“I cannot believe my eyes,” said Sorak, staring at the hoard with fascination. “Is all this real?”
“Yes, it is real,” said Kara. “Gathered over the years from all over the city and placed here by the undead, who were driven by some vague instinct left over from their days among the living, when they came to Bodach seeking riches, and found instead an eternal living death. Each night, if there is no prey within the city for them to pursue, they shamble through the ruined buildings and the cellars and the storehouses, seeking the wealth they once came here to find. An old chest of jewels in the residence of some long-dead aristocrat, a ceremonial golden dagger in a dusty council chamber, found by some animated corpse and polished lovingly, then brought here and dumped with all the rest. Bit by bit, the horde accumulates. It is much larger now than when first I came.”
“But... why do they bring it here?” asked Sorak.
Kara shrugged. “I cannot say. The undead are not rational creatures. Their minds, if they have not rotted away, are incapable of coherent thought. They are like simple beasts, driven by hunger and by instincts they cannot truly understand. If they were not so horrifying and so dangerous, they would be pathetic.”
“And the Breastplate of Argentum is somewhere among all this?” said Sorak, aghast. “How could we ever find it?”
“It was not here when I first came to Bodach,” Kara said. “Of course, I was not searching for it then, but for something else entirely. However, when I found this precious horde, I detected nothing magical within it. Since then, they may have found the talisman and brought it here. They would not know what it was. To the undead, it would merely be a breastplate made of silver. But if it is here, at least it will not be near the bottom of the pile.”
“But even so, finding it among all this would take forever!” said Ryana with a sinking feeling as she realized the sheer impossibility of searching through all the treasure piled before them. “And we have only hours until nightfall!” The task seemed utterly impossible and hopeless. “We shall never find it if it lies buried among all this!”
“Perhaps not,” said Kara. “But this had to be the first place for us to look. If there is now a magical talisman within this horde, I shall know it in a moment. But I can detect only the aura of its magic. I cannot be absolutely certain it is the talisman we seek. Still, it would have enormous power, and that should help identify it.”
She closed her eyes and held her hands out toward the treasure horde, palms facing down. Sorak and Ryana held their breath as Kara slowly moved her hands in a gradual, sweeping motion.
“Yes,” she said, after a moment. “There is, something ... something very strong....”
“Where?” asked Sorak, scanning the pile anxiously.
A moment,” Kara said, trying to localize the aura she was picking up. She opened her eyes. “There,” she said, pointing. “At the far end of the pool, near the righthand corner.”
Sorak and Ryana ran to the area she indicated and stared down at the pile of treasure in the nearly drained pool. “I do not see anything that looks the way it was described,” said Sorak. “Can you pinpoint the location more precisely?”
Kara came over to them. “I will try,” she said. She closed her eyes and held her hands out once again. “There,” she said, pointing to an area roughly four feet out from the side of the pool.
Sorak started to lower himself over the side, but. Ryana stopped him. “No, not like that,” she said. “It would take forever to sort through it all by hand, and you may cut yourself on something in the pile. It would be much better if we used the Way.”
“Of course,” he said with a grimace. “How stupid of me. In my enthusiasm, I simply was not thinking.”
They both stood beside the pool. Ryana closed her eyes and concentrated as Sorak slipped back and allowed the Guardian to come forth. Kara stood by, concentrating on the magical aura of the talisman to help guide them in their efforts.
For a moment, nothing happened, and then several of the objects on top of the pile of treasure shifted slightly with a clinking sound. Then they rose up into the air, as if something had forced them up from underneath, and the next moment, it was as if another fountain had suddenly been turned on, an invisible fountain that spewed pieces of the treasure horde up into the air, flying outward from the spot Kara had indicated and landing atop the treasure pile several feet away.
As the Guardian and Ryana combined their telekinetic powers, jewels and coins seemed to erupt into the air, sparkling in the firelight from the braziers. Necklaces and rings and bracelets made of gold and silver and studded with precious stones flew up and landed a short distance away, raining down upon the pile of treasure with metallic, clinking sounds. As bits and pieces of the treasure horde were thrown up into the air, Sorak, Ryana, and Kara watched for the glint of silver breastplate made of chain mail.
Sorak was reminded of the exercises they had done as children back at the villichi convent, lifting objects into the air with the power of their minds and holding them there for as long as they could, juggling balls and making them describe graceful arabesques in midair. As a boy, he had found those exercises difficult, frustrating, and pointless, and could never move so much as one little ball with the power of his mind, no matter how hard he concentrated. He would exert himself until his face turned red and sweat started to break out on his forehead, all to no avail, only to execute the exercise successfully the moment he gave up. He had not known then that it was not he but the Guardian who was doing it, that he himself had no psionic powers, but that others of the tribe did. He had not yet known about the tribe then. All he knew back then was that there were periods when he seemed to black out, often to awaken somewhere else, with no memory of what he had been doing or how he got there. With the help of Varanna, High Mistress of the villichi sisterhood, he had discovered the truth about his other personalities, and she had helped him forge a link with them so that they could all work together instead of competing for control of the same body. The Guardian, as the strong, maternal, balancing force among, them, had worked together with Varanna to help the tribe find a sense of unity and cohesiveness.
Now, all Sorak had to do was slip back slightly so that he was still aware of what was: going on but watching, with no real control over his body, as the Guardian came to the fore and brought her strong psionic powers into play. With Ryana adding her ability to the Guardian’s, object after precious object sailed up into the air, as if some indefatigable invisible worker were throwing up shovelfuls of treasure that spun, glittering, through the air. Precious coins that had not been minted in any Athasian city for countless generations because of the rarity of metals pattered down by the dozens like gold and silver raindrops. Daggers made of elven steel, a long and complex forging process that had been forgotten for several thousand years, came up from the shining horde and fell again, to be buried once more under hammered gold tiaras and silver girdles, intricately worked pieces of ceremonial armor. All gave testimony to an age when Athas had been a very different world. It glowed as it came up from the pile, its glow was not immediately perceptible, merely a faint, blue aura that could have been nothing more than a trick of the firelight from the braziers. But now, as it floated in midair above the treasure horde, they could see that it was, indeed, glowing with some inner power of its world, indeed, abundant in the natural resources that had provided the metals and the gems for the construction of these ornaments by master craftsmen, whose descendants saw such materials only rarely, in the form of ancient, cherished heirlooms handed down through the generations among the old families of the wealthy aristocracy.