“What eventually made you give up your search for a way back? Did something happen, or did you just tire of the search?” Alex asked, her face beaming with delight at the obvious frustration I wore on my face at her ability to pluck yet another question from thin air. “I know we talked of it before, and that spending time with Setia and her people that second time started a change in you. But that wasn’t why you stopped looking to return, you said that yourself.”
We were sat in the works canteen, had been for twenty minutes or so, while we ate lunch. I had eaten slowly, savouring the almost peace and quiet, while Alex had wolfed down her food, rushing to get back to her ceaseless questioning. She even got in a few questions between mouthfuls, followed by a barrage of complaints when I slowly chewed my food and refused to answer.
Big mistake. We now had only forty minutes of the lunch break left and Alex wanted it filled with answers.
Pauline sat across the way from out table, behind Alex. She was alone, her meal finished, a coffee or tea cradled in her hand.
She had looked in our direction a few times, and each time I’d thought that it might be nice to invite her over to join us. But each time I had tried to catch her eye, over Alex’s shoulder, she had quickly turned away. That, or Alex had diverted me from my purpose with yet another question.
I hadn’t told Alex about the night I met Pauline, not even mentioned it. My silence on the matter was not really intentional, I just never seemed to get the time to bring it up.
Each night that Alex and I met, there was no room for chatting or frivolities, it was straight to business with questions about my time on Ellas.
And so the episode with Pauline had slipped into the background until today, when she sat there, not ten strides away.
But fate, and Alex’s bombardment of questions ensured that nothing more would come of that night Pauline and I met. Shame, because I had found myself comfortable in Pauline’s company, and I also could not help but think that she and Alex would get on well together. And Lord knows, Alex could do with a few friends.
“Come on David, don’t be coy. Out with it. Answer my question, we’ve only got a little over half an hour left,” Alex said, into my reverie.
After taking a moment to think on what she’d asked, I replied, “I suppose I first started to loose hope after we found the School. From the moment Jain first mentioned the School I was filled with hope. I really believed that we would find something there.”
“School?” Alex asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “A school, university, a place of knowledge and learning. Let me tell you how we found it and what happened there, and then you’ll understand.”
And then, as had happened so very many times since I’d met Alex, my mind slipped back there, to those days when my life was so very, very different.
***
The thunder roared around us, the night sky streaked with violent blue forks of the most amazing lightning I had ever seen. I’d been out in the odd continental storm in the past, and thought them to be spectacular when compared to those very infrequent and subdued thunderstorms we saw in Britain. But this really was amazing, amazing and absolutely terrifying.
Bolts flashed down from the sky, forking into a myriad of branches before striking the ground; seemingly dozens of strikes from each original bolt. And strike the ground they did.
This was not lightning that just raged across the sky; every fork seemed to ground, and where they hit we could both see and hear the destruction that was caused, so close were we, surrounded on all sides by the thunderous weather.
The storm had come upon us so very suddenly, that outrunning it to shelter had not been an option. The horses were tethered and hooded for fear they would bolt, and we huddled under our makeshift shelter waiting it out; cold, soaked to the bone, and constantly in fear of where the next bolt would strike.
Jain had, long ago, heard stories of a wondrous place of knowledge where the ancients had toiled away ever seeking to extend the worlds knowledge.
Later he had found writings of an ancient centre of learning that indicated it lay somewhere in the north, in the Blasted Land, but until very recently, he had failed to find any more than vague references and fireside stories of its existence.
Then he came across the map, well a fragment of a map really. It seemed to depict a network of travelling circles, and the cities and sites of importance that they served or were near.
The fragment showed only two travelling circles, both I was told, long since destroyed. One had been near the city of Elalium, which was first lost early in Dar'cen’s conquest, and then completely laid waste when he and his servants fled before the forces of Al'kar.
