Fallen, page 9
Just as she stepped into the chamber at the end, it filled with light. She came to an instant stop and stared around her.
‘What the…’ Ridoch said. ‘How did… Oh.’
‘Move, move, move,’ Eminora said, coming up behind Estaree. ‘What happened? Why is there light? Move!’ She managed to push Estaree to one side, stepped into the room, and then she came to a grinding halt as well.
The room was nowhere near as large as the previous cavern, but it was a good twenty paces across and circular. The ceiling arched overhead, and the light was coming from a glowing sphere attached at its apex. In the middle of the room was a round stone table about ten feet across, and there were eight stone chairs set around it at regular intervals. Each chair was very simple: a platform to sit on and a tall, straight back coming to a point at the top. Set into the walls behind each chair was an alcove. Each alcove contained a statue, a life-size humanoid figure.
‘Are those the old gods?’ Eminora said, her voice soft.
‘Yes,’ Ridoch said. ‘Not just the gods.’
Some of the statues were wearing clothing or armour. It was quite clearly real and not carved. Some of them had another item beside them: a staff here, a sword there, a short rod beside another.
Ridoch walked slowly toward the statue with the rod. ‘Rosh. And that must be his weapon, Raten. It’s said that its power can decimate armies.’ He reached out toward it, stopping at one soft word.
‘Don’t,’ Estaree said. Ridoch turned his head to look at her. ‘No good ever came from a mortal touching the weapon of a god.’
‘You have a point.’
‘Indeed.’ Eminora unlocked her body and moved away from the doorway. ‘None of us should touch anything. I am not sure what we have walked into here, but I am sure that we should take great care.’
‘I agree,’ Annamia said, rushing into the room. She looked around quickly, came to a conclusion, and rushed over to kneel before what was almost certainly the statue of Arubel. Like the one outside, it depicted a quite voluptuous woman, but there was more detail here and you could see long straight hair, a nose which was straight and tended to flare at the nostrils, and very full lips. And this statue was naked, so the large breasts and wide hips were quite obvious. ‘This is my goddess. We should take great care here.’
Alex walked in and looked around, far more casually than the priestess had done. ‘Quite agree. It looks like a meeting room.’
‘Or a war room,’ Ridoch said.
‘Or that.’ Alex noticed where Estaree had got to and wandered over to stand beside her. She was looking up at a statue dressed in what looked like blue bandages with a staff of twisted wood-like material beside it. Held in a spiral of limbs at the staff’s head was a blue crystal which glowed softly. ‘Mysara,’ he said. ‘Mysara’s supposed to carry a staff and I think it looks like that.’
‘You are correct, Alex,’ Eminora confirmed. ‘Legend says that anyone who touched it without permission would freeze to death in an instant.’
‘Useful to know.’ Alex looked at Estaree, staring at the statue, and then followed her gaze. ‘You know, you kind of look like her.’
There was a brief instant when Alex thought he would get no reply. Estaree stared at the goddess statue and then looked around at Alex. Her face shifted in an instant to one of her quick grins. ‘Comparing me to a goddess, Alex? Now that’s the kind of compliment that’ll certainly get you laid.’
‘That is not what I meant!’
‘I’m not sure we should be showing such disrespect to the gods in this room,’ Ridoch said.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Estaree replied. ‘If we are in the presence of the divine, one of them is a fertility goddess. Talking about sex in front of her is entirely appropriate.’ Pause. ‘Unless she’d think of it as shop talk. I mean, we wouldn’t want to bore her, would we?’
~~~
‘It’s going to rain tonight,’ Estaree said as she sat down to dinner with a bowl of stew. ‘I’m going to put up a barrier, so there’s no real point in a formal watch.’
‘A little rain won’t–’ Ridoch began.
