Connistantol - Part 6
They were in a part of the city that hadn't been cleared yet, and the narrow streets between the stone buildings were choked with vegetation growing in the deep layer of rotting leaf mold that had been deposited since the city's abandonment. There were no trees here, their roots being unable to penetrate the city's strong foundations, a ten foot thick layer of concrete that was its defence against subterranean attackers and that was as strong today as the day it had been laid down. Instead, the vegetation here was fleshy and herbaceous right down to the ground, with leaves longer than a man was tall that grew directly from the soft stems and with large showy flowers and luscious looking fruits. They could have chopped their way through easily with their swords and knives but dared not leave a trail, so they squeezed their way between the plants, being careful not to break a single stem or leaf.
"Which way?" Drake whispered to Petronax. The soldier peered around, trying to make out the shapes of buildings through the dense greenery. After a while, he got his bearings and led them north along the city wall until they came to a radial street leading directly towards the centre of the city. The plants in the centre of the street had been trampled down by Shadowsoldiers, so they made their way along its edge, where the remaining plants still provided cover.
After travelling a hundred yards or so along the street, they abruptly came to an area where all the vegetation had been burned away, leaving little but a layer of ash on the ground. The boundary between the burned and the unburned area was curiously abrupt. It wasn't as if an ordinary fire had died out after reaching this far. The vegetation was much too succulent and lush to burn naturally anyway. It was more as if the area they were entering had been deliberately set aflame. such as by a flame-thrower.
"Looks as though this was done by fireball spells," said Thomas to Petronax. "Didn't you say there was a wizard with them when they ambushed you?"
"Yes, the Gods damn him! He froze three of my best friends with blasts of cold and six more with bolts of lightning! We had no chance!"
Thomas looked puzzled. "He didn't use fireballs on you?"
"No," Petronax also looked puzzled. "I see what you mean. If he's got the power to do all this..." He swept his arm to indicate the flameswept city streets, "why didn't he lob a few at us?"
"Maybe this wasn't done by a wizard."
"Then by what?" The soldier gave a sudden start as he remembered something he'd told the travellers very soon after he'd first met them. He'd been describing how he'd been left for dead by the Shadowsoldiers after they'd slaughtered the rest of his party, and how he'd briefly regained consciousness to overhear two of the enemy gloating over their easy victory. It may have been just a dream, but he'd thought he'd heard one of them say something like "We didn't need the dragon after all."
What kind of noise did a dragon make when it breathed fire? Wouldn't it make a sound similar to that made by the burners of a hot air balloon? When it flexed its wings, wouldn't it make a sound similar to a group of people trying to fold a large sheet of tarpaulin in a strong breeze? Petronax found that he was trembling. By the Gods! he thought in near panic. Have we just been within a few feet of a real live fire breathing dragon?
Thomas had come to the same conclusion at virtually the same time, and he saw the others going pale as they guessed as well. "Oh terrific! That's just terrific!" said Matthew, his voice shaking with fear. "What in the name of all the Nine Hells are we going to do now?"
"Exactly the same as we were going to do anyway, but much more carefully," replied Drake. "This changes nothing, in fact it may make our task easier in one respect. The native inhabitants of this city will be keeping their heads down while there's a dragon in the area, so we won't have to worry about accidentally running into them. It would have been rather ironic to successfully evade the Shads only to be taken prisoner by a tribe of goblins or human tribesmen."
"They've got a dragon and you say it might be a good thing?" cried Matthew incredulously.
"Shush!" insisted Diana. "Keep your voice down!"
"I know," said Drake soothingly. "You're terrified of dragons, we all are. Who wouldn't be? The important thing, however, is that they still don't know we're here, so our chances of success haven't changed. So long as we're careful, we'll be all right. Have faith and fear not." Matthew nodded glumly, but still looked very unhappy. "What about the rest of you? None of you signed up to fight a dragon, so if you lack the faith to go on..."
"Thanks," said Shaun, "but if my little brother's got the guts to go on, then so have I. I think the women ought to wait outside the city, though."
"We've been through this before," said Lirenna angrily. "Where you go, so do we. Right, Di?"
"Right!" agreed Diana. "Besides, you'll probably need My Lady's power before we're finished here."
Thomas and Jerry also indicated their willingness to go on, and so, after a few more moments to compose themselves and calm their fears, the eight of them stepped out into the open, fire cleared street.
