Page 4

She knew the Archan runes well enough, but all these others were about as legible to her as a licht-cursed mutant’s dying gurgles.

Tarr, on the other hand, rushed forward with excitement.

He brushed the dust from first one book, then another, placing the volumes in little piles and finally dropping his pack to the floor.

“What are you doing?”

she asked.

“Some of these are history books,”

he replied, placing the indicated ones in his pack.

“The others are of the sciences.

I believe this was once a place of learning, a school.

The text seems to be pre-Archan, but I recognise many of the runes.

It could very well be the library of the First College.”

Esterra watched him pick and choose from the piles he had arranged.

She had heard of the Wandering College, but all its members had been slaughtered in a massacre decades ago, or so the gossip in the Circle ran.

Shrugging internally, she turned to watch the shadows, ever on guard, torch held to the side, not too far from the grip of her blade.

Her silly companion went wild over his new toys, whispering and muttering away like a lunatic.

He chose two of the thinner books and slipped them into his bag.

He hefted it onto his shoulders with a grunt and nodded at the next doorway.

Another stairway greeted them, the steps as tall as those before.

The pair followed the curious footprints in the dust.

Esterra had some idea of their provenance.

However, she had learnt that jumping to conclusions about anything in the wilds of Verpace was a fool’s game.

The torch provided a little warmth for their thawing bones as they descended into the depths of the city.

Thirty steps down, Esterra could see no end to the stairway.

The walls seemed to close in on the intruders, and she considered the incredibly vast weight of snow held up by the old beams and structures above.

She shivered.

“I have read of older magic than the licht, in ancient books,”

Tarr said, as if continuing a conversation.

“Old books are full of nonsense,”

Esterra replied.

“I hear they once read tales of fancy, where people that didn’t exist pranced through worlds that were imaginary.

Not all books are historical, and even those you claimed tell of some history are usually full of lies.”

“Does your cynicism aid you in your travels?”

“I believe what I see.

And I have seen much,”

Esterra said.

“As have I, and read more.

There is no licht here, and I maintain an open mind as to why there are no inhabitants.”

“Maintain that loud speech and you’ll wake them if they are here, that much is certain.”

Tarr shut his mouth, eyeing Esterra’s sling, her clawed hand hanging limply from the end.

The crippling atrophy spread from her fingers to her elbow, the pale skin wrinkled and grey.

The veins were visible as lighter lines running underneath.

Many years ago, she would have hidden her arm with a deep sense of shame at such an open gaze.

But she now knew that if people feared you, they were more likely to think twice.

Such repetition of thought was beneficial for a person’s health, in Esterra’s philanthropic eyes.

It prevented futile attempts at robbery, rape, or murder.

“Why are you smirking?”

Tarr grumbled.

“Because I have wandered long alone, and have been my own source of amusement for years.

You’re a welcome relief, though.”

“I’ll write about you someday, so watch it.”

“Who would read about a lichtridden?”

“Future generations.

We must leave a record of our experiences, to allow those who come after to learn from the past.”

“Stars know what they’d learn from me.”

“I wonder the same,”

Tarr said, one corner of his mouth lifting.

The sudden jolt in Esterra’s leg shocked her.

They had hit the bottom of the stairs.

“Damn it, man, you made me lose count.”

“Sixty-four,”

Tarr said.

“Hm.

Thank you.”

They were in a vaulted corridor, the ceiling rising so far above them that it was entirely veiled from sight.

Pillars lined the walls, stretching up into the shadows like the trunks of some stone forest.

Supporting beams of a style neither had seen before soared overhead, and Tarr noted to Esterra the peculiar metallic globes which hung from each meeting of arches, clear of any dust or oxidation.

Esterra grunted in answer.

As they walked down the hallway, they came across an alcove with false pillars carved from marble and built into the huge slabs that made up the walls.

A large empty frame was propped up against the inner curve of the alcove, set on varnished wooden hooks set deep into the mortar.

Whatever painted canvas had once inhabited it had long since collapsed into dust, much like its artist.

The entire frame was of gold, coated with the grimy leavings of aeons, but still shining through in patches here and there.

Tarr brushed it with curious fingers, leaving trails of shining metal in their wake.

He claimed that gold had once been the mineral most sought by the world before the First Lichtvallen, prized for its rarity and colour, valuable beyond anything else.

She asked him whether it was stronger than steel or bronze.

"Not at all," he replied.

"In fact, it is far softer than either."

"How ridiculous.

So one could not even smelt the stuff into something useful, like weapons or tools? Little wonder they left this here to rot.”

