The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (43 page)

“It seems to recognize you,” Reggie said.

The knight’s helmet moved back and forth. “Some of it looks familiar. It may be very old Etonian, or even Ætòênyân. However, I’ve only seen it in some very old books and engravings.”

“I don’t suppose you can read it?” Tom asked Tizzy.

“Sorry. Not big on reading religious propaganda, so never learned,” the demon said.

“Talarius, step back. Let’s see if it goes dark and if it will light up for anyone else,” Tom instructed.

Talarius stepped back, and the light dimmed and then went out as he moved further away. Each of the others moved close to the back wall; however, the wall remained dark.

“So for some reason either Talarius, or maybe something on him is causing the runes to show,” Tom said.

“So these are Etonian runes? How would they get here in the middle of nowhere in the Abyss?” Antefalken asked, clearly troubled and puzzled. More noise came from the corridor.

“They are getting closer,” Tom said. “Any of you know much about rune magic?” They all shook their heads except for Antefalken, who made a so-so motion. Tom looked at the bard. “What do we need to do? Read them out loud?”

Antefalken shrugged. “Not necessarily; they could be instructions or maybe a riddle, or maybe you read them aloud to a particular response. It’s hard to say without actually reading them. You really have to get into the runes and understand them somehow.”

Get into the runes?
That might be an idea. Maybe Tom could trace them like a link or something. “Talarius, move up to the runes so I can see them.” The knight did as Tom asked. As he did, Tom opened one of his belt pouches and carefully removed an arrowhead and hid it in the palm of his hand. He stared intently at the writing, looking for a starting point. The lower right-hand corner looked as good as any. He got down on his knees up close to the runes and carefully, so that the knight could not see what he was doing, tried scratching at the first rune with the arrowhead. It did not seem to do anything.

He concentrated his essence into a strand, as he had on the battlefield, and channeled it through the arrowhead. Thinking more, he tried to reach into himself to the wad of god mana that had been giving him indigestion. Trying to separate it out was not easy, but it was the only thing he could think of. As he scratched, he tried to force his stream into the arrowhead and insert it into the rune. He imagined himself, his essence stream becoming part of the rune, even as he had done with the mana streams, treating the rune, which was clearly magic, as if were a stream or a priest that he wanted to possess.

There! It caught; he was coursing through the rune. In his mind he heard a noise that somehow he knew was the verbalization of the rune. All the runes were lightly connected. He allowed himself to flow from one rune to the next, and as he did, he could mentally hear the runes speaking their sounds.

“They are getting closer! Any luck?” Antefalken asked.

Tom could not spare his attention to answer; he was too busy flowing through the runes. He did try to speed up the process though; he poured more of the god mana into the runes.

“Whoa!” came a voice behind him—Boggy’s, he thought.

“He’s doing something; they are getting brighter, rune by rune,” Estrebrius said.

“I’ve never seen runes do that, but then I don’t usually deal with hidden glowing runes,” Antefalken said.

“They are definitely powering up,” Talarius said. “For something.”

“All the rune words are lit; the door and frame are still dim,” Reggie observed.

The sounds of the runes were echoing in Tom’s head. He did not need to touch the runes to keep the link. He stood back up, palming the arrowhead.
Find the starting one—there.
Tom proceeded to intone the sounds he heard in his head aloud one by one; with each completed rune word, he injected more mana.

“I don’t know that language at all,” Antefalken said.

Talarius shook his head. “Nor do I.”

Tom completed the intonation and felt a cracking sensation. Suddenly the dimmer outlines of the door and frame flashed brilliant blue. As the light faded, they could clearly see the door and frame as real objects. The barking was very loud now from down the corridor, accompanied by what sounded like shouts of victory. Tom reached out and twisted the door handle and pushed the door open. Behind it was a landing with stairs leading upward. “Hah! A stairway to heaven!” They all cheered.

“You better hope it’s not going to Tierhallon!” Tizzy shouted.

Tom went through the door and made room for the others to come through. They all quickly did, even as a large arrow slammed into the rock frame of the door before bouncing off. Tom looked through the door to see a large horde of very big and angry D’Orcs charging into the room. He quickly slammed the door and began pulling himself out of the runes, with luck depowering them. “Everyone go, up the stairs! I’m trying to lock the door behind us.” The handle he was holding suddenly vanished, leaving a solid stone wall with no markings.

Tom leaned against the wall to rest. He could hear angry shouts and yells from the other side. The stone wall and door had been rather thick, but not insurmountable. They might be able to break down the wall, given time. They needed to hurry. He charged up the steps after the rest of the group.

The stairs went quite some distance and ended on a landing that had more steps going upward on the other side of the landing. The more interesting thing, however, was on the wall to their left. In the center of the wall was an ornate marble entranceway, or rather door frame, with a very white marble door with a heavy vault handle, a wheel sort of thing, and giant stone hinges on the right. It looked to Tom a little Greek or colonial in style, but the door and the frame were heavily inscribed with more of the same runes.

This time as Talarius approached the door, it was his armor that started to light up. “This is most unusual,” he said.

“Why would Etonians be wandering around in the Abyss making runic doorways?” Antefalken asked.

“How would they even get down here? That would be an act of war that would trigger all sorts of repercussions,” Boggy said.

“Do you know anything, Tizzy?” Tom asked.

Tizzy shrugged. “Never been through that invisible door. Certainly never been in this room. Back in my day, no Etonian in their right mind would have set foot in the Abyss.”

“So none of this was here when you were last here?” Boggy asked.

“No idea, but I think that if it had been installed at that time, there would have been a lot of dead bodies lying around. The demons that lived here would not have let an Etonian in, I can guarantee you that.”

“So what’s behind the fancy door?” Rupert asked.

“Up for another try?” Antefalken asked.

