ERLOS
Book Three: Angel Brother
Chapter Fourteen of Erlos
At the age of sixty-one Hamish El Tyrone, the governor of Quod province in Llozd, still had most of his hair, though it was grey now. He was an unremarkable looking man in height and build, with tired eyes and a belly that protruded slightly.
El Tyrone was in his library where below his open window human beings competed for space in the dusty streets and markets of the town with braying donkeys and with oxen and camels, and with carts and barrows, and dogs and chickens amidst a din of voices and shouting of the merchants.
He was writing at his desk when he was disturbed by a loud knocking on the door. His library was private. It was not his office. After a third bout of knocking, Hamish, irritated, opened the door to a Ukonaai rider with dusty boots.
"What is it?" Hamish asked.
“I bring a letter from the Emperor,” the rider said.
"Give it to me."
The rider reached into his bag and passed into El Tyrone’s hand a bulky letter, sealed with wax. El Tyrone carefully inspected the Emperor’s seal then dropped the letter onto his desk as if unwilling to touch it with anything but his eyes.
The rider remained standing. El Tyrone sighed. He dropped a few coins into the rider’s hand, at which the rider nodded and left without closing the door.
Hamish got up again, shaking his head, and shut the door.
He went and sat down again and looked at the letter for quite a long time before reaching for it. He used an expensive ivory paper-knife to break Mykros’ seal and then leaned back in his chair to read the document.
The contents, as expected, ordered new taxes and made other demands -- including a death warrant. The subject of the death warrant was an Aazyrian – a simple shepherd. A reward was offered for his capture and execution by the governor.
There was a further reward offered for a green stone that the shepherd was believed to be carrying. The penalty for anyone who sheltered the shepherd, was death
In fact, Mykros had learned about the Urinda stone and had decided to change his mind about Sorac: one able to come by such a powerful artifact ought not perhaps to be so lightly considered – and besides that, why should not Mykros have the stone for himself? Mykros lived with one foot in the spirit world of ghosts and demons.
Hamish El Tyrone read the letter a third time. He sighed. More taxes. He took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. The pressure of his knuckles caused zig-zag patterns behind his eyelids. He shuffled the pages together and stuffed them back into the envelope, then fiddled in his pocket for a key. He unlocked the top drawer of the desk with it and dropped the letter into the drawer and went downstairs to join his wife for tea.
“You're tired," Clarissa said, as her smooth hands tipped the silver teapot: "Would you prefer we skip the theatre tonight?”
El Tyrone accepted a cup from his wife. “No I just have get some new edicts circulated,” he said. “It won’t take long.”
“Food taxes?”
“A death warrant, too.”
“The people know they’re not your edicts or taxes,” she said.
“Do they?” El Tyrone, stirred his tea: “Anyway, I despise myself.”
“Don’t talk like that, Hamish.”
“We must leave soon, Clarissa.”
“You will do what is right.” She sipped from a thin china cup: “You are my husband, and I will follow you.”
He finished his tea and stood up: “I’ll be done as soon as I can.”
He paused at the door. He turned with his fingers on the handle of the door: "I love you."
"And I love you too, Hamish darling."
Much had changed in Llozd, too, since the days of the King Dumarion Ben of Aazyr. Now each man lived for himself. The old Llozdian patterns of free trade had long ago broken down since Aazyr’s daily free caravans had ceased to arrive. Now everything in Llozd had a price, and a large percentage of that price went to Mykros as tax.
Dusk came warm over the city of Quod, its flat white roofs and open buildings suited to arid clime. It was still a beautiful city, thought El Tyrone, in spite of ugly changes in the hearts of men. He spent the next two hours dictating to scribes and sending out couriers to announce the new tax laws and to warn against sheltering the Aazyrian shepherd, should he be found, while making public the reward offered for his capture.
But Hamish carefully avoided saying anything about the green stone.
The sky was dark outside the open window when he had finished what he had to do. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and massaged his temples with the tips of his fingers.