‘A little rain would be annoying, uncomfortable, and leave us all feeling less than able in the morning. Bearable, but an unnecessary experience. This, however, is not going to be a little rain.’ She turned her gaze to Eminora. ‘Chance magic. Where connection is inappropriate, chance takes over. Really, if one had total command over those two schools, one could achieve anything. Well, except when dealing with magic itself. I suppose that’s three schools you’d need.’
‘There are nine, right?’ Alex asked. ‘What’s the point in the other six? You aren’t including any of the elements or the healing one. I may be biased, but I think the healing one’s important.’
‘It makes things easier, Alex. Specialisation, if you like. By manipulating chance, connection, and magic, you could make torn tissue reconnect, have water flow uphill, or concentrate heat into a fireball and launch it at your opponent. But you’d probably spend a couple of hours working out how before you actually did anything magical. You learn life magic to heal, and harm, people because it creates a sort of framework of processes to get things done without having to resort to first principles.’
‘Huh. I learned something. I’ve no talent at all for magic, so it’s no practical use to me, but I did learn something.’
‘Anyone can learn and use magic, Alex. Magic is an inherent part of everything in this world and beyond. Even the beasts can work magic, though they tend to be very, very bad at it, having little concept of abstract thought. I’m sure you could manage a casting if you had to, since you do have some capacity for thought.’
Alex frowned. ‘I think I was just insulted. However, since my capacity for abstract thought is quite low, I’m not sure.’
‘Hit her anyway,’ Ridoch suggested.
‘I have no desire to have a lightning bolt shot up my butt.’
‘See?’ Estaree said. ‘That is a strong indication of higher intelligence. You’ve determined cause and effect based upon a hypothetical situation. If you hit me, you get a lightning bolt up your butt. Excellent use of the brain Arubel gave you and far above many beasts.’
‘Now I feel patronised. I’m giving up while my head is above water.’
‘And Alex’s intelligence is revealed to be near godlike. Not many men know when to give up.’
‘Does that mean,’ Ridoch said, frowning, ‘that women do?’
Three voices replied in unison: ‘Do you really need to ask?’
~~~
Rain hammered down on the hemispherical barrier over the camp, creating splashes of light with each impact which rippled across the magical surface. It was sort of pretty, but the rain was so hard that the pattern was mostly a chaotic mess. Estaree had not been wrong when she said there would be more than ‘a little’ rain.
‘We don’t get storms like this that often around here,’ Alex commented. They were all still awake, though they were lying under their blankets.
‘I feel Clifftop would have washed away by now if you did,’ Eminora said.
‘Maybe. There might be some problems with the gate if the river swells.’
‘I like my weather a little warmer than it gets up here,’ Annamia said. ‘It rains plenty in Godhome, but it tends to be warm rain. And it hardly ever snows, even in winter.’
‘It rained there earlier today,’ Estaree said. ‘This storm is the result of a front sweeping down over the plains and then curving in toward the mountains. It heated up on its way, and then it cooled as it rose toward Godspire. The cooling is why it’s dumping its wrath upon us now.’
‘The opposite of people then. People usually get more wrathful the hotter they get.’
‘And that is why we have spirit magic to manipulate thoughts and emotions rather than using, say, air or fire. The minds of living things don’t follow the rules of the rest of the world. Well, they do, but they tend to do it in as perverse a manner as possible.’
‘Well, I grew up near Elwood,’ Alex said. ‘Sweaty summers, cool springs and autumns, and cold winters. Summer isn’t all that fun in Elwood.’
‘I should probably defend my homeland,’ Eminora said, ‘but since I left to work in Godhome, I do not really have a leg to stand upon. I found the weather in Elwood less than pleasant myself. Godhome is a little more consistent. Though a bad summer in Godhome can get very bad. It gets so hot that it is the opposite of sweaty. All you can really do is sit still, drink water, and make use of any breeze you can find.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Annamia said. ‘I remember a summer like that when I was a kid.’
‘You are making me feel old,’ Eminora grumbled.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?’ Alex asked.
‘One hundred and fifty-nine as of three weeks ago.’
