Ossendar: Book Two of the Resoration Series (64 page)

“What in the abyss is this?” Philip asked.

“Looks like a stage.” Atock said quietly, but his voice still echoed around the room.

“It was used for magic.” Flare said without thinking. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back. Both Atock and Philip looked quickly at him.

“Are you sure?” Atock asked, looking back at the room. “Looks like a stage to me.”

Still silently cursing himself, Flare nodded. “I'm sure. I read about it in one of the books that I read about
Mount
Ogular
.” Actually, that was a lie. He had read about it in one of Cassandra's books, but it would have been foolish to admit that. He was fairly sure that the stage was used for intricate magical rituals; rituals that took more than one person, and unfolded over days, weeks, and sometimes months.

Atock stepped down the first step. “Well, it doesn't look like anyone been here for a very long time.” He looked around, “Want to make camp here?”

“No!” Philip and Flare answered in unison.

“It's too large an area, with too many entrances.” Flare continued, “I would prefer to find a smaller room, a place that we can defend easier.”

“Absolutely,” Philip said.

“Okay. So which door do we go through?” Atock answered.

“First to the left.” Flare answered. “Let's keep it simple.” If they had to come back through here, at least they would know which door to take.

Atock stepped back to the top row of steps, and led the way to the next doorway. It opened on a hallway almost identical to the one they had just left. It too was irregularly shaped, and there was a slight ascent to the floor.

They followed the hallway and quickly came to a small room that was on the right side of the passage. It was maybe ten feet by ten feet, and the walls were smooth brick. A small stone bench was the lone decoration; it sat against what remained of the far wall. The back wall had collapsed, and the stones covered the back half of the room.

“This will do nicely.” Flare said approvingly. Truly, it would be easy to defend this small room, with its one entrance. “I'll take second watch.” He added, knowing it was the one watch no one wanted.

“I'll take the first watch,” Atock said with a sigh.

They continued walking the darks halls for the next two days, continuing their gradual downward trek. The fear that they might wander until they ran out of food and water, slowly settled in on the other two as well. They also kept it to themselves, but Flare could sense the change in their personalities. All humor disappeared, and conversation decreased dramatically. Now, they only spoke when they needed to. Philip had sunk back into his grouchy attitude, and even Atock was a little touchy.

The hallways changed gradually, too. The passages became much more roughly constructed, the farther down they went. They took on more of an appearance of a tunnel and less of a stone hallway. And tunnels they were, because the passages were more rounded now, and here and there beams supported the weight of the overhead rock. The marks of shovels and picks could be seen in the sides of the hallways.

In places where the wall had collapsed or crumbled, pieces of pots and small utensils were spotted sticking out of the rubble. Apparently, the catacombs were tunnels and passages through the buried remains of the fort, it seemed that the fort had been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times. Whether mud slides that had buried the city, or volcanic eruptions, they didn't know, but it looked like the fort had been rebuilt multiple times on the same spot.

Higher up, the rooms off of the passages had mainly been crypts, but the farther they descended, the fewer crypts they came across. “Makes sense,” Atock had said on the second day. “The people living in the fort must have buried their dead in the crypts, and it makes sense that they would have used the rooms that were closest to the surface. I mean, why walk any farther to bury your dead than you have to?”

The rooms themselves also changed as they went farther down into the catacombs. There were a lot of rooms near the surface and most of them were relatively small, being around ten feet by ten feet, but that changed gradually. The first thing that they noticed was that there were fewer rooms as the distance between rooms slowly increased. The appearance of the rooms also changed, as the crypts disappeared, the rooms became larger and more unfinished. The walls were more roughly cut from the stone, and more of these rooms were crumbling and collapsing.

The temperature dropped slowly, and it wasn't long before the guardians were wearing their cloaks as they walked and sleeping under their blankets at night. They would have made a fire at night, but there wasn't any firewood or anything else to burn, and their torches gave off precious little heat.

Their supplies were starting to get low. The food supplies weren't too bad, as they had planned carefully for the long trip. However, their concern was the water and torches. Water was getting dangerously low, even though they were already rationing. The torches also were getting in short supply, and they had been only walking with two for several days now. It was a horrifying thought to be lost in this maze without any light. Flare knew that he could use magic, but that would present a whole new set of problems.

They began the fourth day cold and walking in silence; the optimism having been siphoned out of them. The walk through the endless tunnels slowly warmed them up, but their mood stayed depressed.

“Is the tunnel getting wider?” Atock said, breaking the silence, after they had been walking for several hours.

Flare blinked, having gotten lost in his thoughts. He stopped walking, and looked around. “Yeah, I think it might be.”

“Do you think we could be close?” Philip asked; hope clearly showing through in his voice.

Atock grinned at Philip, “Gods, I hope so. Well, let's check it out.” He turned and led them forward.

They hurried forward, their pace considerably quickened by the renewed hope. The tunnel continued to widen, and the walls gradually took on a more finished appearance. Before long, the three of them could have walked side by side, and still have room to spare. The ceiling of the tunnel, which for so long had been just barely above their heads, receded until it was several feet above them.

Atock stopped suddenly. “This is new.”

Philip and Flare hurried forward, to see.

They had come to a four way intersection, the first that they had encountered in their four days in the catacombs.

“Which way do we go?” Philip asked, looking down the left hand turn, holding his torch higher to get more light down the passage.

“I don't think it matters,” Atock answered. He had walked to the far side of the intersection, and was looking down the straight ahead passage.

“Why not?” Flare asked, moving over to join Atock.

“I think that all of these passages are interconnected. Look,” Atock said, pointing a short distance ahead. Another hallway opened to the left, and unmistakably, and a small amount of flickering light emanated from the passage.