"It was an age of luxury," Tarr had said.

"A world of trivialities and pleasure that we can scarcely imagine."

"A world of fools."

"Perhaps."

They continued on.

They had only gone a few paces when one of the metal globes above them shook.

A sound like a bell flooded through the corridor.

It was a clear sound, designed to be pleasing to the ear, though neither traveller was happy to hear it.

Woken by the first, the next globe did the same, but at a higher pitch, the toll resounding through the hall as the echoes of the first died away.

A third followed, higher still.

Neither traveller moved.

The torch flickered yellow and red, the shadows around them jittering in the fitful glare.

The final bell’s resounding echo perished, and silence reigned once again.

Neither spoke, listening and holding their breath.

After a minute, they drew gasping lungfuls of air, and looked at each other.

“An ancient greeting system?”

Tarr inquired, the hope weak in his voice.

“Or an alarm,”

Esterra said.

“Yet there is only one path before us, and we must take it.”

They marched onward, and came to the end of the hallway.

Another chamber opened before them, this one with more dusty carpets and great empty chairs lined along the walls.

An intricate tapestry hung on one wall, and the imagery there showed a large court filled with people.

Deep shadows of black were sewn into the fabric.

There was a tall throne in the centre.

But as her torch flickered, Esterra could swear that one or two people of the court had vanished in the time it took to blink.

Tarr gripped her shoulder, pointing further up the chamber.

The tall, white throne depicted in the tapestry loomed there in the darkness, the marble almost glowing as it reflected the light.

It was carved with the same weird geometric imagery mixed with brush-strokes, the spaces between inset with glints of silver.

A huge statue was seated there, taller than Tarr even when seated.

Royal dressings had been carved in intricate detail in the marble, the bare forearms corded with muscle, the creases in the fingers caught with lifelike accuracy.

The figure had its forehead cupped in its palm, elbow propped on the throne’s armrest.

It was a picture of despair and great weariness, as if all the pain of this dead kingdom had been absorbed into this marmoreal king, abandoned by his court.

His desolation was made all the more grim by his complete isolation.

But where are thy guards, oh King

And why hast thou been so left?

Do see the gains of thy sin

Observe thy dead realm, bereft

Tarr whispered the poem in the dry air.

His words fell flat in the dark chamber, any echoes swallowed by the velvet shadows which seemed to loom over them, a great cloak cut from the very night itself.

“An old poem,”

he said in reply to Esterra’s look.

“Might even be about that very man seated there.”

Esterra grunted, and looked back at the tapestry.

She blinked.

It was not the same, or perhaps she hadn’t looked properly the first time.

Whatever the case, now it showed only the king seated in his throne, an exact replica of what lay before them, but in vibrant colours.

“Tarr, there is a magic here which I have not encountered before,”

she whispered, stepping backwards.

Tarr turned to reply.

The bells tolled again, three separate tones pealing down the stairway.

The pair ran to either side of the doorway, leaving the torch spluttering on the flagstone beside the dusty carpet.

Esterra did not retrieve it, but kept her hand near her knife, ready to kill whatever threat might emerge.

Yet no one came down the stairs.

As the last bell’s echo died away, they sighed in quiet relief.

“Look, Esterra!”

Tarr said.

The statue no longer rested on its arm.

It now sat up straight, staring directly towards them.

Ebony darkness surrounded the throne.

It was no ordinary shadow that lurked there.

The light of the torches skittered across the pale marble tiles, picking out the little pits and grooves with terrible clarity.

But where the night lay, it was as if a thick, velvet veil drained all of the light away, creating an effect which defied the senses, as if the chamber existed in a different world where the air was more dense and the rules of fire and shadow obeyed other laws.

The darkness was absolute in a way that natural shadows were not.

In even the deepest shadows of the world outside, some surface would reflect the brightness of torchlight, or at least the outline of an object’s shape would be betrayed by the flickering glow.

But this darkness allowed none of that.

It was complete.

Fear stretched out tendrils toward the two intruders.

The torch had set the carpet smouldering, but neither could tear their gaze from the giant statue and the night that loomed over it.

Darkness filled the furthest crevices and corners, flooding over the ceiling.

At first glance it appeared like smoke and shadow, immutable nothingness that spread and grew.

But on a closer look, she realised it was neither shadow nor smoke.

It was not anything at all.

Pure nothingness, a sheer absence.

Her mind struggled to comprehend it.

A pit or hole in reality did not approach its nature.

An absence, purest absence, where nothing was and nothing could ever be, what was left beyond the very end of being.

