An orc in white was drawn there, the spitting image of Khan. There were orc warriors behind him, painted in the red and yellow of the bodyguard outside. But what was astonishing were the humans on the other side of the painting. They were drawn roughly, but their features and bodies were unmistakeable. One figure led them, mirroring the position of the albino orc.
‘Every thousand years,’ Fletcher murmured. ‘I bet that’s what the hieroglyphs say. A marked messiah, sent to defeat mankind. That’s what an old soldier once told me, anyway.’
‘More like a natural mutation that occurs in every species …’ Malik said under his breath. ‘It may be that albino orcs are larger and have a higher summoning level than others, making them natural leaders. The rest is superstition, nothing more.’
‘Be that as it may, that’s not the strange part,’ Sylva said, looking at them as if they were all blind. ‘It’s the humans. They shouldn’t be drawn here.’
‘Why not?’ Cress asked.
‘Because humans arrived here two thousand years ago, when your ancestors crossed the Akhad Desert,’ Sylva explained. ‘This pyramid was built long before humans even set foot in these lands. Elven texts as old as five thousand years have mentioned this place.’
‘There’s something else,’ Jeffrey said, wiping away a layer of dust with his sleeve.
The outline of a demon appeared between the orcs and humans, the paint that had coated it long peeled away. ‘A Salamander,’ Fletcher breathed. Ignatius chirruped with excitement and pawed at the wall below.
Set above this image were two separate scenes. One, where the orcs stood victorious over the bloody corpses of the humans, and another, where humanity were the victors.
Fletcher thought back to his first infusion dream. He knew from this dream that Ignatius’s summoning scroll had been originally intended for an albino orc, over a thousand years ago. Perhaps the orcs who had drawn the images here had been trying to recreate this prophecy. What was obvious to him now was that, according to both the carvings and his infusion dream, the orcs believed that a Salamander was the key to their victory … or doom.
‘We need to copy this all down,’ Fletcher said, pointing at the wall. ‘Maybe we can translate it later.’
‘Already done,’ Jeffrey said, showing Fletcher his sketch book.
‘Guys,’ Sylva interrupted, holding up the tablet. ‘We need to move, now. The sacrifices are over and Khan is walking towards the back entrance. He has a bunch of his shamans with him, plus a group of orcish youths. They must be adepts.’
‘Damn it,’ Malik growled. ‘There’s nowhere to hide in here – we’ll have to move on. Follow me.’
He snuffed out his fireball and jogged to the other end of the antechamber, where the passage continued. Fletcher and the others had no choice but to go after him.
‘Looks like we’ve waited long enough,’ Othello whispered, trying and failing to hide a smile. ‘Isadora’s team missed their window.’
They jogged until the passageway split once again. There was no time to decide who went where; in the rush Fletcher ended up taking the right passage with Othello, Sylva and Lysander. This time, the floor angled up sharply. They seemed to be heading to the central point of the pyramid.
‘Hey,’ Fletcher gasped, their feet thundering along the passageway. ‘We left Cress and Jeffrey.’
‘We’ll catch up with them later,’ Sylva replied, leading the way with a glowing fingertip. ‘The orcs will be here any min—’
Sylva cut her words short as the passageway ended abruptly, opening up into a massive room. It was vaulted with great beams of rusted metal, while a network of pipes flowed from the ceiling and out into the walls.
A pit fell into darkness around the platform, so deep and cavernous that they could not see the bottom. A wide plinth sat in the middle, with a pentacle deeply engraved in it. There was a hole in the very centre, though how deep it went Fletcher could not tell.
The only way to reach it was four stone bridges, crisscrossing from the four entrances to the room.
‘Where the hell are we going to hide?’ Othello asked, his eyes scanning the room. ‘There’s nothing here!’
‘Look – stairs,’ Sylva said, pointing to the plinth. It was supported by a wide pillar of equal width beneath it. The column had a rough stairway carved to go around it, the stone a fresh white, as if it had been cut recently.
Fletcher tossed out a wyrdlight, sending it spiralling into the depths below. It was deep, almost half as deep as the pyramid was tall. But at the very bottom, Fletcher could make out a tunnel leading into the earth.
Strangest of all, a clutch of several hundred eggs could be seen, piled in a trench around the base of the pillar. They were bottle green and perfectly spherical, with the size and appearance of unripe oranges.
‘Those must be gremlin eggs,’ Fletcher said, recognising them from the Warren. ‘Goblins’ eggs would have to be much bigger, because Mason said goblins hatch from their eggs as fully formed adults.’