Josh was disappointed when the door-opener turned out to be yet another human guard. This one was wearing pearly grey scale armour that looked as if it had come from a giant snake, and had a black cloth mask over his face so that only his eyes were visible. Over his armour was a black tabard with a golden eagle emblazoned on it.
Lady Paleyne held up the medallion that had got them past the Warden in the castle courtyard.
The guard nodded, opened the door wider and they all filed through into broad tunnel, where a second guard waited, dressed in the same manner.
Like the great hall, the tunnel had columns set into the walls, carved to look like twining tree roots, and at regular intervals were diamond shaped panels into which crude iron brackets had been hammered, each holding a flaming torch. The tunnel curved down, forming a giant spiralling ramp which took them deep below ground.
The guard who had admitted them led the way, with the second guard following behind, extinguishing the torches as he went.
The deeper they travelled, the more the style of the columns changed, from the organic branching curves of tree roots, to more angular geometric shapes. Once upon a time the carvings had been set with crystals or semi-precious gems, but most of these had long since been gouged out and looted, leaving gaping holes that marred the beauty of the decoration. Gradually, the torches in iron brackets were replaced with diamond-shaped crystals set into the walls, which started to glow as they approached, and faded away behind them.
At the base of the spiral ramp was a large cavern, with yet another archway at the far end. In Spiralia it had featured a set of double doors made from some kind of crystal, but a wooden fort had been built in front of them, hiding them from view. It was a small fort, and crudely utilitarian against the graceful pattern radiating out from the door frame, but it was a structure that obviously meant business. It had two watch towers to either side, connected by a walkway, and a square gate below that.
They were admitted to the fort, and Josh caught his breath, as the doors came into sight. They were about thirty feet high, tall and slender in proportion, and resembled nothing so much as magical glowing ice, carved with fractal patterns that were a perfect blend of organic and geometric. The magic they emitted had a frosty, numbing feel to it, and it reminded Josh of the key fragment.
The guard cleared his throat, and Josh realised the entire party had been staring at the doors for several moments. The commander of the fort was waiting to one side, holding a glowing crystal set into a wand.
“You know the rules?” he asked.
Lady Paleyne inclined her head, and Josh realised that he didn’t know the rules, and he should probably find out. But before he could say anything the commander was already striding towards the doors. When he reached them, he touched the wand to a section directly at eye height, where the pattern spiralled around a small indentation. There was a clunking noise from the doors, and they gradually began to swing open. The commander backed away, and waved the party through.
Through the doorway was a second cavern, even larger than the first. It had a vaulted roof, forming a perfect arch, and the walls were set with glittering crystals, many of which glowed. It was like walking into the centre of a rock geode lit by lantern light. The walls plunged down steeply, straight into perfectly still lake of azure blue that filled the cavern, reflecting the twinkling light of thousands of tiny-faceted reflections.
This was the first chamber of the Azure Cathedral.
A pontoon was waiting by a stone jetty, directly in front of them. Both ladies stepped carefully onto it, and Josh followed them, which left poor Jann to manage their pack horse by himself. The horse had displayed no consternation at the long ramp into the darkness, or the glowing doors, but now it decided it didn’t want to trust its safety to the pontoon. Eventually, however, Jann managed to coax it onto the boards. There were two pontoon men, dressed in the same eagle tabards as the guards, who poled the boat out into the middle of the lake.
In Spiralia Online, the lake had been patrolled by a giant white serpent, which had functioned as the first boss encounter. Josh looked at the water nervously, but any monsters it contained must have been defeated long ago.
He checked on Lady Paleyne again, but she seemed to be fine. Lady Alianne had her hood pulled forward to hide her face. Maybe Lady Paleyne only needed to keep the illusion up when there were other people around, but right now the pontoon men were focused on their task.
Lady Paleyne noticed Josh looking at her, and smiled faintly.
“Do you know what this place is?”