As the emptiness washed over the tapestry, Esterra saw that she and Tarr were now visible in the woven cloth, and the statue had also shifted to reflect the present room.

The nothingness enveloped the tapestry and everything around the throne.

Soon all that could be seen was the pale marble figure against a backdrop of ebony night, the red light of the torch a jaundiced flicker in the eternal dark.

The statue did not move.

The carpet and the ancient dust burned, and thick smoke rose in black clouds to the rafters.

The statue stared at them from carved eyes.

The bells tolled a third time.

Before their eyes, the statue rose to its feet, stone cloth splitting where it met flesh, becoming soft, as it had once been.

Marble muscles rippled under marble skin.

The eyes blinked once, then fixed on the two humans, hollow pupils staring.

The statue of living marble was twice as tall as Esterra and rippled with muscle.

It wore a cloak of ever deepening shadow which spread its void across all the surroundings, negation billowing across the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Esterra wrenched Tarr toward the farther doorway, snatching up her torch as they circled the smouldering carpet.

The echoes of the last bells pursued the pair as they fled the room, and Esterra’s last glance showed the statue still standing at the throne, smoke eddying about the legs, flames licking its feet like frenzied serpents fighting about a fallen beast.

They left no mark on the marble.

They ran through corridors and chambers, boots loud on the flagstones and threadbare carpets.

They passed tables piled in silverware and feasts now dry and dusty.

The food was almost fully preserved in the stale air.

Spiders and other creatures had not made a home here.

Statues sat at some tables, while in other rooms they stood guard or lay resting on ancient beds with posts which climbed high into the shadows.

Servants stood frozen in mid-stride, carrying trays, various items of bedding, food, or wood, their faces all equally impassive.

Only the people were of stone.

All else was as it had once been, albeit drained of moisture and covered in layers upon layers of ancient dust.

Each statue was almost twice Esterra’s height, much like the one in the throne room.

They wore various styles of robes, with belts and odd trappings which indicated no clear use.

They were carved in a style which accentuated health and prosperity, muscled but not ungainly.

They passed some kneeling at prayer in dark alcoves, grotesque statues of some long-forgotten god looming over their veiled heads. Priests bent in earnest conversation, but no words left their still lips. Children lay crying silently into the dark, their mothers holding them with muted expressions on their faces. There was no life here, only a sick mockery of it, captured in a perfect montage of white marble.

All the while, Esterra checked behind them, and her thin hope lifted at the lack of pursuit.

Maybe the fire had prevented passage.

Perhaps they had imagined it, the light playing tricks, or exhaustion setting in.

A hundred reasons suggested themselves, but deep down she trusted her senses.

There was an old magic in this place, and it had noticed them.

They stumbled down stairways.

Tarr’s tall hat flew off at some point, but neither of them felt any desire to collect it.

Esterra lost count of how deep into the city they had come.

The statues grew in number.

Their dress became coarser and their appearance thinner, the faces more distraught the further they went.

A figure of a woman lay on one arm, the other broken into pieces.

A guard stood beside her with unsheathed sword.

An expression of despair was frozen on her screaming face, and Esterra shivered.

Other statues lay contorted in the middle of rooms for no clear reason, and the regal stillness of the floors above was nowhere to be seen.

It was a scene of pandemonium and panic.

Some figures knelt with their faces in their hands, bodies tensed, each muscle caught forever in cold stone.

Heavy footsteps sounded from behind them as they ran through the hallways and rooms.

“The king is coming after all, it seems,”

Tarr gasped.

Esterra noted his breathing was as laboured as her own.

The torch she carried was sputtering, and she handed it to him.

He took it, his panicked eyes meeting hers for only a moment before returning to the darkness ahead.

As she reached behind her to retrieve a fresh torch from her pack, she saw the shadows behind them were darker and closer than they ought to be.

The emptiness hungered.

The heavy crunch of marble on flagstone came from the night in sickening waves.

Esterra wrenched the torch free and held it to the unsteady flame Tarr carried.

It caught quickly, and Tarr threw the old one behind them in a shower of sparks.

The shadows swallowed them instantly, and the torch flickered out a few seconds after.

“Damn it,”

Esterra gasped.

“Where is the hollow, Tarr?”

Tarr shook his head and kept running.

They chose doorways and stairways randomly, as there was no sign that any one direction was better than another.

The statues numbered in the hundreds now, cramming rooms and hallways, forcing the pair to squeeze between sprawling legs and reaching arms, frozen fingers of marble clawing at them in the wild rush to get through.

