The Book of the Burning

The entry into the labyrinth was a small roofless room with a path to the left and to the right, both leading into darkness, and Anson let the light dim, saying, “My arm is just a little bit tired.”

“Well, then let it rest for a while,” Ohean placed a hand on his shoulder. “Just a moment. Just one more moment with that light.”

Anson nodded, looking at Ohean, and as the light of Callasyl dimmed they saw, traced on the wall, the circular pattern of the labyrinth, and at its center was the pattern of a long key.

“They Key,” Conn murmured

“It would be beautiful,” Mehta said, “if we were only here for the sights.”

“This is a bad business,” Theone murmured as they stepped into the maze.

“If we have made it this far,” Conn said, sounding more cheerful than he felt, “there is no reason we cannot complete this.”      

Anson nodded to this, and clapped the Blue Priest on his shoulder.

Just then there came through the earth above them a sound, long and low, and they all stopped, and Theone trembled a little and touched Mehta.

“That is Durgenhorn,” Ohean spoke. “It is another reason we should complete this as soon as possible.”

“It means we’ve been caught,” Theone told Mehta. “It means they know we’re here.”

“But where to go, where to go?” Mehta was murmuring.

“Ohean,” Conn said, strokingh is chin, “That Key.”

Ohean nodded distractedly. His hand was in his shirt, feeling the heavy cord that held the long key always hanging about his neck.

“Ohean,” Anson murmured.

Anson was walking forward, and he put his key to the larger key print in the wall.

“What’s he doing?” Mehta whispered to Theone.

She shrugged and said, “I don’t think even he knows. But he knows he has to do it.”

“He is doing,” Conn said, almost impatiently, “exactly what I thought he should be doing when I saw that key pattern.”

Gently, Ohean touched Conn’s cheek while still moving the key about, and gently Anson touched Ohean’s hand.

Once again, high above, filling the whole dark place, came the sound of the Durgenhorn, and at that, there was also a click.

And then past them, to the right, they saw a light.

Ohean moved away from the labyrinth on the wall, and toward the light, which was a torch in the passage to the right.

“I think I’ve done it, friends,” he said. “Anson, douse your light for good now.”

Anson obeyed and followed him. Then Theone and Mehta.

All down this path were little burning torches, and they disappeared down another hall.

“Is this magic?” Mehta wondered, looking at the little flickering golden flame in the wall sconce beside her.

“Yes,” Ohean said. “Magic and the gift of the Gods. This place has been waiting for us all this time. It called to me.”

“And I bet if we follow these lights,” Anson said, already disappearing down the hall, “they will take us straight to the Stones”

All of them were already halfway down the hall when Mehta said, “How do we know, though?”

Theone looked back at her, for the first time, smiling, and said, “We know by following.”

As they traveled the corridors of the labyrinth, the light grew brighter and Theone murmured, “Who knew?”

“She is here,” Ohean murmured.

“Who is here?” Conn whispered.

“The Goddess,” Mehta answered. “Elladyl herself.”

Ohean declared, “She is here, helping us. Even down here, where they thought to remove the Stone from Her and the people to whom she gave it, She is here.”           

They traveled through the turning paths with lighter hearts now, and now and again there were black paths that shot off into other directions.

 “And now I should turn around,” Ohean said.

“What?” said Anson.

Theone, walking ahead of them, heard and said, “Whaddo you mean you should turn around?”

“They are upon us,” Ohean said. “Phineas knows where the Stone is, and he is on his way. The gates have been opened, and he is already coming down the passes. The way we entered is not a way by which we can return.”

“What are you going to do?” Mehta demanded.

“You’re going to fight him!” Conn said. “Well, then I’m coming with you.”

“We all are,” Theone declared.

“You are not,” Ohean said, already going down the hall, back to the entrance of the labyrinth, followed by Anson.

“Ohean!” Theone’s voice rang off the wall.

“You need to retrieve the Stone,” Ohean said, “And Conn, they need a mage with them.”

“Get the Stone!” Anson shouted, and they were gone.

Conn, Theone and Mehta stood in the light passageway looking into the darkness where Anson and Ohean had run.

“Great,” Mehta murmured.

And then Conn began to laugh.

The women looked at him.

He remembered it all now, remembered being under the earth with Theone and Mehta, not as a simple dream, but as something done long ago. He just kept laughing.

“Let’s go,” he said, heading down the lit path.

Again the Durgenhorn sounded, shaking the walls and filling the air under the earth.

“Let’s go,” Conn repeated. “It’s the only thing we can do.”

The moment they were carried over the steps and through the Temple doors, Rendan tightened his body because he felt his bowels melt. No matter what he said about this place, he had hoped never to enter it. And it was already night, and what had happened to his father? How had these men entered the palace? Only now, as he and Ethan were pulled through the darkness of the great hall, did he wonder what would happen to him.

