They approached the ruins by the sea with trepidation; fear born of generations of retelling of the few mythical tales held on to by the humans of the Empire. No place held as much terror in their imaginations as the Pearl Sea; it was hard for all of them, even for Harriet, to come to terms with being at its rocky margins and hearing the action of its dark waves on the shoreline.
These were buildings from an age of which they knew nothing; the work of unknown hands. The four of them stood uncertain how to proceed. For days they had followed Jacabo through the wilderness but he was far from eager now to lead them closer to their destination. Harriet had carried Collins’s chart but now her only guide was a drawing of the carved stone that they were supposed to find and return to Thackliss. While Bilteg stood scanning the ruins for signs of life Caitlet took a step forward. “Let’s go then” she said emphatically “I want to have a look inside now we are here.”
With Caitlet in the lead they made their way towards the moat that surrounded the crumbling complex. They could make out the finely worked and decorated masonry both in the piles of rubble and still comprising the walls of the most intact structure. Relief swirled its way across the remaining surfaces. Harriet recognised barely visible characters amongst the strange almost organic abstracts and walked ahead of the others close to the moat’s edge, looking up at the mysterious images as she did so. None of them looked down at the deep saltwater held below.
Occasionally being pushed away from the ruins by thorn bushes, they made their way around the moat until they reached, by the seawater inlet channel, a narrow stone bridge. It rose in a precarious looking arch over the gently eddying waters below; it seemed a marvel that the ages that had so dilapidated the buildings had somehow left intact the bridge, but despite some crumbling along the sides it looked to retain in its tightly fitting stones, the strength of centuries past.
From the north side of the ruins, by the bridge and the inlet, they could see the front of the surviving structure. It was colonnaded along its entire northern side although as yet it was too early for the sunlight to penetrate far beyond the fluted columns into the dark interior.
“What do you think it was Harriet?” Caitlet asked. The scribe just shook her head slowly, all the time looking forwards and wishing that she was brave enough to go across the bridge first and study the carvings that she had seen.
Instead Caitlet and Bilteg went up to the bridge. They looked at each other. The width of the bridge was such that one of them would have to go first. “If it will take me, it will take any of us” Bilteg said and carefully put one foot on the green grey stonework.
Across they went one by one; Bilteg first and Jacabo last. The margins of the artificial island were thick with undergrowth; there were even quite large trees clinging to such soil as had accumulated on rubble and crumbling steps. A block at a time the complex was being reclaimed by the landscape; demolished and consumed. As Jacabo stepped from the bridge a cracked half cobble tipped and fell into the moat; the others started a little to hear the splash, it was a like a deep gulp that echoed between the slimed walls of the encircling channel. Trying to calm the others, Jacabo just raised his hands and gently pressed down through the air with them.
The columns and the floor upon which they stood were set up above ground level; across the broad front of the building the steps had become green terraces; at one end a sapling perched, its largest roots visible as if it was itself slowly climbing towards the colonnade above. As they neared the steps Bilteg and Caitlet drew their swords; they could still make out only a little detail inside; beyond the front rank of columns it still looked as dark as the predawn.
Once they reached the top of the steps and the soldiers moved between some columns their eyes began immediately to adjust to the gloom. Harriet still lingered in the bright morning light, for now her attention was taken with the carved symbols on almost every piece of masonry she glanced at; she was excited, but could feel her frustration mounting. She needed time, time she knew she would almost certainly not get.
Whilst Jacabo stood reluctant at the awesome threshold of this eerie place, Bilteg and Caitlet edged further into the vast chamber behind the two rows of columns. A broad swathe of light lit up one corner where the roof had collapsed; they could just make out the outlines of an imposing set of double doors in the wall opposite. It was not until a moment later that they perceived, in the half light along the walls on either side of the doors, shapes that stopped them in their tracks. The soldiers each let out low startled gasps and in the blink of an eye took up the fighting posture that was the mark of their trade.
Their enemies however did not move. These creatures were no more than statues but so terrifying to see that both Bilteg and Caitlet stood breathing as heavily now as if they had just been in combat. Jacabo ran in behind them having heard what he took for the start of trouble and stood with his mouth open, aghast at the forms in stone that stood before them. When Harriet cautiously came between the columns she too was taken aback. “What are they supposed to be?” Jacabo said to no-one in particular and very slowly, as if the stone might suddenly come to life, he started to walk towards one horrific representation.
