At the northernend of the room was the dragon throne. He noticed now that therewere four statues, two at the front and two at the back of thethrone. These looked to be made of brass or bronze. They were ofNewman shape with two legs but had four arms each and animal faces.In each of the arms was either a short sword or a mace. Theyobviously weren’t cleaned often as they had a layer of dust on thetopsides. There were also at least another twenty statues of weirdbeasts dotted around the room.
Both he andBellen approached one of the statues and stopped at a red linepainted on the floor about five paces from it.
‘Beware Milord.It is said that if you cross the red line it will open its eyes towatch you. If you step any closer it will come alive and attackyou.’
Aquitain hadseen many examples of animated statues back in Panmagica. Hisgranddad even had a couple. They could be very nasty if youtriggered them and were tough to fight but they were usuallylimited to guarding a specific area. So if you triggered them butgot out of the area quickly you were safe. The one problem was thatyou were never quite sure what would trigger them. They couldusually detect live creatures or people but often didn’t react tosmall creatures the size of rats or smaller.
‘OK Bellen’said Aquitain. ‘I want you to step across the line then walk awayback to the way we came and watch from the service doorway.’
‘Are you sureMilord?’ replied Bellen a little scared.
‘Yes. Do it. Iwant to watch the reaction of the statue.’
Bellen steppedover the line then quickly headed back to the safety of thedoorway. The statue opened its eyes and followed him back to thedoorway. A minute or two later it closed its eyes. It didn’t seemto pay attention to Aquitain at all so he stepped over the line andthe eyes opened again this time looking at him. Again a couple ofminutes after he stepped back the eyes closed.
‘I wonder if itsenses living creatures by their spirit aura?’ thought Aquitain. Sohe created a pure heart shielding his spirit aura within it. Thistime when he stepped over the line the eyes of the statue didn’topen and with growing confidence he walked past the statue up tothe dragon throne. Bellen couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
The throne wasa basically a lovely golden chair set in front of the chest of afull sized stone dragon statue. The dragon was unlike any Aquitainhad seen in Panmagica but that in itself was not unusual, as he hadseen pictures of a wide variety of weird shaped dragons. Theyseemed to be able to adapt to a great variety of livingconditions.
The dragon’shead wore a golden crown set with gems and a cloak of gem studdedgolden silken cloth covered most of its stony body giving it a lookof great majesty.
He ducked underthe cloth and saw what he was looking for strapped around one ofthe stone dragon’s legs. It was a power limiter. A device used tobleed away magic essence hence limiting the amount of magic that acreature could use.
If the thronecould talk into their minds it would be using mindspeak. Thelimiter may have been enough to stop the statue from talking. Hechecked the other side of the dragon throne and found anotheraround the other front leg. He disabled both of them.
The problem wasit didn’t tally with Bellen’s story of what had happened. Thesewould have been visible to anyone who saw the throne without thecloak on, but the cloak was only put on about five years later.There must be something else as well. He searched all around thebase of the throne but found nothing more then finally rememberedthe crown.
Fortunatelybeing so tiny he was able to sneak up the back of the dragon throneunder the golden cloak, although being so little also meant that ittook him half an hour to climb up to its head. He periodically sentmindspeak messages to Bellen to assure the trixie that he was OKbut he could easily imagine that the trixie was terrified of themgetting caught. Finally he reached the top of the head and hisobjective.
The circularcrown was made of real gold about a Newman pace in diameter butpainted over with gold paint to make it look fake. Embedded in thecrown were a number of large crystals. He mentally contacted oneand was nearly overcome by the response. Most, if not all of thecrystals shouted to him.
One by one hetalked to them. They were all genuine powerstones, each storing adifferent mind wizard power. This crown was the most powerfuldevice he had ever seen, he was sitting in a Mighty Crown of Power.So what was wrong? What was blocking the throne? He had missedsomething.
Aquitaincarefully checked the golden crown in which the crystals wereembedded looking for faults or problems. No luck. He then decidedto use his crystal sight on every crystal. He started at the frontand methodically worked his way around in a clockwise direction. Hewas in the back section when suddenly his crystal sight wasblocked.
‘You’re a smartlittle trixie aren’t you.’ someone said using mindspeak.‘Unfortunately too smart for my liking!’ and a bolt of lightningarced out of the crystal. Aquitain’s body absorbed it completelywith no harm done.
‘You’re smarterthan I gave you credit for.’ said the memcrystal.
‘Let’s see howyou like it hot.’ And a ball of flame erupted on the dragon’s headenveloping Aquitain destroying his illusion, leaving him standingthere as a shiny green crystal.
By this timethe surprise was over. Aquitain called for a certain power crystalin the crown to release its power directly at the talking memorycrystal embedded in the crown. There was a single pure highfrequency musical note of considerable power and the memcrystal andone of the powerstones on either side of it shattered into amillion small shards which scattered all over the place. Aquitaindidn’t escape lightly either. His whole body cracked all over butfortunately held