And it was a great hall. Black as it was, Rendan could tell this. Originally he struggled manfully until he saw that Ethan wasn’t actually making much of a struggle at all, and he still managed to look dignified. Rendan calmed himself and looked toward his friend, but Ethan could not see him, but Rendan could barely see anyone in this space of scarcely lit darkness either.

“Not through the Curtain,” voices murmured. “Not through the Curtain.”

And the voice that was Urzad’s murmured something, and then another one said, “There must be another way.”

But suddenly Phineas’s voice barked out: “Bring them through the Curtain!”

With an instinctive dread, Rendan dug his heels into the floor and was hit in the back of the neck for his troubles. Pain flooded his skull, and the Hand who had hit him growled, “Through the Curtain with you.”

And then they were being dragged across the large stone flags of the temple floor, and Durgenhorn was shaking the Temple, and just then there was a great splitting, and then, for one small second, Rendan saw everything, saw the great height of this temple, saw, intricate paintings of a strong jawed king and soldiers marching up and down a mountain, a knife to a throat, and blood pouring down, roiling like rivers, and then there was a great, high, open curtain, hanging higher than city walls, all shot with silver and encrusted with jewels like stars. Then it was gone, and they were in darkness and Rendan, still dazed, blinking at purple stars, was pulled through.

“The Dreams are terrible,” Kenneth said.

Dissenbark had gotten up and made tea. They all sat in the kitchen with only the light of a single lamp for company and she said, “It’s like you can’t stop screaming.”

Shaking her head she added, “I’ve never known anything like that bad.”

“This time I dreamed long enough to come through the Curtain.

“When I had to come through, there was a sign I had to make to the one who brought me through. He was all in black. He whispered something to me. I couldn’t remember. And then he took off all my clothes.”

Arvad lowered his eyes and turned away, not understanding his discomfort, but Birch nodded, seriously.

“And here, it gets worse. It gets stranger. This is why I…” He put his fingers to his eyes, “couldn’t take it.

“There was a woman. Like my mother. She had pretty gold hair like my mother. And… they stripped her. She was terrified. She hadn’t expected it. And then the man who had me… He killed her. There was so much blood, and I remember this horn. The horn was just playing on and on. Dull, roaring, and they must have put the blood in a cup. Or… in a something. Because they were spilling it all over me. It was so hot, and so sticky. And the smell… And I kept thinking it was mine. I just felt like I was blood, nothing but blood. So much of it, and I… I could hear her die.

“And as she died the man who had me was telling me. ‘Now thou hast been born out of blood.’ He… rinsed me. The water was hot, but I could not get that smell off of me. And… something was dead in me then. I felt so dead.”

Kenneth stopped talking.

“That’s not in the dream,” he said. “That’s me remembering. Now I can remember. How I felt. Dead. And I couldn’t get rid of the smell. And… he was saying, ‘Now you have no name.’ And that’s when I lost my memory. The first time. And became whatever I was before Birch and Yarrow found me.”

The whole time Kenneth spoke, Dissenbark was looking at his right wrist and now she said.

“Kenneth, I think that what you were before Yarrow found you was a Black Star. A Hand.”

“Well, well, well,” Phineas murmured. “Urzad, love. You, Corajan. Uzul. Leave Prince Ethan in the loving care of the Guard. He is for later. It is you I want,” Phineas fixed his eyes on Rendan.

As they dragged Rendan up the small steps, the prince tried to regain his bearing. They slammed him down on a cold table of worn black rock, and he blinked a little as the roar of the Durgenhorn went up again. This room was lit, and it was empty. There were three stone walls and the curtain ahead of him. He’d thought something important would be here.

And then he understood. As he was being tied to the table he realized there was something important here. This was no table. This was an altar. He was a sacrifice.

He chuckled a little, blinking as Phineas drew from his dark robes a shining, crescent shaped knife. Phineas was chatting in a low conversational voice.

“Sacrifice has fallen out of favor. Especially in the southern lands where they think they know so much, are so sophisticated. They talk of the sacrifice of your life, or of love. Hum…. Or, take here, now and again the occasional cow or chicken. I’ve even heard at the Temple of Banthra a tiger was offered up, which makes no sense seeing as Bantha is a tiger himself. I find that most confusing.”

As he spoke, the knife had disappeared, but the whole time there was the scrape, scrape, scratch of Phineas sharpening the blade and now, so heavy it made Rendan cough, came the old familiar incense. Every time he’d heard the horn and smelled the incense, had they been killing people?

“But no,” Phineas continued. “No, no. Of old it was known. It has always been known that the true sacrifice, the one of effect is blood, and royal blood at that.”

