Jadde - The Fragile Sanctuary (35 page)

‘That’s as maybe. Take a break, you’re
exhausted. We can hold here. Eat and drink, then return.’

He glanced up as the first demon leapt down
onto Cyprusnian ground.

‘
Take her back
,’ he ordered a
limping warrior as he swung Palerin at the demon. Engaging the flailing
creature, he jumping away from its feet-knives and severed its head with one gigantic
sweep of his sword.

He had a moment of epiphany and clasped the
gold sun that had spoken to him all those weeks before. He knew now it was a communicator
of thoughts, relayed through a string of users over great distance allowing the
Highnirvana people to communicate with his pursuers and with Josiath. He
thought into it with all his highsense.

‘Rachel?’

‘
Rachel are you there?
’

A dead demon crashed down beside him; he avoided
its twitching finger-knives.

 ‘
Malkrin Owlear is that you with
Jeremy’s sun?’

It was the voice of Rachel again.

‘We need your help now, the main palisade is
under assault.’ He thought at full shout as he looked up at the sunset
filtering through the billowing smoke and orange glow of rampant flames.

‘Less volume Malkrin please,’

‘Can you help?’

‘We are travelling to you. We have rebuilt ancient
guns, but it is a slow journey and they are a great weight to haul down the
mountain. Expect assistance to arrive at twenty hundred hours approximately.’

‘20 hundred hours?’

‘Eight o’clock this evening. Also be
advised we have had to split our forces in an urgent quest.’

What do you mean?’

A quarter-man lunged at him tearing his
tunic arm and drawing blood. A spear was thrust into its carapace seams and two
Wolf warriors dispatched it as Malkrin put his hand holding Palerin to his temple
to aid concentration.

‘Are you injured Malkrin?’ The Wolf warrior
asked.

Malkrin waved him away and concentrated.

‘
Four scholars and two soldiers have
been diverted to find a Seconchane female trapped in a lost cavern belonging to
the ancients. It is a legendary place and we have sought its location for years
without success. In fact, ever since the quarter-men began re-emerging beyond
Mount Doom.’

Her words confused him and he finished
with, ‘Just hurry.’

‘The additional quest may contain the
solution to wiping out the quarter-men.’ Fear not Malkrin. All is not lost.’

And the voice was gone.

He swung Palerin at a demon that had just
killed a Seconchane boy armourer.

As the creature died he suddenly thought of
the sun and planet symbol in the hidden library and realised what had mystified
him about it.

He would have to leave the tribes to fight
without him. The ancient weapons were the key to killing the demons in a
slaughter the tribes could not accomplish on the battlefield. The lower library
was still the key to finding the armaments – and he had to get there quickly, for
time was running out for them all.

CHAPTER
TWENTYEIGHT

M
alkrin
fought through the night and by the next morning they still held, all of the
warriors held in reserve now manned the palisade and men slept under the timber
wall. The field before them was littered with piles of dead Quarter-men. Another
pile had been heaped in a corner away from the defences. The demons’ wood
battering rams lay abandoned and still smouldering in burning oil which had
been poured then ignited from the palisade. It was the one element that had
gone the tribes’ way and this oil alone was responsible for keeping the quarter-men
at bay.

The creatures had
withdrawn at first light. Malkrin wondered whether they were nocturnal and
could only stand a limited amount of light, or perhaps they retired to allow
the sun’s rays to replenish them. He hoped he would live to test each
possibility and discover the truth. With this unexpected but probably short
lull in the fighting there was an important matter to attend to in the library.

The Fox was commanding his
forces from the high bluff with his twenty menservants as messengers and
bodyguards. Malkrin rode to him and explained his theory of the gold wall-sun
and his conversation with Rachel of the Highnirvana. ‘Allow me time to check
the library’s giant sun symbol and reveal its secret.’ The Council Elder looked
impassive, unconvinced. ’sun symbols seemed to be the emblem of power within
the Seconchane and Highnirvana societies so I am guessing the wall-art is the
ancients trying to convey a message down the ages in some way.’

The Fox’s stern face
softened, he was getting through to the old man.

‘If I look close enough, a
code will surely be revealed. Or what if I touch it – what then, would the
ancients speak to me, tell me of the hidden weapon and of their magic?’

The old man now looked
directly at him and not to his beleaguered warriors below.

‘A powerful sense tells me
it is vital that we follow this up.’ It took Malkrin a further valuable ten
minutes to persuade The Fox to allow him six hours and a horse.

Malkrin rode the mare hard,
she was willing and an hour later he left the sweating animal snorting and
whinnying at the doors inside the Priests Keep. He rushed down the steps and
burst through the door into the glaring light of the hidden underground library,
and ran past Nardin and the two priests. They looked up startled from books and
piles of notes as he flashed by. He stopped before the wall with the huge emblem.

Nardin ran up, his eyes
again sharp and focused.

‘Malkrin, what is it?’

‘Has this wall ever struck
you as strange?’

‘No. Why? It’s just an old
mural.’

‘You have been taking
Kristopher Falconfeathe
r
’s
words out of context. He said, ‘
if you search this library diligently, you
will find what you seek.’
He meant the library itself not its books
.
’

Enlightenment appeared in Nardin’s eyes.

 Malkrin continued
searching physically and with his highsense at maximum. Then a once familiar
fog returned to his mind, and internal shapes focused. He paused and
concentrated. Cobweb filled cavities surrounded by metal wire reinforced concrete
filled his mind.

