Remains, Part IV

From behind him, Shazer heard a succession of quick, sharp cracks. Nodding to himself at the industry of his companion, he returned to his survey. He had never seen a group of ruins like this before. It was obviously far older than the aboriginal or colonial structures that seemed to appear behind every hill. He had read about Azhō-Eochaid, the Sundered Realm, the ancient civilization that bards spoke of, but he had never seen any real evidence of it before.

Clearly, however, this compound had served many purposes over the centuries. More modern architecture brushed up against the older generations of stone, and Shazer had found debris: an old sack with a hole in it, a broken horseshoe, and so on. His heart began to race as he considered what might be beneath the floor Boaz had found. It had been a long time since they had found anything worth selling at the market in Lutz.

“Shazer,” Boaz called and the scholar hurried back to his friend.

“What is it?” he said as he stepped onto the stone floor. Boaz had driven two long, heavy spikes into the trapdoor and was busy adorning them with ropes.

“I don’t think I can do this alone,” Boaz said with a grim smile.

Shazer smiled too and set down the lantern.

The spikes were angled away from the men so they would not easily pull free and, after taking a few deep breaths, Boaz and Shazer threw themselves against their ropes. Boaz growled and Shazer squeeled, each of them getting low and pushing with their legs.

Slowly, the stone began to lift. The men strained on in the flickering lamp light until, just as Shazer’s strength was about to give out, the heavy block finally tipped over. Both men collapsed as suddenly the resistance to their weight disappeared. Shazer gasped for breath. Boaz cleared his throat a few times, but otherwise made no noise.

It was not long, however, before the curiosity and desperation of the two men overcame their weariness. It had a year since they had found anything decent to sell in the markets of Lutz, and it had been several month since either had had an honest, decent meal. Each man had sold nearly everything he owned, keeping only those possessions that would facilitate their expeditions after the artifacts of forgotten worlds.

“Come on,” Boaz moaned, rising ponderously to his feet.

Shazer took three more deep breaths, then rose as well, though he sighed at how sore his muscles had already become.

Together, they walked toward the black opening in the floor. In the dregs of the twilight, it seemed to pulse against the lantern’s glow, as though it was a living mass of some kind, gently breathing.

Boaz looked in first.

“Too dark,” he said. There was a shaft, but it dug into the darkness long before it revealed its terminus.

“I’ll get the lantern,” Shazer said. As he turned, Boaz gathered phlegm and saliva into his mouth and spat into the shaft.

“Not too deep,” he said, turning to recover their ropes. “Fifteen or twenty feet, I think.”

Carefully, they tied one of the ropes to the lantern, then slowly lowered it into the darkness. In the beginning, the walls glistened, as though years of water draining through the trapdoor had rubbed them smooth, but as the globe of light descended, the texture of the walls gradually changed. The stone blocks became pitted and porous and the two men both wondered what could have created such an irregular pattern in the body of such hard stones.

The shift descended nearly ten feet, and then opened into room directly beneath the one in which they stood. As far as they could tell, the strange features of the lower walls of the shaft continued into the room. The lantern settled twenty feet below on a flat surface of packed dirt.