“Uhm…” Estrebrius made a hesitant motion. “Perhaps it’s locked up for a reason? Maybe it’s dangerous?”

“Dangerous for whom?” Tizzy asked. “I cannot think an Etonian would try to protect demons from something.”

“I find this very disturbing,” Talarius said. “I must confess, I am very curious. I am also very hesitant, but this should not be. It’s very wrong.”

“Okay, so I think we open it,” Tom said. Antefalken and Rupert shot him big grins.

Tom stared at the runes. They looked exactly like the runes downstairs, so while he knew how they were pronounced, he had no idea what they meant. He decided to start by just reading the runes aloud.

“
Darwaltho omnibois pertuum, fetenagathan larthow mewem. Dest naturume sanct vastros deum. Narth faltosth agck demolscrius bitem. Saveros tootos freeyum nathos, eternolom cretenexos verum. Argwolo beat sact fetenagathan. Barthfarlon omnibus bitem,
” Tom intoned.

Nothing much happened. “That didn’t help.” He walked up to marble vault wheel and examined it. Clearly it could turn, and probably released giant bars inside the door. At the center of the wheel was a small insert, almost like a screw hole; probably the axis the wheel turned on. Tom passed his palm over it and pushed the arrowhead into the hole. He was still attached to arrowhead and so it took no time for him to start sending himself into the stone axis.

At first, he didn’t detect magic per se, but then suddenly he hit against what he guessed was the door itself. It flashed against him painfully. The door was definitely alive with magic; much more magic than the runes below. This was heavy magic; it vibrated with power. He closed his eyes to try and feel the power. Yes, the vibrations resonated with the magic in the arrowhead. This was Tiernon’s magic. He needed more of it. Tom reached back to what he imagined in his mind was the wad of divine mana within himself; that which he had taken from the umbilical cord but still had not digested, so to speak. He pulled on it and let it suffuse the threads of his own being, much like infiltrating the priests. This he sent up against the magic wall.

In his mind, his mana stream flattened against the wall of magic, the two sets of mana not quite in sync. Very close to being in sync; just not quite. He tried spreading his flattened-out stream, imagining it as a coat of paint upon the mana wall. He imagined his coat of paint absorbing the vibrations of the mana wall, synchronizing with them, relaxing and oozing into the pores of the mana wall until they were one.
Relax, let go, sink into the wall of mana. We are one.

There—he was the mana wall, at least the part near the handle. He carefully let more mana, both his own natural and the undigested god mana flow into the wall, a trickle of animus riding along to guide it. Flowing, engulfing, becoming one with the mana wall, one with the door and the runes. At the edge of the door the mana vibration changed. The magic in the doorframe was different; it was locked firmly to the door’s magic, but different.

Tom tried to do the same thing again. It was exceedingly tricky, much harder this time, as he had to maintain the same frequency, or whatever it was, as the door, but also try to match the doorframe to infiltrate it and keep it all as one piece. It was hard, very hard. He could see what he needed to do, but trying to balance three different frequencies was extremely taxing.

He had no idea how long it took, but suddenly he was in. He could feel himself and his mana inside the doorway. He let more mana in. It was slow going because he had to shift and match frequencies, but soon he had engulfed the doorframe’s magic.

Now, he could see clearly what he needed to move the giant rods within the door; he needed the frame to let go. There—those were the rods he needed to release in the frame, pinning the doors in place. He suddenly realized that the archway was connected to the room. He could feel the room. The magic wall of the doorway was part of the overall magic wall shielding the twenty-by-twenty-foot room on the other side of the door. He could not tell what was in the room, but he could tell its size.

Tom willed the room to relax, to rest. He realized he needed to synchronize the magic of the room/doorway with the door. If he did that, he could make the pins slide and the door open.
Relax, calm, and synchronize,
Tom thought, willing the three parts of his mana self. Over and over, like calming a puppy.

There! They were all synched. He willed the doorway pins to move.
Slurk, slurk, slurk
… a fury of noises came from the wall as he did so. Tom began turning the wheel, now suddenly aware of the room and of his friends standing up after having been seated on the floor during this long ordeal.

The pins rolled back into the door. Now he needed to pull the door open. It was heavy and he had to push against the floor hard with his legs, but it swung open very smoothly. A cloud of very stale air escaped the vault as new, fresher air entered.

“Wow, how long was that?” Tom asked, slumping against the door. He had to slowly withdraw himself from the room and door. He palmed the middle of the wheel and willed the arrowhead back into his hand.

“About an Astlanian hour, I think,” Rupert said. “We watched you with demon sight. It was pretty wicked.”

“It felt like I was doing a bank job,” Tom said with a laugh. The others looked at him strangely. “Never mind. What’s inside?”

They all peered into the room. It was, as Tom had seen, a twenty-by-twenty-foot room with nothing in it except at the very center. There were two marble blocks covered in runes about six feet apart, linked by a black metal bar that seemed fatter on one end than the other. It looked as if the blocks had been formed around the two ends. Almost as if the bar had been set in concrete that was allowed to harden. Except that the blocks were marble, not concrete.

“All that, for this?” Boggy asked, clearly disappointed. Tom had to agree. A dull metal bar encased on its ends in rune-covered marble. What could make a metal bar that important? Or was it the blocks? Tom reached out with his mental fingers. No, the blocks were Tiernon magic, like everything else. The bar was something else; something very different. It did not like the Tiernon magic, but whatever it was, it was very weak at this point.  It did not actually seem to have much, if any, magic in it. It was more residue at this point, a faint trace of past power.

“I think whatever it was, it’s harmless now,” Tom said. “The runes on the blocks are Etonian, like the locks and all. The bar is different, but there is not much of any magic left in it. I would say a small residue, but no real, active mana in it,” Tom said.