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DUN HEARD SCREAMING, and then rubble falling. He ran across the corridor to get to where he heard the scream tailing off. Not checking his footing in his haste, he tripped on a floor slab with a raised edge and fell full stretch, bashing his jaw on the rubble-filled floor and biting his tongue as he did so. Dazed, he lay there for what was about thirty clicks but to Dun, it felt much longer. The screaming had stopped, the noise of crashing stone had stopped, and the corridor returned to silence.
Dun’s heart leaped into his throat as he dragged himself up. He tasted blood in his mouth, but his only thought was of Tali. He stopped himself just before he leaped forward.
“Think, Dun, you’re no use to her dead,” he chided himself.
Instead of rushing ahead, he smelled the air and reached out with his air-sense. He could smell Tali: fear, tinged by excitement. Typical, Dun thought. A little blood. Masonry dust. Reaching out with his air-sense again, he got a surprise. The corridor wasn’t how it had been before. A large chunk of it had fallen in. Some of Tali’s mystery wall, evidently.
Dun sidled forward, following the trailing scent, careful that he didn’t trip again, or worse, step on Tali if she was injured in the rubble. Dun had so prepared himself to find Tali in the rubble that when he found her standing up he nearly bumped into her. She was upright and stock still.
“Tali! You scared the wits out of me.”
“Dun.”
“What?”
“I think we’ve found something incredible. Feel.”
Dun did as Tali suggested and felt with his air-sense into the room. It was long and lower-roofed than the corridor, but as he slowly stepped forward, he found the far wall sooner than he expected and he realized what she was talking about.
“Gods,” Dun said. There was a mural on the long wall of the space, and by the crumbling texture of the stone, it was very old. Epochs old. Many pieces had flaked to the floor; some huge chunks, some small slivers.
“It’s beautiful,” Tali said, hands flat against the wall.
And it truly was. For all its age, the work and the art involved were breathtaking. It seemed to be many characters, sometimes the same ones, engaged in something. Different panels had similar characters, but different scenes. Beautiful, but disjointed and fragmented from the level of decay.
“My gods, the folk who carved this must have been so clever,” Dun said.
“Which makes it ironic that it was discovered by folk who are so stupid!” Myrch barked.
“Blood and spit,” Tali said, under her breath.
“I think you broke their wall,” Padg said.
After a brief pause in which all of them caught their breath, Dun spoke first, “They’re some sort of pictogram. They’re telling some kind of story, if only we could make it out. So much has been damaged.”
“There’s some kind of recurring shape here too, in some of the scenes. A curve, an arch, or something,” said Tali. “Feel, here?”
“There’s writing too, although gods alone know what it says,” Dun said.
“I don’t recognize it in any writing I’ve learned, and we do learn ancient scripts for researching recipes,” Tali added. “It’s not the Stone-folk writing or at least not recently. It doesn’t seem related even.”
“Come on then, Myrch,” Padg said, from where he’d found himself a stretch of wall to feel for himself. “You seem to be expert in everything, you must be able to tell us.”
Myrch had sidled over to the wall too while everyone had been talking. He said nothing.
“You must have some kind of clue,” Padg said.
“Ancient history really isn’t my area of expertise,” he said flatly. Then more urgently, he added, “Can we get back to the more important subject of how you two idiots nearly got yourselves killed here?”
“Must we?” Tali said.
“Yes. I don’t think you’re getting this. The Stone-folk are renowned for their building abilities. Their forebears were more skilled still, and they are very protective of their history.”
“I thought history wasn’t your strong...”
“Padg!” Myrch shouted now. “Down here is dangerous. Protections for who knows what, set here for eons waiting for someone to bumble into them and get themselves killed. Our only protection down here is caution. If you two thunder around the place then I can’t protect you. Then the whole point of this journey will be forfeit.”
“I thought you knew where you were going down here?” Dun said.
“I never said that.”
“But your hiding place?” Tali said.
“Only ever used as just that. There’s an access hatch and a series of ladders to get back up. I’ve never entered the Stone-folk’s domain this way.”
“But you have been to the Stone-folk’s kingdom before?” Dun said, checking all his assumptions now.
“Yes, but only from the river level and only with the correct invitations and protocols. Down here, if we get caught...”
“If we get caught, what, exactly?” Padg said.
“Well, let’s just say we’re trespassing. And the Stone-folk don’t react well to surprises.”
“Great,” Tali said. “That’s just great.”
“So what now?” Padg said, testily.
