Swords of the Six (17 page)

“Well, well, well. How do you like that? Here we are in the
ruins
of Al’un Dai, temple of a long-gone wizard, and it looks as if he built it yesterday.” She harrumphed. “Ruins
indeed
! This place is spotless. Check out the elaborate design work—”

The pause lasted long enough to tell Dantress that her sister had finally noticed the stranger.

“What have we here?” Rose’el stepped up to the gates. Blood dripped from the tips of her fingers, landing on the stone pathway at her feet. She either did not notice this or did not care. “Hello there,” Rose’el began, “care to open the gate for us?”

The stranger still stood there, silent and unmoving as if frozen in time, then flipped back their hood. Slender, tall, athletic, a blond haired woman of enviable beauty fixed her sapphire eyes upon the sisters before turning and walking to the base of a gray marble stairway. The steps wove up to the recessed wooden doors in the main tower.

There she stopped, looked back and smiled. About-facing, she ascended the stairs. The doors opened inward to admit her—revealing a long, dark corridor inside the structure lined with red columns and gray banners—and the doors closed behind her without a sound.

"We'll have to let ourselves in," Caritha said.

Whipping out their swords, Caritha and Rose’el struck at the great chain across the wing gates. Bits of rust flew off their blades, falling to the dirt beneath their feet. Their efforts did not even leave a scratch on the chains.

Dantress gazed up at one of the dark towers, considering the situation. A vulture flew, not above the tower, but toward it. The bird glided, undeterred by the walls of stone, heading straight for the tower. She cringed, expecting to see it collide with the wall of stone. But the vulture passed through it, emerging unharmed on the other side, and angled for a slow descent. She watched it shrink out of sight into the northern borders of the forest.

Her sisters still beat at the chains, blades clanging. Caritha, her long hair askew, her face beading sweat, stepped back, holding her hand up, palm outward. A feeble burst of blue energy shot against the gate and vaporized harmlessly against it.

The vulture . . . it had gone
through
the stone . . . as if it were not even there. As if it did not truly exist. What if the tower did not really exist, could it be an illusion?

This temple, Al’un Dai, had fallen a long time ago. The great white dragon had told her so. Yet it appeared whole, standing as mighty as the day it had been built. But she and her sisters had seen it in ruins only a short time before. Could they be under some kind of spell? Were they trapped in an intricate deception? She could think of only one way to find out.

“Wait.” She grasped Caritha’s sword arm with one hand and held Rose’el’s shoulder with her other. “I don't think that will do any good."

"No?" Rose'el pulled away. "Do you have a better idea?”

Dantress smiled, releasing Caritha’s arm. “If I am right, then none of this is real. It is all an illusion created to keep us away.”

“An illusion to keep us away from what?” Caritha shook her head. “You’re not making any sense, Dantress.”

Dantress eyed the wing gates, the chains binding them gave Caritha’s question merit. What would be the purpose to creating an illusion as complicated as this one? Unless to hide something? Or, some
one
?

They must be on the right track.

“That’s it!” she said. “The illusion is meant to keep us from finding—not a thing, but a person—the man who was once a member of the Six, the man we have come to find!”

“That is absurd,” Rose’el replied, raising one eyebrow.

“Really?” Dantress looked at her. “Why?”

The question hung in the air for a moment. Rose’el pointed at the wing gate. “Tell me,” she said, “that you
aren’t
suggesting my sword struck an illusion.”

“Would it surprise you?” she replied, inching near the black iron bars. “If I am right then I can walk through this . . . If not then I will not be able.” She took two more steps and drew in her breath. The metal was so close to her skin that she could feel its cool surface. No! It was an illusion!

She closed her eyes, walking forward. When she felt certain she'd passed the gate, she dared open them. The towers of the temple were crumbling around her. They reverted to their dilapidated state, charred and broken. Piles of rubble rose ahead of her, with the largest pile of all where the mighty central tower had once stood. Partial walls, some with windows and doors, stood amidst the rubble. A few still supported thick roofs tiled with what appeared to be smooth metal plates worn by untold years of wind and rain.