The other lay north of a few small towns and villages, on the banks of what was once the great river Altwen. Next to the travelling circle was engraved the symbol for a school, and that was what had piqued Jain’s interest and brought us out here to the Blasted Land – for a school might be shown as an annotation within a town or a city on a larger scale map, but to be shown in its own right on a map such as this, and to be the only feature near a travelling circle made no sense. Unless of course it was a very important school, such as the great place of learning that Jain sought. Jain believed it to be the school the stories talked of, and so had begun our expedition.
he storms raged almost constantly here, for this was where the final battle had been fought. And even in defeat Dar'cen had brought his spite to bear, destroying all the lands around him, laying them uninhabitable for the centuries that followed, and ionising the atmosphere such that storms filled the skies night and day.
Hence the name the area had been given – the Blasted Land.
Finally the storm abated enough for us to move on. Forks of lightning still streaked the sky but there were far less ground strikes, and most were in the far distance.
There were five of us now – Step and Garam had joined our party.
We had been in Baraha a month past, when Tarnia had decided she need a drink, and by a drink she meant a bender. And her benders were legendary; I could not help but associate them with sailors finding their first bar after month upon month at sea.
She liked on occasions to go on these benders as she called them, and woman though she was, we had no worries for her safety when out alone – Tarnia could look after herself. Besides Jain too liked a drink, and he also frequented the seedier parts of the towns we visited, and so would often accompany her. His jovial sense of humour was probably what averted much of the trouble that might normally follow Tarnia’s drunken frenzy around a town or village.
On this particular night she came across Step and Garam in the Ram’s Head, a dive of a tavern at the far end of a darkened alley that had the audacity to be named a street.
To be accurate I should say that Jain came across them first, for Jain loves to take part in games of chance, especially when those games can be manipulated by those of a mathematical bent such as he.
Jain loved to dice, and that was how he came across Garam and his weighted set of dice.
Garam played with a group of men, one of which, to Jain’s keen eyes, obviously partnered him in scamming the others. Jain had watched for a little while before joining the game, and then, on his very first throw, had surreptitiously switched Garam’s crooked dice for his own very honest set.
He then played along, jovially smiling at Garam and his partner, who both knew full well what had happened to their dice, but could do not a thing about it without alerting the others to their earlier crimes. Should they walk away, there would have been an outcry over the large sum of earlier winnings they would take with them, but the longer they stayed the more they lost to the old man, the old man who had palmed their dice.
But as Garam later confessed, he would have happily given the money back, all the money, and taken a beating to boot, just as long as he could get his dice back. He could always win more money, he said, there were fools aplenty for that, but only one set of dice like the ones that had sat in Jain’s pocket.
The potential for violence, which would have seen Garam and Step badly blooded, escalated when Tarnia walked into the room.
Her voice had boomed across the floor as she spotted them, “There you are you cheating bastards, I’d heard you were in town… Still got those loaded dice of yours Garam?”
Garam winced, and Step’s expletives started with Shit and went downhill from there.
The whole room had fallen silent after Tarnia’s outburst, with violence firmly on the menu, until Jain stepped in and calmly demonstrating with his dice, that they were in no way loaded as the woman had joked. Then, Jain patiently explained that Garam and Step had earlier simply had a run of beginners luck, and with a smirk, he had pointed out that they had both lost quite a sum over the last half an hour.
The mood lightened slightly at Jain’s words, but considerably more so when Tarnia again spoke, “I did indeed jest good people. Garam and Step here are my true and honest friends," and with a huge grin she said, “And I am sure they will demonstrate their honest and indeed generous natures, when they declare that all drinks this night will be bought at their expense." Impossibly, her grin broadened even further as she said, “That is true, is it not, my good friends?"
This time it was Garam’s turn to force out a mouthful of barely understandable expletives, while Step smiled back at Tarnia as he said, “I’ve really, really missed having you there to keep us in line girl… drink up everyone, it is as the good Lady says, the drinks are on us."
Then he stepped forward quickly, took Tarnia in his arms and twirled her round and round, a huge smile now splitting his face.