Although they stood on two legs and seemed to have lower bodies quite similar to those of humans, from the top part of their torsos to the top of their heads the statues were utterly abominable. Where their faces should have been tangles of twisting tentacles thrust urgently outwards; above these horrific appendages, flat round eyes were barely visible on the carved sloping dome-like skulls.
Taking some comfort in staying close to one another and still now and then glancing uneasily at the statues to either side, together they approached the double doors. Bilteg pulled one of the doors open; beyond it were darkness and the watery echoes of drips in the distance. When Bilteg spoke they all started at the booming echo he caused; he got no further than saying “Well” before the return of his own voice hushed him.
Closing the door, by unspoken consensus they made their way back between the columns and out into the daylight. They blinked and looked at each other, hoping every one of them to see in the others the terror they felt powerfully in themselves.
“I don’t know where the carved stone is going to be” Harriet said after a moment in the sunlight. As she pulled her scroll case from her pack, and then, with finger and thumb, the drawing from that, she added “there are carvings on every block on this island.”
“I say we check all of the stones out here before we go and try in there” Caitlet said with a half smile, but her words reinforced the miserable assumption that they had all made that the one they were looking for would indeed be in there hidden in the damp and the dark.
Jacabo was set to watch as the others searched through the surface rubble together. It looked at first like a hopeless task, but in fact the stone on the picture was both distinctive in its shape, five-sided and quite flat, and it seemed, in the nature of the carvings upon it, almost entirely script rather than the tendrils and swirls of the structural blocks. With each step across the uneven field of stones the three searchers became more confident that they would later be lighting a torch and going back in past the fluted columns.
After only a little while though, they did come across something quite out of place. Against a fragment of wall, well hidden in the shelter of a tall pile of rubble, they found a bivouac. There was a ring of blackened ground, with plants now encroaching into its scorched perimeter; a rickety wooden frame and over that what looked very much like a fragment of a large tent of the same pattern that they had brought with them all the way from Tsachenchak.
Caitlet was first to the entrance to the bivouac; she bent down and peered in, immediately took a step back and turned her head saying with a grim look “Whoever it is has been dead a long time.”
When they pulled back the tent fabric and searched through the few belongings that they found around the mouldering bundle of rags that was the corpse, it quickly became obvious that this person had, like them, come here from the Empire. In addition to a beaker and a blanket there was an oiled backpack and a little knife. Eventually, try as she might to avoid it, Harriet got a close look at the body and there, pressed to its chest was a book.
For soldiers on campaign, seeing dead bodies, even long dead ones, was not unusual. For scribes, as for the other urban castes, bodies disappeared without trace the night that they were taken to the black terraces. Harriet certainly wanted to look at that book and she did not want to have to ask either Bilteg or Caitlet to get it for her; as quickly as she could, reeling as she touched the clothes and felt the hollowed and corrupted form beneath, she snatched it away, turned and walked a few paces trying to calm her senses as she went.
Harriet looked around her and chose a likely looking block to sit on. The soldiers watched her closely. “Here” she said giving Caitlet the drawing of the carved stone “you two carry on searching, I am just going to see what I can find out about this unfortunate wanderer.” As they walked away Caitlet looked back briefly but Harriet was already prising damp pages apart, glad to be rid of her audience. Something about the warm tingling in her fingertips told the scribe that this might prove a more important discovery for her than any strange lump of stone.
Although much of the text was lost to damp and mould, as the morning stretched on towards midday Harriet slowly pieced together a sad tale of knowledge and exile. By some weird chance she had come all this way only to find evidence of another human, obviously a scribe like herself, who had stumbled upon clues to forbidden power. It seemed that he had taken the opportunity of the rebellion to flee eastwards; had survived the dangers of the forest which had killed so many of his companions only to find himself here at the “end of the world”, and for some reason writing that he was “trapped here in this dreadful place, surely to die alone.”
There were however much greater treasures folded between the battered covers than the diary of a doomed scribe. Harriet opened the loose sheets with trembling hands, casting her eyes around to make sure that she was alone. Her glance met that of Jacabo still standing sentinel on the highest pile of rubble, but he looked back to the surrounding wilderness without a second thought.
As she concentrated a little she could see an ice blue aura around the edges of the yellowed sheets, they were covered with mesmerising chains of symbols interspersed with a little writing here and there; her scalp tingled now, and the palms of her hands grew unnaturally warm. She knew that she had found the keys to further understanding of the dangerous path that called to her; quickly but as gently as she could she rolled the loose pages and pushed them into her own scroll case. She could not help looking around to be certain once again that she was not being watched. She took the book itself and with as much composure as she could summon laid it back on the front of the long dead adept; as she bent over his body she whispered “Thank you; I will remember you.” Then she went to join the others.
