The Worlds of the Sheaf

Place-of-Toil - Part 2

     "You're right, of course," agreed the demi shae, "but that doesn't necessarily mean we're safer if you go first. If I go first, I might meet something I can enchant into submission. I'm as good a wizard as you are, remember?"

     "I know that," conceded Thomas. "Just pander to a foolish old man's chauvinism, okay? I feel the need to be chivalrous and protective towards my beautiful wife."

     Lirenna giggled and waved to him to go first, and Thomas let himself slip down into the hole.

     His Autumnleaf ring slowed his descent so that he drifted down as slowly as a snowflake, and as he did so he saw that below the layer of soil was a floor composed of the now familiar blue material that the citybuilders had favoured so much. It was just a few inches thick, and below it was a large, open chamber with a smooth, level floor. Lirenna was already lowering herself after him and as he reached the bottom she let go to drop beside him, bending her legs to cushion the impact. Thomas took the wand back from her, then raised it and looked around.

     He was delighted to see that the room appeared to be in pristine condition. There wasn't even much dust to be seen. What there was had settled to form a thin layer over everything and there had been no movement or activity to generate more. There were some traces of fungus and mould covering the walls and floor, but so completely had the room been sealed against the damp that there wasn't even much of that. It was an archaeologist's dream. The sort of find they lie awake at night fantasising about. It was the kind of find that lifetime reputations are made of, and the two wizards stared in wonder at the relics of a civilisation that had disappeared thousands of years before.

     The room was easily a hundred yards across, with thick pillars in places to help support the weight of the tower above. It appeared to have been used as a shelter. A refuge in times of danger. Beds lined the walls. The iron pocked and rusted, the sheets disintegrating to layers of fine powder. Each bed was occupied by a mummified corpse, with others lying on the floor and heaped up against the only door; a thick slab of iron that looked as though it had been designed to withstand a siege.

     They must have been sealed in by falling debris during the disaster that had destroyed the Citybuilder civilisation, thought Thomas, and he felt his heart going out to the poor survivors as he imagined their last hours of terror and desperation. He could almost see them frantically attacking the door in growing panic as they felt the air growing stale around them. It seemed he could almost hear them crying out for a rescue they knew would never come, intermingled with shouts of anger as they blamed each other for their predicament. How would it have felt as the knowledge slowly dawned that they had simply delayed their end and prolonged their suffering?

     He shut the thought out of his head and looked at Lirenna to see how she was taking it. "They wanted a safe place," she said, staring around in horror. "A place to wait out the danger. And it turned into their tomb. They forgot to allow themselves another way out."

     "Saturn'll want to see this," said Thomas. "We've got to get a message to him."

     "You go," said Lirenna. "I'll stay here to make sure the felisians don't tamper with anything."

     Thomas knew what she meant. If there was anything they didn't want the Tharians to see, (and Thomas still thought that was unlikely but why take even the smallest chance?) then this was where it would be. Clues to unravel the ancient history of their race. Neither of the wizards wanted to have to face Saturn if they came back to find the place cleaned out, the bodies removed ‘out of respect for the spirits of the dead'. Lirenna was right, therefore. They couldn't risk letting the felisians get their hands on this site before they'd had a chance to examine it properly.