“Doesn’t make much sense to build it without an entrance.”
“Well the old one might be covered by fallen stone. I can create a new way down if necessary,” I replied.
“Oh,” said Dorian, “then why are we wasting our time looking around?”
I took a deep breath, “Are you like this at home?”
“Why?”
I had a hunch Rose might regret having him home full time if he completely quit doing patrols, but I decided to keep my opinion to myself. “No reason,” I replied, before walking in a new direction.
I found a location directly over one of the closest rooms beneath us. It was only twenty feet down, under an assortment of rock and sand. I briefly considered talking to the earth, to allow us to slip unhindered through the ground, as I once had with Rose. It was a short distance though, and talking to Dorian had left me with a bit of tension, so I decided to use my own power to create a more normal entry. “Step back a bit,” I told Dorian, and then I focused my will on the ground in front of me. “Grabol ni’targoth,” I said in a commanding voice as I exerted myself. The ground shook as I forced it open, tearing a hole in the earth and reshaping it to form a ten foot wide opening and a steep ramp downward.
My large friend stood next to me with his sword drawn. He looked menacing.
“What’s that for?” I asked, pointing to the sword.
“Just in case.”
“There’s nothing alive down here,” I responded. “Nothing close enough for me to sense anyway.”
Dorian ignored my wisdom. “You’ve been wrong before.”
Shaking my head, I led the way down. The room that my new entrance led to was full of rotten boxes and dry dust. The smell of mold was overpowering. It appeared to have been a storeroom once, and I’d have guessed that the contents had been food stuffs. Needless to say, they were no longer good.
Dorian started coughing from the foul air, and before I realized it a powerful but subtle wind swept down from above, threading its way through the room and into the tunnels, rapidly replacing the stagnant air with fresh. Damnitt, watch yourself, I mentally chided. That was the very reason I was supposed to have a mielte watching me. My abilities as an archmage occasionally manifested without conscious thought.
“Good thinking,” said my companion, grateful for the fresh air. Of course he didn’t realize that my self-control had slipped.
“You’re welcome,” I said dryly.
A wooden door that had long ago succumbed to dry rot was all that barred our way out of the storeroom. Dorian swept it away with his hand, and we began searching the hallway that led from that point onward. Eight similar storerooms and a few smaller closets connected to it, but in each we found nothing more interesting than dust and ruined foodstuffs. Some of the wood was well preserved in the dry air, while in other places it had nearly disintegrated from occasional exposure to moisture.
An hour of careful searching revealed nothing of interest.
“Seems like we’ve come up empty handed,” noted Dorian at last.
I shook my head. “No, there’s more… beneath us somewhere.”
“Well I’ll be damned if I can tell where the entrance is,” he answered. “How can you tell?”
“I can feel an empty space beneath us, but it’s shielded by magic. It’s more than a hundred feet down, so I can only assume that it must connect with this area somehow,” I told him.
Dorian grunted, “That doesn’t make much sense. How did they get in and out?”
There was the possibility that they had used a teleportation circle, but I had a hunch it was something else. “I think they’ve used an enchantment to hide the entrance, and some distance beyond,” I said as I thought about it. The mistake had been in not hiding the deeper portion of their sanctuary with the same enchantment. “I’ll create another way down.”
I began using my magic to create another tunnel, but as soon as I started I found that the floor was not what it appeared to be. Beneath a thin veneer of tile lay heavy granite rather than earth or simple bedrock. To my magesight it still appeared to be mixed rock and earth, but now that I had removed the tile, I could see the granite slabs with my normal eyesight.
“That looks an awful lot like a door,” said Dorian, pointing at a large square section in the center. He was remarkable in his ability to state the obvious.
Bending down, I could see fine lines traced across the surface of the stone, marking the enchantment that hid the truth from my arcane senses. Cleverly done, I commented to myself, noting the pattern that some long dead enchanter had used. “There’s something else in this enchantment though… I don’t understand why they included these runes,” I said aloud. “Give me a few minutes to think. I can probably figure out where the key runes are.”
“Key runes?”
“The central nexus of the pattern, the point they would have gone to when opening the door… it may require a specific magical input, or a physical sign. Depending upon how they designed it, I might be able to fool it, or at least figure out what the requirement is for unlocking it,” I explained.
Dorian frowned, “I forget that you don’t speak the common tongue. How long will doing whatever you were talking about take?”
I ran my hand over my chin, pulling at my beard. “I’m not sure… an hour or two maybe,” I answered.
“How about this…,” said my friend, “this line appears to be central, and I’d bet the stone is less than a foot thick, if this is truly a door. So there are probably only one or two points here that actually keep it physically in place, behind or within the stone.”
I raised an eyebrow, “And?”
“If I can create an opening in the stone, somewhere around here,” he said, pointing to the center, “then I might be able to apply enough force to break whatever bar is holding it… assuming that it hinges along the sides there.”
“Well yes,” I replied, amazed that he thought he would be strong enough to do such a thing. I could have done the same thing with brute magical force, but I had a strong suspicion that the enchantment was tied to something else… something we might want to avoid if possible. I opened my mouth to explain, but I had spent too much time thinking about my answer.
Dorian had already taken my ‘yes’ as full agreement. Raising his sword, he held it between both hands, with the point facing downward. Exhaling, he drove it into the granite seam. Rock chips flew in several directions and the point bit deeply into the stone. I also felt a surge as the enchantment was disturbed. Something had happened, though I couldn’t be sure what.
“Shit,” I said bluntly.
“What?”
“You triggered something,” I replied.
Dorian was quiet for a moment. “Nothing seems to be happening,” he said, and then he drove his sword into the rock again. “How about that time?”
I sighed, “No, whatever it did, has already been done.”
He smiled, “No use crying about spilt milk then.” In the space of a few minutes, he cut a crude hole through the stone in the middle of our ‘door’. It turned out to be no more than six inches thick, and the opening he created was five or six inches in diameter. He stopped to wipe his brow. “This is a lot harder than it looks.”
“Swords really aren’t meant for cutting stone… or even wood for that matter,” I told him wryly. Even enchanted as it was, and with Dorian’s considerable strength behind it, cutting holes in granite slabs was a difficult task.
“I think it’s enough now,” he said, setting his sword aside. Dorian tried to reach inside, but his gauntleted hand proved to be too bulky. Stripping off his armored gloves and removing his helmet, he tried again (I had replaced his armor during the past year). Kneeling down, he slipped his right hand in far enough to grip the inside edge of the stone door.