He spotted a trio of skulls half buried in the thick turf, and a strange, crystal staff lay close at hand. Walking around it, Hyden couldn’t help but notice that the door looked exactly the same from both sides, but he ignored the odd portal, and the temptation to grab up the staff, and just enjoyed the company of the wolves and his familiar.
The mother wolf commented about the scent of the Great Wolves that lingered on him, and he had to tell the pups the tale of Grrr, and how he had died to save King Mikahl from the Choska. Telling the story made him feel like Berda, and he sort of liked it. The story was sad, yet it made the pups proud of their kind. The mother wolf sensed the underlying urgency burning inside Hyden’s spirit, and carefully tempted the pups away, with the promise of a fresh meal. Hyden hugged them, and let them lick his face, and then watched with a conflicting well of emotion boiling inside him as they casually trotted away.
Talon was perched atop the golden doorframe, patiently preening his feathers. The door inside the frame was slightly yellowed with age. Carved upon its face, was a glade set in a forest of tall pine trees, with mountains beyond them, and a little stream running through the foreground. As he stood there observing it, the trees might have swayed a bit, and maybe the stream gurgled and trickled. He didn’t let the hypnotic scene distract him though. His full concentration was on the riddle that the Dying Tree had told him.
“A pyramid, a patterned knock, made up of only ten,
If you start from the bottom, I will let you in.”
He hoped he had it right. He said it as he remembered it in his head. About the fifteenth time he recited it, the answer came to him. It was so easy, that it was startling. So simple, and yet so easy to complicate, that it was no wonder that no one had ever returned from this place.
A pyramid of ten: one, two, three, four, it added up to ten. From the bottom up, it was truly a pyramid: four, three, two, and one.
With confidence, he rapped four times on the door. After a moment’s pause, he rapped three times, then two, and finally one. With the final knock, Talon fluttered from the doorframe to his shoulder.
The door creaked open on a room, formed of the same white marble as the palace of Xwarda. The circular tower chamber was dark, but the cracks in the ill fitting window shutters were letting in the wavering orange glow of some distant raging inferno.
Hyden knew he was in Pratchert’s Tower now, for on the floor, was a thick, lush rug, made from the skin of an arctic bear. It was the same arctic bear that Pratchert’s father had killed for his King a few hundred years ago.
Chapter 55
The Choska demon’s mouth came snapping down at Mikahl, but a great white bundle of furred aggression leapt into the space between him and those slavering jaws. The teeth still found his flesh, but their force was blunted by the wolf’s breaking body. Grrr had sacrificed himself, and the sorrow Mikahl felt for the loss of such a beautiful, and proud creature, almost outweighed the physical pain he was in.
Almost.
Mikahl suddenly sat up.
The memory of the Choska demon’s toothy mouth, and Grrr’s bloody body faded from his mind quickly. The rush of Ironspike’s magic had been charging his blood for hours, and now his veins were full of pure liquid lightning.
In his confused, yet alarmingly aware mind, a chorus of angelic voices called out to him in a symphony of vast and consuming sound. Each voice sang out a different melody of possibility. One voice sang of defenses: of a shield, of armor, of a field of force to hold something in place, or deflect an object. He wasn’t sure how he understood the glorifying music, but he did. Another voice sang of binding and constraining; another of finding, of searching and summoning. A melody, that was rather louder than the rest of the symphony, sang of fire blasts and concussive energy, of streaking missiles and lightning strikes. There was healing strength, and a whole percussive section of portal commands, but the sound that flared into a solo melody of its own, over the rest of the harmonious din, was the voice that sang of the “Bright Horse.”
What it was, and why it was coming for him, he had no idea, but somehow Mikahl had called out to it, and now it was here.
Queen Willa angrily watched the darkened battle in the distance, from the crenellated roof of the Royal Tower. She wanted to be there, amongst her soldiers, so badly that it was driving her mad.
Andra, General Spyra, and the Mayor had forbidden her from joining in the battle at the outer wall. She had a duty to stand guard over the Wardstone, and to fight to protect it from those with evil intent. The mother lode of the magical bedrock was more or less under the palace, and she knew that it was what the demon was after.