Ethan screamed, and Rendan heard the scream end as quickly as it had started. Rendan felt pleasantly calm, unwilling to make a show of himself. He was tightly bound to the altar. He knew that now. He was testing his bonds.

“My Temple has fallen on hard times,” Phineas explained. “There are those who would take from it the precious gift placed in the hands of the Lord who rules this House.”

The long blade came out. It was lain across Rendan’s throat, and it was needle sharp.

Phineas shook his head.

“I can’t let that happen. Even now there are men on their way down to find the traitors, but there is one more magic which will make sure they never leave, that this Stone never leaves, and it is your blood, your highness, and I will spill it,” Rendan felt the first cut on his neck.

“I will spill it,” the sorcerer said. “Right now.”

But, like so many villains in so many stories, he had talked too long, in love with his infamy, and as he raised the knife, a voice, sharp and unwilling to be disobeyed, shouted:

“Do not touch the lad!”

The chamber where they stayed was lit red. Everything was red lit, and Orem never understood exactly where they were, but he had spent all day pouring over the maps of the Temple and the Underpasses, and he had been going through the books of lore Yarrow had brought with her.

Up and down one end of the room, the Elder called Allman paced, hands behind his back, and Orem wished they’d left him behind. The one called Skabelund sat, quiet enough, knees clasped, hands clasped, staring ahead of him. This young boy, though, this Prophet of theirs, Orem could get used to. He and his mother and his little girlfriend had been going over the maps, speaking back and forth to each other about what they might do, what would not work, what seemed plainly foolish.

Yarrow was sitting on a bed across the room, and though the enchantress had said nothing, Orem suspected there was something she wanted from him.

And then he put his hand to his mouth, shook it and turned his head again.

“What?” Yarrow said, sitting up.

“I’m not sure,” Orem told her. “Let me… let me check. Aimee, may I see the atlas.”

Dahlan’s mother nodded and handed the large book of maps to Orem. Turning back large pages, he frowned then, at last, lifted his head again and rising, demanded. “Where’s my coat? Where’s my sword?”

“Swords!” Dahlan leapt up as if he was preparing to fight but, nonplussed, Sariah pulled him back down.

“Orem?” Yarrow said, gathering up her own cloak.

“We gotta go after them,” he said, heading out the door as Yarrow found his coat. “We’ve got to get them. Right now!”

Mehta gave a little shout, catching at Theone’s cloak.

They’d reached the end of the pathway, and by the dim glow of the last light, Conn, behind them both, could see a great shape, a sleeping form, and he pushed through them.

“We have to,” Connleth Aragarath said. “It’s why we’re here.”

But the shape did not move and now Conn wished he had his Ohean’s power to call light out of darkness, but all he could do was reach and touch.

“It is stone,” Conn said. “It isn’t real.”

He went further into the darkness and he felt cold, rough rock carved into patterns of fur, carved into a thigh, carved into a great torso, he felt all around it.  a recumbant body, and now he felt up it.

“I’ll get a light from out there,” Mehta’s voice sounded. It was close and muffled so Conn knew they were in a restricted space.

He had already felt around the body and there again, above them, through them, came the Durgenhorn.

The room was filled with a quiet warm light, and then Mehta was handing it to him, saying, “I didn’t know if it would come off the wall or not. But it came so simply.”

“I feel like two things are fighting in this place,” Theone murmured. “The Lady whose stone this is, and the one to whom it has been given.” She had taken the torch from Conn, and by it she saw a long figure, with the body of a man, but no man, larger than a man, and she and Conn climbed up, almost waiting for it to come alive.

Over him they stared. The face had a mane like a lion’s and the nose was a lion’s, but the horns were those of a bull, and as Theone stared into it, the Durgenhorn blew again and shook her to her center.

“The Stone,” Conn murmured.

Theone looked down. In the hands of the monster, clutched tightly, was a black stone, and Theone said, “It can’t be it. That can’t be.”

“But nothing else can be,” Connleth Aragarath told her, and he put his hand on the cold rock, preparing to move it.

“It’s fast,” he said, shaking it again. “It’s fast.”

And then, just then, Theone knelt across the large stone chest and said, “Release. Or I will break those fingers.”

And like that, like flower petals, the granite hands opened, and Theone took the stone.

At once it began to be warm in her hands. She gasped from surprise, but not pain. She opened her hands, and there was a faint blue light, and then it was growing clearer and clearer, and now Mehta gasped as her torch went out and then the Stone was brighter still, white now and as they gasped at the wonder they felt the horn again. Mehta climbed up onto the belly of Mozhudak, for surely this was a statue of that creature, to join them.

This time the horn did not stop, the shaking did not stop, and then Connleth Aragarath, whose face was blue white in the light. went completely white and he said: “It’s not the horn… It’s not the horn.”