This is the only non-Orlandan basilica, the church of Lord All-God, King of the Earth, or Terreanfor. The basilica is carved into the face of the Night Mountain, making it a place where no light touches, even in the middle of the day. There is a hint of the old pagan days in Sorboldian religion, even though they worship the All-God and are a See of our religion. They believe that parts of the earth, the ground itself, that is, are still alive from when the world was made, and the Night Mountain is one of these places of Living Stone. The turning of the Earth itself resanctifies the ground within the basilica. It is a deeply magical place.
Walking now beneath the soaring stone trees, past the immense statues of creatures honed from the living rock, Achmed could agree with the late duke’s assessment.
By the time the procession had traveled deep enough into Terreanfor to move beyond the garden of animals and into the inner sanctum, where the statues were now stone renderings of soldiers, Achmed noted another light ahead, though a cold one that did not burn like fire this time. Closer examination showed that some of the rocks that were housed within the Earth cathedral were glowing on their own with a kind of phosphorescence he had seen only in his travels through the Earth; the element of ether, finally, he thought.
When he and Ashe were passing beneath the upraised blades of two stone swordsmen flanking the central aisle, the procession stopped.
Up ahead he could barely make out the movements of the pallbearers, who were positioning the linen-wrapped bodies on the altars of Living Stone, from which most of the song of the Earth was emanating. The vibrations of the song, soothing but with an undertone of pain, lulled him as first the Patriarch, then the benison, began to drone the funeral rites in Old Cymrian, the common tongue of the Island of Serendair, now a dead language used only in religious ceremonies.
Oh our mother the Earth, who waits for is beneath the everlasting sky, shelter us, sustain us, give us rest.
How long the ceremony lasted Achmed had no idea; it seemed like moments later, and an eternity as well, when the procession began to move again.
The benison led the clergy, pallbearers, and mourners deeper into the profound darkness, past the altars of Living Stone that hummed with the same mellow, orotund vibration of the sonorous earth all around them.
Deep within his soul, Achmed felt a painful tug, a desire to remain within the dark walls that in the light would shine green and rose, purple and blue with pure, undiminished life. There was a power here, a deep, elemental essence that spoke to both of his bloodlines, his mother’s Dhracian love of the deep earth, his unknown father’s kinship as a cave dweller. It was all he could do to spur himself to keep pace with Ashe, whom he could barely see in the dark.
The line processed to a tall, straight stairway that stretched up into the darkness beyond the altars. As they mounted the stairs, the air became warmer, lighter; a gray haze began to fill the space before them.
“This must be the stairway to the sepulchers,” Ashe murmured as the darkness began to diminish.
Achmed merely grunted, wishing the endless ritual would end, so that the colloquium they were to convene afterward to discuss Sorbold’s future could get under way.
Finally they ascended to a landing, a wide open floor with a low, vaulted ceiling above it. Light, more present in this area, was provided by a host of the glowing rocks Achmed had seen earlier.
Two scaffolds lay in the center of the floor of this open room, attached to ropes and pulleys that hung from the ceiling above, in which dark rectangular holes could be seen.
The benison intoned his concluding rites, the ceremonies of burial similar to those performed in the Patrician church of Roland, but with elements of the ancient ways, the more pagan touches that Stephen had long ago commented on. When he had finally finished, he turned to the assemblage.
“My children, the right of committal to our mother the Earth is concluded. There is only now the interment, the ascension of the bodies into their individual sepulchers in the royal crypt above us. If you wish to leave now, the acolytes will escort you back to Jierna Tal, where a funeral banquet will take place, after which we will convene the colloquium. If you would like to ascend to the viewing area of the sepulchers by way of the Faithful’s Stair,” he added, pointing to a tiny doorway in the wall near the scaffolds, which were already being drawn up toward the ceiling on the ropes, “you are welcome to witness the final burial rites. Please note that the Faithful’s Stair is quite winding and close; if you are in ill health or uncomfortable with tight spaces, I gently suggest you return to Jierna Tal at this point.”
The dignitaries, most of them in the throes of claustrophobia, hurried after the departing acolytes and into the air of the upworld.
Except for the Lord Cymrian and the Firbolg king, who looked at each other questioningly, then together made a quick path for the archway that the benison had indicated, and darted up the steps.
The benison had not exaggerated the tightness of the turning stairway. Achmed’s shoulder, and all of Ashe’s right side, brushed the curving walls as they climbed in ever-shortening spirals. As they ascended, the air around them grew warmer, the ground was distinctly drier, less alive.
“This was ill considered,” Achmed muttered after the thirteenth full turn around the staircase’s axis. “I really have no need to see the sepulchers; I was merely curious as to what it was going to take to haul the Crown Prince up into his tomb.”
“Perhaps they have a few dray horses and an elephant on the upper floor to help,” Ashe suggested, curling his shoulder in to avoid the continuous abrasion he was suffering from the wall.
“If there is more than another full rotation, I’m turning back,” the Bolg king declared, climbing with a deliberate gait. “For all I know this staircase could lead all the way to the top of one the peaks in—
Ashe heard Achmed’s voice choke off abruptly.
“What is it?” he asked as the Bolg king stopped.
Achmed never answered him. Instead, he took a few halting steps forward, staring all around him.
Stepping into the upper burial chapel of Terreanfor, which housed the individual mausoleums of the monarchs of Sorbold, was like stepping into a living rainbow.
The chapel was small in girth, but tall in height. Thin supports of stone that connected with the ceiling and were decorated with statues of men, most likely legendary figures from Sorbold history, judging by their heavy facial features. The statues demarked sections of the tomb, almost invisible in the rest of the walls.
Which were made entirely of exquisite stained glass.
The Bolg king took another step into a gleaming patch of rosy light adjacent to a glimmering blue that pulsed gently as a cloud passed overhead in the sky beyond the window walls.
His mismatched eyes scanned the panorama of glorious color around and above him, drinking in the beauty, the artisanship, of a thousand years’ time and scores of generations of craftsmen’s labor which had combined to produce a paradise doused by the afternoon sun, facing west.
“A lovely final view.”
Ashe’s voice was muted to his ear. Achmed shook off the words almost without effort, lost in the majesty of the rainbows which had solidified into place along the mausoleum’s walls and in the domed ceiling.
His conscious mind, a distant second to the workings of his aesthetic senses, made note of two things.
First, he could see that each of the individual sepulchers of Sorbold’s royals had its own window, flawlessly rendered, depicting a stylized representation of that monarch’s life. Leitha was immortalized, a beautiful, rotund woman in rich garments, one hand scattering bread to the nation’s poor, the other stalwartly bearing a sword. Clearly the windows had been commissioned and all but completed many years before; they were probably begun at the time of her birth. The sheer artistry of it and the others that commemorated the lives of her ancestors took his breath away.