The Sorcerer's Legacy (48 page)

Standing to each side of the large opening stood a colossal statue carved out of the same ruddy stone of the mountains. The statues were of a man and a woman at least sixty feet tall. The man looked like a warrior wearing armor and wielding a huge two-handed sword, its tip between his spread feet, his hands resting on the pommel. The woman wore robes and had long flowing hair with a holly wreath encircling her head like a tiara. A badger or some similar creature stood protectively at her feet.

Darting from boulder to boulder, doing their best not to make any noise, the group crept closer to the entrance where they saw two guards standing to each side of the open passageway. One was short and somewhat fat, the other enormously tall and broad, a veritable giant of a man. Thanks to the thick columns, large boulders, and the pair’s constant bickering the party was able to sneak up to within forty or fifty feet of them.

“How are going to get by them?” Malek whispered.

“There’s just two of them. We can rush em and take em down without trouble,” Borik suggested.

Maude shook her head negative. “They could shout a warning and alert someone inside and that big one could easily count as two by himself.”

Maude turned to Tarth. “Tarth, can you cast a spell to put them to sleep or immobilize and silence them?”

“Of course, Maudeline,” Tarth replied.

The elf pulled out some fibrous piece of plant material from some unseen pocket of his robe, quietly chanted a few elven words of magic, and blew the object in his hand towards the pair as the magic consumed it. Instead of the bickering brothers falling asleep they started quacking, first in confusion and then in fear.

“What did you do, Tarth?” Maude hissed angrily.

“Oops, I must have accidentally grabbed duck grass instead of dream lily. I will just use some sand this time, it’s easier,” Tarth explained and recast his spell.

The two quacking men fell back against the wall and slid down fast asleep once Tarth recast his spell. Maude led her group past the two unconscious guards and into the gloomy halls of the temple.

The massive opening quickly narrowed to stone block halls of slight more normal size although they continued to be quite spacious. The walls contained a great deal of base relief carvings, particularly around the arches that were set about every twenty feet down the hall.

Several corridors branched off from the main passage but for now, Maude felt it prudent to keep moving straight and not take any unnecessary turns. The halls were vast and the temple enormous.

“This thing is huge for a temple,” Maude remarked.

“I think it was more of a monastery than a temple. Set this far out you would not get many people coming to worship except for those that lived here,” Malek replied.

“This place is as big as a city. I’m glad it’s not occupied. Pretty quiet so far,” Maude remarked.

“Yeah, that pyramid was quiet too until we picked up that stupid mask,” Borik reminded them.

Maude prayed that the main passage led to what they were searching for otherwise it could take days to explore the place. Borik was the first one to notice that the floor began sloping downward, its angle of decline increasing the farther they went. Within minutes, the downward slope was readily apparent and soon became a ramp.

The passage ahead opened into a huge room of fluted columns extending from floor to ceiling. The ramp led almost to the center of a large room sunk thirty feet below the passage they had just exited.

There were several empty pedestals surrounding a large circular carving that looked to be an enormous globe. On the right side of the globe was a carving of the sun, on the left side a moon, at the top there was a star, and at the bottom was a carving of what looked like ocean waves. In the center of the globe was a carving of a tree just below a fifth pedestal.

Five more pedestals were arranged in a circle around one of the fluted columns near the far wall opposite the bottom of the ramp. The upper ceiling and the tops of the columns were lost in darkness.

“Something tells me that this is where we need to be,” Maude thought aloud.

“I don’t see any boots, just a few statues and they don’t even look like gold, just carved rock,” Borik groused.

“Let’s take a closer look at the statuettes,” Malek suggested.

The party stepped around the carving, having learned early in their career to never step on anything built or carved into the floor, and examined the statuettes. There were five in all, three female, two male. Each one was only about a foot tall.

“Ok, now what?” Borik asked grumpily.

Malek and Maude shook their heads in helplessness.

“I think these four are the carvings of the gods but I don’t know what the other female statuette represents,” Malek supplied.

“Tarth, do you know what any of this means?” Maude asked the elf.

“Of course I do, Maudeline,” Tarth replied airily with a wave of his hand.

“Then why don’t ya tell us, ya lame-brained, pointy-eared halfwit!” Borik demanded impatiently.

“Because you did not say please,” Tarth replied with sniff, crossed his arms, and pointed his delicate nose in the air.

“Tarth, would you
please
tell us what it means?” Maude asked nicely.

“I want to hear
him
ask me nicely,” the elf said, pointing his chin at the dwarf.

“I ain’t gonna ask that nimrod nicely for anything lest it’s ta go jump off a cliff!” Borik snarled.

Maude bent down, grabbed the dwarf by his beard, and looked him in the eye. “You ask Tarth nicely or so help me I will bury you up to your thick, hairy neck in the sand and dip your beard in honey,” Maude growled back.

Borik stamped his feet in circle, kicked, and head butted one of enormous columns before stamping over next to Tarth.

“Bend down so ya can hear me because I ain’t repeatin’ myself.”

Tarth bent at the waist and lowered his head.

