‘If I were to ask youto examine your amulet, would you object?’
‘Of course not GreatLord, it is only an old badge of office that has been passed downfrom shaman to shaman for hundreds of years. It has historicalvalue but little else,’ and Kami held it close so that he couldview it.
Aquitain examined theamulet carefully. It was a black polished circular disk about fourfingers wide, with the shape of a cat carved into the front surfacewhich had been highlighted by rubbing some white material into thegroove. The reverse side was smooth and plain with no design. Heused his power to detect magic and found none. The disc wasnon-magical.
It was no accident thatAquitain was a magical item artificer. His trade had been assuredwhen his grandfather discovered he had a talent for picking thebest crystals and gemstones to imbue with magic when creatingmagical devices. He had always been able to mentally visualise theinside crystalline materials, and had soon learnt by trial anderror what distinguished a good crystal from a poor one for thepurposes of his trade. His talent was referred to in the game ascrystal vision. It was a rather rare talent, but one that some ofthe finest item makers had claimed to have.
Using his crystalvision he looked into the disk and found a variation in someinternal property of the stone that gave a pattern that any wizardwould recognise as the ancient symbol for the element of air. Hethought a little more about the material the disk was made of. Hehad seen it before but never used it as it had an unusual property.He asked the shaman to hold a metal knife blade near the disk andsaw that the blade was attracted to it. He now had an idea how thedisk might work as a key, but wanted one final confirmation.
Through the mindlink heasked the three wizards whether any of them had some powdered iron.It was used as an ingredient for creating fire magic effects.Gaston came to his rescue with a small quantity of the substanceand a piece of parchment. He had Gaston place the parchment overthe smooth side of the disk and sprinkle the iron powder over theparchment, then tap it. Almost miraculously the iron powderdisplayed the symbol of the element for air, and he knew the secretof the amulet. It was a key. The next problem was to find out howand where to use it.
‘I am having strongthoughts that you are not the brother of K’wala but K’walahimself,’ said Kami. ‘I was not knowing that the amulet was holdingsuch secrets.’
‘Has some of your lorebeen lost?’ asked Aquitain.
‘My master was killedaccidentally while I was being a young shaman. I am thinking thatthere were things that I did not learn from him about this place,’replied Kami.
‘That’s not good. We’llhave to work them out,’ said Aquitain.
‘What are you going todo?’ asked Miranda.
‘It’s a game Mandy.It’s a big magical puzzle to work out. If we can get in we can savethe children and learn a little about the Founts. So let’s poke itand see what happens.’
‘You’re not going tosend anyone in there are you?’ she asked.
‘Yes I am. Haven’t youwondered why Granddad sent Goth? I’m guessing that he knewsomething like this would happen so he sent us a magical tool. Gothis immune to most magic and physically tough as well. We can use itto probe the defences and see if we can work out a way to defeatthem.’
He informed everyonethat he was going to send in Goth and they all watched with greatinterest. He stood with Miranda and Zephira about fifty paces backfrom the eastern entrance, and Zephira sent in the big metalconstruct. The moment it stepped onto the eastern pathway a hugebolt of lightning shot at it out of the ball at the apex of thestructure. The thunderous sound made everyone jump and it echoedacross the jungle causing panic amongst the birds in the trees butit didn’t affect Goth one bit, it just kept walking. Zephira haddirected it to circumnavigate the temple and then return.
A few seconds later,huge pieces of ice appeared out of nowhere above Goth and raineddown on it, smashing into it mercilessly. But Goth was built forpunishment, and while it took a few dents it kept on moving throughthe icy slush.
A further few secondsand the whole temple and its grounds seemed to burst into flame andburn for several seconds, turning the water to steam andincinerating all the leaves, branches, weeds and anything else thatwould burn. Goth was unaffected, and kept walking until hedisappeared from view behind the temple.
Moments later a thickyellow-brown fog filled the grounds, blocking off all vision.
‘This isn’t good,’ saidAquitain. ‘That’s an acid fog. That would harm Goth if it were tostay in it too long, and the fact that we can’t see worries me aswell.’
They waited, and therecame a sudden, huge crash as if Goth had run into a stone wall,then a few seconds later another crash and then a third, as Gothpartially staggered and partially fell out of the edge of thetemple grounds. Behind it stood a huge animated mound of rock,which disappeared back into the fog, that soon after began todissipate. When the fog had cleared there was no sign of the hugestone elemental.
‘Merciful Lady, I’mglad you didn’t send anyone in there. They would have had nochance,’ said Miranda.
‘Yes I agree. It’s aninteresting challenge, isn’t it?’ replied Aquitain calmly. ‘I thinkwe have all the resources we need to solve the problem, but let methink about the details a little.’
Five minutes later hehad Alpha grow legs and sent it to examine the nearest twofountains, telling Miranda that it was too small to trigger thetemple defences, then when Alpha returned without incident heannounced he had a plan to get in, but it would need a littlepreparation first. He asked Miranda to fly to the Jeti village andtheir mine and get him some components, and he asked Kami to havehis warriors make him four disks of wood, the same size as Kami’samulet but about two fingers thick.
Then came the trickypart. He needed Kami and
