‘No.’ The Unknown was certain. ‘All they can possibly know now is that the pass has fallen - spectacularly - and they’ll be doing their level best to retake it. They - or rather, their agents - know there’s a search for Dawnthief because of our appearance at Septern’s house but they won’t have enough information to target us or our position. Not yet at any rate.’
‘To stop any confusion,’ said Denser, ‘remember the Wytch Lords have not regained corporeal form yet and their power is still limited. When they are walking, that’s when we have to worry, though we don’t know when that will be.’
‘How many Wytch Lords are there?’ asked Will.
‘Six,’ said Ilkar. ‘Embarrassingly enough, I don’t know all of their names, although I should. Denser?’
‘Seriously?’
‘It was never high on my learning list, no.’
‘Gods, it was a mantra to us. Pamun, Arumun, Belphamun, Weyamun, Ystormun, Giriamun.’
‘Very impressive.’ Ilkar smiled.
‘Not really,’ said Denser. ‘Names to terrorise errant mages, generally. It’s a shame they are no longer an idle threat, isn’t it?’
The conversation broke up. The beasts had been named and each member of The Raven, perhaps for the first time, took on the enormity of what they were trying to achieve. And its potential futility. For while they were guaranteed defeat if they lost Dawnthief to the Wytch Lords, they weren’t guaranteed victory if they destroyed them.
Denser lit his pipe, his thoughts drifting inevitably towards his Familiar. He forced himself to push them aside, concentrating instead on images of the single great tomb that dominated Parve and the Torn Wastes. A grand stairway led up to the heart of the pyramid. Ornate mosaics and decorations adorned the walls and floor of a great domed hall at the end of which a single door stood at the entrance to the crypt. Inside, the Keepers tended the six stone sarcophagi, preparing the way for the return of the Ancients. Waiting for the movement within that signalled the reincarnation of essence that would stir the Wytch Lords’ bones and bring the regeneration of the flesh. He shuddered and prayed they would be in time.
With full night holding sway, The Raven moved on to the trail leading directly to the Arch Temple of the Wrethsires. Thraun was convinced that no one would pass them in either direction, and Denser, beginning to believe the Temple would be empty, wondered why the thought worried him so profoundly.
They were at the Temple in an hour, its squat dark shape looming into view against the flat black of the cliffs behind as the path opened out beyond the edge of the tree line. The silence was complete but for the lake on their left, whose soft ripples brought an aura of calm to the scene that was not reflected in the minds of The Raven.
They fanned out and walked slowly towards the huge iron-banded oak doors. The Unknown stood at the centre of the chevron, Hirad and Jandyr to his right, Thraun and Will to his left.
Behind them walked the three mages, Ilkar with the command word for a spell shield on his lips, Erienne preparing light and Denser something altogether more destructive.
At the doors, Jandyr moved up and placed an ear to the wood. ‘I can’t hear anything, but these are very solid. Put it this way, there aren’t three hundred screaming worshippers in there.’
‘Only one way to find out for sure,’ said Hirad.
He trotted up the half-dozen worn stone steps, grasped the handles, turned them and pushed. The stench of death swept out as the doors swung back, hinges protesting. Hirad stepped back a couple of paces, his face turned away.
‘Gods, that’s bad. We need to give it time to clear a little.’
Hastily drawn swords were resheathed and mana shapes were dismissed. No one was going to attack from within.
The Temple was pitch dark inside. While the rest sat on the steps facing away up the path, Ilkar stood to the right-hand side of the doors, looking in at the carnage but turning his head to draw breath. He told what he saw.
The immediate impressions were of bodies and blood covering the black, white and green tiled marble floor. Looking closer, the elf tried to map out the likely course of the fight that had taken place. Right inside the doors, three armed and armoured men in green cloaks lay in a tangle surrounded by four of what had to be the aggressors. They weren’t Wesmen, mercenaries perhaps, but their dark leather and look meant they couldn’t have been Temple guards.
But what lay further within presented a confusing picture. At the far end of the Temple were sprawled the bodies of at least half a dozen Wrethsires, identified by their deep green cowls, their blood mingling in puddles that collected in dips on the tiled floor. And scattered about the Temple were perhaps twenty more of them, weaponless, defenceless, slaughtered.
Ilkar’s eyes, though, rested longest on the scene right in the centre of the Temple. On a five-foot-high plinth, and set in a metal and glass case, sat the Death’s Eye Stone - a black orb shot with striations of carmine red and emerald green that swirled around a disc of piercing blue.
Surrounding the stone were half a dozen bodies, though it was difficult to be exact, such was the state of them. Bent, broken, torn and scattered, the swordsmen had been hacked to pieces, in some cases literally. Blood smeared every surface, hugged every crack and spattered every panel of floor and plinth. But it wasn’t the dismembered bodies that worried Ilkar; it was that he couldn’t fathom who it was that had done it.
So many factors didn’t add up. The bodies around the stone were not Wrethsires or guards, their clothing told him that, yet they appeared to have been defending the area around the plinth. And whoever it was that had massacred them so comprehensively hadn’t stopped to take the stone. Not only that, they hadn’t lost a single one of their number and had then left without leaving a trace of themselves. It just didn’t make sense.
He took a deep breath, held it and moved a couple of paces inside.
‘Careful, Ilkar,’ said Hirad.
Ilkar turned, exhaling. ‘Hirad, they’re all dead.’
‘How long?’
Ilkar knelt and put his fingers to a puddle of blood. It was dry. Not a trace of stickiness.
‘It’s impossible to say. It must have been an oven in there today, it’s still hot now. They smell four days dead but it could be less than a day.’
‘Let’s get moving. Is it breathable?’ Hirad ambled up the steps to join his friend.
‘Just about.’
‘Right,’ said Hirad. ‘Let’s get inside, secure the place and start clearing bodies away from the stone. Nobody touch that case just yet.’
Erienne set a standing LightGlobe above the Death’s Eye Stone while Thraun took a taper to the braziers set around the walls, at about head height. Will and Jandyr hauled bodies from around the plinth, leaving them against the walls, and The Unknown stood guard at the main doors, scanning the tree line for something he knew could not be there but that gnawed at his insides just the same. Ilkar checked the curtained-off rooms at the rear of the Temple.
Hirad joined Denser, who was studying a series of statues let into alcoves around the walls.
‘Interesting, don’t you think?’ said Denser. Hirad turned a slow circle, taking them in. There were eight of them, floor-standing. Cloaked in green, each statue wore a rich coloured tabard over ceremonial plate and chain armour. Painted masks covered the faces and each carried a double-bladed axe in the crook of its arms. They stood more than eight feet high.
‘Completely out of place, aren’t they?’ asked Hirad.
‘Not at all.’ Erienne came to his shoulder. ‘They have a well-documented warrior past. And those masks represented maps of life or death energy, which is where they believe they draw their magic from.’
Denser looked at her askance. ‘Something of an expert, are you?’
‘No, but it pays to have a little knowledge of your contemporaries, ’ said Erienne shortly.
Ilkar walked back into the main body of the Temple.