“It’s known that you are in the city,” Edric said. “It would be considered a snub to the king if you did not attend.”
“The king’s an idiot,” Tyr said. “He won’t know one way or the other.”
“But the Babachenko will.”
Alexander floated out of Tyr’s manor house and moved his focus to the palace. It was an enormous structure built into the top of a dam that held back a sizable mountain lake. The stonework was certainly accomplished by magic. The entire palace had a fluid, graceful design that was as beautiful as it was functional. At the very center sat a banquet hall built almost entirely of glass. Only the side walls were stone, while the ceiling, front and back walls were transparent, allowing an unobstructed view of the mountains reflecting off of the calm water to the east and the sun setting over the city below to the west.
Water flowed from the lake into the palace through myriad conduits, some for consumption, some for utility, and some for power. The only ways in were the twin elevators powered by the controlled flow of water through an array of paddlewheels.
Deeper within, Alexander found the forges, both coming to life as workers prepared to put them into service after so many years of disuse. He moved closer and discovered what he’d feared. The crystals Grant had found in the mine were being prepared to power the forges in a vastly scaled-down version of a heartstone chamber. The ranks of Lancers would soon begin to expand.
He spent over an hour exploring the palace while servants worked frantically to prepare for the banquet. The guards wore different uniforms than the overseers or the Lancers, and they were alert and well organized. Still, their number was limited. Given the difficulty of reaching the palace in the first place, a large guard force didn’t seem warranted.
Most of the upper chambers and passages were busy with servants and functionaries, but the palace had many levels below that were used for storage or simply not used at all. What he couldn’t find was an escape route. In every keep he’d ever seen, there was always some form of hidden way out, yet this palace seemed entirely cut off except through the twin elevators.
Next, he went to the king’s chambers but slammed back into his body the moment he tried to pass through the wards protecting that part of the palace. His hope of hiding in the palace and killing the king in his sleep diminished. If he couldn’t move through the barriers around the king’s chamber with his clairvoyance, he knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t be able to physically enter that part of the palace. That left the banquet itself. Not his first choice, but the best chance he would probably get, all things considered.
He calmed his doubt and returned to the firmament, this time going to the mine and the darkness within. He found an ancient city carved into the stone on many levels, with countless rooms, buildings, and bridges. The central chamber where he and Grant had turned back was a great chasm nearly three leagues long, reaching deep into the heart of the mountain. All along the chasm walls were structures built into the stone, some were platforms jutting out into the black with buildings resting upon them that could only be described as works of art, while others were vast networks of chambers cut into the stone with delicate grace yet structural soundness. As Alexander explored, he found many more of the crystals that glowed with the colors of life-the crystals that the Andalians were using to make force lances and slave collars.
He delved deeper, finding chambers and statues that looked like they’d been created for the artistry of it rather than for any functional purpose. One enormous room held a forest, accurate in every detail, down to the needles on the fir trees and the birds on the branches, yet everything in the room was made entirely of stone, silver, and gold. Alexander could have spent hours in that room alone just marveling at the detail of it all.
Occasionally, he came across creatures in the dark that he couldn’t identify, some so well-hidden that he would never have seen them were it not for their colors.
Many of the areas in the vast network of chambers were lit by eerily glowing stones set into the walls and ceilings that cast just enough light to see by, while other places were black as pitch.
As Alexander neared the far end of the chasm, he started to see the faint glow of light in the distance. Abandoning his cursory search of the underground city, he flitted to the light with a thought. A stone platform seemed to float in the darkness; the single bridge that used to link it to the rest of the structures had long since vanished, leaving only the abutment. Seven pillars of stone once stood in a circle on the platform. Six topped with softly glowing orbs remained, while the seventh lay broken and scattered in chunks. Just within the pillars was a magic circle cut into the stone, but instead of the customary seven symbols, there were dozens of symbols crowded between the inner and outer boundary lines. Near where the pillar had fallen, the stone floor was melted and deformed, wiping away a section of the magic circle.
In the center of it all rested a low altar cut from a vein of quartz shot through with gold. Atop it was a broad bowl carved from the same piece of quartz. Alexander had seen something like this before. He approached and found the bowl empty except for dust and a few pieces of stone debris.
As he was examining the altar, a mound of dirt that he hadn’t given a second thought to stood up, taking the form of a crudely sculpted humanoid.
“Why are you taking them?” he pleaded. “They’ve done nothing to harm you. Please bring them back.”
Alexander materialized before the three-foot-tall humanoid, wondering how the creature had been aware of him. “Hello,” he said.
“Why are you taking them?” the humanoid said with such forlorn sadness that Alexander couldn’t help but feel sympathy.
“I haven’t taken anything, but maybe I can help you. My name is Alexander.”
“I’m called McGinty, or I was. Now I’m just alone in the dark. They made me too well and now they’ve gone.”
“Who’s gone?”
“The fay.”
“I don’t know who the fay are.”
“They’re the makers.”
“They made all of this?”
“No, they made those that made all of this.”
“And who are they?”
“The Linkershim. Why are you taking them?”
“I’m not.”
“But you’re a fleshling. You dig and you dig until you find the Linkershim and then you kill them. They’ve never done you any harm, yet you kill them. Why?”
“Who are the Linkershim?”
“They are the builders made by the makers.”
“So the makers are the fay.”
McGinty nodded.
“What happened to them?”
“They died,” McGinty said, sitting down dejectedly. “When the light went out of the world, they all died.”
“When did this happen?”
“Before,” McGinty said.
“Before what?”
McGinty seemed confused … he was hard to read, since his colors were so faint as to be almost invisible and his facial expressions were made of clay. Alexander waited.
“Before the fleshlings came.”
“And I’m a fleshling.”
“Yes. Why have you taken them?”
“I haven’t taken anything.”
“But you have … I saw you. You took three of them.”
“The crystals are the Linkershim?”
“Yes, why did you take them?”
“I was with a man who took them, but I didn’t know what they were … I’m still not sure I do.”
“You are a fleshling, and you took them. I tried to keep you out. I shook the world and I warded the entrance, but still you came. More will come and more Linkershim will die.”
“The crystals are alive?”
“They are Linkershim-they are all alive.”
“How?”
“Magic … the fay made them.”
“But they’re just crystals, they can’t do anything.”
“Not anymore,” McGinty said, starting to cry, though without tears. It seemed very odd for such an inhuman creature to behave with such humanity.