Magical tracker

Jaya started to say something else, but Jodah had closed his eyes and tilted his head back. The archmage was pulling something from the depths of his memory, from that bleached and cleaned part of his mind that held only information with none of the emotions attached to it. Her lips became a thin line as Jodah started to mouth a series of archaic words.

Before him, over the water, the air coalesced and began to glow. At first it seemed to be another of his light-balls, twin to the one that danced over his shoulder as he sloshed between the piles. Then this particular ball of mana caught fire, as if doused in flammable liquid and set alight. Glistening bands of multicolored flames danced over the surface of the glowing globe. It hovered, casting multicolored shadows against the toppled bookshelves along the walls. Then it darted toward Jaya.

Despite herself, Jaya flinched as it danced past her.

“Follow it,” said Jodah, “but don’t touch it! It will give you a nasty burn.” Already he was sloshing back toward her along the edge of the pool and passed her at the entrance.

The flaming ball moved like a dragonfly, darting down the hallway, following one wall, then the other. It seemed to have its own intelligence.

“What is it?” said Jaya, watching it hover then lurch forward.

“A very old spell,” said Jodah. “Almost a thousand years old. I don’t know if anyone else would remember it now. Think of it as a magical tracker. It’s tracking down a memory.”

“Whose? Yours?” asked Jaya.

“When I was a young man,” said Jodah, then stole a sideways glance at Jaya. “And before you say it, yes, I was a young man, once. I was here, and I was at a place that oozed darkness, or it seemed to at the time. Even when we were here, millennia later, it was present, though diminished, like an echo but still strong. Now there’s nothing. So I called upon this little tracker to hunt down a memory, comparing what was with what is. It will find the heart of that ancient power, despite the changes to the hallways and corridors since.”

The glowing tracker reached a stairway and dived down, dragging the two mages in tow behind it. It moved slowly at the base of the stairs, as if trying to figure out where it belonged, then zipped to one side. Finally it bounced against a stone wall, flung back by an obstruction that had appeared in the millennia since the memory that fed it had first been created. The glowing orb slammed into the wall a second time, then a third, and finally sputtered and died.

Jodah reached up and touched the wall. It was dry, at least comparably dry to the rest of the walls, and the mortar crumbled slightly at his touch.

“Through here. I need an opening,” he said. “You want to do the honors?”

“Loud or soft?” asked Jaya, smiling.

“Soft,” said Jodah. “No need to let the keeper know we’re punching holes in his walls.

“Spoilsport,” said Jaya, but the smile remained.

The task mage traced a circle on the dry stone. As she dragged her finger along the dusty stone, she intoned old words that she had learned from a spell merchant at one of the Kjeldoran ports. Her finger left a flaming tracery that crackled as it etched deeply into the stone.

The task mage traced her rough circle and returned to her starting point, leaving a flaming design inscribed on the wall. She counted to three, then kicked the center of the circle with as much effort as she could muster. The stone circle popped neatly out, falling away with a resounding crash, then sliding into the distance with a diminishing roar, ending finally in a bone-felt thump. Dust billowed out of the hole.

“That was soft?” said Jodah, half-expecting the keeper’s minions to descend on them.

Jaya shrugged and said, “Next time, you should let me try loud.”

They climbed through the hole and found the reason for the noise. Their entrance had opened on a staircase, and the stone plug had slid down the stairs after being knocked loose. The air was thick with dust, and Jodah summoned a small wind to settle it elsewhere then he put a little more mana into his light-ball.

“Look familiar?” asked Jaya between coughs.

“Believe it or not,” said Jodah, “yes it does.”

He clambered down the uneven stairs while behind him, Jaya pulled herself through the hole.

The stairs descended, then leveled out, then descended again. This area had yet to be affected by the rising dampness, and parts of the wall were dangerously buckled inward. Still, Jodah pressed on, pausing only to run his hand along the wall.

“Once,” he said, “this wall hummed, like there was machinery present.”

“It’s been a while,” noted Jaya. “Maybe that humming is what you’re no longer feeling.”

Jodah shook his head and pressed on.

Finally the passage leveled again, this time spilling out into a roughly circular cavern. Along one side was the collapsed, blackened remains of what might have been another staircase up, a victim of dry rot and fire.

Jodah stepped into the middle of the room and spread his arms. “This is it!” he said.

Jaya leaned against the entrance and said, “This is what?”

“This is the source of that feeling of power, of evil, of darkness,” said Jodah. He stamped his foot, hard. “This was once a bottomless pit. And they hung Lord Ith in a cage over it!”

Jaya blinked at the solid floor and said, “This doesn’t look very bottomless to me.”

Jodah dropped to one knee and ran his hand over the surface, nodding. “Interesting. Maybe the pit is beneath it, but the surface looks the same as I remember it.”

“That’s a rarity in itself,” noted Jaya, but the furrows in Jodah’s forehead deepened.

“Odd,” he said at last. “The floor doesn’t look recent or even carved by human hand. Indeed, there’s something wrong here. It looks like it’s always been here. Except the pit is missing.”

“Oh, come on,” said Jaya, suddenly impatient. “You don’t just steal a bottomless pit.”

“Even if it was sealed, you could still feel it,” said Jodah. “Here was the center of the darkness.” He pointed up to the rough ceiling. “Here was where the dreams first haunted the Gixians. Here was where Mairsil the Usurper put Lord Ith, the founder of the Mage’s Conclave, hanging him from the ceiling in a magical cage.”

***

The Shattered Alliance, Chapter 3