+++++++++++++++
As it had fallen to Eldrinda Benkilte to lead the vortexian crossings, so now it fell to Justin Leobin of Victoria City to execute Erlos’ judgment and sentence upon Bueloess.
All the weight was laid on him. There was silence as he weighed the issue. In that silence Erlos knew that the angels of Cephanti were with Justin Leobin bringing wisdom to bear on the choice facing him – as his mind reached out to Bueloess, seeking any spark of light with which he might negotiate, but finding only a deadly hatred that attacked his mind with awful images of pain.
What Justin Leobin discovered there was far beyond the limits of his tolerance, and would disturb his sleep with nightmares for the rest of his long life. Though he struggled to maintain his thought-probe so that the event could be properly recorded on the Aksh Tapes for future generations, the horror of the contact was so unbearable that he could maintain it only for short periods before having to withdraw his mind to rest, while his body shuddered and his clothes were soaked in sweat.
At last he spoke.
“Does Eloih create evil?” he quietly asked: “What is evil in the sight of Eloih? Upon the great plains of Aazyr the lion must hunt the antelope, or starve. For one to live, the other must die. A child knows these things. So -- what is evil?
''Erlos knows only this: that evil is what threatens the safety its own world, and the life of its children. Eloih alone knows why these things must be, according to His own eternal purpose.
''So what then is this ancient serpent Bueloess that in its terrible hunger must feed on other worlds, and seeks now to devour both Erlos and Aelutia in order to sustain itself?
''Does Erlos sin today if Erlos take the life of this ancient serpent, to save its own people and the people of Aelutia, and the lives of countless others yet unborn upon both Erlos and Aelutia?''
His calm eyes moved around the room, from face to face.
''This is the choice that today falls upon Erlos," he said: "For how can Erlos destroy Bueloess’ power-base, yet leave the world-foundation upon which the ancient fortress stands?"
''We know there can be no such solution," he said: "For that would be to kill the serpent but leave behind a serpent’s egg, from which in time a new Bueloess will one day grow. Our duty is not only to ourselves and to Aelutia, but also to the ten thousand worlds ravaged by Bueloess, and to another hundred thousand future worlds.
“Erlos cannot avoid its duty today, nor venture any compromise with what we now see before us. There is no shred of mitigation.”
He paused again: ''Therefore before passing Erlos' judgement upon Bueloess, Victoria City requests Spectra and Astra Cities to speak, if they have mitigation.''
“Spectra finds none,” said Mycyl.
“Astra finds none,” Eldrinda said.
Now Justin Leobin passed sentence:
“We, Erlos, judge the world of Bueloess to be a peril to the greater whole, of which Erlos is a part. Therefore, by Erlos’ own power -- and by the power bestowed on Erlos by Cephanti, Angel Chieftan of the Arc, whose Badge Erlos wears today – shall Erlos fulfil its duty to utterly and for evermore destroy this planet which is the foundation of the fortress of Bueloess power.”
Bueloess reaction was to send out swarms of fighters, like wasps from a disturbed nest. But they were blinded by the light of Erlos and the pathetic resistance was quickly annihilated without a single Erlotian casualty.
A terrible silence followed, as the three Erlotian Cities burned brightly in the darkness, drawing power for their weapon, and Bueloess was made to quail within his fortress and blinded by the light of Erlos.
Erlos had always possessed their sound weapon but, like the vortexian capability of their cities, they had never before used it.
Certain now of his course, Leobin held The Three locked as a triangle of power.
At first the mountains of Bueloess began to shake, and then to crack and splinter. More and more powerful became the waves of sound, penetrating ever deeper into the heart of the planet, as mountains fell into deep fissures and eruptions of hot magma plumed hundreds of miles into the atmosphere.
Still the vibrations grew.
The crust of the planet began to convulse and then to tear. Still deeper penetrated the terrible sound as the violence of planet waves increased like storm waves on the ocean until, with a final and terrible explosion, the planet Bueloess shattered into fragments, and was no more.
