Kebble smiled. “Good luck,” the marksman said before his face disappeared.
Smithe growled and stalked through the next doorway, disappearing from view along with the light from his torch. Aimi looked around at everybody else. She could see little of them but their faces in the flickering torchlight, and they all looked worried. Shrugging away the odd sensation that once again crawled between her shoulders, Aimi stepped over the stone bench and followed Smithe.
Arches spread the entire length of the long room, loop after loop of stone extending into the darkness. Each arch was about six feet in length, and they ran both front to back and from side to side, cutting the room into many small squares. On the floor in the middle of each square was a circle of discoloured stone.
“I believe they were for praying,” Pavel said from behind as he waved his torch at the arches. “See the small holes on the underside of each one? Curtains were likely hung there so the faithful could pray in relative privacy.”
Aimi looked upwards. The arches didn’t extend vertically, but the roof was too high up to be seen in the scant light. She found herself wondering what the dome looked like from the inside, whether it had once been painted like some of the temples in Larkos.
“If this is the room they prayed in,” Smithe said, “makes sense the altar would be at the end, right? Come on. Let’s get this bitch looted.”
Smithe stalked forwards and, with a shrug at Pavel, Aimi followed. Everyone else surged forwards, eager to get the job done and be away, their footsteps echoing loudly.
Aimi almost bumped into Smithe when he stopped, so closely had she been following the quartermaster. Behind her she heard the expedition slow and start to spread out. They’d left the square grids of arches, and in front of them now was what had to be the altar to the forgotten god.
A statue rose up so high it almost disappeared into the darkness above, a group of six figures standing back to back in a circle facing outwards, each one different but for their faces. One carried a shield, while another held a sword. One was dressed in robes, while another wore an apron and carried both a hammer and a shovel. The final two were hidden behind the others. At the feet of the statue lay a large bench, and upon it sat a much smaller depiction of the six figures, made of gold rather than stone. Each of the figures had small, different-coloured gemstones for eyes.
“Grab it, Jotin,” Smithe ordered, already walking off around the statue.
“Stealing from a god,” Jotin said hesitantly. “I ain’t so sure about this.”
“Just do it,” Smithe hissed. “Kebble said this bloody god is as good as dead already. No power left.”
“That ain’t what he said,” Aimi complained.
“Good as.” Smithe completed his circuit around the statue. “Ain’t nothing else here. Just the one fucking lump of gold.”
“Your man outside said the rest might be kept in a cellar?” Alfer said. “We should look for some steps.”
“Does anyone else still hear that scratching?” said Jolan.
“I told you it was rats, ya damned coward,” Smithe snapped.
Jolan was looking up into the darkness. “Then why is it coming from above us?”
Chapter 41 - Starry Dawn
“Is this magical diviner of yours still gonna work?” Elaina said.
They were standing on a long skybridge that ran to the Observatory from the building closest to it. On the ground below were metal, glass, and stone remains of the largest monoscope Elaina had ever seen.
“I hope so,” Keelin said, his voice barely more than a whisper in the dark.
“They must have wanted to look at some things really far away,” Elaina said. The Observatory was almost twice as tall as the buildings around it, and the monoscope had once been a giant. But, like everywhere else in the city, time had brought down the mighty achievement.
“The stars,” Keelin said. “It was used to look at the stars.”
“Aye, but… Why?”
“Some people say you can tell the future by the stars. Probably shit. Maybe these folk believed it.”
The door at the end of the skybridge was made of stone, and it stood proudly defiant despite the passing of time. Keelin put his back against it and pushed with all his strength. Nothing happened. Elaina joined him, putting her own weight to the slab, and together they shifted it. It moved slowly at first, but soon the door cleared its frame and swung open on surprisingly smooth hinges.
The air inside the Observatory was still and dry, and it felt odd against Elaina’s skin. The hairs on her arms stood up, and she felt a strange energy all around her. It took her a moment to realise the Observatory wasn’t dark. A dim glow reminiscent of moonlight shone down from the windows, even though the moon was well and truly obscured by cloud.
“That’s eerie,” she whispered.
“The windows absorb sunlight during the day and release it at night to keep the place lit. The creature who told me about this place described it in great detail.”
Elaina grunted. “That’d be a real useful trick to know.”
“We’re not here to steal the secrets to making fancy windows, El. What we’re looking for should be two floors up, in a laboratory filled with gears and cogs.”
Keelin started searching for the stairs up to the next level. Elaina was far more interested in what this floor contained. A vast array of glass equipment was laid out, set up on wooden tables that somehow hadn’t rotted to dust. Bookshelves stood along one wall, and each one was full of dusty tomes. A small shelf of scrolls sat alongside a cupboard containing glass vials, all of which were filled with a variety of coloured liquids. Elaina didn’t know much about magic, but she guessed only sorcery could keep the place pristine through the passing of thousands of years. A thick layer of dust coated everything, but other than that, it looked like a working alchemist’s laboratory.
“Here,” Keelin called, one foot already on the first step.
“I’ll catch you up,” Elaina said. “I want to have a look around first.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… maybe we’ll find something valuable.”
“I’m not looking to get rich here, Elaina.”
“Not all fortunes are made of gold.”
Keelin looked like he was about to argue, but he shook his head and turned back to the stairs.
“Here,” Elaina said, pulling her sword out of its scabbard and tossing it to Keelin. “You might need a weapon, just in case.”
“What if you do?”
“I have a knife. Always was better with the shorter blades. I’ll catch you up soon.”
Elaina wandered about the laboratory. She trailed her fingers through the layer of dust upon a table, picked up a small bottle of green liquid and shook it to no effect. Finding herself in front of a bookcase, Elaina began scanning the tomes. They were written in a language she somehow recognised despite never having seen it before, but though the characters were familiar she couldn’t piece together what they said.
Moving on from the bookcase, Elaina examined the cupboard full of glass vials. The liquids they contained ranged from clear in colour to all sorts of greens and reds and yellows. Each vial was clearly labelled, but again Elaina couldn’t quite read the language. She understood letters here and there, but the meanings of the words were lost to her. Elaina picked up a scroll from the nearby shelf and carefully unrolled the parchment. This time, whole words made sense. Elaina read as much as she could, and even as she was reading, more and more of the language became apparent. Before long she was able to decipher the whole scroll, even though the language was still very much alien to her. She went back to the bookshelf. The titles on the books all made sense to her now, where before they’d been undecipherable.
Elaina looked back down at the scroll in her hand and read it again, more closely this time. A grin formed unbidden across her face. She looked about for something to write with and found a lump of charcoal from some long-extinguished fire beneath a glass jar. She rolled the scroll out on a table and read for a third time the formulae it detailed, jotting down in the common tongue the ingredients and how to mix them. When she was done, she shoved the scroll into her little pack and leapt up the stairs after Keelin.