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They were lucky, and managed to reach the building Petronax wanted without seeing any of the enemy or any of the city's native inhabitants, although there was no shortage of footprints on the ash covered ground. They walked along the centre of the street, where the Shadowsoldiers' footprints were thickest, so that they wouldn't leave a trail of their own for a passing enemy soldier to wonder at. After about half an hour, they reached a large, three storey building near the centre of the city that was still almost intact and slipped gratefully inside through one of the open doorways, glad to be out of sight of any large flying reptiles that might happen to pass by overhead.
The building was a hollow shell, with no remaining furnishings or decoration. The Agglemonians had taken it all with them when they'd left centuries before, and the city's new owners apparently had no interest in it as a dwelling place. The doors and windows were empty openings, and a layer of soil six inches thick had formed on the floor, in which small shrubs and flowers were still growing, having been partially protected by the walls from the fire outside. The Shadowsoldiers had been there before them, however. Their footprints were everywhere, and they'd made a lot of holes in the walls looking for secret doors and hiding places. Petronax led them through several rooms until they reached a long corridor that ran the entire length of the building.
"What was this place?" asked Thomas curiously.
"One of the administration buildings, the seat of the province's government. From here, they ruled everything between Pastora and the Great Flat. A large area, but sparsely populated, which is why this city's so small. This was one of Agglemon's minor provinces. The place we're looking for is the governor's office. If anyone knew where the Orbs were, he would have. If this place follows the usual pattern, it'll be on the second floor, so we want the stairs."
Fortunately, the stairs were also made of stone and were built solidly into the walls and so had survived the centuries intact, but the upper floors were just wood and, even though treated with chemicals to preserve them from worms and rot, had crumbled under their own weight in many places, leaving great gaping holes between storeys. Leaving the others on the stairs, therefore, Jerry and Lirenna crept tentatively down the second storey corridor, following the directions given by Petronax. The nome because he was the lightest, and the demi shae because she had an autumnleaf ring that would protect her if the floor gave way beneath her.
The two had also been chosen because of the special abilities possessed by their races. Nomes are superb judges of structural stability, and can spot an unsafe floor or ceiling from a mile away, this ability being vital in their shallow underground dwellings dug out of sometimes crumbly soil where a cave-in could bury or suffocate a whole family, and Jerry was able to guide the demi shae around spots too weak to support her weight. The shae folk, in turn, are very good at spotting minute details, tiny shreds of evidence that a human might overlook, both because they had sharper eyesight, shae folk having six times the number of rods and cones per square inch of retina, but also because they have a power of intense concentration that allows them to see things in a single glance that a human might not notice in an hour's careful study. As they looked inside one room after another, therefore, looking for the secret wall safe that Petronax said was there, Lirenna took only a couple of minutes to search each wall, walls that a human would have had to inspect minutely with a magnifying glass to cover as effectively.
"The governor's office will be one of the ones overlooking the courtyard below," hissed Petronax. Jerry waved back in reply and told Lirenna to avoid the spot directly in front of her, which she would have sworn was perfectly solid. She moved over to the wall and edged along it, and as she passed the area Jerry had warned her of, it collapsed with a loud crash, leaving her with just a six inch wide strip of floor to stand on. She stood frozen in shock waiting for her thumping heart to calm down, while back on the stairs the others waited anxiously to see if the noise attracted the enemy. After several minutes had passed with nothing happening, however, they decided that they'd gotten away with it and carried on.
The corridor was a long one, at least seventy yards long, and had twelve doors along each side, most of them just empty doorframes. The two wizards looked into one after the other, spending about ten minutes in each room. The walls were bare, with most of the plaster having long since crumbled away, exposing the grey bricks of which the building was made, and the windows were empty, allowing a warm breeze to blow through. They stayed well away from the windows, not wanting to be seen by the enemy, but a couple of times Lirenna risked a glance out and saw several Shadowsoldiers walking up and down the streets, methodically searching the city, looking for the same thing they were. The second time she looked out, she pulled back hurriedly as she saw one of the enemy glancing in her direction. There was no outcry, so she knew she hadn't been spotted, but she vowed not to take such a stupid risk again.
While they were in the fifth room, the others back on the stairs heard her give a soft cry of delight, and a moment later her face popped around the door again. "Found it!" she whispered. "It's disguised as a building brick!"
"Can you open it?" whispered back Petronax.
"I don't think so, it's very well made. I might be able to get the whole brick out, though. The mortar's very crumbly."
"Just make sure you don't bring the whole roof down on your head."
"Don't worry," said Jerry. "I know what I'm doing."