Not rising to Padg’s tone, Myrch said, “I suggest we go back to the room and eat, and then since we can’t go back up due to our pursuers, we press on carefully.”
“You think they’d still be waiting for us if we went back up?” Dun said.
“Be careful not to underestimate our river friends’ persistence.”
“If we stay to eat, I want to spend some time recording what I can about the pictograms,” Dun said.
“If you must,” Myrch said reluctantly. “But everyone else should stay in the room, in case we need to escape that way.”
“I’ve not even touched them yet,” Padg said.
“All right! Go too if you must, but be careful.”
So Tali and Myrch trudged back to the room with their packs, leaving Dun and Padg at the face of the mural. Dun quickly realized that Padg was waiting until he could no longer sense the others anywhere in the corridor outside. Then, in the anteroom, they were sufficiently far away not to be heard.
“I thought you hated history,” Dun said to his friend once they were clear to talk.
“Of course I do, idiot, I stayed to talk to you.”
“Just like old times.”
“I’ve got a feeling nothing’s ever going to be like old times ever again. But you know that.”
“I know you didn’t just stay to chat.”
“No,” Padg said. “I’ve been busy on your watch.”
“I’m guessing not busy sleeping?”
“No. I waited till Myrch was asleep and searched his pack.”
“Hells, Padg, you could have got yourself killed if he’d caught you.”
“I took a chance. We needed to find some more about him.”
“And?”
“He’s got a lot of weird stuff with him.”
“Like what?” Dun said, his interest piqued.
“Some stuff too weird to begin to describe...”
“You’re apprenticed to the Makers chum if you can’t make anything out of it, who can?” Dun said.
“Well, to start with, that weapon of his. Even that’s weird. For a start, it’s all metal. It’s a kind of a tube, with a wooden feeling handle that’s got metal bumps on it. There feels like there may be levers on it to get it to come to bits, but since I might have had to get it back together in a hurry, I didn’t risk it.”
“You have been busy.”
“That isn’t the half of it, Dun. There were squishy pouches with something in them. Some extremely nice writing scrolls. Not like bark or the papyrus that we trade for, but thinner, finer. And oddest of all was this weird contraption, like a helmet or a hat with a strap to hold it on, and a fabric inner, but with all this odd mechanical apparatus on top of it that seemed to be holding two round glass plates in place. Then it all folded up to fit in his pack and again there were a lot of levers and metal bumps to it, but I thought it best to leave everything exactly how he expected to find it.”
“And breathe,” Dun said.
There was a rumble, a tumbling stone sound as some piece of rubble settled in the distance.
“Hells, Padg, I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, whatever else he is, our friend Myrch is one hell of a trader. Any piece of his kit must be worth tens of thousands of trade tallies. Our Makers would kill to get their paws on it. Do you still think he’s okay?”
Dun let out a deep sigh. “I trust your judgment completely, Padg, and I don’t trust him. It’s just I’ve got this sense that he’s not a bad person and we should follow him.”
“Is this one of those ‘foretelling’ feelings?” Padg shot back.
“I think so.”
“And that’s the best we’ve got to go on?”
“That’s all we’ve got to go on, friend, sorry,” Dun said sadly. “Is that enough for you?”
“It’ll have to be. It’s you I’m following, Dun, not him.” Then after a pause, he said, “Shall we get back to these ancient scratches of yours then?”
Long after they’d finished their rough sketches of the layouts and some details of the pictograms, something that he’d felt in that place was playing in his mind. There was a recurring shape that he knew was important, but couldn’t quite place. An oval of sorts. It seemed many of the scenes took place inside this shape. He noticed other things too. Often there was a horizontal line bisecting the oval. And many characters seemed to populate the many scenes, but they seemed to be of two main types: small two-legged, upright, slightly hairy types and thinner, taller, hunched-over creatures. It was almost as if he had all the words to make up a sentence, but didn’t know the sequence. Later, as they walked, he was too preoccupied to notice the tiniest tickle of foretelling, like a polite cough in his brain. It was too late then to cry out, as Tali stood on the first step of a great staircase upward. They heard a click and a noise of stone grinding on stone, then a whoosh and a cloud of dust enveloped them in a split second. As they coughed and gasped for breath, the last thing they heard was a huge booming clang echoing through the great stone halls. Then they lost consciousness completely.
––––––––
“It’s so vast down here and so much of it made or modified by ‘Folk’, not from before. If I hadn’t been around a bit, a feller could be quite overwhelmed.”
Excerpts from <Distress Beacon SN-1853001>. Found by E.S.V. Vixen Terradate: 26102225.