‘Not old for an elgrin. They usually make it past three hundred at least.’
‘We are long-lived. Of course, that applies more to men than women. Childbirth is a major cause of mortality among elgrin. Our hips are too narrow. Our legends say that the first two intelligent mortals were the two primordial elgrin, Norphaliel and Orphelia. I have often thought that, if we had let the humans go first, the gods might have done a better job designing us.’
Estaree burst into a fit of laughter and everyone looked in her direction. ‘Sorry,’ she said when she had mostly calmed down. ‘I found that really funny.’
‘I suppose it is, in a way.’
‘It’s not like the gods are infallible. They make mistakes. And from the way humans are put together, I don’t think all the flaws were worked out of the system when the elgrin were made.’
‘The gods… ’ Ridoch began.
‘I’m sure you’re going to say something about them being perfect, so please don’t. Expecting perfection from anything is delusional.’ Estaree turned and put her head down on the blanket she was using as a pillow. ‘I think I’ll get some sleep. The sound of the rain is rather calming.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Eminora said. ‘Let us all get some sleep. We will be that much more ready to get an early start.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ Alex replied.
‘Enormous fun,’ Estaree said, though her voice was almost too quiet to hear.
23rd of Karntash.
‘Well, that explains the storage problem,’ Eminora said.
The party were standing in what amounted to a cellar. A very, very big cellar. It was not as big as the cavern with the town in it, but it was a hundred feet in height and around a thousand feet in diameter. And they had found three others underneath the town. Of course, they were entirely empty.
‘You found these pretty easily, Estaree,’ Alex said.
‘Eminora wanted to know about storage. I looked for anywhere they could have stored things. Easy enough when you know the parameters you’re looking for.’
‘If you’re a magical genius.’
‘Obviously.’
Eminora was making notes in her book. ‘I am not sure how much you could actually store in these places. I would imagine you could supply the town above for some time if you had to. Getting things down here is another matter.’
To get to the storage areas, you had to know which building to go into. Then you had to open a hatch in the floor of one of the rooms there, and then you had to walk down ten flights of stone steps. Though one could assume that the residents knew the route, anything bulky would have been a complete horror to move up or down.
‘Not really,’ Estaree replied. ‘Give it a little thought and I’m sure it’ll become obvious.’
The elgrin frowned and pursed her lips. ‘You could just– Gates! They used gates.’
‘Sorry, there’s no prize other than illumination.’
‘Of course. Yes, they would simply create gates into these rooms to move things around. If they had the magic to build this place, they would most certainly be able to create any gate they needed to supply it and transport goods up to the town. I would imagine that it was rare for anyone to come and go the way we are doing. They would probably have created gates out to other locations in the world and travelled that way.’
‘Why don’t we do things like that ourselves?’ Ridoch asked. ‘It sounds like it would be a godsend to merchants.’
‘Creating large gates is not easy, especially over extended distances. It requires skilled magic workers who charge a premium for the service. Here, they seem to have had a surfeit of skilled magic workers, so it would not have been an issue. Or they had divine assistance, which would make it even easier.’
‘Hm. So, this is my theory, and you can take it under consideration or not, but I think this place was some sort of safe haven. A refuge. A place the old gods could keep some number of mortals safe while they planned to defeat whatever was outside.’
Once again, Eminora pursed her lips in thought. ‘That would suggest they had advanced warning of the demons. They knew the God War was coming before it happened and planned ahead in case of disaster.’
‘Ogran,’ Estaree said.
‘The god of mysteries? Ah, yes. The knower of secret knowledge. It is said that all prophecy comes from Ogran. Perhaps he could have known of the demons before they came. Yes, yes. Your theory does hold water, Ridoch. It is certainly as good as any hypothesis we have.’
‘But why would they make this their base of operations?’ Annamia said. ‘The demons could never enter Godspire, so why not work from there? I mean, putting a refuge here makes sense. It’s near Godspire and well hidden. But I’m not sure why they would have some sort of meeting room here.’