Tarnia made the introductions, and that night Garam and Step returned with them to join our little troupe. Tarnia, not being one to pass up any opportunity to rib and embarrass her friends, told the story of that night over and over for months, until I myself almost believe that I was present when it all happened.
After that night, Jain made it his mission to teach Garam and Step the pleasures of winning games of chance purely by relying on ones own knowledge of numbers and the permutations in which dice may fall. They were both quick learners, and soon began to win almost as often with Jain’s honest dice as they had with their own weighted set.
But Garam, ever the impatient one, soon tired of honest play, preferring the quick killing to the long yet honourable route to fortune.
From that day on we were five.
We saddled the horses and set off again, on our way northward, following the path of what had once been the great river Altwen; now reduced to a deep sided ravine of churning grey and white foaming water; water that Jain said was more acid than anything else.
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Nothing grew here, at least nothing edible – sparse withered old stumps of ancient trees seemed to have some life remaining to them, but even they did not thrive.
We had been in the desolation of the Blasted Land for over fifty miles, and by Jain’s reckoning we had another twenty at least to go until we reached the school, or at least until we reached the place where the symbol on the map indicated a school had been.
With the progress we had made so far, it would be at least another two days. Up to now the storms had dogged our progress, forcing us to stop sometimes for hours at a time, because the violence and frequency of the lightning strikes and the roar of the thunderclaps made the horses completely unmanageable in mere seconds.
Onward we went, soaked to the skin and altogether not the cheery party that had set out on Jain’s School Trip, as it had been aptly named by Garam. Only two days into the stormy, rain drenched terrain, it had become Jain’s bloody, flaming School Trip.
Eventually, three days later, Jain decreed that we had arrived, at least to where the map indicated a school to be.
There was not a great deal to see, the same desolation to the West, and the ravine, that was the Altwen, bordering us on the East. There were some sign of what must have once been buildings though; low broken walls here and there, and about two hundred yards in front were sets of parallel walls, shattered in places almost to the floor but in others reaching perhaps five or ten feet into the air. The walls seemed to stretch for hundreds of yards into the distance, and as we approached we could see other walls crossing at right angles to the first, forming the outline of, what could only have been, rooms within a larger building.
Jain was convinced that these broken walls and mounds of rubble must be the school we had set out to find; he was absolutely ecstatic.
I had not known what to expect, but when I first saw the ruins and the devastation, my mood formed a mirror to the surroundings themselves, and hope of finding what I looked for plummeted.
But there was no dampening Jain’s enthusiasm; we pitched camp and sat and ate, while Jain continued long into the dark, eventually by torch light, searching through the ruins. Inch by inch he searched, and to us sat by the fire, he looked like a madman.
He would walk perhaps ten or fifteen feet, and then stop to examine some stone or artifact, rubbing it with his hand or sometimes scratching at it with his belt knife. Then, perhaps after as much as ten minutes of this, he would grumble and huff and move on again, only to stop once more mere yards further on.
Eventually when I and the others had lain back ready for sleep, he came back to us, the smug look on his face visible even by the dim light of the dying fire. I looked at him expectantly, and the others sat up perched on elbows to hear what he had to say.
“Tomorrow, my friends. Tomorrow,” was all he would say regardless of how we badgered him. Then he lay down and within minutes was fast asleep.
I could have strangled him, but still had to chuckle at the evil old bastards sense of humour.
The following morning came, and once again a storm hampered us. The black clouds blotted out all but the slightest light from the sun, and the sheet rain hid the little that remained. The lightning flashes lit the surroundings, but they were so frequent that moving more than a few feet in any direction left you feeling disorientated, dizzy and ill.
So we sat, shielded by tarpaulin, yet again miserably wet, but now with an increasing sense of frustration at Jain; for he would still not talk of his find.
