Paul Collins - Swords Of Quentaris

She stepped through hesitantly and soon only her back was visible. Then it wasn't.

Rad waited for something to happen. When Tulcia said, Are you coming in or what?' he almost fell backwards.

'What happens if it becomes solid while we're in there? What then?'

'Then we become mountain people,' Tulcia said. 'Look, Rad, it's safe, all right? It's just been magicked to keep people out. And it's done its job well. Now I'm not going to wait all day.'

Tulcia's hand reached out from the seemingly solid rock and pulled Rad in.

7. Hamilian MagicRAD fell into and through the cliff face. The moaning wind was still buffeting the ridge, still rushing in at them in eddying swirls of dust; other detritus littered the cavern floor as though the barrier wall were nonexistent. Rad peered out through the mouth of the cave and although the horizon was slightly obscured by the rock patterns, it was clearly an illusory granite wall.

Rad brushed Tulcia's hand away as though it

were a bothersome biting insect. 'I was coming!'

he snapped. 'I was just looking at the rock image.'

Rad stopped dead. 'Have you ever seen the like before?' Despite the fact that his every nerve was tingling with alarm, Rad's face broke into a look of wonder. The cave, with its shifting shadows and otherworldliness, had a nightmarish quality that both thrilled and alarmed him.

'It's real,' Tulcia said, touching her sword against the jagged outcrops of stalactites and stalagmites. She took a deep breath, inhaling the cold, close air. 'It's deeper than it looks. There's certainly ventilation coming from somewhere.'

'Hmm.' Rad tentatively poked a finger through the cave mouth. When it disappeared through the shimmering mirage he quickly pulled it back.

'Weird,' he said. Another wave of alarm turned his skin to gooseflesh. His morbid imagination touched on the fact that he could well be inside a dragon's mouth, and these rock formations —

both hanging and jutting up — were indeed its rotting fangs.

'But what's it hiding?' Tulcia pondered. She sheathed her sword. 'It is said in The Book of

Quentaris that the Hamil have not visited Quentaris in generations. No-one has reliable proof that they even really existed in the first place! That they were almost godlike even before they created wings and joined their brethren in the night skies is probably a myth. Is this where they lived, looking down on lesser humans as a shepherd might tend his flock? Or is it one great hoax?'

'You read and think too much,' Rad snorted.

'If you're saying that this hidden cavern is protected by something other than a master sorcerer, you're a feather short of a stuffed pillow.'

Tulcia looked into the darkened depths of the cave. 'Hamilian protection or conjured magic, it matters not,' she said. 'Ancient Hamilian magic was supposedly banned long ago — most men-tion of it was expunged from the Lost Library by revolutionaries. If we find proof of it, we will be wealthy beyond our wildest imaginings. We our-selves could become gods!'

Rad winced at the blasphemy. And if the cave's been magicked by a market hack, what then?' he wondered aloud.

'We had better pray to our Odd Gods to

protect us. But if the hidden cave was magicked, then the sorcerer's magic has betrayed him. We passed the first test with no harm.'

Rad quickly wove a sign of atonement to his special deity, Fellonious, God of Wind and Fire.

'Don't keep saying stuff like that!' he gushed.

'You never know who might be listening!'

'C'mon, hero,' Tulcia laughed. 'Follow me if you dare.'

Rad went unwillingly. Light spilled from cre-vasses where no light should be; the cavern was warm, as though well-fed fires fought the damp; worst of all was that no superior race such as the Hamil would have lived in such dire surround-ings. For despite the warmth and surreal light, this was still a cave. Gravel crunched beneath his feet and the musty smell of animal dung and some other feral presence was in evidence.

As he followed Tulcia's retreating back, Rad kept a wary eye open for the unexpected. Nightmares like this had a habit of containing the most unlikely surprises. It was while he was surveying the darker reaches of the walls that he noticed something inexplicable. Scrawlings in

the Scar? No. He peered closer. The wall was definitely stained, but in the meagre light he could discern neither the colouring nor the design.

Rad put his finger to the stain. Dried to a crisp. It was perhaps his overactive imagination that made him look to the corresponding wall. A similar pattern upon the facing wall made him frown.

'Oi! C'mere quickly, Rad!'

He took a step forward and yelped. His foot had landed on something brittle and he half expected some skeletal creature to come alive and waggle its bones at him. He pushed back against the wall and felt a thready thrumming.

Looking down, he could just make out the gaping jaws of a whitened skull leering up at him. The rib cage had been protected by a leather jerkin, now encrusted with white pow-der and shrunken with age. The rusted pommel of a sword protruded from a curved scabbard, the likes of which Rad had never seen. Lying a knife-thrust away was an uncrested helmet, up-ended like a long-disused bucket.

'Rad? I've found the rift. I've never seen anything so fantastic!'

Shoving away from the wall, Rad skirted the dried bones — some primeval instinct warned him not to linger here a moment longer than necessary. He unsheathed his as yet unnamed sword and waved it about in front of him. The unnatural light had dimmed now, as though a trap had been sprung and the hunt was almost over.

A faint sizzling sound to Rad's right jerked him around. The point of his sword swung into the wall and disappeared. Rad prodded his sword and it sank up to the hilt. He withdrew it to make sure it was still whole. Experimenting, he described a huge arc as he had seen Tulcia do earlier. The mirage covered an opening almost as big as the cave mouth.

'Are you coming or what? Rad!'

Rad stuck his head inside the mirage. Inside the rock was yet another cavern, even larger than the one they had traversed. He pulled out his head then stuck it back in, still completely enthralled by a tingling experience.

One false move and he knew that the unwary could become lost in this rift. Perhaps that was

the reason for so many disappearances in the caves. Maybe each of them was simply a maze —

for all he knew, all the caves were linked. He scuffed his feet and made a giant 'x' in the rubble.

They would have to explore this new route later.

He followed Tulcia's voice. He had heard rum-ours of mimics in the rifts, beings that could imitate any word and lure victims to their deaths.'

What he found was a shimmering blanket of luminous green. It stretched across the cave like a solid web, wavering and oscillating as though fingers were dipping into it, causing ripples and reflections.

This wasn't another mirage. This was the real thing. A rift. What lay beyond could be the cause for great delight or great concern. It was known that the rifts closed and opened at will, trapping adventurers in lands with no chance of escape, no hope of returning home until they found another open rift.

'RAD!'

Rad jerked. That was no imitation of Tulcia.

No-one could mistake her fiery temper, nor imitate it, he hoped. Rad took a deep breath

and plunged through the rift.

The crossing was somewhat of a disappointment. The rift had again turned his skin to gooseflesh, but that was all. He turned and looked at the bubbling, writhing curtain of coloured air.

Had he actually stepped into another world? It certainly didn't look like it. This was still the same cave they had been exploring. With a shrug he followed the footsteps left clearly in the ancient dust.