‘The old gods were always more tied to Arubel and the other celestial bodies than the Twelve,’ Eminora said. ‘Perhaps they felt it more appropriate. Or it was a later addition. They made it after the Twelve cast them out of Godspire.’ She looked toward Estaree.
‘What?’ Estaree asked.
‘Well, you keep coming up with clever solutions whenever we get stuck, so…’
‘I can’t think of everything. Do you think I’m a goddess or something? Even if I was, I wouldn’t have the answer to everything.’
‘Oh, well, perhaps. But you would probably know what order this place was built in.’
Estaree grinned. ‘Now there you have me. I probably would. What else are we going to look for down here?’
‘Look for? Nothing specific. Unless something comes up that raises a question. We will sample a few more buildings, make sure my map notes are correct, measure the Chamber of the Gods, and that should be it.’
Annamia sagged. ‘That means we’re going back up. Ten flights of stairs.’
‘You’re an adventurer as well as a priestess,’ Alex said. ‘Ten flights of stairs shouldn’t be a problem.’
‘Tell me that again after you start wearing a dress.’
~~~
Estaree was looking at the statue of Mysara again. When she noticed Alex looking at her, she flashed him a smile and turned away. There was a lot of statue contemplation going on, so it was not that unusual that Estaree should be paying attention to one. And Mysara was the goddess of magic. That kind of made her Estaree’s patron deity. Except that Estaree did not seem to think of the gods that way…
‘There are statues of Arubel in the temple at Godhome,’ Annamia was saying, ‘but they don’t have the detail this one does. They’re a little variable too.’
‘This was taken from life, perhaps,’ Ridoch said.
‘Or made by the woman herself,’ Alex said. ‘They’re all very detailed, except for that one. You have to wonder what happened to that one.’
The statue in question was humanoid, certainly. It was a perfectly proportioned male figure. The features, however, were indistinct, smoothed out. Actually, it was stranger than that. It was almost as though there was a distinct, sharply defined face there, but you were looking at it through frosted glass. You got the impression that, if you somehow managed to catch the statue by surprise, you might just see what its subject looked like.
‘That one will be Ogran,’ Eminora said. ‘One of his mysteries is supposed to be what he really looks like. It seems that even his statue here reflects that. And we may be looking at the only representation of him anywhere in the world.’
‘I don’t know that much about Ogran,’ Alex said.
‘Well, you and everyone else. Ogran is the mysterious wandering star which brightens and dims in the sky over the course of ten years. At its dimmest it is all but invisible. There are other worlds circling Rosh, like Arubel. Unlike Arubel, they are all barren, or so we are told. Ogran, however, is not like those and appears to be more like Rosh. Another sun, yet far dimmer. None of the gods, especially Ogran, will tell us more, however, and Ogran’s mysteries remain as shrouded as his face.’
‘Annoying bastard,’ Estaree muttered.
‘Shouldn’t Orealis know?’ Annamia asked. Estaree made a small snorting sound and began carefully examining a statue of Coriansi. Annamia ignored her. ‘He’s the god of knowledge and he’s supposed to be Ogran’s son.’
‘If he does know,’ Eminora replied, ‘he has never said anything. Unless he has told his followers and they maintain the secret.’
‘Hm.’
‘What about Ogran?’ Alex asked. ‘Doesn’t he have followers?’
‘He has people who say they follow him,’ Eminora said, ‘but no official church. Once in a while someone claims to have received a revelation from Ogran. Usually when he is at his brightest in the sky. If it happens to be something good, they might attract a following for a while, but none of the gods have ever acknowledged one of those prophets as a real follower of Ogran, let alone a priest.’
‘Madmen and con men, most of them,’ Estaree said. She was louder this time.
‘Almost certainly true. However, unless we hear from Ogran or one of the other gods, we will probably never know much about that enigmatic deity. And his statue appears to reflect that. It is quite fascinating. Really quite fascinating.’