But eventually they found stairs leading upwards, out of the depths of the dead city.

The statues climbed the stairs with them, gripping the hands of little ones, fear scrawled across their pitiable features, like the last words of a visionary who had seen beyond the stars, beyond death, beyond the physical and the spiritual, into the nothingness of the shadow of the king, and what they had seen there was frightful beyond measure.

The steps boomed from behind.

At the top of an especially long stairway, the pair burst into a library.

Piles of books lay stacked against shelves of dark wood which towered into the gloom.

Reading tables lay scattered about, the surfaces covered in candles and puddles of dried wax.

Scrolls written in extinct languages spread unrolled across the floor.

It was a place of disorder, a mess that told a story of panic and terror.

They passed between the shelves, Tarr muttering under his breath the entire time.

At one end of a wide section of shelves they entered into a vast, round, open area.

Statues knelt with hands upraised, all facing toward the centre.

There, on a dais of a few steps stood a tall statue, dressed in the telltale robes of a sage or priest.

A real book still lay in his marble arm, right hand raised high in impassioned rhetoric.

The statue’s mouth was wide open, and his brow was furrowed.

The figures arraigned at his feet were part of his stone inheritance, their grasping hands wound tight in his robes, supplication bleeding from their tearful eyes, the emotion of a moment carved into them forever.

Tarr had stumbled to a stop, hands on his knees, breathing hard.

Esterra collapsed to her knees, and hawked spit to the side, but took care to hold her torch above the scattered pages and books.

We have outrun the king, but not for long , she thought.

Even now the tremor of his footsteps could be felt rumbling through the flagstones.

“I believe this man killed the city.

Or he was trying to save it.

Either way, he failed these people,”

Tarr said between gasps.

“Would the licht kill this bastard?”

Esterra asked, looking back at the spreading dark.

“I think this city died long before the First Lichtvallen, Esterra.

Centuries before.”

“Answer me.”

Tarr shook his head.

“There is no way to know.

But if you failed, we’d be dead before we could even consider another plan.”

Esterra cursed, and thrust her torch into a pile of books and scrolls, which burst into flame, tinder for the great shelves looming above.

Tarr looked away, and she understood.

She was destroying something of great value to him, with complete disregard.

She knew that feeling too well, could still remember it from when she was an eight year old child.

That pain would never go away, but one learnt to live with it.

One had to.

The flames filled the library with light, and the advancing emptiness of the shadow burst angrily against the flashing glow.

They could not swallow so much light at once, it seemed.

The light was like a wall, thin as paper, yet somehow enough to keep it at bay.

For now.

Tarr ground his teeth, staring at the liquid darkness.

Esterra tensed.

She had spotted no exit from this mausoleum.

The footsteps crunched though the wall of shadows, and Esterra glimpsed the white figure stalking through it toward them.

The king’s face appeared, and the top of his chest.

The shadows flicked across the stern features, but his brow did not lower, his mouth did not move.

The carved eyes stared directly into Esterra’s own, and she recognised the wordless statement they made.

An enemy had been located, an intruder, a violator.

The hatred burned coldly, colder than the ice and snow so far above them.

Yet Esterra saw a special malevolence meant for her alone.

Her soul cowered under its gaze.

The shadows pushed forward, consuming the flames.

“Up there!”

Tarr yelled, pointing high up one wall.

Far above the shelves, barely visible in the dark, there were openings, tunnels for ventilation or light.

Darkness lay there now, but it was their only chance.

They ran toward the ladder which leaned against the shelves nearby.

Esterra threw her torch into a collapsed bookcase, the wood and paper flourishing instantly into a grim bonfire.

The king’s gaze was fixed on the statue of the priest, and the shadows lashed furiously at the flames about him.

His rage fomented a sea of blackness, a storm of deathly night, the darkness expanding in sharp waves.

“Go!”

Tarr said, pulling at her arm.

Esterra could not look away, though.

She watched as the shadows burst through the books and flames, weaving through the air with serpentine movements.

The night enveloped the priest and his stone audience.

Something happened within the shadow.

Shrieks poured forth, climbing in crescendos as the crunch of marble and cracking of bones intensified.

Words in a tongue the world had not heard in a thousand years poured out in exhortation and reproach.

The priest’s voice rose, the voice booming out, but as if from a thousand paces, from a forgotten century.

But it was crushed beneath the screaming.

The shrieks overrode everything, and terror clawed its way into Esterra’s soul, a dark creature that knew exactly where to strike best, scratching and ripping and tearing into her mind with mad abandon.

Her heart pounded, panic flooding her entire being.

