City of Sorcerers (33 page)

Rafnir gave one last look at the sunlit ruins, took a deep breath, and went down into the depths of Moy Tura.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The narrow passage plunged down into the bedrock beneath the temple without a curve or deviation. Its walls were so close together, the people had to stay in single file. Fortunately, the steps themselves were fairly wide, and a stone railing had been placed on the right side about waist-height. The walk down wasn't too bad---except for the air that chilled the searchers to the skin and the darkness that pressed in around the edges of their little lights.

The clanspeople hadn't gone down more than ten steps when a single feeble light began to glow on the ceiling just ahead. Morad started so badly he nearly tripped on a step.

The Korg put his hand on the Geldring's shoulder. "No need to be alarmed," he said sadly. "There used to be a string of lights along the ceiling that were spelled to shine whenever a magic-wielder came near. I'm surprised one still works."

There was something rather comforting about the light and its reminder that other magic-wielders had walked underneath it every day. Its pale illumination couldn't compete with the spheres the travelers had made themselves, but its presence helped to diminish some of the fearsomeness of the tunnel as the men, the woman, and the cat passed below and continued their descent.

A few minutes later they reached the bottom and gathered together in a tight group. By the light of the magic globes, they could see that they were standing in an intersection of several tunnels. The passages were much like the stairs, smooth-walled and obviously man-made, but here the way ran wide enough for two people to walk abreast. One tunnel continued straight ahead. Others led away to the left and right.

"Which way?" Savaron's voice boomed in the quiet.

Kelene started and bumped into Rafnir. She felt his hand, warm and strong by hers, and she clasped it to help settle the tendrils of fear that were curling in her head.

His fingers tightened around hers, inadvertently opening his emotions to her touch.

She sensed an uncomfortable mix of nervousness, worry, apprehension, and a warm pleasure at her closeness, before she forced herself to close off her mind. At the same time she was aware of Rafnir mentally drawing away from her, too, and the flow of feelings was cut off. Kelene was relieved. She knew now it was possible to control her talent around Rafnir and allow him some privacy of feeling. That ability might be important later on if their newfound friendship continued to flourish.

Without speaking, the Korg turned to the left-hand tunnel and led his companions cautiously along the passage. Because the tunnels had been sealed for so long, there wasn't much dust or litter along the way, and very little moisture had accumulated.

Other faint lights glowed like ghostly candles on the ceiling overhead.

They hadn't been walking very long when the Korg stopped so quickly Morad and Savaron slammed into him and sent him stumbling forward. Muttering and apologizing, they reached out to help him and saw what had shocked him so badly.

There, just a step away from the Korg's boots, was the skeleton of a man. It lay sprawled at the foot of another set of stairs, its flesh long gone and its bone gleaming palely through the scraps of a long yellow tunic. An arrow protruded from its back.

"Sentran," murmured the Korg.

Kelene saw his cheeks were wet. "You knew him?"

"A friend. He always wore that awful shade of yellow." He stared up the black hole of the stairway. "Sentran liked to work late. He must have been shot and made it this far before he died. . . ." His voice trailed away.

Morad leaned over and fingered the fletching on the arrow.

"If the colors were the same then as now, it's Geldring." His face turned a ghastly hue in the greenish white lights of the spheres. He let go of the arrow as if it had stung him.

They hurried on, leaving the body of Sentran in undisturbed peace, and pushed a little faster through the tunnels.

At last the Korg reached a place where the tunnel widened and came to an end in a very solid-looking door. The door had a stone lintel and was covered with hammered sheets of bronze. A strange emblem of a golden hand with a red jeweled eye in its palm adorned the center of the door.

"This is it; I recognize the Healers' symbol," the Korg told the small group. Then his expression grew puzzled. "But I didn't know there was a door here." He pushed it to no avail.

Savaron and Morad added their shoulders with his against the door and pushed, but the door did not budge. There wasn't enough room for anyone else to help them, so they gave up and looked for another way. They were disheartened to find no visible latches, hinges, or locks.