“You’ll just have to wait and see, no point in me trying to explain. Be patient, it won’t be long now. This storm will not last for ever, and it will be worth the wait," he said.
After his comment, garroting replaced strangling in my minds eye, and this time I chuckled as I imagined the look on his face as I tightened the wire.
It was hours before the storm eventually lifted and even then, at first, Jain tried to insist on building up the fire to make tea. The look we all gave him must have finally gotten the message across.
“Okay, you win. I’ll show you. It's not far, but if I am correct, we will need to come back to the fire to make torches."
Garam huffed, but he did bank up the fire, and then Jain finally led us into the ruins.
Less than fifty yards from our camp, Jain stopped at a mound of stones to the side of what must have been one of the larger rooms because the broken walls that bounded it stretched off thirty or forty yards into the distance on both sides. “This is the first I have found,” Jain exclaimed. “Though, I am sure we will find others should this one prove to be fruitless."
We all looked perplexed, baffled even. But no one wanted to be first to ask the smug bastard what it was we were looking at.
Moments of silence passed while Jain patiently looked questioningly at each of us in turn.
Finally Tarnia blurted out, “Stairs! It's the ruin of a staircase, blocked but leading downward."
Jain smiled at her, his most benevolent fatherly smile, and then, with a voice dripping with smug sarcasm he said, “I knew you would be the first to see it, my dear. But I had hoped for some signs of recognition from the others too."
Tarnia blushed, something I had never seen before, and Garam and Step both grunted, “Of course… we would have got it eventually,” almost in unison.
Jain then explained what he knew, or had read of the School. Originally it had been a magnificent structure, towering into the sky, dozens of floors high. A place where hundreds worked to further knowledge, and still hundreds more came to learn. He believed that in the final battle, the weapons used by Dar'cen and his forces had destroyed all of the surrounding area, vaporising all but what remained of the central building that formed the School. But floors were left below ground, he believed, and there might be much to discover there.
It took a while to clear away the top stones; it appeared they were all that remained of the stairway to the upper levels, long since collapsed or destroyed by Dar'cen’s weapons of war.
Slowly as the stones were removed, we exposed a wide staircase leading downward just as Jain had said.
Immediately below was a huge chamber, some form of entrance hall, possibly a dinning area or lecture theatre. That single room was enormous, easily large enough for us to make camp, and even bring the horses under shelter. Passageways led off each of its walls, some to corridors long since blocked by surface falls, and others leading off in all directions, with rooms again leading off them.
We also found other stairwells leading downward to other levels further below. But given the frequency of the storms and the coming dark, we halted our search and did indeed make camp there, bringing the horses, together with a fair supply of wood from the stunted trees that still somehow managed to live in the desolation.
That night Garam, Step and I set about making torches, whilst Jain and Tarnia made an initial survey so as to better plan our search for the days to come. My earlier depression on finding the school was now replaced with a sense of hope, not the scholarly elation that oozed from Jain, but hope nonetheless.
The following day we searched all that we could access on the first two basement floors.
It was indeed a school of some sort. Jain said, that it had been dedicated to furtherance of knowledge and research into the unknown.
Much, he said, was first discovered here; the wonders of travelling came from this place, and great advances were made in the war against disease, and in the search for longevity, immortality even. In the distant past, many of those possessed of strong magic were blessed with the gift of long life, sometimes into hundreds of years for the strongest, he said, and even today that was true for a small few. But even in the age before Dar'cen, the common folk, those without magic, rarely lived passed their hundredth year, and seldom was that in good health.
This place, he said, had defeated illness and disease, but not the ravages of age.
So much of the effort here was to mimic what nature had given to those with magical strengths – to make long life available to all the people. But alas, he said, all those great discoveries were forever lost at the coming of the demon, Dar'cen.
We found the remains of shelf after shelf that had once held books, scrolls and the like, but very little of the shelves themselves remained, and of books only the odd leather or wood cover remained, and they would crumble to the touch. All had decayed to dust with the passage of time and the ravages of the radiations that had wracked the whole region.
