What would it be like to wield such power, he wondered? He would most likely never know. The Old Witch had told that such sorceries drove most men mad or warped them physically to the point of death. Human beings were not meant to wield such potent magic. But then, he was only half human. If he tried, which side of his nature would win out? It would be the ultimate test of what he was.
He did not like to dwell on what the results of that test might show, so he tried to shift his thoughts to something else, to their mission.
They had been sent pretty much across the border to find some wizard who was supposed to be holed up here along with a tribal religious leader. They had come armed and equipped to take on much more than they had encountered. They had brought a wizard and enough wyrms to rout a troop of hussars. Clearly someone somewhere thought this was important.
And what had they found? Not a thing so far. Just a ruined city, a bunch of scared hill-men and talk of a haunted mine.
It was stranger yet, he thought. They were along the border with Kharadrea, and more and more Royal troops were being sent to Redtower. There could only be one reason for that. The Kharadreans would not be mad enough to invade the Realm, particularly not while fighting a murderous civil war against each other. Talorea planned some form of intervention, a thing specifically prohibited to both it and the Dark Empire by the Treaty of Oslande. It would mean war, and not just with the Kharadreans if Realm troops marched through Broken Tooth Pass; war on a scale that had not been seen in over a century.
Rik was not sure how he felt about the prospect of war in the East. It would mean plenty of plunder, and that was something of which every soldier dreamed, but it might also mean facing the massive slave armies of the Dark Empire. Those Terrarchs were not kind to humans who dared oppose them. During the schism, they had crucified regiments of men they had defeated, as a lesson to those who thought to resist them.
All manner of tales were told of the vile sorceries of the East. Rik had read about the previous wars. That had been bad enough. This one could only be worse. Alchemy and gunnery had progressed a great deal since then, and who knew what the mad wizards of Askander could do now? There were whispered tales about the necromancy and vampirism practised by the Terrarchs of the forbidden land. All he knew was that the Exalted loathed their estranged kin with a hatred religious in its intensity. What was it drove them to that, he wondered?
He shook his head and stared at the lake once more. Its surface was grey and dappled. He had let his thoughts stray a long way. He flinched. Somewhere on the far side, he thought he saw a light. It flickered and vanished, and he waited for a minute or two to see if it would reappear. When it did not, he decided he had better report the matter.
Sergeant Hef was not best pleased with being dragged from his bed to come and look for a light that was no longer there, but he was a good enough soldier to know that it might be important. He woke Pigeon and sent him off to get Vosh and find out where the mine was. The guide appeared and confirmed that it lay in the general direction in which Rik had seen the light. Unfortunately his presence brought the Lieutenant.
Sardec stared into the lightening gloom through his telescope, trusting to his Terrarch night vision to let him see what the others had not. He found no satisfaction in it though and turned his glance back gloomily towards the men of his command. He glared at Rik.
“Apparently you saw nothing,” he said. There was accusation in his tone and Rik saw another punishment detail coming.
“Perhaps he did, sir, but it’s gone now…” said Sergeant Hef. “Better to be woken by an alert sentry than have our throats slit because he was asleep.”
Not even Sardec could disagree with that. “I will feel happier when we have investigated this mine, Sergeant,” Sardec said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And happier yet when we find this wizard. There is a stink of sorcery about all this that I dislike.”
That was the first thing Rik had heard Sardec say in a long time with which he could unequivocally agree.
“And speaking of wizards, find out if Master Severin has fully recovered yet. We might need his skills before all of this is over.”
“Very good, sir.”
The Sergeant sent Pigeon on his way and followed the Lieutenant back inside. Rik returned to his sentry duties, his greatcoat buttoned tight against the cold. He really wished now that he had time to loot some of those corpses of clothing. Some of it might well have fitted him, and even if it had not, another layer would not have gone amiss in this chill.
Dawn came. Rik marched along with the others. He clutched his rifle and looked out at the lake. In the early morning light there was something about it that made him deeply uneasy; a suggestion of oiliness about the water and stillness and…watchfulness.
He felt like at any moment something might emerge from the depths and attack them, something ancient, evil and inhuman. It was all too easy to imagine strange shapes swimming around through the ruins of those submerged buildings. He told himself that they were too far from the ocean for the squid-like Quan ever to have had a presence here.
He had always feared them more than any other species of demon. There had been one priest at the orphanage, an ex-sailor who had terrified all the children with tales of massive tentacled shapes rising from the moon-lit sea. Those stories had stuck in Rik’s mind.
Foragers moved in dispersed formation all along the slope leading to the mine entrance. They were taking no chance of missing anything or of being easy prey to anybody who might start sniping at them. He wished he had been one of the forty men who had been chosen to remain at the mansion with Corporal Toby and the wyrms but Sardec had ensured he was not. That seemed to be the way of things these days. Come to think of it, it always had.
“Look at that,” said Weasel. Rik followed the direction of his nod. A half-tumbled column lay in the water. Its sides were smooth and covered in strange runes. Some of them suggested heads with masses of tentacles emerging from them, others webs, other spiders. The column was chipped and weather worn. If you looked closely there were others like it visible just beneath the surface of the waters.
Rik wondered what had once been here; a temple of some sorts to the old gods perhaps, to Uran Ultar himself. The material looked like no stone he had ever seen. It was smooth and shiny almost like glass or perhaps the carapace of some large beetle. Just looking at it made him nervous. Those runes seemed to have a hungry life of their own. He told himself it was just his imagination, but couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.
“That’s Elder World work,” said Leon. Superstitious fear was evident in his voice. Rik nodded and shuffled uneasily upslope. He had no desire to get any closer to those columns than where he was now. They were things from the dark ages before the coming of the Terrarchs. Some of them were older than the human race. Often in the bad old days, such relics had been places of sacrifice.
“Excellent,” Rik said. “Dark wizards, Zarahel the Prophet and now Elder World runes. Why do I feel there is some connection?”
“Maybe it’s just coincidence,” said Leon.
“Let us hope so.”
“I don’t like this at all,” said Leon, rolling the unlit pipe to the far corner of his mouth and making an odd whistling noise through it. His huge eyes stood out in his thin features. Fear was etched there. Master Severin looked at them. He did not seem quite fully recovered from last night. There was a weariness and languidness about him that they had not noticed before. It was as if the magic he had unleashed had drained the strength from him.