Dawn came. Rik marched along with the others. He clutched his rifle and looked out at the lake. In the early morning light there was something about it that made him deeply uneasy; a suggestion of oiliness about the water and stillness and…watchfulness.
He felt like at any moment something might emerge from the depths and attack them, something ancient, evil and inhuman. It was all too easy to imagine strange shapes swimming around through the ruins of those submerged buildings. He told himself that they were too far from the ocean for the squid-like Quan ever to have had a presence here.
He had always feared them more than any other species of demon. There had been one priest at the orphanage, an ex-sailor who had terrified all the children with tales of massive tentacled shapes rising from the moon-lit sea. Those stories had stuck in Rik’s mind.
Foragers moved in dispersed formation all along the slope leading to the mine entrance. They were taking no chance of missing anything or of being easy prey to anybody who might start sniping at them. He wished he had been one of the forty men who had been chosen to remain at the mansion with Corporal Toby and the wyrms but Sardec had ensured he was not. That seemed to be the way of things these days. Come to think of it, it always had.
“Look at that,” said Weasel. Rik followed the direction of his nod. A half-tumbled column lay in the water. Its sides were smooth and covered in strange runes. Some of them suggested heads with masses of tentacles emerging from them, others webs, other spiders. The column was chipped and weather worn. If you looked closely there were others like it visible just beneath the surface of the waters.
Rik wondered what had once been here; a temple of some sorts to the old gods perhaps, to Uran Ultar himself. The material looked like no stone he had ever seen. It was smooth and shiny almost like glass or perhaps the carapace of some large beetle. Just looking at it made him nervous. Those runes seemed to have a hungry life of their own. He told himself it was just his imagination, but couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.
“That’s Elder World work,” said Leon. Superstitious fear was evident in his voice. Rik nodded and shuffled uneasily upslope. He had no desire to get any closer to those columns than where he was now. They were things from the dark ages before the coming of the Terrarchs. Some of them were older than the human race. Often in the bad old days, such relics had been places of sacrifice.
“Excellent,” Rik said. “Dark wizards, Zarahel the Prophet and now Elder World runes. Why do I feel there is some connection?”
“Maybe it’s just coincidence,” said Leon.
“Let us hope so.”
“I don’t like this at all,” said Leon, rolling the unlit pipe to the far corner of his mouth and making an odd whistling noise through it. His huge eyes stood out in his thin features. Fear was etched there. Master Severin looked at them. He did not seem quite fully recovered from last night. There was a weariness and languidness about him that they had not noticed before. It was as if the magic he had unleashed had drained the strength from him.
“What have you found?” Severin asked. Haughty contempt was evident in every word. Weasel gestured towards the column where it lay in the waters. Rik guessed the scum on its side made it invisible from no great distance. Severin's shining mask reflected the murky water.
“Ultari obelisk,” he said. A thoughtful smile spread across his face. He looked more like a dreamy scholar than a Terrarch officer. “A small one.”
“Ultari, sir?” said Leon.
“One of the Elder Races. The Book of Iskarus claims they were all but exterminated by the Serpent Men in the Dark Millennia and that only decadent remnants survived into this age of the world. Those were wiped out during the Conquest along with the humans foolish enough to worship them. They used humans as food, you know.” The wizard glanced up at them, and then seemed to realise who he had been talking to and clamped his mouth firmly shut. He turned on his heel and gestured for them to move on. The guide paused for a minute, made some sort of obeisance before the column and moved on.
“See that?” said Leon as they moved on. “Looks like the hill-man worships the Old Gods.”
Rik thought it not unlikely. The Terrarch faith had never really taken root up here from what he had heard. Many still followed the old ways. He wondered at the way the mage had spoken. There was so much the Terrarchs kept to themselves. Of course, that was just one of the ways they preserved their power. He felt put down though, as if the wizard had been deliberately showing off the knowledge he had, and they did not.
Ahead of him now he could see the entrance to the mine. It yawned, dark as the mouth of hell in the cold mountainside. Lieutenant Sardec waited there impatiently with the rest of the troops; as ever his gaze seemed fixed on Rik.
Chapter Six
Rik looked through the archway. The tunnel led down into darkness. A strange fusty smell came from it, a mingling of rotten wood, dampness and something else. There were signs that someone had been here recently. He did not need to be able to track as well as Weasel to see that. The prints were there for everyone to see. Almost new wooden props held up the ceiling. Wooden buckets were stacked near the entrance. Here and there lay the hafts of old pickaxes. The heads had been too valuable to leave.
“This looks new,” said Sergeant Hef. He came from Agaline, to the west of the Realm, rough hill country famous for its mines. He had dug coal before he had gone for a soldier. Claimed he was grateful for the Queen’s crown every day it kept him above ground. Rik suspected he was not joking either.
“Somebody went down there,” said Weasel.
“Why?” said Sardec. “What’s down there?”
His eye was fixed on the hill-man. The guide shrugged. “The wizard ordered it dug. It’s haunted.”
There was real fear written on his face, and audible in his voice. “By what?” Sardec asked.
“Ghosts?” suggested Weasel.
“By something. Something that killed miners in the dark. Some said it was a demon. That’s why we started using slaves.”
“And yet this wizard and his friend the Prophet came here. Recently, by the looks of it.”
“Sounds about the right place for them, sir,” said Weasel. “Maybe they came to bind the demons.”
“I suggest you leave the magic to Master Severin.”
“Gladly, sir.”
Sardec smiled sourly. “Do you have any ideas, Master Severin?”
The wizard cocked his head to one side. “There is something very odd here. Spells have been cast deep within this mine. Magic of a type I am not familiar with. And there’s something else at work here, something very subtle. It made my spell go awry last night.”
Sardec’s cold smile widened, as if he thought the wizard was making excuses. “Vosh, anything to add?”
“The wizard, the dark wizard, ordered the mine dug here. Our people would not have done it, but they were afraid of him and what he might do. He kept them digging, down into the dark. They opened up old ways. Then he just ordered them to stop. It seemed like he had found what he was looking for. The prisoners were sent down and never came back up. No one ever saw them again. After that the wizard spent many a day down there. Sometimes the Prophet went with him.”
Rik listened carefully. He thought he heard strange groaning sounds deep within the mine. He was not the only one. Sardec looked up.
“It’s just the earth settling and props creaking,” Sergeant Hef said. “Nothing to worry about. Not much.”
Sardec looked troubled, Rik thought. His eyes were fixed on the mine and the low ceiling once more. Rik just knew he was thinking about sending the whole bunch of them down into the dark. He seemed to read Rik’s mind. He looked back at them and swiftly chose ten of them to accompany him. Sergeant Hef was to remain on the surface and stop anybody getting away that might slip by them.