“Closer,” Borik ordered, crooking his finger at the elf.

Tarth bent down further and cocked his ear towards Borik’s mouth.

Borik put his hand on the elf’s shoulder and cupped his mouth with the other next to Tarth’s ear.

“Tarth, would you
please
tell us what we’re supposed ta do,” Borik whispered nicely into Tarth’s ear while a smile spread across the elf’s narrow face. “Because if ya don’t—,” Borik suddenly wrapped his stubby hands around Tarth’s slender throat and began squeezing and shaking him like a terrier, “I’m gonna choke the life outta your worthless moronic body, so help me!” Borik shouted as he shook Tarth so hard his head wrap fell off.

“Borik, let him go!” Maude and Malek both shouted as they pried the dwarf’s fingers from around the elf’s throat.

“Are you all right, Tarth?” Maude asked with concern while the wizard gasped for breath and rubbed his bruised neck.

“I’ll be fine, Maudeline, thank you,” Tarth replied with glare and a hiss at Borik.

“Can you please tell us what all this means, Tarth?”

“I would be delighted,” Tarth said and sashayed over to the statuettes. “Oo, this is going to be fun,” he squealed in delight, clapping his hands, already forgetting the dwarf’s abuse.

  “Malek was correct; these four are the gods that humans are most familiar with. The fifth one is known mostly to the older races like elves and dragons. She is the all mother. She created the world and the other four gods.”

Tarth picked up the flawless crystal statuette of one of the women. “I’m the all mother,” Tarth intoned in a deep, ethereal, feminine voice. “I created the moon, the stars, and the planet. I watch over all of my creations but I must not interfere in affairs of gods and mortals.”

Tarth carried the statue over to the pedestals surrounding the large globe and placed it at the one near the top symbolized with the star.

He returned to the statuettes and picked up one of the male figures carved out of turquoise.

“I am Serron, god of the seas. I created the oceans and the creatures that dwell within them. I am a capricious god, bringing life with one hand and destroying it with the other,” Tarth intoned in a deep rumbling voice and placed the statuette on the southern pillar.

The elf returned to the statuettes and selected another male figurine of pure amber. “I am Solarian, god of morning, hope, and light. I shine my brilliance down upon the world so that the seas and the lands stay warm and thrive beneath my radiance,” Tarth droned in a clear and regal voice and set the figure on the eastern pedestal.

The elf picked up one of the two remaining female figures, the one carved from jet-black onyx, and walked towards the western pillar. “I am Sharrellan, the goddess of darkness, evil, and foul deeds. I am jealous of my brother’s luminous presence so I claim half the world for darkness. I shall fill it with creatures of the night; cruel, ugly, and savage,” Tarth whispered in a soft but sinister tone and placed it on the pedestal.

He finally retrieved the last statuette, a woman carved in exacting detail from jade. She wore a loose robe with the same holly wreath crown as the enormous statue outside. Tarth picked it up and tilted it from side to side like a child playing with a doll.

“I am Ellanee, the beautiful goddess of nature, creator of all the trees, plants, and little animals. With a sprig of puss willows I created the fuzzy little bunnies, with a tuft of cotton I created the silly little squirrels—,”

“And from the nuts I created the idiot, lame-brained elves,” Borik interrupted.

Tarth glared at the dwarf. “From all the animal poo I created the dwarves, which is why they are so smelly and like to live buried under the ground. With the light of my beloved Solarian, my creations grow and flourish, without him I am incomplete.”

“Will you get on with it?” Borik shouted when Tarth started making the statuettes of Ellanee and Solarian kiss.

The elf stuck his tongue out at the grumpy, impatient dwarf and went to place the last figurine on the last pedestal.

“Get ready for the next part,” Borik warned.

“What part is that?” Maude asked.

“The part where we fight for our lives as hundreds of spooky things run out and try to kill us,” Borik answered.

“I think you’re getting paranoid, but let’s stay on our toes, people.”

Tarth placed the statue of Ellanee gently on the last pedestal. The sound of stone grating against stone echoed through the vast chamber as one of the huge fluted columns began to sink slowly into the floor.

“Ta da!” Tarth shouted in celebration.

Another stone slab began protruding from the wall towards the descending column. The column stopped its descent at the same instant the stone slab touched its side forming a perfectly aligned bridge perhaps twenty feet over their heads.

“Are the boots up there? I don’t see them,” Malek asked.

“Oh they’re up here all right and I thank you very much for figuring out how to get them,” A deep voice called down to them.

The adventurers looked up and saw a man almost fully encased in the blackest armor any of them had ever seen. At the upper limits of their view, scores of men with crossbows stepped forward, nearly surrounding the entire chamber from a balcony-like hall fifty feet up the walls.

“See, told ya so,” Borik said softly.

“I’m afraid none of my men are terribly pious and were unable to figure out what exactly needed to be done to locate the boots, but I feel like kicking myself for a fool now that your elf friend explained it,” General Baneford said as he walked across the bridge and out onto the column to retrieve the boots.