As Radeachar settled to earth Varthlokkur began to entertain a new concern: How to get inside if the Place had gone through a makeover and the Old Man’s recollections were obsolete?
That one had been sure that the Star Rider would have changed nothing. There had been no need. Old Meddler was lazy. He lived in permanent crisis mode, concerned only with the disaster of the moment, seldom bothering with preventative work or the grand scale equivalent of housekeeping. When Varthlokkur asked how that gibed with the vast, complex, generations-long schemes the Star Rider wove, the Old Man just shrugged. Those were something else. They interested the Star Rider. Someone who wanted to bother could work out the psychology.
Radeachar had its own sense for the magical, if little inclination to report it.
Once Varthlokkur set his feet down he saw what he sought so exactly that he knew it must be his expectations reflected, yet could be taken as real for today’s purposes.
The one expectation the place did not meet was an aggressive defense. It did nothing even when he touched the gate. The Old Man had said that the entrance would be the most dangerous part. Once he was inside he would belong. If he did not belong he would not have been allowed in, would he?
Carefully, by the numbers, hoping the Old Man had lost nothing during his prolonged mental holiday, the wizard executed the rituals that would let him enter. The Unborn floated behind. Varthlokkur wondered if it owned a sense of time. He could recall no situation where it had become impatient.
Screaming, the gates swung in a few feet. Rust chunks broke off the hinges. Old Meddler had not come and gone here.
Inside, the Place conformed to his recollections. It was a cemetery- where the tombstones and stelae told no tales. Time had erased most every inscription. The rare partial survivors were incised in alien characters. There was no reason, in fact, to conclude that this was an actual burial ground. It simply resembled familiar cemeteries-and was a product of his own mind, anyway.
There were mausoleums, too, more weathered than the simpler monuments, suggesting that they were older. He was curious but did not step away from his mission. Foolish to open a box, the contents of which were unknown and might be deadly.
The few iron statues all appeared to be damaged. Several were down, overgrown, and sinking into the soil. The most damaged were also the rustiest. Those with the least rust nevertheless lacked a hand, a foot, or showed signs of having been hit violently by something at least as hard as they were.
Varthlokkur had seen iron statues in action only once. Nothing had stopped or slowed them, but that time their advent had been a total surprise. Still, even forewarned, he feared sorcery would not slow them. On the other hand, the efficacy of natural law was persuasive here.
He selected the least-impaired-looking statue and told Radeachar to proceed as planned.
The first challenge was to find out if Radeachar could shift one of the damned things.
They looked heavy.
Not too heavy for Radeachar, though it did strain.
The Unborn soared till it and the statue were a speck. The Place’s boundary membrane seemed infinitely elastic from inside.
The statue ended its plunge on granite flagging, surviving better than Varthlokkur expected. No pieces flew off.
The Unborn repeated the cycle again and again, enjoying itself. It wore down quickly, though. That was not good. They had to get back to Fangdred once the damage was done. Old Meddler would attack soon. The trap had to be armed and set. This was just to make sure the villain would remain hamstrung after that dust settled.
Radeachar had dealt with the soundest statues. Varthlokkur had hoped to achieve more. Had hoped to come across better opportunities to do mischief. Loss of the iron statues would have to do.
Still… He probed gently, cautiously, everywhere, but learned very little. This was all beyond him and more mechanical than his mind was equipped to handle. His inclination was to loose a storm of generally destructive sorcery to rip the place up, on a scale not seen since the Fall. Totally liberal vandalism would ruin the Star Rider.
The graveyard feel restrained him. The uneasy sense that he should not. Destruction could break things open.
There might be more here than appearances suggested. It now felt like not all those graves might be empty. Like some contained tenants who were wakening.
Could the Place be a prison for the restless dead as well as Old Meddler’s home base?
Could be. It might contain some of the world’s oldest horrors. Or enemies Old Meddler had conquered in ages past.
There might be places here reserved for Varthlokkur and the Empress.
That such an alien notion entered his head left him more wary. It did not feel like original inspiration. Something wanted him worried and scared.
It was an old, old world haunted by countless secrets. Sorcerers built themselves by using evils claimed from colleagues who had gone before them, who had grown fearsome in their own time by taking from the dead who had preceded them.
This was the fate of any sorcerer of attainment. One accepted it as the price of power today-or shied away from, whining, by those who would deny the inevitable.
A thousand Magden Noraths, and worse, had come, then gone. Ten thousand more would follow, every one cannibalizing his predecessors. The Great One demonstrated that a horror clever enough and stubborn enough could persist beyond death by establishing itself in the very skin of reality.
That was another idea that he would not have entertained in the normal course, but it felt completely true. Could it have leaked out of that membrane, across Radeachar’s consciousness, its path opened by his own sense that these graves might not all be empty symbols?
For a moment he thought he felt the amusement of a distant something that had been tasting his thoughts. He shuddered-then blanched as he sensed another something, screaming mad and starving to get at the world, this one a terror at least as powerful as the Great One had been.
He headed for the gate immediately, summoning Radeachar as he went. They dared not tarry. He might be one of the most powerful men alive but he was too weak to resist what wanted to control him here. He beckoned the Unborn again, impatiently. “Let’s go! Now! We’ve done all that we can do here.” Which was not nearly as much destruction as he had hoped, but might already be more than could possibly be good for the world.
Pressure that he had not fully recognized stopped once he passed through the gate.
The boundary definitely kept in as well as kept out.
With Radeachar’s help he resealed the gates, then rested with hands on knees, panting. He had not been worn down like this for ages. “That was harsh.” A few breaths. “The man might not be entirely wicked after all.” Assuming Old Meddler did restrain things like whatever it was that had reached out…
Radeachar did not comment. It was not feeling chatty. Not that it ever did.
“We’ve done what we can. Back to Fangdred. The hour is coming.”
…
Ragnarson asked, “When the hell will all this go down? I’ve been here a week. I’ve got stuff to do back home.”
Mist gave him a look of exasperation. She had grown impatient herself, especially with those who could not understand how important her mission was. Old Meddler’s attack was overdue. The villain must have something up his sleeve.
It seemed an age since Lord Yuan had reported one of his booby traps tripped. He did not think the Star Rider had been hurt but did believe that the event had led to the delay.
“We can’t make the man hurry, Bragi. We’re the ones sitting on a static defense.”
Though Mist looked at him she was talking to herself. She surveyed the gathering. Her sister-in-law looked particularly haggard. Bragi just looked bored, like everyone else. There was no sense of urgency here.