TST (56 page)

As they approached the pyramid, the ground abruptly slanted beneath their feet. A massive slab of stone suddenly dipped down, one end sinking below the level of the ground while the other jutted up into the air behind them. The carpet of dried leaves slid down into the inky blackness that opened below them, carrying the hapless explorers down with it.

As soon as the party’s weight left the end of the stone slab, a hidden counterweight brought the raised end back down and reset the trap once more. Maude and her group’s stomachs lurched as they fell into the dark empty air and plummeted into a deep void. A scant second later, they landed in an ignominious pile, their fall cushioned by what felt like a thick pile of leaves and detritus.

“Is everyone all right?” Maude asked.

Everyone but Borik gave an affirmative. “I heard something snap when I landed but I don’t know what. I may be in shock and just don’t feel the pain yet.”

“Tarth, make a light,” Maude ordered.

The wizard’s soft voice uttered a short arcane word and a floating glowing orb of light instantly illuminated the chamber. It hovered above the wizard’s head for a moment before it popped like a soap bubble, sending tiny fairy-like motes of light darting about the room.

“Oopsie,” Tarth twittered and tried again, this time the orb stayed.

Just as she suspected, the floor of the chamber they were in was covered with about two feet of soft dry leaves. Malek quickly examined the dwarf for any signs of injuries.

“You definitely broke several bones,” the cleric declared grimly. “It looks pretty bad.”

Borik’s face went pale at the news and waited for the inevitable agony to set in once the shock wore off. “You can fix it though right?”

Malek shook his head. “I’m sorry old friend, but it is far beyond my skills to do anything about it.”

“Oh ya cursed fickle gods! You let me be eaten by a shark, almost hanged for trying to kill an old man, forced to fight in a stupid undersea arena, buried by thousands of tons rock, haunted by ghosts, and now you drop me in a hole to die!”

Borik ranted and cursed the gods, their mothers, and accused them all of every aspect of questionable parentage he could think of.

“Are you done now?” Malek asked as the dwarf wound down his tirade.

Borik let out his breath. “Yeah I’m done. I’m done, done, done, done for,” he moaned and lay back looking at the ceiling some thirty feet above them.

  “Good, because the bones you broke aren’t yours,” the cleric informed him.

“What!” the dwarf shouted and bolted upright.

Malek roughly rolled the dwarf over and showed him the skeleton of what was once some animal that had sprung the trap just like they had and died a very long time ago.

Borik’s face turned red with rage once more. “You knew it wasn’t my bones all along and you let me think I was dying? What kind of cleric are you?”

“I would be less worried about what kind of cleric I am and more worried about what you said to the gods if I were you,” Malek advised. “They don’t care for people cursing their mothers and accusing them of copulating with farm animals.”

Borik’s mouth opened and closed rapidly like a landed fish trying to breathe.

“If you two are quite finished, let’s try and find a way out of here,” Maude suggested.

The party examined the room they were in with the aid of the magically conjured luminous globe. It was perhaps thirty feet across and deep. The floor was covered in leaves, bones of various animals, as well as numerous colorful feathers from what appeared to be large flightless birds that had also fallen prey to the trap door above. Maude, Borik, and Malek examined the walls for any sign of a door or release that would open a hidden passageway but found nothing.

Borik tried to climb the walls but the stones had been smoothly hewn and set without mortar and provided absolutely no handholds. The tilting stone slab created a near perfect seal that made it impossible to try to hook it with a grapnel. After over an hour of careful searching, Tarth suddenly shouted, breaking the silence and startling the others.

“Ah, there we go!” the elf burst out joyously.

“Did you find a way out, Tarth?” Maude asked eagerly.

“No, even better; I finished my hat!”

All eyes slowly turned and stared at the wizard. Perched atop his head was a hat made of numerous multicolored feathers that he had sat and woven together while everyone else was busy searching for a way out. Tarth preened under the scrutiny of his comrades.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked, begging for their acclaim.

Borik gave the elf his best scowl. “It looks like some freakishly developed mutant chicken roosted on your noggin and is trying to get your stupid elf head to hatch!” Borik shouted.

Maude sighed and gritted her teeth before she spoke. “Tarth, can you do anything to get us out of here?”

Tarth sucked his teeth, aggravated by the obvious lack of enthusiasm for his colorful creation. “Very well, Maudeline.”

The elf used his keen eyes to scan the room for a few moments then sashayed up to one of the walls and studied it intently. He cleared his throat before chanting:

“Release us from this gloomy prison

Trapped beneath your stony prism

Open this wall oh so weathered

Thank you for my gift of feathers”

The elf then pushed lightly against the wall, which immediately swung open with a deep grating sound on cleverly hidden hinges.

Borik shook his bearded head in disbelief. “Are you telling me that your stupid hat was the key to getting out of this trap from the beginning?”

“No, but wasn’t it fun!” Tarth cried, gleefully clapping his hands and bouncing on the balls of his feet.

