dryly.
A wooden door that had long ago succumbed to dry rot was all that barred our way out of the storeroom. Dorian swept it away with his hand, and we began searching the hallway that led from that point onward. Eight similar storerooms and a few smaller closets connected to it, but in each we found nothing more interesting than dust and ruined foodstuffs. Some of the wood was well preserved in the dry air, while in other places it had nearly disintegrated from occasional exposure to moisture.
An hour of careful searching revealed nothing of interest.
“Seems like we’ve come up empty handed,” noted Dorian at last.
I shook my head. “No, there’s more… beneath us somewhere.”
“Well I’ll be damned if I can tell where the entrance is,” he answered. “How can you tell?”
“I can feel an empty space beneath us, but it’s shielded by magic. It’s more than a hundred feet down, so I can only assume that it must connect with this area somehow,” I told him.
Dorian grunted, “That doesn’t make much sense. How did they get in and out?”
There was the possibility that they had used a teleportation circle, but I had a hunch it was something else. “I think they’ve used an enchantment to hide the entrance, and some distance beyond,” I said as I thought about it. The mistake had been in not hiding the deeper portion of their sanctuary with the same enchantment. “I’ll create another way down.”
I began using my magic to create another tunnel, but as soon as I started I found that the floor was not what it appeared to be. Beneath a thin veneer of tile lay heavy granite rather than earth or simple bedrock. To my magesight it still appeared to be mixed rock and earth, but now that I had removed the tile, I could see the granite slabs with my normal eyesight.
“That looks an awful lot like a door,” said Dorian, pointing at a large square section in the center. He was remarkable in his ability to state the obvious.
Bending down, I could see fine lines traced across the surface of the stone, marking the enchantment that hid the truth from my arcane senses. Cleverly done, I commented to myself, noting the pattern that some long dead enchanter had used. “There’s something else in this enchantment though… I don’t understand why they included these runes,” I said aloud. “Give me a few minutes to think. I can probably figure out where the key runes are.”
“Key runes?”
“The central nexus of the pattern, the point they would have gone to when opening the door… it may require a specific magical input, or a physical sign. Depending upon how they designed it, I might be able to fool it, or at least figure out what the requirement is for unlocking it,” I explained.
Dorian frowned, “I forget that you don’t speak the common tongue. How long will doing whatever you were talking about take?”
I ran my hand over my chin, pulling at my beard. “I’m not sure… an hour or two maybe,” I answered.
“How about this…,” said my friend, “this line appears to be central, and I’d bet the stone is less than a foot thick, if this is truly a door. So there are probably only one or two points here that actually keep it physically in place, behind or within the stone.”
I raised an eyebrow, “And?”
“If I can create an opening in the stone, somewhere around here,” he said, pointing to the center, “then I might be able to apply enough force to break whatever bar is holding it… assuming that it hinges along the sides there.”
“Well yes,” I replied, a
mazed that he thought he would be strong enough to do such a thing. I could have done the same thing with brute magical force, but I had a strong suspicion that the enchantment was tied to something else… something we might want to avoid if possible. I opened my mouth to explain, but I had spent too much time thinking about my answer.
Dorian had already taken my ‘yes’ as full agreement. Raising his sword, he held it between both hands, with the point facing downward. Exhaling, he drove it into the granite seam. Rock chips flew in several directions and the point bit deeply into the stone. I also felt a surge as the enchantment was disturbed. Something had happened, though I couldn’t be sure what.
“Shit,” I said bluntly.
“What?”
“You triggered something,” I replied.
Dorian was quiet for a moment. “Nothing seems to be happening,” he said, and then he drove his sword into the rock again. “How about that time?”
I sighed, “No, whatever it did, has already been done.”
He smiled, “No use crying about spilt milk then.” In the space of a few minutes, he cut a crude hole through the stone in the middle of our ‘door’. It turned out to be no more than six inches thick, and the opening he created was five or six inches in diameter. He stopped to wipe his brow. “This is a lot harder than it looks.”
“Swords really aren’t meant for cutting stone… or even wood for that matter,” I told him wryly. Even enchanted as it was, and with Dorian’s considerable strength behind it, cutting holes in granite slabs was a difficult task.
“I think it’s enough now,” he said, setting his sword aside. Dorian tried to reach inside, but his gauntleted hand proved to be too bulky. Stripping off his armored gloves and removing his helmet, he tried again (I had replaced his armor during the past year). Kneeling down, he slipped his right hand in far enough to grip the inside edge of the stone door.
I watched carefully as he braced himself and began pulling with his right arm, while pushing down against the floor with his left. His face turned red and veins stood out against the side of his head, but the granite didn’t move. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” I warned. “Let me do that. You probably shouldn’t be overusing the earth power anyway,” I said, remembering what I had seen happen to him after our battle with Karenth and Doron. I still didn’t understand what had occurred. In the past, physical changes such as he had undergone were permanent, without immediate removal of the earth bond… and timely intervention of an archmage to help the afflicted warrior recover his humanity. Assuming the process hadn’t gone too far.