"The door must be magically locked," the Korg decided.

Morad glared at it. "I don't suppose you know how to break the spell," he said to the old man.

The sorcerer exhaled with an irritated rush. "I told you, the healers were very protective of their secrets."

"Could we blast it open with magic?" Rafnir suggested.

"Probably not. The door is protected. It would take so much power to break the spell, the backlash of the magic would kill us in the confined space of this tunnel."

The men fell to thinking about alternatives while Kelene watched frustration darken their faces. To come so far and be thwarted on the doorstep of their destination by the very people they were hoping could help them seemed unfair.

And yet it struck her odd that healers would take such pains to lock a door in what was essentially a public tunnel. The spell on the entrance in the temple above had not been very complicated, perhaps this one wasn't either.

"Maybe you're making too much of this," suggested Kelene. There was no octagonal stone with a thumb depression on the door, so she tried the next best thing.

She laid her palm and fingers on the emblem and pressed hard on the golden hand.

A faint stir of magic tingled against her skin, so Kelene knew she had the right idea. But the door remained firmly closed. There had to be something more. Her next thought was to try magic. This was a magic-wielders' door, after all, and maybe sorcery was needed to open it. Kelene gathered the ancient energy around her and directed it through her hand into the emblem. "Open," she commanded.

Instantly the jewel in the palm flared with a brilliant red light so bright it shone in a beam of scarlet through her hand. The power of the door's spell flashed through her arm to her head and all the way to her feet, prickling on her skin and making the hairs rise on her arms and neck. The reaction of the magic barely registered in her mind when the light went out and the door cracked open. Kelene blinked in pleased surprise.

Impressed, the clansmen grinned at her. But the Korg scratched the back of his neck and studied her thoughtfully.

Kelene stepped out of the way while Savaron pushed the heavy door open. Over the groan of the hinges, the people heard a strange, hollow, rattling noise that made everyone jump.

"What was that?" Morad exclaimed. He mentally shoved his sphere of light through the doorway into the darkness beyond. The green-white light shone on the floor, illuminating a scattered collection of human bones.

Kelene made a small sound somewhere between a gasp and a cry. "They're only children." She limped through the door into the corridor beyond and knelt on the cold floor by a huddled group of three small skeletons lying along the wall. Two more sets of bones had been knocked aside by the opening door. She picked up a skull no bigger than her little brother's head and turned tear-filled eyes to the men who were standing pale and silent in the doorway. "What were they doing here?" she whispered.

The Korg clasped his hands behind his back to hide their trembling. "Someone must have hidden them down here. Most children weren't allowed in the tunnels until they had passed their first rites." He paused to clear his throat. "They wouldn't have known how to open the doors."

"Put them down here to keep them safe, not knowing it would be their tomb. Poor babies. They must have been so frightened!" Ever so gently, Kelene laid the skull beside the others and wiped her face. She was cold and miserable down in these tunnels and the sight of those small bones depressed her even more. The dark, chilled air and the enclosed spaces affected her more than she had thought and teased her imagination with violent images of that night so long ago. She wanted nothing more than to get out of there before they found another gruesome reminder of her people's folly and cruelty. Instead she forced herself to rise and step away from the skeletons.

Tam's cat padded carefully around the bones into the corridor. Kelene, with the men close behind, followed the small animal toward the several doors that stood open on both sides of the hall. The first door on the right led into a large room well furnished with long tables, benches, and two tattered rugs. Dusty, faded tapestries hung on the walls, and a few lamps were suspended from the ceiling.

"That was probably a study room or gathering place," observed the Korg.

Kelene, Savaron, Morad, and Rafnir looked around the room and were impressed.

The only rooms those four clanspeople knew well were in the chieftains' halls in their clans' winter camps. This large, comfortable-looking study fascinated them. "There must have been many healers here at one time," said Rafnir.

