He started off down the tunnel, with me, Maram, Liljana and Kane close behind. The dark tube of rock seemed empty even of rats. We walked quiedy, but the scrape of our boots echoed off the bare rocks. After a while we came to a place where another tunnel joined ours. Daj told us that he thought it led to another sanctuary somewhere on the seventh level. Or perhaps, he said, it gave out onto the passage that led to Morjin's Porch on Skartaru's east face. Along that way was to be found Morjin's Stairs, which led down to Argattha's lower levels and the secret escape tunnels there that Morjin still kept open.
'Do you know these tunnels?' I asked him.
'Well, I know about them,' Daj said. 'But I was never able to find out where they were.'
We walked on for another two hundred yards and came across two more of these adjoining tunnels. And then, after turning left, toward the east, our tunnel ended abruptly in what seemed a wall of solid rock.
'He's sealed it off!' Maram whispered when he saw this. 'We're trapped!'
I smiled as I brought my sword up dose to the wall to reveal the cracks running through it, outlining a door – the door that must open onto Morjin's private chambers. I pressed my ear to the cold rock and listened for any sounds from the room beyond it
'What do you hear?' Maram whispered, pressing close.
'Only your breath in my ear. Now be quiet.'
I continued listening for a murmur of voices, the slap of boots against stone, silverware clacking against a plate – for anything at all. But the rock was as quiet as a skull. The only sound I heard was the drumming of my heart up through my ear.
'All right,' I said, turning back to look at liljana and Kane. 'Is everyone ready?'
Both of them had their swords drawn, as did Maram and I. I gripped Alkaladur's hilt more tightly as I faced the door and said, 'Memoriar Damoom!'
There came a clicking from within the rock of the door. I placed my hand on the edge of it; it felt wet as from dripping water, but I realized that it was only my sweat.
Slowly, I pushed against the door. It opened directly into a cloth that I discovered to be another tapestry. I squeezed out from behind its clinging folds and stepped into a well-lit room.
'This is it,' Daj said, joining me there. 'Lord's Morjin's room.'
I knew that it was. All at once, a sickly-sweet odor as of incense mixed with decay made my stomach chum. As the others moved out from behind the tapestry and then pushed the door shut. I looked out at a large, richly furnished room. Intricate tapestries, like the one hiding the door behind us, completely covered the room's four walls so that not a square inch of bare rock remained exposed to remind Morjin that he had chosen to live inside a mountain. We stood with our backs to the room's west wall. To our left, along the north wall, was a heavy bronze door cast with roses and other flowers – the door to the rest of Morjin's palace. Straight ahead stood another door, like in size, but it showed a great, spreading tree beneath a bronze sun.
Daj said that it opened upon the passage that led to the throne room.
Before starting toward this door, I quickly took in the room's other features. Above the great bed along the south wall was hung a blue-black canopy embroidered with thousands of tiny diamonds. These were set in the patterns of the constellations' stars. On either side of the bed were gilded chests and wardrobes; three long mirrors, framed in ornate gold, were set into the east north and west walls. The ceiling was a chessboard of white and black wood squares, while the floor was covered with a single carpet woven with the shapes of knights on horses, winged lions and ferocious beasts. As before, when Morjin had brought me to this room through the doorway of nightmare and illusion, I looked down to sec that I was standing on the head of a fire-breathing dragon. 'Look, Val!' Maram whispered to me as he nudged my side. 'That's a touchstone, isn't it!'
I turned to see him pointing at a massive desk on which many books lay open.
There, too, set out as if Morjin had been studying them, were warders, wish stones, dragon bones and other lesser gelstei. I saw three precious music marbles as well as a sleep stone, with its many swirling colors that looked something like a fire agate.
Maram took a step straight toward the desk, perhaps intending to touch or take one of these treasures. But i grabbed his elbow and said, 'We don't have time for this.'
Kane, moving quickly, swept up a few bloodstones glowing with a dreadful red light and pocketed them. Then he pointed his sword at a large stand next to the desk. He snarled out, 'So, we have time for this, then.'
I saw that the stand, which looked something like a brazier, held six large eggs thrice the size of an eagle's. Before I could stop him, Kane crossed the room and thrust his sword straight through one of the eggs, breaking open the leathery shell. Five more times he thntst out and when he was done, the steel of his sword dripped with a thick, blood-orange yolk. Thus did he destroy the eggs of Angraboda, one of the dragons that Morjin had summoned here from Damoom.
'But there were seven eggs!' Daj whispered as he crossed the room to where Kane stood snarling down at the broken, oozing mass of shells.
'Seven, eh? Are you sure?'
Daj nodded his head, looking about the room, as did Kane. He stalked across it to wipe his sword contemptuously on the silk coverings of Morjin's bed.
'Kane, there's no time!' I said, making for the door with the great tree. 'We've got to go!'
'You go,' he said, casting his eyes about the room. 'This is a rare chance.'
'To destroy an egg?'
'Yes, that,' he said, stabbing his sword into one of the bed's feather pillows. 'And to destroy Morjin.'
Now he looked at the door on the north wall that led to the rest of the palace; he gazed fiercely at the tapestry covering the door by which we had entered the room.
And then he said, 'So, I'll wait here for him. And when he comes, I'll send him back to the stars.'
Liljana, who had a cooler head than mine, went over to him and touched his sword arm. 'You might wait days then. And what are we to do while you wait to make this murder?'
'Complete your quest.'
'But what if we need your help?'
'You won't,' he snapped. Then his savage gaze fell upon her. 'I know that you want him dead almost as badly as I do.'
'Perhaps,' Liljana said, looking away from him. 'But not as badly as I want to find what we came here to find.'
I, too, found it hard to bear the fire in Kane's blazing eyes just then. But I stared straight at him and said a single word: 'Pease.'
There was a moment when I thought he would turn inward to that burning ocean of hate that pulled him ever downward into the hell of his own being. But once, near a little clearing littered with the bodies of the gray men that we had slain, he had pledged his sword to my service so long as I sought the Lightstone. The deep, knowing touch of our eyes told me that he remembered this promise. And that he would keep it
'All right,' he said, pointing his sword toward the east door that led to Morjin's throne room, let's finish this damn quest of yours then!'
I stepped over and twisted the knob of the door, which was unlocked and pulled open like any other. Behind it was a hallway, draped with flowing silks, that ran straight east I led the way into it and then Kane shut the door behind us.
We marched forward for a distance of a few hundred yards. No other doors or passages gave out onto this new tunnel. On either side of us and above us, Daj said, were the rooms of Morjin's palace that could only be reached from his room through its north door. Many people, I sensed, were all about us through thin walls of rock.
As we hurried along, my breath came more quickly in bursts that seemed to burn my nostrils and mouth. And yet the air was cold, as was the rock beneath the thin, silk wall coverings. The door at the opposite end of the hallway was cold, too. We came upon it in a rush of driving feet and beating hearts. Like the door to Morjin's room, it was cast of bronze and unlocked.
With a last look back at Kane and the others, I pushed it open. And then I stepped out into Morjin's throne room.
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram whispered in my ear. 'Oh, my Lord!'
We stood along the west wall of one of the largest enclosed spaces I had ever beheld. The vast chamber,