Turning, she climbed up the ladder, right arm forgotten in its cast.

She had witnessed something that she understood, and yet did not.

The darkness wanted her, and she knew it wanted her specifically.

Not Tarr, not anyone else, just her, and if she did not reach the hollow it would take her.

And something deep within her knew what that meant, even if she herself could not comprehend it.

No human could understand that faceless, nameless nothingness.

Her right arm twitched sharply, but she ignored it, leaping up the ladder and forgetting all else.

She had to flee.

Tarr followed behind, his massive bag of books, paper, and supplies weighing heavily on his back.

The terror painted across his face was a faded mirror of her own.

She did not care.

Only a few more yards to climb.

The shrieking was dying down, and the night swirled in nebulous liquid clouds, only growing in size, spreading like molten pitch.

Esterra had stopped climbing to stare at it, transfixed in a way she had never been before.

The king emerged, cloaked in shadow and in his hand he held the stone head of the priest, which had changed expression in death.

Its eyes were replaced with hollow sockets, filled with that bottomless darkness.

He lifted it, pointing the dead face toward Esterra.

She screamed and climbed harder.

The king threw the chunk of marble.

It smashed into the ladder, and both Esterra and Tarr leapt aside onto the shelves as the ancient device broke under the impact.

The darkness surged towards them, swallowing fire and light and all before it.

The marble figure walked with it, white in a wild ocean of black.

The pair climbed madly.

Books fell down into the raging bonfire below, and the shelves cracked under the new weight of their bodies.

The air was filled with their heavy breathing and the crackling fire and the swirling smoke of burning knowledge, with the deep crack of marble feet on broken flagstones rising from the twisting shadows with enough power to shake the teeth in the trespassers’ skulls.

With a final pull of her good arm, Esterra reached the top, and collapsed, breathless.

Her lungs burned.

This is not how I end .

She heaved in a deep breath.

I won’t die like this! She rose to her knees, every muscle groaning, and turned to the tunnel.

Tarr screamed from below.

Esterra took a step forward into the tunnel, jaw set.

Shelves cracked, sparks scattered upwards into her view.

Tarr’s heavy breathing and panicked muttering tore through her mind.

She took another step forward.

“Esterra!”

She closed her eyes, but a tear broke through anyway, and drew a burning path of shame down her cheek.

She strode forward.

“Help me, Esterra.”

She stopped, the fear in her heart urging her to run.

Emotions lead to death.

Empathy is weakness .

The king wanted her.

The darkness wouldn’t hesitate to rip her to pieces and send her mind into the insane maelstrom it called home.

Perhaps this human need to help was a suggestion from the shadows, a bait for her.

It’s a trap.

I should just run.

Esterra turned and slid to the edge, looked over.

The darkness was ripping into the raging fire at the foot of the shelves, eating the flames even as they were born.

The king looked straight up at her, but she forced her eyes to focus on Tarr.

He was only a few shelves down.

Hooking her feet into the stonework, she lowered her good arm.

The man made a grab for her hand, but missed.

His muscles were visibly trembling from strain.

“Drop your pack, you fool!”

she shouted.

Tarr looked up at her.

Esterra met his eyes, betraying none of her thoughts.

She could not help him decide.

But she would only give him a moment.

Burning pages glided up past them, rising on the heat of the fire, charred edges bursting alight even as the air lifted them.

He swore.

Shadows ripped the books and shelves into pieces just below his feet.

He unbuckled the pack.

It fell down onto the king, bursting apart.

The papers and books fed the bright flames, sending fresh sparks out.

The darkness swept back, leaving the statue in the open.

Fire licked about it, but again did not scorch the white marble. Tarr gripped her hand, and she wrenched him up and over the edge. He collapsed, but dragged at her shoulder.

“Come on, Esterra.”

Esterra looked for a moment longer at the marble king.

It returned her gaze.

The same cold recognition burned in the dead eyes.

She read an acknowledgement of defeat.

Neither the king nor its prey had died, though.

The cloak of shadows swept about the white body once more.

This was an eternal battle, and one which Esterra would have to wage eventually.

The king stared, and Esterra met it without flinching, glaring at him in triumph.

I won today, I’ll win tomorrow.

And I’ll keep winning, you bastard.

Mark my words.

“Esterra,”

Tarr said, tugging at her tunic.

She rose, and they ran down the tunnel, the feeble light of the burning library their only guide.

Soon that faded from grey to black.

They ran on, and did not realise they were in the hollow till the feeble glow of licht painted the curved walls of the cave in its twisted light.