The Korg frowned. "Not really. The Healers' guild was the smallest in Moy Tura.

It was learned long ago that not every magic-wielder can heal." His glance shifted to Kelene, but she had already moved back into the hall to continue the search.

There were three more doors in the hall, each one made of ironbound hardwood fastened with simple latches. Behind the doors were rooms much smaller than the first that led nowhere. One had a worktable and some benches sitting along the walls. The second seemed to be a storage room half full of everyday items: cast-aside clothing, pots, earthen dishes, a few empty storage jars, a broken stool, several mouse-eaten cloaks, and a wooden box full of small clay jars similar to the ones the healer Piers had used for his medicines. Some of the things had been broken and strewn around the floor, probably by the children in their search for food to eat.

Kelene shuddered and moved to the last room. She stuck her head in the doorway and felt a sour pang of disappointment. The chamber was the last one she could see, and it was barren---no shelves, no alcoves, no doorways leading to other rooms, no cupboards or closets. Nothing but dust and aching silence.

Frustrated, she withdrew to the hallway. The men obviously hadn't found anything either, since there were no excited voices or calls for assistance. They were wandering from room to room, too, their globes of light following along obediently above their heads.

Kelene turned her attention to the only place at the end of the hall where she had not explored. There she found the stairway leading to the upper floors. It was very obvious why they had not found the stair when they explored the hall. In the process of razing the building, the victors had pulled down a wall over the hidden staircase and the door had collapsed under the weight of the crashing stone. The entire stairwell was blocked with chunks of masonry and broken Stone. The children trapped down there never had a chance to escape.

Kelene kicked a stone aside with the toe of her boot. The hall ended by the stairs in a blank wall. There was nowhere else to look.

She was about to go back when she noticed Tam's cat by her feet. The little cat's white fur was bedraggled and dirty, and her whiskers were dusty, but the animal was too distracted to notice. Something fascinated her along the blank stone wall directly across from the stairs. She sniffed the stone and poked at it with her paws, all the while pacing back and forth with her tail swishing.

"What is it?" Kelene.inquired.

The cat made a puzzled sound.
The rock has no smell. It is cold and gray like
other. Just no smell.

How odd, Kelene thought, putting her hands on the wall. It did feel like the rest of the walls---cold, damp, dirty---and yet there was something slightly strange about it. It didn't seem as dense? As textured? The difference was so subtle she couldn't even describe it, and she certainly wouldn't have noticed it without the cat.

Fascinated now, she began to examine the wall from ceiling to floor while the cat wound around her legs and sniffed at different sections of stone. There was certainly nothing as obvious as the outline of a door, a symbol on the wall, a latch, or a lock.

The only thing Kelene found were two small, faint depressions in the stones about shoulder height and perhaps an arm's length apart.

Kelene put a thumb in one of the depressions, spoke the Korg's spell word, and pushed. Nothing happened. She tried the other, and still nothing happened. The stone remained immovable and enigmatic. Finally Kelene tried placing a thumb in each indentation and pushing at the same time.

Once again nothing seemed to change.

Then she happened to glance down and saw Tam's cat walk between her legs into the wall and disappear. Kelene was so startled; she reached out to grab the cat, lost her balance, and fell headlong through the stone into total darkness.

She rumbled onto what felt like another floor. The stone beneath her hands was as cold and dirty as the hallway, but she couldn't see it well enough to be sure. To her eyes, accustomed to the light of her sphere, the space around her seemed densely black. She froze in the darkness under a cold wash of fear.

What are you doing?
meowed the cat from some place close by.

Kelene stifled a yelp of surprise and unclenched her hands from the floor. Warily she pushed herself up to a sitting position. "What is this place?" she whispered.

Room. Like others.
The cat's tone sounded surprised at Kelene's reaction
. Turn
around and there is doorway.

Kelene turned her head, and sure enough, just behind her was a rectangular opening outlined by the faint light of her sphere that dangled just beyond the entrance.