The dwarf’s face fell slack in disbelief. “I’m going to kill you, Tarth. If we get out of here alive, I am going to kill you. I am going to smother you with a pillow while you sleep, tie you up in a gunnysack, and throw you into the harbor,” Borik promised in a tone devoid of all emotion.

Tarth patted Borik on the head as he walked past the dwarf and through the now open door. “You’re so silly.”

Borik clenched and unclenched his fists several times while he imagined them wrapped around Tarth’s skinny neck then fell in behind the rest of the group.

They party stepped out of the trap chamber and into a long stone corridor. Borik took the lead, wary for further signs of snares or ambush. The passageway ran straight for about a hundred yards before ending at a two-way intersection.

“We should be under the pyramid now,” Borik whispered.

“Which way should we go?” Maude asked the dwarf.

Borik looked both ways but the passage continued in darkness beyond the range of Tarth’s conjured light in either direction. “I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference either way, so I say we go right.”

“Lead the way,” invited Maude.

The party walked carefully down the passage, alert for any sounds of occupation but heard only their own breathing and footsteps echoing down the stone hall. Minutes later, Borik saw a patch of blackness at the edge of the light to their left that indicated another corridor or room just ahead. The passageway continued straight but on their left, a massive room spread out before them. The party stepped towards the center of the colossal chamber.

The room was huge, at least a hundred feet on each side. The floating orb of light was just able to cast its glow far enough for them to see that several open doorways along the walls led to chambers or more passageways. A great deal of the floor was covered in tile. Much of the tile was blue, depicting the sky. A massive twelve-pointed sun laid out in yellow and orange tile dominated the center of the room. As they drew nearer the walls, the light reflected off hundreds of thousands of small colored tiles laid out in a mosaic of almost unimaginable size, detail, and complexity.

Malek studied the amazing mosaic that wrapped around the entire room. “It appears to show part of the people’s history that built this pyramid.”

Malek had Tarth follow him with the light until they found what appeared to be the beginning. “These figures here must be the people that once lived here,” the cleric pointed out, indicating the bronze-skinned, dark haired humans depicted in the montage.

“It looks like there was a series of disasters, famines, and plagues.”

“How can you tell the length of time by the pictures?” Maude asked.

“In seminary school we were taught various ancient writings and lore interpretation. You can see that this figure here is shown as an infant then again as young boy. By comparing his height to that of one of the adult figures, you can see that he is perhaps ten years old now, indicating a passage of time of about ten years,” the cleric explained.

Maude looked quizzically at the depiction. “How do you know that the infant and the young boy are the same person?”

“Look closely, each figure of significance is indicated by a small glyph,” Malek told her, pointing out the tiny identical symbols on both figures.

“I’m impressed that you noticed that and are able to make sense out of all of this,” Maude said, giving him a rare praise.

“I’m surprised you actually learned anything while you were in seminary,” Borik grumbled.

Malek looked at the dwarf crossly. “Of course I learned things. What do you think I did all day?”

Borik answered the question with a bushy raised eyebrow.

Malek opened his mouth to argue and defend himself but thinking back, found very little to support his defense. “Anyway, it looks like whoever this child is, he is going to figure in as a very prominent figure in the near future,” Malek continued.

“A short time later, maybe two or three years, there was a major cataclysm. You see here that fire rained down from the heavens for several days, killing thousands of people. You can see the priests down here praying and beseeching their gods who are shown up above hurling down the fiery stones destroying homes and crops.”

The party looked and saw the fierce gods, rendered several times larger than their human followers, in tile twenty feet over their heads with fierce expressions on their faces.

“After the cataclysm,” Malek continued, “the priests constructed a monument as a token of their fealty and devotion. Tens of thousands of tribe members and possibly slaves from other tribes worked nonstop, even through the night by torchlight, constructing the pyramid.”

Malek paused, tapping his chin in thought. “What I don’t see, and what has me very curious, is where they got the stone to make it. I did not see any cliffs or mountains that would provide a site for a quarry nor does it show how they carved and shaped the stone.”

“That’s true,” Borik put in. “The quality of the stonework is on a level with dwarven work.”

Malek set the mystery aside and continued his narrative. “We see our young friend here studying to become a priest himself. Years pass and he is finally a man and initiated into the priesthood. At least eight more years has passed, if not more, and our pyramid is only partially completed. Many more years pass and our young priest has become a very prominent and powerful member within the ranks of the priesthood.”

“He has risen to the highest ranks of the priesthood and is now the most powerful figure in the city and at a rather young age. The construction of the pyramid continues even to the level of neglecting many other aspects of their culture and civilization. They barely permit enough farmers and animal herders to feed their population and starvation is still prevalent. Scholars, musicians, poets, and any other occupation not deemed essential to life has been extinguished. Those who once prescribed to scholarly or cultural works have been relegated to work on the pyramid.”