‘Ceda, have you heard from the delegation?’
‘The delegation? No. From the moment of their arrival in the Warlock King’s village, all contact with them has been lost. Blocked by Edur sorcery, of a sort we’ve not experienced before. There is much that is troubling. Much.’
‘I should leave now, Ceda, while there’s still daylight.’
‘Agreed. Then return here with what you have discovered.’
‘Very well.’
The track leading to the quarries climbed in zigzag fashion to a notch in the hillside. The stands of coppiced trees on the flanks were sheathed in white dust. Goats coughed in the shade.
Bugg paused to wipe sweaty grit from his forehead, then went on.
Two wagons filled with stonecutters had passed him a short while earlier, and from the frustrated foreman came the unwelcome news that the crew had refused to work the quarry any longer, at least until the situation was resolved.
A cavity had been inadvertently breached, within which a creature of some sort had been imprisoned for what must have been a long, long time. Three ‘cutters had been dragged inside, their shrieks short-lived. The hired necromancer hadn’t fared any better.
Bugg reached the notch and stood looking down at the quarry pit with its geometric limestone sides cut deep into the surrounding land. The mouth of the cavity was barely visible near an area that had seen recent work.
He made his way down, coming to within twenty paces of the cave before he stopped.
The air was suddenly bitter cold. Frowning, Bugg stepped to one side and sat down on a block of limestone. He watched frost form on the ground to the left of the cave, reaching in a point towards the dark opening, the opposite end spreading ever wider in a swirl of fog. The sound of ice crunching underfoot, then a figure appeared from the widening end, as if striding out from nowhere. Tall, naked from the hips upward, grey-green skin. Long, streaked blonde hair hanging loose over the shoulders and down the back. Light grey eyes, the pupils vertical slits. Silver-capped tusks. Female, heavy-breasted. She was wearing a short skirt, her only clothing barring the leather-strapped moccasins, and a wide belt holding a half-dozen scabbards in which stabbing knives resided.
Her attention was on the cave. She anchored her hands on her hips and visibly sighed.
‘He’s not coming out,’ Bugg said.
She glanced over. ‘Of course he isn’t, now that I’m here.’
‘What kind of demon is he?’
‘Hungry and insane, but a coward.’
‘Did you put him there?’
She nodded. ‘Damned humans. Can’t leave things well enough alone.’
‘I doubt they knew, Jaghut.’
‘No excuse. They’re always digging. Digging here, digging there. They never stop.’
Bugg nodded, then asked, ‘So now what?’
She sighed again.
The frost at her feet burgeoned into angular ice, which then crawled into the cave mouth. The ice grew swiftly, filling the hole. The surrounding stone groaned, creaked, then split apart, revealing solid ice beneath it. Sandy earth and limestone chunks tumbled away.
Bugg’s gaze narrowed on the strange shape trapped in the centre of the steaming ice. ‘A Khalibaral? Errant take us, Huntress, I’m glad you decided to return.’
‘Now I need to find for him somewhere else. Any suggestions?’
Bugg considered for a time, then he smiled.
Brys made his approach between two of the ruined round towers, stepping carefully around tumbled blocks of stone half hidden in the wiry yellow grasses. The air was hot and still, the sunlight molten gold on the tower walls. Grasshoppers rose from his path in clattering panic and, at the faint sensation of crunching underfoot, Brys looked down to see that the ground was crawling with life. Insects, many of them unrecognizable to his eyes, oversized, awkward, in dull hues, scrambling to either side as he walked.
Since they were all fleeing, he was not unduly concerned.
He came within sight of the square tower. The Azath. Apart from its primitive style of architecture, there seemed to be little else to set it apart. Brys was baffled by the Ceda’s assertion that a structure of stone and wood could be sentient, could breathe with a life of its own. A building presupposed a builder, yet Kuru Qan claimed that the Azath simply rose into being, drawn together of its own accord. Inviting suspicion on every law of causality generations of scholars had posited as irrefutable truth.
The surrounding grounds were less mysterious, if profoundly more dangerous. The humped barrows in the overgrown yard were unmistakable. Gnarled and stunted, dead trees rose here and there, sometimes from the highest point of the mound, but more often from the flanks. A winding flagstone pathway began opposite the front door, the gate marked by rough pillars of unmortared stone wrapped in vines and runners. The remnants of a low wall enclosed the grounds.