Not long after they sat down to rest and take some food. It was clear to all of them that the carved stone, unless it was buried and lost forever beneath the rubble, had to be within the confines of the surviving building. Jacabo set to making as many torches as he could with a flask of oil and strips from the dead scribe’s bivouac wrapped around good sized branches from the trees amongst the ruins. Bilteg turned to sharpening his sword; Caitlet stood watch. Harriet sat anxiously and hoped that the others would think she was scared about going into the darkness rather than worried about the new contents of her scroll case and how those few sheets might change her life forever.
It was the middle of the afternoon when they finally went back through the columns and into the long hall before the double doors flanked by the fearsome statues. In the guttering illumination of the torches the abominable half-men were even more terrible to behold that they had been that morning in the grey half light. Bilteg once more approached the double doors; he passed the torch he had been carrying to Caitlet and pulled one of them open.
The walls of the chamber beyond seemed to pulsate in the unsteady torchlight; a thousand twisted and irregular shadows gave stark relief to dramatic and intense patterns so dense that it appeared that the space altogether lacked the usual angular geometry of a building. In the centre of the floor, some ten paces from the doors there was a black abyss, only when Bilteg stepped forward, following a definite path through carvings on the floor, did it become clear that in fact steps led underground.
Although he could hardly believe that anything might live down here, Bilteg passed the torch to Harriet now; he drew his sword and hefted his shield in front of him. He took comfort in the weight of both and, closely followed by the others, went to the top of the steps. Each moment that passed brought from below the echoes of dozens of drips and a gentle rhythmic lapping, as if the sea itself were coming ashore in this perpetual night.
The steps led down into a long narrow passage, rounded and fluted with more carvings. As they walked down Caitlet noticed that amongst the swirling patterns, apparently at random, there were sometimes large carved eyes. The first she had seen had startled her, and with each subsequent similar discovery she became more apprehensive.
After only thirty paces or so the corridor disgorged them into a large chamber that opened up on either side. The middle of this weird space was given to a constructed pool of water. They could see the ridges of the patterns on the bottom of the pool; it was of a depth barely to reach Bilteg’s knees. On the other side of the pool sat a large stone block two paces long and half as high, on top of the block sat a five sided intricately patterned stone; it was the object of their search. In the wall behind the block was a round hole surrounded by representations of eerie flat eyes; it was from this strangest of portals that the sounds of the sea emanated. The air was filled with the brackish scent of the moat and the ancient damp deep in the stone walls.
They approached the pool four abreast and stood there together at its edge looking down at the water. After a few moments Bilteg looked left and right at the others and then carefully lowered one leg in until he felt the hard ridges under his foot, then, with equal care he stepped in with the other leg. Jacabo and Harriet watched; by now Caitlet had her hand on Bilteg’s shoulder.
“Shall I fetch it then Harriet?” Bilteg asked. The scribe just nodded and the soldier waded away and out from under Caitlet’s hand. He was only two paces out when Caitlet could stand it no more and in a moment she too was in the water, it reached the top of her thighs and she waded after Bilteg with determination but some difficulty. Jacabo looked at Harriet, said nothing but raised one finger to her and pointed firmly at the floor, and then he too turned and went into the pool.
The sounds of the three soldiers wading echoed monstrously around the chamber drowning out the lapping of the seawater moat beyond. Harriet stood rooted to the spot; every moment seemed to be a lifetime and although her arm now ached with the exertion she held the torch higher, all the time watching the water as if the carvings themselves might come alive and swallow her friends, leaving her here alone and as doomed as the dead scribe above.
Once Bilteg was out on the other side he turned and helped Caitlet and Jacabo up on to the floor. Then he turned his attention to the stone on the rectangular block. Caitlet looked at the stone for a moment but then, curiosity overcoming apprehension, went to look through the round exit beyond. Jacabo meanwhile had noticed something odd about a section of wall a few paces away on their right.
Bilteg called back to Harriet “Are you alright?” When Harriet could be seen to nod he went on “The stone is resting in a stand and all around it there are strings of shells and white beads. Shall I just see if I can lift it and then bring it back?”
With every echoing syllable Harriet flinched; it seemed to her that the noise was now almost deafening. Her heart raced and she felt the desperate need to run away towards the daylight and the fresh air. If she had not been holding the only lit torch she might well have already been on her way. “Yes” she said very weakly, coughed a little before trying again with more conviction: “Yes.”