His long lost inner eye
had returned with such good timing he wondered if it were Jadde’s bidding.

‘I see a narrow space deep
down, perhaps a passage similar to the one used to get into this secret library.’

Nardin looked puzzled,
‘your lost highsense has returned – thank Jadde,’ he said automatically
although he no longer believed in the Goddess.

Malkrin informed him of
the Highnirvana peoples’ quest for a cavern full of ancient magic. ‘We must
help find the old weapons. I’m convinced a entrance is in here behind the
mural.’

Malkrin stood back and
sent his returned highsense into the wall. He scanned the wall structure from
the hidden space and working toward him. It appeared to be surrounded by
natural rock, then as he journeyed through the natural layers it changed to
concrete block infill. It was a passage he was sure, and it led to the wall
before them. He brought his highsense back to just within the wall. The bricked
in space contained a spider’s web width black line the shape of a door and was covered
with a layer of plaster. He walked to the indicated area and used his finger to
trace the line. Ordinary vision showed a misalignment of painted lines in the
mural.

‘Here it is,’ he shouted
triumphantly and traced his finger over the door shape again for Nardin. They
looked for a hidden door release, pressing all over the area. Suddenly at waist
level Nardin pressed a section, and soundlessly a pad of white glowing numbers
on a black pad emerged.

The shining numbers
invited Malkrin to touch them so he depressed five at random. Each number
reappeared magically on a small rectangular patch above the studs, a red light blinked
– but nothing happened. Then the number screen became blank. He tried 2016, a
date he remembered from the Morris-Tailt diary – the light blinked again and
rejected the year. Malkrin tried a few more year dates – nothing; each time the
irritating light blinked its denial then died.

‘More defunct machinery,’
Nardin muttered close to his ear.

Malkrin had a sudden
mental connection and pressed digits 4, 7, 6, 5, the book number
Falconfeather’s message had stated. The red light blinked its usual refusal. Then
he noticed a button called ‘enter’ it was slightly larger than the others. He
tried pressing it – nothing. He pressed 4 7 6 5 again, then immediately pressed
‘enter’ – after all he did want to enter so it seemed appropriately linked to Falconfeather’s
number. Suddenly hidden catches clunked and the hair width seams widened as
locks released.

A door swung open to
reveal a dark so solid it looked like a barrier.

‘It’s as simple as reading
when you know how,’ he joked.

After collecting two oil
lamps from the scriptorium Malkrin led the way with Nardin following.

The flickering light
revealed steps leading down so far they were swallowed by the dark. Five
minutes later and descending all the way they approached another door. This one
had a handle similar to the one in the library and opened easily.

Lights in the ceiling
sizzled for a moment and went out. But it was promising – the ancients had not
provided lighting for no reason. Another door; and it opened onto a soft spongy
layer underfoot. In the lamplight it looked patchily red, in places faded to
pink and in others eaten by rodents or just decayed with age. On either side,
doors with lettered names mounted on the outer face appeared. They opened one that
had belonged to a Prof. Erwin Kingston, he had other unpronounceable letters
after his name. Malkrin had no time to work out their meaning. Kingston’s room
appeared to be a workplace full of furniture similar to the library. They moved
on past long dead dignitaries’ rooms; then stopped dead as they read a name on
a partially open door.

General-commander Jadde

They looked at each other in surprise and entered
the room. A single light in the ceiling lit to greet them. In the gloom Malkrin
stared at footprints in the dust and noticed a disturbance in the grime on a
large ornate workbench. Someone had been here recently. He examined a small
painting on the desk with a faded picture behind glass. He made out an adult
man with his arms around two children. All were smiling as if they had just
eaten a full meal of venison. He glanced at a pile of folders in a tray marked ‘urgent’,
his eyes moved to another tray as Nardin hissed.

 ‘Something’s happening.’

A red glow filled the open door, and then
bright crimson smoke billowed into the room. Through the choking miasma a ghost
appeared and stared at them.

The smoke made his eyes water and he began
to cough. Nardin had backed into a corner next to a metal cupboard.

‘Malkrin, my love,’ it said in a tender
voice he thought never to hear again.

The spectral figure approached, arms
outstretched unearthly in the red fog. Malkrin joined Nardin in the corner. You
could not fight an apparition, especially one resurrected by the ancients.

Nardin had his hands to his newly healed
eyes, the red miasma affected him like an evil poison and he screamed in pain.

‘It’s all right Nardin.’ The apparition
spoke again; ‘it is me Cabryce.’

Malkrin grabbed Nardin, forced him behind
and then shrunk as far into the corner as he could.

‘For Jadde’s sake you dumb idiots – it is
really
me.’ The familiar scolding tongue woke him from the nightmare.

‘Cabryce?’

‘Who else do you think has my face? S
peak
to me
. I haven’t spoken to anyone for seasons and seasons let alone the one
person I really wanted to speak to – that is you husband.’

‘Cabryce,’ he repeated and stepped forward
to sweep her into his arms.

His hopes soared. Together they would find
the DNA weapons and if Jadde blessed them use the ancient technology to stop
the quarter-men from filling her heavenly domain with the extinct tribes.

To be continued
in.....

JADDE

 
Book Two: The Dark
Tide

Now available on
Amazon Kindle