We found the remains of desks and various equipment, all of some form of plastic, or at least that was how I would have described it. But Jain insisted the material was some form of vegetable extract, that when worked by magic could be drawn and molded into wondrous forms of great strength. But even those had degraded in the years since their making, such that their original forms were not even recognisable in many cases.
In one room, a room with huge glass doors, we found the remains of what could only have once been people. The floor was littered with thousands of bone fragments that, when touched, crumbled away to dust. Jain believed that these were the remains of the original researchers and students of this place, those that were present when Dar'cen first came to Ellas; executed as both an example to all, and to remove any knowledge that might somehow prove to be a threat to his conquest.
How Jain knew or believed this I did not know, but if the latter was indeed true, then what was it that these poor people might have known? What did Dar’cen fear that they might know? And did some remnant or clue remain here, where he had so casually taken their lives?
On the second day we searched the third and lowest level; if any existed beneath we found no means of entrance.
This floor differed from the others in that, while most was again devoted to research, a large section of the floor seemed to have been personal quarters.
One room was obviously a bathroom, another a sitting area for relaxation with one of its walls made entirely of a black onyx like substance. The whole wall, floor to ceiling, appeared to be made of a single piece of the black material. Jain excitedly proclaimed that it was a View Wall; a blend of long lost ancient magics and science made the whole wall into a picturesque scene of anywhere in the world, showing the place viewed in real time. The occupants of this room could have sat watching a distant tranquil shoreline, or instead watched while distant news unfolded in front of their eyes. Whoever had owned these quarters must have been important indeed, Jain said, as the cost of even a very small View Frame was an exorbitant sum. But to own a whole wall, such as this, was a king’s ransom; Jain said that it would have taken dozens of skilled Scryers months to infuse their magic into such a large area.
I thought it was a shame that it was now only a shiny black rock, and did not function as it once had. It would have proven invaluable in my quest, or indeed as a weapon against Dar'cen and his forces.
The only other item we found of note was very strange indeed.
In the centre of a room on the third level, very obviously much used for research, stood a large block of crystal clear glass, or at least what I took to be glass. But given what lay scattered around, it was obviously far harder than any glass Jain or I knew of. On the floor lay the remains of all manner of tools and implements that seemed to have been used to batter at the block to try and break through into it.
The block itself was all of ten feet high and six wide, and despite all that lay at its feet, it was completely unmarked, not even the smallest of scratches marred its so very clear surface.
The block and who or what had tried to break through it was a mystery, but what it enclosed was even more so.
Floating within the glass was what I could only describe as some form of opening, a portal or doorway to somewhere else, somewhere not within that room. Somewhere not even within this world, I somehow knew.
The opening was rectangular and almost filled its glass enclosure. Nothing could be seen through the opening, it was black almost, with shimmering lighter shades of grey, that constantly shifted and changed, almost like storm clouds. Except that the changes always seemed to be at the periphery of your vision, never where you fixed your focus, always just beyond. It was very unnerving to look at for more than a second or two.
The block also seemed to project a noise, almost a static hissing, which increased the closer you moved toward it; the noise seemed to repel against you, pushed against you, almost as if it did not want you to approach.
Walking behind the opening to the other side of the block was stranger still. From behind the block, there was nothing at all to see, just a clear glass block and the view of the room the other side. The opening, or portal did not exist when viewed from that side of the glass block.
Jain could not explain what it was, not the glass block or the opening that seemed to float in its centre.
Obviously some had tried long and hard to break through the glass to what lay within, but who, and what they strove to achieve was a mystery.
Our attempts were no better. Garam and Step battered at it with swords and axes to no avail, and even with my enhanced strength and my knives I could not make the slightest of marks on it.
It was strange indeed, but it, nor anything else we found, gave any clues to help with my search for a way home.
Both Jain and I returned from that place empty handed and bitterly frustrated.