The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Ring - Part 2

The room was a sphere, with six alcoves in the curving wall. In each alcove was a mummified human corpse, held in place by straps around the chest and legs, the buckles positioned so that they would have been able to free themselves any time they wanted. They hadn't been under restraint. Two of them were adults and the other four children, aged between eight and sixteen years by the look of them, corresponding to the bedrooms they'd found earlier. There was no doubt in any of their minds that these were the residents of this place, dead in their own home.

The Tharians were surprised to see that all six were wearing odd looking helmets. They covered the whole head including the face, leaving them no way to see out, and were connected by wires to the walls beside them which bore various pieces of apparatus whose nature and purpose they were totally unable to fathom. Besides the helmets, the only garments they were wearing were around their hips, which looked more like helmets for the pelvic areas than items of clothing.

"What did they die of?" asked Saturn. "Plague?"

Timothy moved closer to the adult corpses to examine them closer, but the pelvic garments attracted his attention more than the dry, shrunken remains of their flesh. He gently turned the corpse to see behind it, the straps holding it in place snapping like rotten string, and found two pipes. A thin one and a thicker one, leading from the garment back into the wall. Their purpose was immediately obvious to him.

"They collect waste from these people," he said. "Solid waste from the rectum, liquid waste from the bladder. These people must have lain here for days at a time and didn't want to move even to answer the call of nature."

"Why?" demanded Saturn. "Were they crippled by some disease?"

The cleric examined the bodies carefully, and produced a knife with which he cut away the leathery flesh to examine the bones of the elbow. "There's no sign, but disease doesn't always leave any sign on the skeleton." Then he noticed something else. A thin tube leading from the wall, its end entering the dry, leathery flesh of the other arm near the albow. Intelligent though he was, though, there was simply no way he could have known what an intravenous feed was. He stared at it in puzzlement for a few moments, therefore, before dismissing it from his thoughts.

"I'm not sure they were ill," he said. "I can't say why I feel that, unless it's something I'm getting from Caroli, the Lady of Healing." He fingered the metal helmet. "I think these are significant. What are they? Why are they all wearing them?"

"They remind me of the Helmets of Farsensing," said the wizard, gently freeing one from the man's head. "I don't sense any magic, though." He glanced at Thomas, who shook his head. "No Rossemian magic either, unless it's faded below the threshold of detection over the centuries." Saturn tilted the helmet back, looking inside. The others crowded around and saw the same thing he did. The entire inner surface of the helmet was covered by hundreds of tiny buttons, each of which would have been pressed to the man's scalp when the helmet was in place.

He placed the helmet on his head, paused a few moments in concentration, then removed it with a frown of disappointment. "Nothing," he muttered.

"Nevertheless, they may once have done something," said Timothy, taking it from him. "What about that spell you used in the Red Mountains, in the volcano crater? The spell that brings the past to life? We could see how they lived, what they did..."

"It only works on events that occurred within the past few years," replied the elderly wizard. "To see this far back in time would require the Eyes of Folbor, which have been lost for a thousand years. I don't know. maybe Braddle can divine something. We'll bring him here sometime, see what he can dig up."