For a moment, Flare almost reached for his sword, as his first thought was that there was someone down the passage, but as Philip moved over to join them, the light coming from the passage disappeared.

“Philip, go back to where you were.” Atock said, pointing back the way Philip had come.

“Why?”

“Just do it.” Atock snapped.

Philip sighed, and walked back over to the left hand passage, and the light once again shown from the side passage up ahead.

“I don't understand,” Flare said confused. “Why does that passage connect back around?”

Atock shrugged in answer, “Come on. Let's take a closer look.”

They moved forward slowly, and looked around the corner of the left hand passage. There were two doorways on either side of the short passage, and then two more doors, and finally the passage dead ended into a wall.

Flare motioned Atock to check out the door on the right, while he checked the door on the left. It opened into a small square room. Once, it looked like there had been a wooden door in the opening, but it had long ago rotted away. Perhaps there had been furniture in the room, but it had also rotted away a long time ago.

Flare emerged from the tiny room to find Atock already waiting for him. “Well?”

Atock shrugged, “Just a tiny empty room.”

Flare nodded, “Yeah, the same thing over here.” He motioned to the next two doors, “Let's check those two out.”

Philip had already started towards the doors, and he glanced around the two rooms first. “Nothing. Kind of looks like a bedroom. Doesn't it?”

“What do you mean?” Flare asked confused.

“In Telur, I visited the
temple
of
Adel
. Most of the priests and priestesses there live in these tiny little rooms.” He grinned and shrugged, “It was just the first thing that occurred to me.”

It was good to see Philip smile, Flare thought. It had been too long. He smiled back, “Let's have a look around.”

The four small rooms that they had found were not the only ones. There were quite a few rooms in the middle of the vicinity, and they spent an hour exploring them all. There were twelve of the small rooms, and one very large room.

The large room was rectangular, maybe twenty feet by forty. The ceiling was lost way up in the darkness, and a few parts of the ceiling had collapsed, leaving piles of rubble. The floor stepped down so that the center of the room was the lowest part. In the middle, was a long stone table. Beside the stone table, was a circular depression that resembled a fire pit. Lying on its side, a metal tripod ended in a rusted out metal bowl.

“What is this?” Atock asked. “Do you think it has anything to do with magicians, like that other room we found?” He asked, looking at Flare.

Atock's question bothered Flare. He didn't want anyone thinking that he was an expert on magicians. “I don't know. I guess it could be.” Actually, he kind of suspected that it might have been another magic room, but he was confused by the metal tripod. He pointed to the opposite of the room, “Look, another door.”

Philip reached it first and disappeared through the door, followed closely by Atock and Flare.

The next room was also fairly large, and once, it had clearly been a library. The walls were lined with stone bookshelves and there were freestanding bookshelves in the middle of the room, but the books had all rotted away.

“Okay.” Flare said glancing around. “I don't see any reason to spend any more time here. Let's go.”

They left the small grouping of rooms, and continued down the passage. They stopped for lunch after another hour of walking, and Flare could sense the let down the other two were feeling. They had hoped that perhaps they were nearing the end of their quest, but apparently it wasn't to be. They finished lunch quickly and quietly, and started the monotonous walk again.

Shortly thereafter, they encountered another large room. Well, actually it was a large cavern, completely natural. The cavern was naturally formed, and the far side was lost off in the distance. The only finished portion of the cavern was the stone path that led off into the darkness. The sides of the cavern also were lost in the darkness, and on either side of the path, was rough natural rock and stalagmites rising up from the ground like some monsters' giant fangs.

The three guardians walked cautiously out onto the path, nervously looking around as they did so. After days of the tight passage, the openness of the cavern was uncanny. There was a slight breeze, as the air moved through the enormous space.

They walked forward following the path. About thirty yards into the cavern, the floor dropped away. A great chasm opened beneath them, they could not see the bottom in the murky blackness. A stone bridge continued from the edge of the stone path, and arched up and out into the darkness. The far side of the gorge was lost in the distance.

Atock slowly worked his way up to the edge of the chasm and looked down into the gorge, then he quickly moved back. “Looks like the only way over is the bridge.”

“But we can't see the far side. For all we know, the bridge might have collapsed over there.” Philip said, a slight note of panic in his voice.

Swallowing hard, Flare moved up to the edge of the bridge. “I don't think we have any choice.”

“Yes we do!” Philip responded quickly. “We could go back and look for another way around. We don't have to risk this bridge.” The panic was still in his voice, and his breathing was getting quicker.

“I know what we will do,” Flare said after a moment. It was obvious that Philip was close to losing control. He seemed terrified by the thought of falling into the gorge. He didn't think Philip was normally afraid of heights, but the dark chasm was different apparently. “How about this? I will go over the bridge, alone, and once I get safely to the other side, then I will call out and you two can come over.”

Philip swallowed hard, and glanced at Atock. “Okay. Sounds good.” He still sounded shaky, but no longer seemed about to give into the panic.

Flare nodded, “I'll take one of the torches, and whoever comes last will carry the second torch.”

Flare turned back to the bridge, and moved out to the edge. Suddenly, he understood some of the fear that Philip was enduring, as his heart was beating furiously. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out onto the bridge. With his left foot on the edge of the stone path, he leaned forward and pounded his right foot on the edge of the bridge. The bridge didn't move, it seemed solid. Breathing only slightly easier, he placed his right foot on the ground and then took another step. He realized that he was holding his breath, and slowly exhaled. Nothing happened, the millennia old bridge appeared to be solid, or at the very least solid enough.