Josh wondered how much he should admit to knowing about the Azure Cathedral. Technically, he’d studied it from top to bottom, and spent hours wandering around a virtual version of it. But why was it full of humans? Where were the stone elves?
“I’ve heard of it,” he admitted. “But only that it used to be full of monsters. I don’t know anything about it now.”
Lady Paleyne nodded.
“It was lost to a great crystalline construct, the product of a spell gone awry, at the heart of the huldra city deep within the caverns. The construct was defeated by the Seven Heroes nearly fifty years ago, and the Cathedral retaken. The huldra were able to reclaim their ancestral domain, and in gratitude they offer passage through the Azure Lakes in times of need.”
The huldra were the stone elves. The medallion Lady Paleyne carried must be one of their tokens of admittance. She was using the caverns to get Lady Alianne to Dendral as swiftly and secretly as possible so the latter could be awarded her Philosopher’s Stone. Were there other factions out there who would try to prevent that? Was that the goal of the green-eyed man who had abducted Josh, the one Lady Paleyne had called Orlad? And what was so special about a Philosopher’s Stone?
Josh wanted to ask about it, but he bit down on the urge. Lady Paleyne was up to her neck in political intrigue, and the less he knew the better.
They poled onwards through glimmering aquamarine water beneath a glittering field of crystal stars. Josh could see why it was referred to as the Cathedral. It had the same atmosphere of hushed reverence, and filled him with quiet awe at its beauty and immensity.
At the far end of the cavern were more doors rising up out of the water, which swung slowly open at their approach. The pontoon men guided the craft into a narrow berth beyond, surrounded on three sides by straight walls cut into the rock. The water began to foam and bubble, and the level rose swiftly. Josh realised they were in a canal lock. No wonder this was considered a fast method of travel, compared to walking or riding along the north-west road.
Once they reached the top of the lock, the doors at the other end opened, and the pontoon poled out into a much smaller cavern. This one had a series of stone archways leaping over the lake, and balconies built into the walls, behind which were the dwelling places of the stone elves. Instead of a cavern roof covered in thousands of glittering crystals, there were six giant crystals set in a row. These glowed, which provided enough illumination for everyone to see clearly.
There was another group of people standing on a quayside situated just beyond the doors of the lock, and Josh was once again disappointed that none of them were huldra. He wasn’t concerned, though, until he heard Lady Paleyne suck in a sudden breath of alarm.
“What’s wrong?” Josh asked in a low voice.
There wasn’t time for her to answer him, because the guards jumped onto the pontoon, making it tilt in the water, and sending the pack horse snorting and stamping in alarm. They spread out to surround the party, hands on the hilts of their weapons.
Their commander had stayed behind on the quayside, and now she bowed to Lady Paleyne.
“Welcome to the Azure Cathedral, noble visitors. My lord has given orders that you be detained until his arrival. Please, step this way.”
Lady Paleyne stiffened.
“I have right of passage!”
The commander inclined her head.
“At milord’s discretion.” What could be granted, she seemed to imply, could also be revoked.
“Indeed?” Lady Paleyne said. “And what business does the Earl of Northcrag have with me?”
“His lordship has not informed me of his reasons,” the commander said, still in the same polite but inflexible tone of voice. “And, forgive me, my lady, but as you are a notable illusionist, I must insist on mage containment protocols.”
Lady Paleyne protested, and Lady Alianne—still disguised as Bethca—looked as if she very much wanted to do so too.
Josh could see there wasn’t any point in resisting. There were too many guards, and nowhere to run. They were polite but implacable while they took away Josh’s belt knife, his bow, his quiver and his pack. They didn’t find any of the spell scrolls or paper he had secreted in his clothing, and he had wrapped the magic muffling cloak around his magic items before putting them in his pack, so he hoped they would escape notice too.
One of the guards had some kind of monocle, which he focused on the party one by one. He declared Jann and Josh clear immediately, but pointed to Lady Paleyne’s neck and wrists, which resulted in the removal of an amulet and a set of bracelets. Josh presumed the monocle was a way of sensing magic, which made him immediately want to look through it. There was very little chance of the guards permitting that, however.
