carved out of solid rock, must have been three hundred feet high and nearly as long and wide. Immense pillars rose up from the floor like giant stone trees and fluted out to support the dark ceiling high above. Everything about this cold, vaulted hall seemed dark, with its acres of bare, black basalt Yet Morjin and the hall's makers had applied all their art toward filling it with light. In the walls and ceiling were set many hundreds of glowstones, throwing out their soft, silky sheen. The pillars were jacketed in gold leaf, which reflected this radiance out into the hall Various statues, encrusted with rubies, sapphires and other gems, added to the glitter. And yet it was not quite enough to reach into the farthest corners and drive away the shadows. In the midst of all this ancient and hideous splendor hung an air of dread that seemed to ooze from the exposed rock along the ceiling, floor and walls; here echoed the memory of torments as old as the ages and the future cries of hopelessness and doom.
For a moment I pressed back against the bronze door to still my dizziness and orient myself. 1 noted the three closed gates, along the east, north and west walls.
Opposite the door to Morjin's rooms where we gathered, at the center of the hall and toward its southern end, stood a great throne. It had been built, it seemed, in imitation or mockery of the king's throne in Tria. Six broad steps led up to it, and eacs step was framed at either end by the sculptures of Gashur and Zun and other Galadin who had become as monsters. The greatest of these was the coiled, red dragon monument to Angra Mainyu into which the throne itself was set. When Morjin took his place on this seat of power, his head would be framed just below the huge dragon's head, which looked out into the room with golden eyes carved out of two huge amber stones.
Leaving the door behind us open should we have to beat a hasty retreat, we moved out into the great hall as we began what I hoped would be the final moments of the quest. But even as Alkaladur's blade shone with a new light, my hope faded. For in truth, the silustria blazed too brightly. It whatever direction I pointed it – north, east, south and west – I could detect not the slightest change in its luminosity. I knew from this frightful radiance that the Lightstone must be very close – so close that my silver sword could lead us no farther. But how we were otherwise to find it in so vast a space, I didn't know.
For there were a thousand places where Sartan Odinan might have set down a little golden cup. Behind the throne, and in other parts of the room, there were altars, cabinets and pedestals that might have been the Lightstone's resting place. And cold braziers, lamp stands, benches, shelves and even the plinths of the great stone pillars holding up the ceiling. Along the huge walls themselves – carved with dragons, demons and a huge bas-relief of the Baaloch and the dark angels imprisoned with him on Damoom – there were recesses and rocky projections, any one of which might have hidden the Lightstone.
'Well?' Maram said to me as we walked out into the room.
'It's here,' I said. 'But it's so close, my sword can't tell us where.'
'Then how are we to find it?' He stopped by the line of pillars running down the hall to the right of the throne. He bent to feel along a pillar's massive, square-cut plinth, tapping his hands along the stone like a blind man. 'My Lord – we can't just hope we'll stumble across it!'
We worked our way straight across the hall, passing between the throne and an evil-looking, circular area with several great standing stones arising from the floor.
We came to the line of pillars running down the hall to the left of the throne. And there, suddenly, Flick appeared. His small, scintillating form, now throwing out sparks of silver and gold, shot straight up into the air like fireworks. He whirled about ecstatically, then dived down like a firebird and began weaving his way in and out of the mighty pillars in streaks of violet flame.
'Do you think he knows where it is?' Maram asked. 'Do you think he is trying to tell us?'
Flick looped in and out of the pillars and then spun directly over the circular area with its standing stones, which looked to be used for rituals. Flick, I thought, certainly knew where the Lightstone was. And more, it seemed he was drinking in its presence through every sparkling bit of his being and growing ever brighter. But I sensed that he couldn't simply tell us where it had been hidden. For whatever Mick really was, it couldn't have occurred to him that for my friends and me. the lightstone remained invisible.
It was the greatest torment of Argattha to stand so close to the Lightstone, almost to feel its numinous presence charging the air as before a storm, but not be able to see it.
Daj, watching us look across the room as Flick streaked about must have thought we had fallen mad. He could not make out the Timpum's fiery shape. And so he was the first of us to behold another sight.
'Val – over there!' he suddenly cried as he pulled on my arm. He pointed across the ritual area at the gate on the west side of the hall. 'They're coming!'
And even as my eyes fell upon the gate's iron doors, they flew open, swinging inward. Many guards, dressed in mail and yellow livery stained with angry, red dragons, charged into the hall. Many of them bore swords and halberds in their hands; some had long, thrusting spears. Their captains arrayed them in four lines, two on either side of the doorway. Almost without thinking, I took a quick count of their numbers: there were about twenty-five of them in each line.
'So,' Kane muttered. Just then the door to Morjin's private chamber by which we had entered the hall slammed shut 'Four of us against a hundred – so.'
Without any more prompting, Maram ran over to the gate on the east wall behind the pillars where we gathered. He pounded against it but it was locked. 'Trapped!' he cried out. 'Now we're truly trapped!' So we were. As Maram quickly rejoined us and we stood with our backs to the pillars, there came a flurry of motion from outside the open gate to the throne room. And then a man dressed in a golden tunic, trimmed with black fur and emblazoned with a ferocious, red dragon, strode through the doorway. He was almost tall and bore himself with an unshakeable air of command.
His close-cropped hair shone like gold while the beauty of his form and face seemed almost too perfect. His eyes appeared golden, too. For he was, of course, Morjin the Fair – the Lord of Lies and the Great Beast who had so often Come for me with his daws and illusions in the worst of my nightmares.
'Ah, my friend,' Maram said to me as we pressed back against the pillars, preparing for a last stand. 'This is the end – finally, the end.'
Morjin took another step forward, before pausing to beckon with his hand to his guards. He stared across the room straight at me – and at Kane, Maram, Liljana and Daj. There was utter triumph in his hideously beautiful eyes. And then, without a word, his face fell into a mask of hate as he and his guards began marching toward us.
Chapter 44
Morjin left half of his men to guard the open gate while he deployed the fifty othera around the ritual area facing us. I had supposed that he and his guards would simply charge us when they drew close enough. But it seemed that he had other plans.
'Back toward the wall!' Maram hissed at me.
I was reluctant to retreat from the line of the pillars to the wall, for there we would be trapped with no room to maneuver. And Morjin seemed loath to force this retreat.
He stood at the center of the circular area staring at us across some seventy feet of the bare stone floor, and his guards stood there, too.
'No, hold here,' I said to Maram,' 'Let's see what he's waiting for.'
A moment later, six red-robed men walked through the gate, down the line of the guards posted there and crossed the room to join Morjin. They were of various ages, heights and colorings, but they all had the long, lean, hungry look of wolves.
'The Red Priests!' Kane snarled out. 'Damn their eyes!'
Even as he said this, I felt a sharp stab of despair at the base of my skull, and men that I dreaded even more than these drinkers of blood entered the room. There were thirteen of them, all wearing hooded gray cloaks over their gray garments. Their faces were as gray as rotting flesh, while their eyes – what little we could see of them
– were like cold gray marbles empty of life. There was nothing inside them, I thought, except a ravenous desire to drink our lives and our very souls.
'Oh, no!' Maram muttered as he stood trembling beside me. 'The Stonefaces!'
