Barrington Bayley - The Pillars of Eternity

Romrey observed the move in silence. ‘Let’s move,’ Boaz said. ‘If we find any doors, we might be able to tell what kind of place this is.’

Romrey stepped down from the sledge, which dutifully trailed after them as they moved deeper into the ‘city’. Soon it engulfed them. The sky seemed to disappear, its colours merging with those of the structures that rose and danced all around them. His surroundings began to seem forbidding to Boaz. He was telling himself that they were wasting their time here, and that they would do better to search elsewhere, when a cry of ‘Hey!’ came from Romrey.

He had found an entrance to one of the blocklike buildings, shaped like a man-sized door. The aperture was too small to admit the sledge. Leaving it parked outside, Boaz followed his companion through.

Inside, the darkness was almost complete. Boaz switched on a torch and held it aloft. By its fierce radiance he saw that they were in an empty chamber, cube-shape but with rounded corners. In the opposite wall was another entrance, this time oval but also of a size to admit a man.

Romrey peered through it. ‘It’s a tunnel.’

Boaz joined him, twisting the ring on the torch to produce a beam. There was nothing to be seen in the tunnel, which after a few yards curved out of sight.

Pausing, Boaz told himself that poking into any chance corner was perhaps not the best way of persuading this fabled world to reveal its treasures. A more reliable method might be to trust his ship’s spy beams. While Romrey urged him to go down the tunnel, he summoned up the ship, asking which way he should go.

The ship spoke, but mingled with the message was a note that was unfamiliar: Go forward .

He stepped through the opening, beckoning Romrey to follow.

They moved cautiously, for what seemed a long time. There was no apparent sense to the oval corridor’s convolutions: it turned this way and that, it dipped, it rose, it slanted at random oblique angles, it turned – so Boaz suspected – back on itself. Then, as he was about to suggest they retrace their steps, it delivered them to a low-ceilinged, boat-shaped chamber, about the size of the lounge in Radalce Obsoc’s yacht.

Returning the torch to an all-round lamp, he took quick stock of the room. The walls were of a matt lavender louvred with close-set ribs which followed the curve of the chamber like the ribs of a sail-driven water boat. Placed along the center of the chamber were about half a dozen closed chests, or coffers. A storage place, perhaps?

Romrey dashed to the chests and threw open the unresisting lid of the first one he came to. He drew his breath in sharply, dipped in a hand and pulled out something that glittered.

It looked at first like a silver spider’s web. But its threads seemed to flow and reorganize themselves constantly as Romrey held it up to the light, turned it over and examined it through an eyeglass.

‘I don’t know what this stuff is. Never seen anything like it before.’

Boaz was not listening to him. He was receiving a message, which at first he thought came from his ship – but no, it was that other, unfamiliar note which minutes before had mingled with the ship’s voice.

Here, little Mudworm, is the treasure you seek .

Mudworm! That hated name – the name he had not heard all these years, the original name he had been given by his enemies – where had it come from now? What was speaking to him?

With the words, there was an instruction. He was directed to the third chest in the row. Moving to it, he saw that it had a transparent lid. Not only that, but a square in the ceiling over it was also transparent, and light – daylight, as far as he could tell – shone down onto the cask below.

Through the crystalline lid, he saw a layer of what appeared to be large diamonds.

The use of his earlier name had provoked turbulent and unpleasant feelings in Boaz. Nevertheless he forced himself to be calm, and lifted the lid.

The gems, about a hundred of them, were laid on something resembling velvet. Each was faceted, and about an inch and a half in diameter. Boaz picked one up, turned it over, let it catch the light.

Romrey was suddenly at his elbow, the silver spider web dangling from his hand. ‘What’s that? Is it…?’

For answer, Boaz brought the gem close to his face to peer into it. One could see reflections in the facets, tiny little pictures. He brought it closer to his eye, looking as though through a lens.

And he saw himself and Romrey, coasting over the yellow plain on the float sledge, reaching the ‘city’, dismounting…

A scene from the recent past.

Now he understood why this chest had a transparent lid, why the light shone on it from outside. Time-gems refracted light through time. From the past, from the future. The overhead panel brought it light from the city’s environs.

But a scene from the past could be explained by other means than time transference. He turned to another facet. And saw himself again.

He saw Romrey, too, but something was wrong. Romrey was standing like a statue, staring ahead of him as if frozen. In the scene Boaz himself seemed disturbed. He staggered, peered close at Romrey, reached out his arm to touch him…

The picture faded.

A warning?

‘What did you see?’ asked Romrey. He reached past Boaz and picked up another gem, focusing his gaze into it as Boaz had done. For a while both men were absorbed in the tiny picture shows.

It was strange that images so minuscule, and presumably bounced around the interiors of the gems at random, should be so clear. The gems themselves were as limpid as water, except where glints and sparkles flashed through them – and as these glints enlarged themselves, as the facets were turned, the scenes came suddenly into focus, never lasting more than a few seconds before vanishing.

If the glimpses were all from past and future time, then the range was immense; somehow Boaz had expected it to encompass a few hours or minutes only – perhaps no more than seconds or a part of a second. Briefly he saw a perfect little landscape with a yellow sun and wavy, frondlike trees swishing over dusty ground. Flowerlike creatures walked in groups beneath those trees…. Now he saw one of the golden ships flying. It swept over Meirjain’s fantastic landscape, then soared upward, disappearing in a sky that was blue rather than mottled.

Boaz snatched up another gem and examined it for scenes also. He was greedy for evidence of time transference. But fascinating though the little cameos were, nothing seemed to distinguish one jewel from another.

‘Let’s get ’em,’ Romrey exclaimed feverishly. They scooped the gems up, pouring them into their belt pouches. Then Romrey turned his attention to the other chests.

Boaz stood where he was. He had retained the last gem in his hand and was staring into it. He turned the stone ever so slightly, until a tiny scene came into focus.

For the first time the scene was within the chamber itself. The six chests were being carried into it and laid down in a row, just as he and Romrey had found them. The work was being done by humanoid, olive-skinned creatures who were completely naked except for silver circlets around their waists. The humanish impression was completely destroyed, however, by their faces, which more than anything resembled the head of an Egyptian ibis…

It was wholly coincidence, a startled Boaz decided, that the ibis also figured in a colonnader card entitled the Stellar Realm…

He tried to hold the scene, but his fingers trembled and he lost it.

He dropped the gem in his pouch.

He felt frightened. He did not know who or what had spoken to him a short while ago. He presumed it was a thought from his own mind (perhaps even some sinister stray datum from his ship?); he wanted to stay and explore further, at the same time fighting an urge to leave, now, with what he had found.