The guard with the monocle also indicated Lady Alianne with a general sweep of his hand. The commander turned to Lady Paleyne expectantly, who gave a bitter twist of her lips, but a moment later the illusion around Lady Alianne dissipated.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Mage containment protocols, apparently, required everyone’s hands to be bound in front of them, and, in Lady Paleyne’s case, covered with gloves that prevented her from moving her fingers or being able to touch anything. They also tied a strip of cloth over Lady Paleyne’s mouth that would prevent her from speaking, an indignity she suffered in stony silence.
The guard post had taken over a set of rooms that had once been living quarters for the stone elves. The room the party were locked in was small and windowless with a single door, and had two benches set against the walls. Lady Paleyne and Lady Alianne sat on one side, and Josh and Jann on the other.
So here Josh was, tied up and captive, again. Why did this keep happening all the time? Luckily he had had time to take precautions at the castle before they left.
“Pally, you said this route would be safe,” Lady Alianne said. She sounded distraught, and Josh didn’t blame her one bit.
Lady Paleyne couldn’t reply, due to the gag, but the expression in her eyes was bleak.
Josh, meanwhile, reached into the cuff of his sleeve for the folded scrap of paper he had prepared the night before. He pushed magic into the spell paper, which was wrapped around another paper object. The spell paper disintegrated, leaving Josh with a small paper knife, now imbued with the Stone spell.
Lady Paleyne’s eyes had darted to him the moment he had cast, but she didn’t react in any other way.
Josh started cutting the ropes around his wrists. It was so much easier with his hands in front of him, and he didn’t nick himself at all this time. Clearly practice made perfect. The moment his bonds fell away, he stood up, stepped over to Lady Paleyne, and started cutting at the ropes around her wrists. Her eyes widened at him, and she made urgent noises against the gag.
Josh looked confusedly at the door, thinking that maybe one of the guards had come in and he hadn’t noticed, but it wasn’t that at all.
Instead, Jann’s arm snaked around Josh’s neck, hauled him away from Lady Paleyne, and squeezed tight. What the hell? Josh stabbed him in the forearm with the paper knife, and Jann grunted, but didn’t let go. Josh struggled for breath, and tried to throw Jann off him, but instead found that his vision was dimming. He threw them desperately to the side, and they crashed into the door, landing on the floor. Jann didn’t let go, however. Josh struggled, but the other man’s grip was too tight.
Just as he realised he was going to lose consciousness and there was nothing he could do, Jann’s arm around his neck suddenly went limp. Josh rolled over, heaving air into his lungs, and saw Lady Paleyne. She had managed to get one of the finger gloves half way off, and had her hand on Jann’s ankle.
She must have rendered him unconscious. With magic. It was good to know that she could do that.
The door jerked open, and the guard who had been standing in the corridor appeared in the doorway, sword in hand. Josh scrabbled for one of his spells, and cast Stone again, this time on the guard’s own armour. It didn’t stop him, but it slowed him enough that Josh was able to scramble backwards, even as Lady Paleyne ripped the gag from her mouth and said something.
Josh didn’t hear exactly what she said, but there was a force behind it, an effect that spread out in a ripple. He didn’t realise what it had done at first. He saw Lady Alianne jump forward and throw her cloak over the guard’s sword, but everything happened in complete silence. There was only a ringing sound in Josh’s ears, and the rushing of his own blood, but he couldn’t hear anything else.
That had been a silence spell!
Josh rolled out of the way as Lady Paleyne jumped over the prone form of Jann, and reached out towards the guard. He evaded her, trying to step back, but was hampered by his own stiffened armour and the cloak that tangled his sword.
Josh was still holding the paper knife.
He stabbed at the side of the guard’s knee, but the knife just shattered against the pebbly grey armour, so he grabbed hold of the guard’s leg and tried to pull him off balance. The Stone spell on the armour made that harder, but the guard felt him and tried to kick him away, and that distraction finally allowed Lady Paleyne to get within reach. She only needed to brush the guard’s temple with her fingers, and the guard collapsed, landing heavily against the door.
