“How’s Matt doing with the door?” asked Shaun as he entered the room.
His younger brother was crouched in front of a spot on the wall where Lirenna’s sharp eyes had spotted a secret door, a few feet away from the steel door to the teleportation chamber that still remained stubbornly closed. The others were gathered around, anxiously watching him work while trying not to disturb him as he struggled to pick the lock which, fortunately, was a conventional, mechanical one and therefore theoretically amenable to a sufficiently skilled locksmith.
It was proving particularly stubborn, though, resisting the young soldier’s every effort, and at the sound of his brother’s voice he shouted an obscene word and threw the twisted length of wire away in frustration. “Badly!” he said in fury. “It’s been so long since it was last unlocked that all the tumblers are stuck in place! Not only that, but it’s a six lever bastard! It’ll take more than a bloody length of wire to unlock it. What’s the point, anyway? It’ll only lead to more empty, dusty rooms and corridors. The only way home’s back through there.” He hooked a thumb at the steel door.
“It’s better than just sitting here waiting to starve,” replied Jerry. “It’s something to do, something to take our minds off things.”
“Besides, why would they bother to lock the door if there’s nothing behind it?” asked Thomas. “There must be something in there. Try kicking it in again.”
“No point,” replied Shaun. “That door’s strong enough to withstand an army. The only way’s to pick the lock. Are you sure there’s nothing you can do, Matt?”
“Not with wire,” replied Matthew. “I need a proper key, something I can put some real pressure on the levers with. I might be able to carve one out of a bit of ironwood, one of those crates you found in the other room. If I can break a bit off, carve it to the right shape… Trouble is, if it breaks in the lock, we’ll really be in a mess.”
“Can you do that?” asked Thomas doubtfully. “How do you know what shape the key’s got to be?”
“I could feel the positions of the levers with my bit of wire,” replied the young soldier. “That tells me the basic shape, and then I just have to keep sawing off bits until I get it right. Like I said, though, It’ll only need one little splinter to break off in the lock...”
“Do it anyway,” said Shaun. “Like Jerry says, what have we got to lose?”
“Alright, go get me a bit.”
Shaun left the room, and they heard the sound of muscular straining coming from the storeroom, followed by a loud cracking noise. The woodsman returned with a small, jagged piece of ironwood in his hand, the freshly exposed wood a lighter shade of blue. “Still strong,” he confirmed as he handed it over. “This about the right size?”
“Looks about right,” replied Matthew, turning it to look at it from different angles. “Now push off for a bit. I can’t do it with you lot all staring at me. Leave me alone to get on with it.”
He ushered them all out of the room and closed the door. He sighed deeply and took a moment to let his tensed up body relax a little. Then he took a penknife from a pocket. A steel penknife, luckily. Steel was the only thing that would cut ironwood. He examined the piece of ironwood again, trying to visualize the finished key inside the shard, then put the knife to the wood, exerted some pressure and began to cut.
☆☆☆
The others stood around outside the door for a few minutes before deciding to make the best of a bad situation and wandering off. Thomas went back to the storeroom containing all the astronomical books and records, keen to lose himself once more in his neverending quest for knowledge, while the others returned to the observation room to play with the Lenses of Farseeing again.
Nearly a full day had passed since they’d left that room, during which Kronos had passed twice over Tharia’s night side, and they were now almost directly over the planet’s sunlit hemisphere. Also during that same time, though, Tharia had made almost a complete revolution on its axis, and as the questers opened the door they were delighted to see the familiar outline of the continent of Amafryka laid out before them, the only continent that was well known to the various races of humanity. The only one on which any kind of civilization was known to exist.
On that continent, or more properly two continents in the act of grinding together so that Great Lake Megra was all that remained of a great ocean that had once separated them, a succession of mighty human empires had risen and fallen while the generally more sedate demihuman races, the shae folk, trogs and nomes, had looked on in bemusement, wondering why the short lived humans found it so difficult to build a stable, lasting civilization. During all those thousands of years, though, none of the four civilized races had managed to do more than establish a few small, temporary outposts on either of the planet’s two other major continents. The colonies generally failed after a few generations either because of disease, the harsh climate or predation by the fearsome carnivores that ruled there. Only a few wandering tribes of humanoids managed to survive, eking out a precarious existence by remaining constantly on the move, leaving behind any country that changed its character to become too dangerous.
