The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [236]
“That’s right,” Grace said, chewing her lip. “But what does it mean?”
Travis laid a hand on her arm. “We’ll chat about Einstein later, Grace. However the thing managed it, the demon isn’t here anymore. We have to find Sareth’s passage and get out.”
“Give me a moment,” Sareth said, stepping to the edge of the precipice. “Things have changed since last I was here. I have to think about where the passage to the sewers would be.”
Durge tightened his grip on his sword. “I would urge you to make haste in your determinations. We cannot expect the Scirathi to be tricked indefinitely by Lady Melia’s ruse. And do not the sorcerers have a relic by which they might transport themselves here?”
Sareth said nothing as he scanned the darkness.
“You need light,” Lirith said. She made a weaving motion with her fingers, then held aloft a softly glowing orb of greenish light. The darkness receded a fraction. Grace’s forehead creased in a frown, then she repeated Lirith’s actions. A second globe of greenish light appeared, this time in Grace’s hands.
Still the darkness pressed close.
“Lir,” Travis whispered, and the silvery radiance of his runelight joined that of the witchlights. The darkness retreated another fraction. It would have to be enough.
Sareth turned to continue searching. Grace, Lirith, and Durge moved after him. Travis started to follow, then something caught his eye: spidery outlines flickering in the green-and-silver light. He moved toward the circular pedestal he had glimpsed earlier.
No, not pedestal, Travis. Altar.
A thrill coursed through him as he knelt beside it. He reached out a hand, hesitated, then touched the symbols carved into the smooth, black stone of its sides, symbols that gleamed in the magical light.
“Everyone,” he said softly, although the word echoed all around, “I think you should come look at this.”
In moments the others were there. By then, Travis had already realized the purpose of the symbols. They weren’t runes or another kind of writing, but rather sharp, angular pictographs: drawings meant to be read without language.
“It’s a story,” he said.
Lirith knelt beside him. “A story about what?”
“A sorcerer,” Sareth murmured, dark eyes gleaming in the witchlight. “Look, there he is.”
Sareth pointed to a stick figure. The figure gripped a curved shape in one hand, and from its other trailed a line of small dots.
“But what is he doing?” Durge said, the pale illumination deepening the creases in his face.
Grace touched the altar. “He’s binding the demon.”
Together, glyph by glyph, they deciphered the story. The sorcerer shed his own blood, enticing a being that was represented only as a dot surrounded by concentric lines of power. The demon. Jagged outlines suggested a crag that could only be the hill of Tarras. The sorcerer created a hollow in the hill and with more of his own blood lured the demon inside.
“But it wasn’t just his own blood,” Lirith said, pointing to a glyph. In the stick-sorcerer’s hand was a dot with eight small lines radiating from it.
Quickly, they read the rest of the story. With the scarab, the sorcerer enticed the demon into the prison in the rock, then worked a great magic. The very last glyph showed a rain of dots pouring from the sorcerer’s body as the circle of the demon shrank in on itself.
“That’s all?” Durge said, frowning. “But the story does not seem complete.”
“I don’t think we’re seeing everything,” Travis said. “Look, here’s the edge of another glyph. But the rest has been erased somehow.”
Then he understood. On one side, the stone of the altar was warped and rippled like the walls of this place. Whatever power had carved the tunnels had deformed the stone of the altar, wiping out the last part of the story. However, Travis thought he could guess the final symbols: the sorcerer, with his remaining power, carving his story here.
They rose, standing around the altar.
“So it was the scarab of Orú,” Sareth said, wonder on his face. “That was how the sorcerer bound the demon in this