It amazed her that some of the towers still stood after so much time and such pervading destruction. The wind howled through the ancient structures, an eerie reminder of the terrible battle once fought over this bit of land.

“Dantress! H-how did you . . . how did you do that.”

She turned at the sound of Rose'el's voice. Her sister stood pointing at her with eyes open wide, “how did you do that?”

Dantress had been right. She let herself smile. Caritha and Rose’el were standing in the ruins too, their eyes darting from towers to rubble and back at her. “It was nothing more than an illusion created to keep us away,” she said. She absently kicked aside a metal plate on the ground. Under it a boomerang lay. She picked it up, but it drew blood from her finger and she immediately dropped it.

Caritha reached down and picked up the boomerang. She blew dust off its silvery surface. “Strange.” She twirled the object with her wrist then held it out to Dantress. “The elbow is leather,” she said as Dantress took it, “but be careful, its wings are outfitted with blades. I believe it is a weapon.”

Tucking the blade boomerang under her belt, Dantress walked toward the place where she had seen the woman walk into the nonexistent central tower. She could sense something nearby, a presence. Pain, sorrow, anger . . . Someone was waking, someone whose bitter memories were strong enough to enter her young mind.

The shadows of her two sisters joined her own.
We are here, Dantress. Tell us what you are thinking.

She jerked around, searching their faces.
Caritha, was that you? Did you just—communicate—using your mind?

But the eldest daughter of the dragon looked beyond her, and Dantress heard nothing more. If Caritha had communicated to her with her mind then she was holding herself back, unwilling for some reason to continue using that form of communication. Was there more to this sister than the dragon had said?

Silencing her own questions, Dantress gestured for Caritha and Rose’el to follow her as she sidestepped a large block of stone and proceeded toward a hole in one of the temple’s standing walls. She thought she heard a wail, as of a child, echoing faintly from somewhere inside the wall. But she could not be certain.

She entered the wall and searched until she noticed a large, flat stone that stood out in the debris because it appeared clean and unbroken. Approaching, she called her sisters' attention to it. With their help she slid the stone to the side.

A circular hole gaped beneath it, like a well, with stone steps set in its walls and a railing. It led down into darkness.

A draft of warm air rose from the darkness below and passed over her face. She grasped the cool surface of the rusted iron railing, held up by support bars fashioned like king cobras, and gazed into the darkness.

For an instant she caught the scent of smoke in the air but the perfumed essence of flowers replaced it. Roses, lilacs—she couldn’t be sure what kind of flowers they were because the smell tinged the air as a mere sampling, no more than a whiff or two.

Drawing in a deep breath, she reached down, parted the fold in her outer skirt to reveal the hilt of her weapon. The rusted blade protested as she slid it from the sheath. “Come on,” she said, keeping her voice low so as not to alert anyone except her sisters to her presence, “he’s down here.”

She turned. Caritha had drawn her sword and stepped around her to start down the stairs. Rose’el squinted at Dantress, her dark eyes boring into her.

“How do you
know
that
he
is down here?” Rose’el folded her arms. Her gaze diverted for a moment. Caritha stopped to look up at her.

“Rose’el!” Caritha snapped.

“Well,” Rose’el defended herself, “it seems to me that it is highly unlikely to find a warrior living in these ruins. Perhaps there may be clue here to lead us to him, but I very much doubt he is living in the basement.”

Caritha waved her hand, an edge to her voice. “Quit procrastinating! Dantress was right about the wing gates and she was right about the whole illusion.” She redirected herself back down the stairs, and drew her sword. “Give me light, weapon of the Six.” As the words left her mouth, the blade glowed dimly with reddish-orange light, illuminating the broad stone steps.

Dantress followed her down, whispering to the sword of Xavion, “Shine, oh my sword!” Its light joined that of Caritha’s and Rose’el’s.