None of this was in the minds of the four questers, though. They could only stand and stare in horror at what they saw through the room’s long window. Most of the continent looked very similar to how the Western Continent had looked; covered with smudgy greens, browns and oranges and with the occasional glimmer where the light of the yellow sun was reflected in lakes and rivers. Near the centre of the vast land mass, though, just north of the immense salt lake, they saw something that made them stare in shock and horror.
It was a hideous mass of sickly white, looking as though someone had torn away an area of the planet’s living skin to reveal the bare bone beneath. Lirenna found herself going faint and dizzy at the very sight of it and Diana lifted her hands to clasp the silver caroli flower hanging around her neck as if drawing strength from it. Jerry made a sign of warding with the fingers of his left hand; the sign that, in the traditions and superstitions of the nomish people, was supposed to offer protection from evil. Even Shaun, the strongest and bravest of them, was shaken to the very core of his being and his hand flew to the hilt of his sword, as if it would do any good against the monstrous, malignant evil in front of them.
“The Shadow,” he whispered fearfully.
“By the Holy Gods!” whispered the tiny nome, speaking softly as if afraid that it might somehow became aware of them, staring down at it. He tensed up as if resisting an insane impulse to run from the sight of it. “I never realised it was so big. It covers over a tenth of the whole continent.”
“Why is it so bright?” asked Diana, forcing herself to remain calm. “I thought the Shadow was dark and, well, shadowy.”
“It is from underneath,” replied Jerry. “It’s dark underneath because it reflects away most of the sunlight before it reaches the ground.”
“It looks as though the world’s got whiterot,” said Lirenna, referring to a thankfully rare disease in which patches of the victim’s skin turned hard and white, often splitting open to release foul smelling pus. The condition would slowly spread until the victim died, by which time it may have covered over a quarter of his body. Its progress could only be halted by surgically removing the affected area, which often meant amputating an entire limb.
“Yes,” agreed the cleric. “It is a disease. An infestation of evil. Our planet is ill with a sickness that may well prove fatal.”
“Pity it’s not the kind of illness that you can just put your hands on and heal,” said Shaun. “By the Gods, look at the size of it! What hope have we got against that?”
“There is always hope,” replied Diana sternly. “We must always have faith in the Gods, no matter how bad things seem.”
Shaun nodded, but his eyes were still wide with fear. "I’d always imagined that it was more or less circular," he said.
Lirenna nodded, glad for the sound of his voice. It suddenly seemed terribly important to keep silence from taking hold. She had the powerful sense that, if that happened, none of them would have the strength to speak again. She searched for something to say in return. Anything. It didn't matter what.
"It looks like that amoeba we encountered in the Caves of Shanathin," she said. "Those bits reaching out look like pseudopods, as if it's some kind of living creature."
"It goes right through the Overgreen Forest," said Shaun with a quiet voice. "I hope our family got out."
"I'm sure they did," said Diana.
Lirenna saw the look of worry that appeared on Shaun's face. An expression of hope was a long way from the divinely inspired certainty she'd been able to give Tom that his family was safe. Diana clearly knew this as well as she turned her face away guiltily.
Shaun sat in one of the chairs and fiddled with the controls until the lens showed an image of the Ilandian countryside about twenty miles west of Fort Battleaxe. Half the picture showed once beautiful gardens and orchards ravaged and plundered by the Shadowarmies, a sight that brought tears to Lirenna’s eyes and made her go weak with horror. The other half of the picture, though, the eastern half, showed nothing but blank whiteness; sharp edged but undulating gently like a partly filled balloon being buffeted by the wind.
“It’s grown,” he whispered with a mouth suddenly gone dry. “It’s spread.”
“Is it still growing?” asked Jerry softly.
“Can’t tell,” replied the soldier. “We’d have to watch it for a while, see what it does.”
“What about Fort Battleaxe?” asked Diana.
“Dunno, can’t see through the Shadow. I can’t imagine them lasting long after being engulfed, though. Remember what Rob said it was like in there.”