Once Caitlet stuck her head down the tunnel beyond the round exit she could see that in fact water came right up to that point. After another twenty paces in fact the sloping roof of the tunnel hit the water. As her eyes adjusted to the dark it seemed to Caitlet that she could see a diffuse whitish light. She stared into the gloom and thought she saw a fish; dismissed the idea and was about to turn back to her friends but suddenly she knew that she had seen movement down there. Now it looked like a shoal, and then in an instant like one huge fish, then two or three huge fish all coming to the surface only a pace away from her. She was already throwing herself backwards, pushing away from the lip of the round tunnel entrance, when the shapes broke the surface of the water, at first curved but unrolling to sinuous points reaching at great speed for the surface creature that had presented itself.
All the others saw was Caitlet staggering backwards and plunging into the pool, she fell and sat on the bottom and all eyes turned to her. But through the portal came three searching limbs which recoiled so quickly after failing to make contact that only Harriet saw them for longer than a blink of the eye; for Bilteg and Jacabo they were little more than a flicker in the corners of their sight, gone before they could turn their heads away from the pool to follow the movement.
Jacabo, who had just discovered that the odd section of wall was in fact a concealed door left slightly ajar, quickly jumped into the pool and, whilst turning his head to look at the portal, helped Caitlet to her feet. Bilteg almost dropped the five sided stone in his rush to draw his sword and took three long strides to put himself in front of the suspect hole in the wall. He looked straight down the blade as he pointed it, ready to strike, but nothing came. “There’s something in there Bilteg” Caitlet shouted, “don’t go any closer.” As her cry reverberated around the chamber and down the round passage to the water, Bilteg heard something heavy slide over stone and enter the water. The water in the tunnel lapped at the walls irregularly, but otherwise there was neither sight nor sound to give any clue of the creature that had come so close to catching Caitlet in its grasp.
Jacabo saw that for now the trouble had subsided; he returned his attention to the intriguingly hidden door. If it had been properly shut he doubted that he would ever have found it, as it was he could just prise it open a little way at a time until by turning side on he could have squeezed through. The distant light of Harriet’s torch penetrated not at all the space beyond the door, so Jacabo waded back across the pool and lit another torch from her flame before peering into the room he had discovered.
Bilteg said “We have the stone Jacabo, what are you doing? Let’s get out of here.” But Jacabo was curious and did not even pause to answer the other soldier. Caitlet watched the round portal anxiously; as yet she had not even climbed out of the water but now added her voice to Bilteg’s.
“Come on Jacabo” she said as he went past her with his newly lit torch, “We have what we want. Jacabo ignored her as well and stuck first the torch and then himself through the half open stone door. Seeing that Jacabo could not be reasoned with on this, Bilteg motioned to Caitlet that she should keep an eye on the round tunnel, and he went to see what Jacabo had found.
“What’s in there?” Harriet called probably too quietly at first to be heard by the men and then again louder “What’s in there? What have you found Jacabo?”
Jacabo and Bilteg were standing staring at the strange contents of a very small room. There were sturdy looking wooden chests, some of which were open. Immediately they could see huge numbers of discoloured metal disks, each one no larger than a man’s eye; hundreds if not thousands of the same kind of white beads that had adorned the stone block in the main chamber; unusual metal chains and finely crafted artefacts with stones set in them. Jacabo opened some more of the chests, the wood soft with damp, and saw that they contained more of the same; he put his hand deep into one of the piles of metal disks, pulled out a handful and let them run through his fingers; the ones underneath shone brightly in the torchlight and they rang on one another as they dropped back into the chest.
Jacabo looked at Bilteg and shrugged. Bilteg was already leaving the room; moments later Jacabo followed him out into the main chamber. “What did you find Jacabo?” Harriet asked again as she saw them emerge.
“I don’t know.” Jacabo said as he climbed into the water and started to wade back across. Bilteg followed him and Caitlet back away from the round portal for a few paces before she too turned and waded back towards Harriet.
Harriet was still looking quizzically at Jacabo when he climbed out of the pool on her side. The woodsman relented and said “Nothing of any use Harriet; it looked like boxes full of children’s toys to me, or like the things that Gabid hung round his neck and had through his ears. I took a handful, I'll show you them later.”
“No books? No writings?” Harriet asked quickly. Jacabo just shook his head and when the scribe looked at Bilteg he too gave one shake to confirm the other man’s answer.