Lady Paleyne was really dangerous.
Even as Josh had that thought, she stumbled, and then collapsed on the floor in a faint of her own. What had caused that? Was that what happened when you magically over-exerted yourself?
Josh crawled towards her. Luckily, she had landed top of Jann, instead of onto the stone floor of the cell, so she hadn’t hit her head or injured herself, as far as he could see. She had deep, bruised shadows under her eyes, which were closed, and she was very pale, but she was breathing evenly and steadily.
The silence spell disappeared with a pop, and Josh realised that Alianne was crying something.
“Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods,” she was saying in her high, piercing voice, over and over again.
“Quiet!” Josh said to her urgently. She shut up, and stared at him with huge, offended eyes. “Help me get her up.” He indicated Lady Paleyne, then realised he would need to untie Lady Alianne first. That accomplished, they lifted Lady Paleyne onto the bench, and laid her down. Josh removed the remains of the bindings around her wrists.
Jann and the guard were still unconscious, but he had no idea how long they would be out for. Wait, they were unconscious and not dead, weren’t they? Josh checked their pulses and breathing, and was relieved to find them still alive. Jann’s arm was still bleeding, though, where Josh had cut him with the paper knife.
Why had Jann attacked him? Had he thought that Josh was trying to hurt Lady Paleyne with the knife? No, it should have been obvious what Josh had been doing.
The guards had been prepared for Lady Paleyne. They had known she was coming, despite the last minute and secretive nature of the expedition, and the decoy in the form of Clarisa. This implied a traitor. Jann had tried to stop Josh from freeing Lady Paleyne. Therefore, Jann must be the traitor.
Josh's thoughts felt muzzy as he slowly worked this through, and he shook his head. If he was going to escape he needed to be sharper.
Jann’s hands were still tied together. Josh checked the ropes, then used a fragment of his paper knife to tear a strip from the bottom of Jann’s shirt, and bound the cut on his arm. Then he hauled Jann into a sitting position on the bench, leaning his head against the wall. Josh went to tie up the guard, then realised that maybe this would be a way to escape.
He hesitated, then used Chi Siphon to pull the Stone spell out of the guard’s armour.
“Can you help me strip him?” he asked Lady Alianne.
The expression on her face indicated that he might as well have asked her to perform an indecent sex act.
“You should refer to me as 'my lady',” she said, haughtily.
Josh repressed a sigh of exasperation.
“Would you please help me strip him, my lady? Maybe I can wear his armour and help us escape.”
“Oh!” she said, as if she had only just cottoned on to the reason for the request. “Oh! I see. Well, yes, that seems a worthy course of action. Only, it would not be appropriate for me to look while you do so.”
After a short discussion, she graciously consented to help him roll the guard if she got to keep her eyes closed. Eventually the guard was slumped beside Jann, wearing Josh’s clothes, with his head turned away from the door so that he wouldn’t be immediately recognisable.
Josh was wearing the grey snakeskin armour. It had a separate cloth lining that smelled strongly of its previous occupant, but Josh didn’t want to suffer from chafing issues, so he had donned that too. The outer leather was buttery soft and smooth, and seemed to stretch to fit him so that he could move easily.
And the mask was a godsend. Josh had no idea whose idiotic idea it had been to put masks on the Earl of Northcrag’s guards, but he mentally thanked them from the bottom of his heart.
“How does it look?” he asked Lady Alianne, before remembering to add, “My lady?”
She gave him pleased smile.
“You certainly look the part!”
Josh gave her both of his Hide spells.
“If I don’t come back, use these for you and Lady Paleyne.” He explained how the spell operated.
Lady Alianne took the spell papers. Her brows quirked as she peered at them.
“They seem very … odd,” she said uncertainly. “The markings are somewhat crude.”
“They will work,” Josh told her firmly.
