afraid of what might happen or feel happy that I was still alive.
I glanced sideways at the bodies of the unfortunate men (which did nothing to raise my spirits or inspire me with optimism). Eventually I plucked up my courage, consigned the world and its mother to the Nameless One, and went dashing through the middle of the hall without even a glance at the dead bodies. I flew off to the side to avoid a patch creeping up silently from behind me, and performed a mind-boggling somersault as I tried to avoid three patches that were advancing on me at once. The shadow stretching across the floor was only five paces away now, and I was just figuring out how to move on from there, when … When I finally I failed to spot one patch of “sunlight” and stepped on it with the very edge of the sole of my boot.
To say that I was on a safe island in a single heartbeat is to say nothing at all. What heartbeat, may a h’san’kor take me. It was five, ten, a hundred times faster than that!
The crossbow jumped into my hands of its own accord, the pain from the copper bracelet started smarting really badly, but I never even thought of taking off the dark elves’ amulet. It was my only defense now, the only thing that could save me from the guards watching over the remains of the dead lying in this hall. The patches of light all over the floor stopped moving, and then little golden sparks started appearing above the patch that I’d stepped into so clumsily. First one, then a dozen, then a hundred …
The sparks appeared, hanging in the air, flashed for an instant with a blinding golden light, and then started to pulse in time with the beating of my heart! There were more and more of them, until I could already make out a vague silhouette. An instant later and there standing in front of me was a creature of gleaming gold, made up of millions of tiny little sparks.
A Kaiyu.
One of the elves’ greatest myths, one of the orcs’ greatest horrors.
Two thousand years earlier, when the elves went for the orcs’ throats in the Palaces of Bone and the blood of the feuding relatives flowed like a river in the burial chambers, something happened that should never have happened.
The orcs took their revenge by despoiling the graves of the elves, and they chose the graves of only the very noblest houses of the Black Forest, scattering the remains of the dead across the halls and leaving their bones to be mocked by the darkness. The Firstborn attacked the thing that was most important to any elf—the honor of his house and the memory of his ancestors. The elves tried to fight back by leaving guards beside the graves, they set traps and whispered spells.… But there’s an effective response to every attack, every guard gets tired sometimes, any trap can be disarmed, and any spell can be overcome with another spell.
The despoliation of the burial sites continued, and then one of the elfin houses decided to summon these Kaiyu from another world to defend the graves against violation by the Firstborn. What happened after that can be read in the legends that the orcs and the elves tell on especially dark nights. But none of the Firstborn ever dared to ravage the elfin tombs again.
And there, standing just five yards away from me, was one of these incorruptible, blind guards who couldn’t be killed. The Kaiyu seemed to be made of thousands of glittering sparks. It was impossible to look at the creature for long—the bright golden gleam made my eyes start to water, and the figure of the soulless guard blurred and trembled like a mirage at noon on a hot summer day. I could only make out the silhouette.
The creature was a head taller than me. Two arms, two legs, a head. No tails or horns or teeth. How could this creature have teeth? It didn’t even have a mouth! And where the eyes ought to have been there were two empty, gaping holes. The creature was completely blind.
Well now, blind or not, it seemed to have a very definite and accurate idea of where I was. At least, it came toward me, and without hurrying, as if it was quite confident that I couldn’t get away from it.
I panicked and shot a bolt at it. It flew through the creature’s body without causing any damage and clattered against the far wall in the darkness. The beast was suddenly only one pace away from me and it raised its hand. I roared in fright, realizing that this was the end, but the Kaiyu’s hand simply swept through the air beside my ear and the guard moved past me and stopped, giving me a good view of its back.
I don’t know which of us was more surprised. The Kaiyu stood there for a brief moment, obviously trying to figure out why I was still alive, and then it had another try. With the same result. As if some force had erected a barrier between us. The guard could see me (strange as that may sound), but he couldn’t harm me. Thanks to Egrassa and his bracelet.
Meanwhile the Kaiyu stepped on the nearest patch of light and the sparks making up his body showered down onto the floor in a golden rain. All the patches in the hall started moving again. What was I to make of that? Did it mean they had decided to let me go?
The bracelet was scorching my arm more and more painfully, and the moment was rapidly approaching when the pain would become so unbearable, I would have to take it off (if I wasn’t going to lose consciousness). I had to risk it and try to reach the way out before it was too late.
Taking no more notice of the patches of light, I set out toward the exit. As soon as my foot touched the first patch, another Kaiyu appeared. This time the golden sparks assembled into the body of the guard a lot faster. But the beast didn’t even try to attack me. I stepped on another patch, and then another.…
Not every patch threw up a Kaiyu; if that had happened, the entire hall would have been crowded with them. Five guards appeared, formed up into a semicircle, and followed me. A fantastically beautiful and at the same time terrifying sight.
The five golden creatures “looked” in my direction, then crumbled into a shower of sparks that were drawn into a patch of “sunlight,” disappeared for a fraction of a second, and then reappeared, but now outside the patch that I had just stepped on. And we walked across the hall like that.
Once I left the hall the Kaiyu stopped following me. The patches on the floor started moving about and waiting for their next visitor, who would arrive in darkness only knew how many hundreds of years. The pain in my arm gradually eased as the amulet protecting me relaxed and became a perfectly ordinary copper bracelet again.
I had passed through the Kaiyu Hall and lived. That was worth celebrating, which was exactly what I did straightaway. Of course, instead of wine I had to make do with ordinary water from a subterranean river, and instead of quail I had to chew on half a dry biscuit.
Forty paces farther on, the first side tunnel appeared, and I started counting the intersections to make sure I wouldn’t miss the turn I needed. At the eighteenth intersection I stopped and turned to the right, leaving the central vestibule.
Up ahead of me the vestibule led to a stairway down to the sixth level, and I was absolutely certain that was the way Lafresa and the rest of Balistan Pargaid’s men had gone. I was going to be more cunning and turn off the main highway. There were many routes leading to the sixth level, and the one mentioned in the verse riddle was a lot shorter than the route chosen by the Master’s woman servant.
I would reduce the distance by three quarters and go straight to the very heart of the sector I needed on the sixth level, while dearest Lafresa would have to tramp across the sixth level from its very beginning and lose almost two whole days. That would leave me well ahead of my rivals. And what if I managed to prepare for the encounter and take back the Key? Almost all (or perhaps all) of Lafresa’s companions had been killed in the Palaces of Bone, and my chances of victory had improved enormously. The important thing was to keep enough lights and food for the journey back.
I spotted the statues of the giants “whose gaze burns all to ash” immediately. They were standing facing each other, clutching stone hammers in their gnarled, knotty hands.
The giants had an air of antiquity and hidden menace. Whose chisel could have carved these huge colossi out of stone? How had they been brought down to this depth and what for? Instead of faces the statues had the smooth surfaces of closed helmets with tall crests and narrow eye-slits. Both of them were looking down at the ground in front of their feet. Between them there was something that looked like a pool or a basin, but from where I was I couldn’t see any water.
’Neath the gaze of Giants who burn all to ash,
To the graves of the Great Ones who died in battle …
Perhaps that “basin” was the way down to the Sector of Heroes on the sixth level? That was exactly where I needed to go, but that phrase about the apparent ease with which the giants’ gaze reduced anyone who came too close to ashes made me feel a bit cautious.
Once I was in the hall, I didn’t try to hurry; I leaned back against the wall and started looking for the answer.
