They stood up, and when the tram moved alongside a long platform, they all stepped off. ‘This way,’ said the little gambler.
They hurried down another long corridor and then Nakor stopped them. ‘From here I got lost, and the only reason I wasn’t killed was because Bek behaved himself back at the training barracks so no one noticed his Lesser was not there for a day. I wandered around and found this thing I must show you. But now that you’re here we can get there fast.’ To Pug he said, ‘You need to make us invisible again.’ To Magnus he said, ‘You need to fly us, straight up there.’ He pointed up into the gloom above them. ‘It goes very far up. Then you’ll need to fly us straight that way,’ he pointed straight ahead, ‘and then we’ll need to go down, very far down, into a very dark place. Are you ready?’
Pug said, ‘Yes,’ and wove his enchantment, rendering all three of them invisible.
‘Hold on,’ said Magnus and Pug gripped Nakor with one hand, and his son with the other. They rose straight up into the air, rising rapidly until there was nothing but gloom above and below.
‘How far up does this go?’ asked Pug.
‘Seventy-five flights of stairs, but I lost count so it may be seventy-six or seven.’
They reached the topmost floor and Nakor said, ‘A bit more, over the rooftops.’
Magnus took them up until they were higher than the highest roof. The sky above was still lost in darkness. ‘How big is this place?’ asked Magnus.
‘Really big,’ answered Nakor. ‘I used a couple of tricks and the best I can tell is that the roof is another two thousand feet above us.’
‘Who could build such a thing?’ asked Pug.
‘And how?’ said Magnus.
‘Only the gods, I think,’ replied Nakor. ‘Only the old gods of the Dasati.’
Remembering the Necropolis of the Gods in Novindus, Pug said, ‘Perhaps. Certainly I can’t imagine any mortal being building this.’
‘Neither can I,’ said Nakor. ‘And I can imagine a lot of things.’
They flew above the huge set of rooms below them, and at last came to a vast cavern. ‘How big, do you think?’ asked Pug.
‘Miles,’ said Nakor. ‘They have a lifting device I found a distance from here, and it took a long time for me to get where we are going. But no matter where I was, or what sort of tricks I used, I couldn’t see the far side. It was like standing on the edge of a great bay where you can see coasts curving to your right and left, but vanishing into the mist, and you can’t see beyond the horizon.’
‘Where are we?’ asked Magnus.
‘Ah,’ said Nakor. ‘I thought you’d have deduced it; we’re in the Temple of the Dark One himself.’ Softly, he added, ‘He’s down there.’
Downward they sped, through a murk unmatched by anything Pug had ever encountered, for not only was it devoid of light, it was as if life itself had been leached out of the very fabric of reality. Soon they saw a light below them, an angry red-orange glow with a tiny fringe of green at the edges. ‘The god is down there,’ said Nakor, softly, as if fearful of being heard.
‘But won’t we be seen?’ asked Magnus.
‘It seems occupied with its own concerns,’ said Nakor. ‘At least the last time I was here, it didn’t pay attention to me.’
They continued down, until a shape emerged in the middle of the red-orange glow. At this distance it was a large featureless black mass, but as they approached they could see it was undulating around the edges. ‘What is that?’ whispered Magnus.
Nakor said, ‘That is the Dark God.’
Pug looked astonished. He had interacted with the gods on Midkemia but they had always presented themselves in roughly human form. This being, however, looked nothing remotely like a human or even a Dasati.
It was enormous, easily hundreds of yards across and its shape was difficult to apprehend, because the edges kept moving, flowing and undulating, as if a supple bag of some material had been filled with oil or water, yet it moved with a slower motion than liquid. Pug was reminded of silk flowing slowly in a breeze. There was no colour on the surface of the being, yet it could not properly be called black. The sensation was that of a void of colour and light, without the accompanying energies visible to the Dasati eye. Evil, was how Pug thought of it, yet even that was attributing too much vibrancy and dimension to it. It was devoid of anything he could recall… save for one time! He pushed aside a stab of fear bordering on panic.
The head of the creature was massive, but dwarfed by the enormity of the rest of its body, rising up at least four feet above the torso, on some semblance of a neck.
‘Somewhere out there,’ said Pug, ‘there are arms and legs.’ There was a tone in his voice Magnus and Nakor had never heard before.
‘What is it, Father?’
Pug looked more closely at the creature’s head, at the two searing red slashes of glowing orange light in the black mask. Around the head, like a crown, floated flickering tiny red flames. ‘I know it,’ he said.