Rose’el didn’t say another word until they had descended an inestimable number of steps and could no longer glimpse the light of day above them. She stayed behind Dantress, from time to time grunting when a bat or two were disturbed from their sleep. A couple of times, Dantress could have sworn she heard Rose’el scraping her blade along the wall.

When they reached the bottom, the light of their swords showed a mostly-smooth floor of stones. A few of them were broken, cracked, and worn. Dantress crouched and ran her finger along the floor. When she brought it up to inspect it under the glow of her sword, she could not see a single trace of dust.

Rose’el clacked her tongue.

“
Someone,
” Dantress straightened, “
must
be down here.”

“Hmph!” she heard Rose’el respond. “Someone, or some
thing.
Personally . . . I’m not sure I want to find out which is the case.”

"Someone." Dantress raised an eyebrow. "That woman who appeared while you beat the gate? She disappeared this way. And I doubt she was a tramp. Her clothes were too well-fashioned and clean."

Creeping forward, Dantress held her sword out so its light fell on the floor. The light of the rusted swords revealed stone walls on either side. Dampness filled the air around her, clinging coolly to her exposed arms and the back of her neck. A bat flew past her head toward the stairway she had just descended. Beneath her the floor vibrated. The farther she walked the worse the vibrations grew until she felt her feet slipping on the floor stones.

She jumped forward and rolled. Rose’el and Caritha did not react fast enough. As Dantress turned she saw the floor stones rotate to vertical positions and her sisters fell out of sight between them. Rose’el growled in a most unfeminine manner as the floor swallowed her out of sight and Caritha’s eyes startled wide.

The stones rotated back into position. The floor once again appeared solid.

Dantress stood shakily to her feet. She was alone now. The silent darkness sealing her in.

“You
are
a smart one,” a smooth, high voice stated from behind her.

Holding Xavion’s sword with both hands, poising it before her, Dantress turned around.

One by one, small circlets of harsh white light flickered on in the corridor, lighting up bronze and black striped walls. She could see wrought iron cobras attached to the ceiling high overhead, their ruby eyes glowing down at her.

Far down the corridor, rising almost twenty feet off the floor and circled by spears stuck upright, stood the statue of a man. Feathered wings, like those of an eagle spread behind him. His shoulders squared and he crouched, catlike, his arms reaching out. In his right hand he balanced a large globe, polished to a black shine, and in his left he held an egg the size of a large ball.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” A human figure standing in front of the statue lifted her arms, spreading them reverently. Her fur-lined hood slipped off her curly, golden hair and her smooth lips parted to show two rows of flawless white teeth. She closed her eyes, her face directed upward.

“Though he is long gone, the presence of my master dwells here still. His spirit is ever present with me, the voices of his counselors are ever in my ears.” She lowered her arms and her face. The light reflected off her sapphire eyes as she opened them to gaze at Dantress. “They know who you are,” she said. “They have warned me that you were coming. You cannot hide from them. The white dragon could not hide you from them . . . he could not see what lay here.”

She cupped her hand to her ear, another smile forming on her lips and her eyes half-closing. “Your journey here was such a waste. I have the power of my master, the power that
they
gave him. Can you not feel it? Can you not sense it growing up around you?”

Goosebumps formed on Dantress’s skin. The floor around her froze, every drop of moisture turned into ice and shattered against the stones. Her limbs stiffened as the temperature continued to drop.

“Now you see, don’t you?” The woman laughed, only to stop abruptly and sigh. “It is unfortunate that you have the dragon’s blood in your veins. You might have become a rather powerful ally. But as a child of the enemy”—she shook her head—“you pose too great a threat.”

Drops of sweat formed on Dantress’s forehead. Some ran into her eyes and froze on her eyelashes, blurring her vision.

God, help me!
Almost as soon as the plea left her mind she heard the words of the great white dragon echoing in her mind: “Do not fear . . . I will be watching over you even when you cannot see me.”

Father, help me. I am failing.

But you will not, my child. Draw upon the strength in your blood, my strength. Use it! It is what this woman fears.