She nodded.
“Good luck!”
Josh took a deep breath, then opened the door and peeked out into the corridor. It was empty. The door had been barred from the outside previously, and Josh wanted to leave it that way while he scouted their escape route, so that it looked like the prisoners were still secure.
He dropped the bar, and ventured down the corridor, his mouth dry. The stone elf apartment wasn’t large. There was a straight corridor from their cell directly to the balcony overlooking the underground lake. There were six doors lining the corridor, three on each side. One was the cell Joshua had just come from. It hadn’t originally been designed to keep prisoners—the bar was an obvious, crude addition hammered onto the delicate scrollwork of the doorframe.
Where were all the stone elves? Josh told himself to shut up and focus. That wasn’t important right now.
He moved quietly and listened carefully at each door, but heard nothing until he got to one of the doors closest to the balcony. There he heard the low murmur of voices. They sounded relaxed, as if it was just two guards idly talking.
There had been the commander, plus six guards, which made seven in total. One guard was out of commission, two were in the room next to Josh, which left five unaccounted for. There were also the two pontoon men. Had they gone back to the lower lake?
Josh edged as close to the balcony as possible. He jerked back when he realised there were two guards standing on it, looking down onto the quay.
In Spiralia Online, the route through the dungeon had taken the party over the bridges that laced across the cavern lake, and which connected the rows of balconies on each side. The party had fought swarms of giant, crystalline spiders. No-one had bothered with the apartments, which had been full of undead stone elves, and hadn’t contained anything worth looting, so Josh didn’t know the layout, but it seemed fairly simple.
He retreated to the cell door, and studied the corridor again. Five of the six doors were obviously elven in nature. They were built from something light but hard and resilient, and had once been covered with lacquer, then decorated with an intricate patterned inlay. The inlay material had long been ripped out, leaving just the impression behind.
The sixth door, however, was little more than rough planks of timber hammered together, with another bar bolted into the decorative elven stonework.
It looked like it had been installed to block off access to somewhere. Josh glanced around, then lifted the bar and peered through the doorway. There was a spiral stairway leading down. He hesitated, then followed it to the floor below. This turned out to be an open area, with an arched ceiling, walls of shelves on either side, and a marble countertop taking up pride of place in the middle.
It looked like a shop layout. The shop opened straight out onto a walkway which ran along the lower part of the cavern. Josh crept towards the opening and peeped out. He could see the pontoon men, sitting on their craft and talking idly to each other, and three guards standing on the quayside. That accounted for six guards, leaving only the whereabouts of the commander unknown.
He looked along the length of the walkway. It was hidden from the two guards on the level above, but in sight of the quayside. None of the guards were facing this way, though. Their attention was focused on the lock doors.
It would be risky to move along the walkway, but possible, so long as none of the guards decided to stare in this direction. The Hide spells would be useful for that, but Josh only had two spells to cover three people, unless he could retrieve his magic cloak.
If he knew where the commander was, he would be able to search all the rooms. Had she gone to report to the Earl of Northcrag that she had captured her prisoners, as ordered?
Josh quietly returned to the upper corridor. He couldn’t stop to search for his things, agonising as it would be to abandon his little collection of magic items. And what would happen to the book moths?
But Jann or the guard might return to consciousness at any moment. Josh had no idea what had prompted Jann’s treachery, but he could no longer be trusted, and would have to be left behind.
Josh was just about to re-enter the prisoner’s cell when he heard a door in the corridor opening. For a moment he panicked, but then he remembered he was wearing a guard uniform, and took up a position outside the cell, as the real guard had done.
The commander emerged from the middle door. She glanced incuriously at Josh, but evidently saw nothing amiss, for she turned in the other direction, and headed to the balcony. Josh waited another few moments, but only heard voices.
He crept along the corridor and peeked out. The guard commander was looking out over the lake, and conversing with the guards. She had her back to Josh, with her hands clasped behind her back in a sort of parade rest.
Maybe there would be enough time to search her office.