40
They stared at the wall Jeffrey was pointing at, unable to believe their eyes. Malik snuffed out the nearest wyrdlights and replaced them with a ball of fire, so that the faded colours were not tinged with blue light.
An orc in white was drawn there, the spitting image of Khan. There were orc warriors behind him, painted in the red and yellow of the bodyguard outside. But what was astonishing were the humans on the other side of the painting. They were drawn roughly, but their features and bodies were unmistakeable. One figure led them, mirroring the position of the albino orc.
‘Every thousand years,’ Fletcher murmured. ‘I bet that’s what the hieroglyphs say. A marked messiah, sent to defeat mankind. That’s what an old soldier once told me, anyway.’
‘More like a natural mutation that occurs in every species …’ Malik said under his breath. ‘It may be that albino orcs are larger and have a higher summoning level than others, making them natural leaders. The rest is superstition, nothing more.’
‘Be that as it may, that’s not the strange part,’ Sylva said, looking at them as if they were all blind. ‘It’s the humans. They shouldn’t be drawn here.’
‘Why not?’ Cress asked.
‘Because humans arrived here two thousand years ago, when your ancestors crossed the Akhad Desert,’ Sylva explained. ‘This pyramid was built long before humans even set foot in these lands. Elven texts as old as five thousand years have mentioned this place.’
‘There’s something else,’ Jeffrey said, wiping away a layer of dust with his sleeve.
The outline of a demon appeared between the orcs and humans, the paint that had coated it long peeled away. ‘A Salamander,’ Fletcher breathed. Ignatius chirruped with excitement and pawed at the wall below.
Set above this image were two separate scenes. One, where the orcs stood victorious over the bloody corpses of the humans, and another, where humanity were the victors.
Fletcher thought back to his first infusion dream. He knew from this dream that Ignatius’s summoning scroll had been originally intended for an albino orc, over a thousand years ago. Perhaps the orcs who had drawn the images here had been trying to recreate this prophecy. What was obvious to him now was that, according to both the carvings and his infusion dream, the orcs believed that a Salamander was the key to their victory … or doom.
‘We need to copy this all down,’ Fletcher said, pointing at the wall. ‘Maybe we can translate it later.’
‘Already done,’ Jeffrey said, showing Fletcher his sketch book.
‘Guys,’ Sylva interrupted, holding up the tablet. ‘We need to move, now. The sacrifices are over and Khan is walking towards the back entrance. He has a bunch of his shamans with him, plus a group of orcish youths. They must be adepts.’
‘Damn it,’ Malik growled. ‘There’s nowhere to hide in here – we’ll have to move on. Follow me.’
He snuffed out his fireball and jogged to the other end of the antechamber, where the passage continued. Fletcher and the others had no choice but to go after him.
‘Looks like we’ve waited long enough,’ Othello whispered, trying and failing to hide a smile. ‘Isadora’s team missed their window.’
They jogged until the passageway split once again. There was no time to decide who went where; in the rush Fletcher ended up taking the right passage with Othello, Sylva and Lysander. This time, the floor angled up sharply. They seemed to be heading to the central point of the pyramid.
‘Hey,’ Fletcher gasped, their feet thundering along the passageway. ‘We left Cress and Jeffrey.’
‘We’ll catch up with them later,’ Sylva replied, leading the way with a glowing fingertip. ‘The orcs will be here any min—’
Sylva cut her words short as the passageway ended abruptly, opening up into a massive room. It was vaulted with great beams of rusted metal, while a network of pipes flowed from the ceiling and out into the walls.
A pit fell into darkness around the platform, so deep and cavernous that they could not see the bottom. A wide plinth sat in the middle, with a pentacle deeply engraved in it. There was a hole in the very centre, though how deep it went Fletcher could not tell.
The only way to reach it was four stone bridges, crisscrossing from the four entrances to the room.
‘Where the hell are we going to hide?’ Othello asked, his eyes scanning the room. ‘There’s nothing here!’
‘Look – stairs,’ Sylva said, pointing to the plinth. It was supported by a wide pillar of equal width beneath it. The column had a rough stairway carved to go around it, the stone a fresh white, as if it had been cut recently.
Fletcher tossed out a wyrdlight, sending it spiralling into the depths below. It was deep, almost half as deep as the pyramid was tall. But at the very bottom, Fletcher could make out a tunnel leading into the earth.
Strangest of all, a clutch of several hundred eggs could be seen, piled in a trench around the base of the pillar. They were bottle green and perfectly spherical, with the size and appearance of unripe oranges.
‘Those must be gremlin eggs,’ Fletcher said, recognising them from the Warren. ‘Goblins’ eggs would have to be much bigger, because Mason said goblins hatch from their eggs as fully formed adults.’
‘I don’t want to know what those are doing there,’ Othello said. ‘But I guess we’ll find out in a minute – that tunnel’s our hiding spot. It might even go to the caves.’
‘Who knows where it leads,’ Fletcher said, peering into the depths. ‘I bet that’s where Khan and his shamans are headed, down those steps. If it’s a dead end it’ll be us three trapped down there against … how many orcs?’
‘Ten,’ Sylva said, counting the shamans and adepts on Verity’s tablet. ‘Their demons have been infused though. We’d better hurry – they’re walking in through the back entrance right now.’
Fletcher wracked his brains. They could take one of the other three passages leading into the room, but there were no guarantees that the shamans wouldn’t come that way. They couldn’t go down … an idea formed in his mind.
‘Lysander, can you fly us up to those beams?’ Fletcher said to the Griffin, looking at the vaulted ceiling. ‘They’re broad enough to hide us.’
Lysander squawked in agreement, then gave Fletcher a wink, confirming that Captain Lovett was in control. He grinned back, her support steadying his resolve.
‘Are you sure?’ Othello said, staring up at the beams. ‘They look rustier than a fisherman’s bucket.’
‘It’s that or take our chances in the caves,’ Fletcher said, putting Ignatius on his shoulder and then mounting Lysander. Othello and Sylva squeezed on behind, and Fletcher felt Sylva’s hands slip round his waist. He, in turn, gripped Lysander around the neck. Without a saddle, Fletcher’s seat was made up of the ever-shifting back muscles of the powerful beast, and the Griffin’s feathers were slippery beneath his breeches.
Fletcher opened his mouth to give the order, but before he had a chance, Lysander launched them from the bridge with one powerful thrust of his wings. For a heart-stopping moment they dropped like a stone, then the bottom fell out of his stomach as they swooped upwards in an arc that hurled them into the rafters above.
Lysander skittered his talons along one of the broad beams in a screech of rusted metal until they came to a standstill. For a moment Fletcher took some deep breaths to calm himself, his face buried in Lysander’s glossy neck feathers. Then he felt the others dismount and he followed their example, careful to plant himself in the very centre of the rafter.
From this view, he could make out the eggs at the base of the pit quite clearly, as well as the platform below. The largest pipe was just beside his head, and the sloshing of liquid could be heard from within. He shuddered and extinguished his wyrdlights, casting the room into pitch darkness. He was just in time, for he could already see the glow of light coming from the entrance they had used.
Then, clutching a crackling torch in his hands, Khan ducked into the room. Up close, his size was even more stark in contrast to the shamans that followed him. His brow-ridge was less defined, and his tusks were somewhat smaller than most orcs’. But that was not what made him stand out the most to Fletcher. It was the demon perched on his shoulder, peering around the room with amber eyes.
Khan had a Salamander with him.