There was still warmth in the late afternoon as, blinking, they emerged from between the columns and into the daylight. For the moment they were oblivious to concerns about being spotted; they sprawled on the steps; drank water and allowed themselves to relax. Bilteg put the five sided stone down carefully next to himself and looked at it. “All this way for a piece of stone” he said, “And I suppose I am going to have to carry it back am I?”
The others laughed and smiled, even Jacabo allowed himself a broad grin. They ate and decided that none of them wanted to camp amongst the ruins; they would follow the road of skulls southwards a little way and find a hiding place there in the wilderness to rest for the night.
Bilteg put the stone in his backpack, redistributing some of his gear to Jacabo and Caitlet to make the space. As the shadows lengthened they stood together and looked for the last time at the ruins around them; “Are we ready then?” Jacabo asked, and then started towards the little bridge over the moat. The others followed close behind.
It was as Bilteg reached the top of the bridge that he looked down and saw that the water in the moat was a good deal higher than it had been that morning. He stopped and watched the channel to the sea for a moment; he could see the ebb and the flow that was gradually filling the moat as the tide came in. “The water’s high now” he said to the others, and he turned to carry on walking; the water beneath the bridge eddied suddenly and then parted as a great black shape rose quickly to the surface; its writhing arms came up on either side of the bridge their tips racing through the air towards the human soldier.
Three of the tentacles had grasped Bilteg before he could even draw his sword, and more searched the top of the bridge to take hold of him as he struggled. Jacabo took his hunting bow from his shoulder, knocked an arrow and aimed down at the hideous creature’s body. Caitlet, not yet across the bridge, drew her sword and unthinkingly sprang to Bilteg’s side hacking at a weird thick limb as she ran. Harriet had screamed with fright when Bilteg had been attacked; now she stood uncertain what to do and thinking of how she was now trapped on the island just as the dead scribe had been.
The creature pulled Bilteg to the very edge of the bridge and, as he finally managed to pull his sword from its sheath, threatened to drag him over into the salt moat that was its home. It had been many seasons since it had seen anything other than the gifts of the tide that made its home a rich fish trap, it knew little other than loneliness and rage; it wanted once again to feast on the flesh of a surface creature. The sword blows cut deep into its limbs; the pain would have been unbearable without the fury; it tried to crush the prey in its grasp against the stone walkway above, it felt it weaken. Then something flew through the air and plunged into its head just above one of its large flat eyes; ichor poured forth and agony engulfed the creature’s dark consciousness.
The tentacles loosened around Bilteg just as he began, through breathlessness, to see spinning purple blotches in front of his eyes. He felt like he was falling and waited for the impact of the water. But in fact, as the crushing grip relented, he fell only on to the stonework of the bridge; the last thing he felt before blacking out was his face thumping into the masonry; the last thing he heard was his sword splashing into the water of the moat.
Together Caitlet and Jacabo dragged Bilteg off the bridge and Harriet ran across to join them as fast as she could. The water of the moat was washing violently this way and that in reaction to its retreat, but apparently the creature had gone.
Harriet knelt next to Bilteg and gently examined him for wounds. She poured some water on to a strip from her already ragged cloak and bathed his bloodied face; once he came round she put her hand inside his chain mail shirt and carefully applied pressure across his torso. The soldier’s pained reactions mapped for them all the extent of his injuries. He would need to be bandaged and would not move, or even breathe, without discomfort for many days.
“Quickly, get down behind the bushes” Jacabo said. Fortunately for them all the woodsman had still had the presence of mind to pay some attention to the road of skulls, only a few paces away to the east; he had seen the same column that they had all seen heading south that morning, returning now to the sea.
They were much closer this time and could see that the bound slaves had become bearers, carrying, often in pairs for the heaviest of the items, chests and stone carvings. Had Harriet looked she would have been reminded of the artefacts that she had laboured to catalogue for Thackpliss, but she dared not look; she lay flat in the undergrowth concentrating on the activities of a tiny creature that was trundling around under her nose collecting the tiniest particles of soil. Each time she thought of the powerful and dreadful creature at the head of the band on the road she struggled to drag her mind back to the little life in front of her eyes.
* * * * * * *
When as the sun was setting they finally found a place to rest, they were all at the point of exhaustion. Even Bilteg, who was in a good deal of pain, slept well that night; Harriet took his turn at watch and when sleep threatened to engulf her paced this and that reflecting on all that had happened..
In the morning they headed along the road a little way and then turned eastwards for the Empire and home.
