Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

His face and expression concerned Nathaniel more than anything else. He had more chin than he did nose, and that wasn’t because his jaw was particularly strong. His nostrils tended more toward slits, and his nose looked closer to that of a bat than it did of the woman. Sharp angles defined his face, including cheekbones and peg-teeth seen between half-opened lips. His ears sharpened and his hair had been pulled back tight to his head. Had the patina been any thinner, Nathaniel would have assumed he was bald. The eyes, sunken back, projected a venomous glance.

Owen started up the steps. “Not the welcoming type, are they?”

“I reckon not.” Nathaniel bent over and wiped a finger on the Temple steps. “No grit here, no mud.”

Kamiskwa pointed to a rough semicircle that ran around that end of the courtyard and then on up to the mountainside. “A dome protected this place. I can feel the residual magick and see traces of it still.”

Makepeace crossed himself. “I reckon I’ll not be going in. I’ll just keep watch out here.”

Rathfield looked at him. “I would have hardly thought you susceptible to cowardice.”

The Virtuan drew himself up to his full height. “Don’t take a coward to recognize that this here is an unholy place. The Good Lord wants me going in there, He’ll give me a sign. Until that point I ain’t seeing why I should risk Perdition right here and now.”

Nathaniel smiled. “Ain’t no reason you should. Fact is, I was gonna ask you and Hodge to stay out here to keep an eye on things. See anything, fire a shot and we’ll come running.”

Hodge nodded and Makepeace moved off in the direction the footprint had pointed toward.

Owen stepped up first and entered the Temple, with Kamiskwa close behind him. Rathfield and Count von Metternin went next, and Nathaniel brought up the rear. He kept his rifle cradled in his arms and forced himself to watch their backtrail. He checked on the doors, visually measuring the opening, and dreaded seeing them close.

The doorway opened into a tall and long corridor carved from the native granite. At least that’s what Nathaniel wanted to believe, but he couldn’t see any chisel marks. As with the statues outside and the settlement’s building blocks, everything had been joined seamlessly. Just the way Kamiskwa kept to the middle of the corridor, as far from the walls as he could, suggested he was feeling magick coming off the stones. Nathaniel didn’t want to be thinking about what kind of power it would take to have shaped what he saw.

Owen rubbed his nose. “Dry, musty air; not at all what I’d expect.”

Every ten yards or so a pair of statues had been placed to support the walls. They alternated male and female, repeating the figures from outside, save that all of them held a glowing stone ball about a yard in diameter. The stone looked similar to those used to build the settlement, and yet was a thin-enough shell that Nathaniel imagined he could see shadowy creatures swimming through the interior. He took comfort in the fact that he didn’t see anything at all squidlike, but he didn’t enjoy the fact that something lived inside those stones.

Halfway into the structure the corridor widened, quadrupling in size to create a cavernous room. Statues continued at regular intervals, now freestanding pairs back to back, holding more lights. At the far end they discovered a raised dais, an altar and a tabernacle structure, the latter of which lay open. Something had once resided in there, but since the Temple’s interior showed no sign of decay, Nathaniel couldn’t begin to guess how long the tabernacle had been empty.

Nathaniel smiled at Count von Metternin. “You seen its like in Auropa?”

The Kessian frowned. “For scale, yes, but…” He pointed to vast expanses of blank wall. “Any cathedral would have murals there and in the ceiling vaults. In the building outside the water washed images away, but here they should have been intact.”

Owen shook his head. “Maybe the water didn’t wash things away. Maybe they were all rendered in magick. Kamiskwa, can you feel it?”

The Altashee brave nodded slowly, and Nathaniel recognized how much conscious control his friend was exerting. Only seen that a time or two, when he’s been in powerful-bad pain.

“Yes, it is magick. The walls tell stories.” Kamiskwa exhaled slowly. “What you would see in a painting, the magick makes you feel. Over there, it must be a battle. I can feel the wounds. Screams are whispers, but they are there.”

Rathfield turned and stared toward the panel Kamiskwa faced. “Impossible. You would have to be touching that to get any magick sense from it.”

“The Shedashee, Colonel, they don’t exactly cotton to the rules of Norillian magick.”

“Do you, Woods, feel what he feels?”

“No, but that don’t mean what he feels ain’t true.” Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed. “You just think of him as someone what was born to magick the way you was born to reading Norillian. You had to learn and got good at it. I ’spect iffen we done learned the right magick, we’d be feeling the same thing. And if we learned more we’d be seeing and hearing and maybe smelling what was coming off them walls. Ain’t something I’d be looking forward to, mind, but I reckon it could be done.”

Rathfield chuckled. “I envy you the innocence of your world view, Woods. This couldn’t have been raised by magick.”

“And you know that exactly how?” Nathaniel looked around. “I seen some darn good masons working in Temperance Bay, and hain’t nothing they done been even close to this. That the same in Auropa, my lord?”

“I am forced, Colonel, to agree with Mr. Woods.”

“But the Church, gentlemen, instructs me that such uses of magick are quite impossible.”

Owen laughed. “And you would know if they had decided that you needed know whether or not it was possible.”

“Careful, Strake, you approach blasphemy.”

“I reckon, Colonel, it ain’t blasphemy he approaches, but common sense. We know this ain’t natural. We cain’t see no sign that masons did this. Kamiskwa says he can feel the magick, and we ain’t got no cause to question his judgment. That leads toward a powerful conclusion. You need to think on this, Colonel…”

“Yes, Woods?”

“Mayhap be that your Church done told you what they thought was true, but this here settlement and what it represents is outside their knowing.”

Rathfield folded his arms across his chest. “It is a point worth considering.”

“Well, here’s another two. Ain’t but one entrance here, and that strikes me as peculiar. There has to be other ways in and out. And the other thing is this: we don’t know what made this place, but we know it look powerful magick. That being so, I’m of a mind to wonder, just what in the name of Heaven was powerful enough to melt the city out there.”

The latter thought sobered them for a moment. Nathaniel moved off and started looking for anything like a door or perhaps a place where a door had been sealed over. He found nothing until he met Owen over by the right side of the dais. “What have you got?”

Owen, on a knee, traced a fingernail along an almost invisible seam in the floor. “It’s fitted flush. I cannot find anything to open it. Magick would seem to make sense.”

“I hope not.”

Owen frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Perhaps I do, Owen.” Count von Metternin ran a hand over his jaw. “Supposing Nathaniel’s observations are correct, likewise that what Kamiskwa is reporting is correct. We would have a settlement that was created through the use of magick. Imagine for a moment what it means for a people to see magick as so common and so simple to do that they use it in preference to manual labor. Imagine a people who, instead of splitting wood with an ax, just touched a tree and had it fly apart into a cord of wood.”