The ‘brick' was two feet wide by one foot high and had a coating of real baked clay. It had fooled even Lirenna's shayen eyesight, which explained why the Shadowsoldiers had missed it, but it hadn't been quite good enough to fool the nome who, being an illusionist, was good at seeing through other people's deceptions. The disguised safe had virtually shouted at him, and he had spotted it the moment he'd entered the room.
It was the sort of safe that was only intended to be opened once every few years or decades during a time of crisis, when the highly important and top secret information it contained would be needed. In the meantime, it was completely hidden by a layer of plaster so that no-one would suspect its presence, and even if the plaster was accidentally or deliberately removed, its disguise as an ordinary brick would still protect it. When the governor was finished with it, its brick covering would have been completely replaced, and when replaced in its position in the wall, the entire room, maybe the entire floor, would have been entirely replastered, so that no sign would be left to betray its presence. You didn't take any chances with something this important, no precaution was too much trouble to take. Doubtless, the governor had had another, more ordinary safe for routine day to day use, and to attract the attention of any thief or spy who somehow made it into the room past the building's other defences.
Jerry and Lirenna scraped away at the crumbly mortar with their knives, and had soon loosened it enough that they were able to carefully ease it out. It was much lighter than a real brick, being hollow, and between them they were able to lift it easily and carry it back to the others.
Petronax wrapped a layer of cloth around the hilt of his knife to deaden the sound and used it to knock the layer of brick off, revealing the metal safe inside, still as bright and shiny as the day it was new. "Now to open it!" he said excitedly. He tried to force the lock with his knife, but it was too strong and after a few minutes of failed effort he stared at it in frustration as if trying to open it by sheer force of willpower.
"Give it here," said Matthew with a smirk of triumph on his face as he fished his lockpicking tools out of his backpack. He fiddled with the lock for a few minutes and soon had it open, revealing a rolled up bundle of papers, yellowed with age, and a small book. "Careful!" warned Petronax, taking the safe back. "They'll be very fragile after all this time. They have to be handled very carefully."
He gently removed the roll of papers, opened them out on the lid of the safe and examined them one by one. "Garrison sizes and compositions," he muttered to himself. "Sealed orders, foreign policy instructions from Arnor, licenses to do this or that. Must have been pretty hot stuff once, the kind of things that, if they fell into the wrong hands, could have shaken half the Empire, but now it's of no interest to anyone except historians. What we want's not here, it must be in the book." He picked up the small book and was pleased to see the words ‘Most Secret' printed on its cover, above the emblem of the Agglemonian Empire, the highly stylised head of a longhorn bison.
"This is it!" he cried excitedly upon opening the cover. "Look!" He showed them the title. Present locations and usages of category one magical artifacts in Fengalla province. "Category one listed all the most powerful military magical items. If even one in ten of the items listed here are still in their listed locations, this book will be worth a fortune!"
"If it were ever to be sold," said Drake sternly. "Which, of course, it won't be. That book is the property of the Beltharan government."
"Yes, of course, of course," said Petronax idly, carefully turning page after page. "Here we are. According to this, there were three Orbs in this province, all in fortresses in the Red Mountains. I know for a fact that two of them are accounted for. One was damaged while being removed two hundred years ago, making it useless, and the other is now in a Samnian fortress, so this must be the one we want. It's in a fortress at the mouth of the Sen Camaris valley. Let's hope it's still there after all this time."
There was a noise from further down the stairs, the clatter of a piece of loose plaster as it fell from the wall and broke into fragments on the floor. They looked to see a small figure, half hidden in shadow, dart out towards the door. "Goblin!" cried Jerry in fury, jumping up and racing after him. "Goblin! Murderous bloody monster!"
"He's heard everything!" said Petronax. "Don't let him get away!"
They ran madly after the tiny figure, jumping three or four stairs at a time, but he was too fast and reached the open street while the soldier was still a dozen yards behind him. He screamed and shouted for help, bringing a few shologs and human Shadowsoldiers out to see what was going on, and when they saw Petronax and the others emerge from the building behind him, a great shout of rage went up and they rushed to the attack. Jerry barely saw them, his whole attention on the goblin, but Drake grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him away.
Jerry saw the shologs then. There were only two of them in sight at the moment and he prepared to fight them, thinking that the huge, hairy humanoids wouldn't have much chance against all eight of them, but Drake was still dragging him away, towards where the others were running hard for the nearest city gate, looks of terror on their faces. Oh Gods! he suddenly thought as his head cleared and he remembered what else was in the city, and he tore himself free from the priest so that the two of them could run at full speed after the others, each of them with only one thought in their heads, a thought that drove them on in a state of terror and near panic. The dragon!
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