The Warslayer(26)

"Is this it?" she asked again. "All of it?"

Belegir chuckled, his voice sounding shaky with relief at having reached sanctuary. "Hardly—though I do not blame you for doubting, seeing us reduced to a nation of ragged wanderers as you have. But come, Slayer. Let me show you Erchane's wonders!"

He strode jauntily past her. Glory shrugged and followed, leading the string of ponies. After a few steps, the passage was filled with the echoing clatter of unshod hooves on stone, blotting out all other sound.

Well, I reckon they'll know we're coming.

The cave-corridor broadened, the walls becoming vertical and even. After a few moments, she realized she could see perfectly well, and when Belegir dropped his crystal back into a pocket of his robe, she realized that the light was coming from the cave itself, though she couldn't see any light source.

Glory stopped to carefully re-sheathe her sword. It was heavy, and there didn't seem to be any reason to brandish it in here. Belegir obviously thought they were safe.

She stopped. When she looked over her shoulder, she could still see the entrance, far behind her. The passageway ran straight as an arrow, directly into the guts of the mountain.

"Belegir, where are we going?" I'm asking questions again. I know I'm going to regret this. But I can't help it.

"To the Oracle," he said, for all the world as if that were an explanation. "Soon we will reach the Outer Courtyard, where once all the Allimir nation came to receive Erchane's wise counsel. We can leave the horses there for the night at the Pilgrim's Fountain—I do not think Erchane will mind."

"So this place is safe as houses, hey?" Glory said. Belegir nodded. "And big, from the looks of it, I reckon. So why didn't you just bring everybody here when the balloon went up?"

Belegir gazed at her in polite incomprehension.

"Bring them here? For safety?" So they wouldn't all DIE?

"We could not do that," he said at last.

At the look on her face he recoiled, and added hastily, "It would not have worked, Slayer! It is true—many of the Allimir nation could have been housed here, and She would not dare to approach this holy place. But they could not be fed. Evesal sent all the acolytes away when Great Drathil burned for just that reason—it was Drathil that supplied the Oracle with food. There is no food here, nor could it be brought, and stored, without making those who carried it targets for Her wrath."

"Hmp." The explanation sounded reasonable, not that that counted for much. "And you say she's dead now, too—so who are we going to talk to?"

"We come to speak to no one, Slayer. We have come to consult the Oracle." Belegir reached out and took the ponies' lead-rope from her slack hand, then turned and walked away.

Glory growled—not caring at the moment if she was stealing one of Vixen's lines—and followed him sullenly. Come here to talk to somebody, only we're not going to talk to anybody. I reckon all wizards must get a course in talking in riddles along with the wand and the pointy hat.

The corridor was like one of those M. C. Escher drawings where a bird turns into a fish by such slow stages you barely notice. As Glory followed Belegir, the hall about her slowly changed. The clatter of the horses' hooves—and of her flat-soled leather boots—was muted when the rock floor was replaced first by coarse gravel, then by fine sand: first white, then colored sand fine as sugar, poured in intricate patterns as bright and elaborate as a woven rug. Just as the floor changed, so did the walls. Decoration appeared: first simple geometric designs, then more elaborate botanical paintings augmented by carvings, as the corridor slowly widened and the ceiling rose, until without any clear sense of transition Glory found herself walking soundlessly over a floor of intricately patterned colored sand through the center of a huge hall a dozen yards wide whose walls were carved with monumental colored bas-reliefs inset with jewels.

Glory had to admit she was impressed. This was light-years more posh than a string of raggle taggle gypsy wagons-O and some smelly sheep. This was Civilization.

She'd dropped further and further behind Belegir, gawking at the paintings, trying to imagine living in the world that they showed. Here were the Allimir as they must have been before the disaster (whatever it was)—a gentle, happy people, as Belegir had said, and a pretty well-off lot besides. It all looked sort of high medieval, if you assumed a medieval artist who'd discovered true perspective. Everything was in scale, so they didn't look like a pack of midgets. No churches, and nothing much she recognized as religion, but everyone looked cheerful and well fed. If it was propaganda, it was still an attractive line of country. There were depictions of villages, of planting and harvest, of hunting and horse-racing, of shepherds with their flocks.