The Worlds of the Sheaf

Place-of-Toil - Part 2

     They scrambled down the bank to where the path ran closest to them, then followed it down to the base of the crater and up the opposite side. The footing was treacherous in places. They had to watch that they didn't twist an ankle on the jumbled rubble that covered the ground. Thomas paused at one point to get a closer look at a strange metal box lying nearby. It had holes drilled in it in strange places, obviously part of its original design, and inside it contained the badly corroded remains of some kind of intricate machinery, so small in detail that it might have been made by midgets. He wondered what it had been and what it had been used for, but the answers wouldn't come from just looking at it. He left it behind, therefore, meaning to ask the felisians later. They'd learned some of the Masters' secrets. Enough to allow them to repair and use their ships. Maybe they knew what the strange box had been.

     Lirenna was waiting for him by the entrance to the basement. "Doesn't look as though there's much in there," she said doubtfully. "A floor of packed earth, litter and rubbish like we expected."

     Thomas squeezed in through the exposed hole in the wall and carefully lowered himself down to the floor. He lifted the wand to get a look around. Lirenna was right, he saw. There was nothing here, but maybe...

     He looked around for the original entrance and found it up in the ceiling, but he doubted they'd find anything up there. If it led anywhere, it would be up into the Masters' building. He wanted to see what had been left by the original citybuilders.

     The room they were in was small. Far too small to be the entire basement of the building above. There had to be other rooms adjacent, or below. Below would be better. The further down, the likelier they would be to have survived the ages intact, along with their contents. He scrubbed at the floor with the toe of his boot. The soil was hard and probably a couple of feet deep. They'd need spades to dig through, then picks and hammers to break through the floor. Unless...

     He grinned and waved Lirenna back, handing her the wand, then began casting a spell. The soil below his pointing fingers flashed an incandescent white, forcing the demi shae to shade her eyes with a slender hand, but when the light faded there was a circular hole in the floor three feet across, its sides as smooth as if it had been drilled.

     Lirenna's eyes widened with astonishment. "What in the name of... What was that spell?"

     "Tollhausen's Tunnel," replied Thomas, grinning with delight. "One of Tak's spells. I managed to recreate it a few days ago and I've been aching for a chance to use it ever since. Good isn't it?"

     "You didn't tell me! Why didn't you tell me you were working on it?"

     "I didn't want to disappoint you if it didn't work out. I've been trying to recreate lots of his spells, but so far this and Fist of the Father are the only ones I've succeeded with. I'll teach it to you if you like."

     "Yes please!" She looked down the hole. "But first, let's see what's down there."

     She approached and sat down on the edge, her graceful legs dangling, but Thomas pulled her away. "I should go first," he said. "It might be dangerous down there."

     "How could it be?" protested Lirenna, but she stood and allowed her husband to replace her on the edge. "It's been sealed up for thousands of years. Or are you thinking of zombies or something like that?"

     "Possibly," replied Thomas, "but we can't even rule out conventional monsters. We don't know the room's been sealed up all this time. There could be underground tunnels, the burrows of tunneling animals, anything. Let's not be fooled by this planet's similarity to Tharia. This is an alien world, and we have no idea what nasty surprises it might have in store for us." He smiled up at her. "Okay?"