The Erlotians had lost not a single fighter.
++++++++++++++++++
Back on the planet of Aleutia the jungle was starting to darken as Tyl and Sorac and Toache followed the kradok and began to descend into what appeared to be a crater -- a natural amphitheatre in the lubyar jungle. The kradok, Kym Myaan, was walking on the new artificial foot that Toache had carved for him from wood, as Kierien's magical ointment combined with his own strong animal constitution helped him recover quickly from his wound.
The sky was nearly dark above the forest canopy of trees when they reached the bottom of the crater. Kym Myaan led them to a narrow gap between two boulders that concealed a fissure leading downwards into a cave from which, in the gathering darkness, there emerged a faint blue glow.
Little wonder no man had ever found the home of the legendary kradok deep in the lubyar jungle -- or thought Tyl with a shiver -- that none had lived to tell.
''I'll go down first,'' Sorac said.
''Be careful,'' she said.
She watched him squeeze his way between the boulders and follow the kradok down into the mouth of the cave, then there was silence for a while and then Sorac's voice echoed up. “There's a pool down here. A beautiful blue pool,” he called. ''Come down carefully because it's slippery in places.''
She squeezed her way down between the two boulders. A short, steep climb bought her out onto a wide, gently sloping surface of water-smoothed limestone that sloped further on downward to where a silent blue pool seemed to be lit from within by the strange blue light.
She could not make out where the colour came from. The water itself seemed to glow. Toache had followed her down and they all stood gazing at the lovely pool.
Grey limestone cliffs rose around the mirror-still water to huge heights that opened at the top to a small circle of darkening sky. All was lit with the strange blue radiance. From within the pouch around Sorac's waist the Urinda stone shone with light and when he took the stone out of the pouch, it glowed with the same light that came from the pool, but much brighter.
“It will light the way,” said Tyl. Somehow, she was not afraid.
“Kym will lead,” Toache said.
There were a great many dark cave entrances in the limestone walls around them. Now the kradok led them into labyrinthine darkness as by the light of the Urinda stone they walked like dreamers through huge cathedral-like caves glittering with crystals and along narrow, precarious ledges above black chasms that fell away to dark, unknown depths.
Tyl felt herself tiny beneath magnificent archways and pillars. Delicately folded lace curtains of limestone hung suspended from the roofs of the caves. Priceless gems shone in the walls amidst colossal and contorted natural stone formations that reared and twisted high and huge around her, into the darkness above. As Kym Myaan led them further into the deep of the earth, water dripped from ancient underground cliffs where the fall of a pebble created resounding echoes.
She was no longer weary or hungry but was instead filled with a sense of wonder, though watchful and aware in every sense. She and her companions walked carefully for hours beside a black underground lake, still as a mirror, whose silent waters Kym Myaan warned them not to disturb, lest they arouse leviathan who dwelt within its depths.
In the womb of the earth she had no fear, while the light of the Urinda stone surrounded her. From time to time, within the dark and twisting tunnels, the party encountered other kradoks, but the kradoks would not enter within the aura of the stone.
Kym Myaan warned the other kradoks off with a roar that dislodging loose stalactites from the roof to fall tinkling around them before reverberating away to final silence in the depths of the caverns -- at which the other kradoks slipped silently back into the darkness, allowing the party to pass on unmolested along their way.
But now Tyl and her companions began to feel themselves surrounded by dark entities -- grey shifting forms with glowing orange eyes. The strange little creatures chattered all around them, just beyond the light of the Urinda stone.
The noisy little creatures became more numerous until at last one of them came forward from the others and, communicating through Kym Myaan, asked them to follow.
“No,'' Sorac said: ''We will not go with you.”
More chattering ensued, until eventually the creature said, “We have seen the light of your stone from the world above. We are the Urda and we wish you no harm. Our king, asks that you come to him – for his child is dying and he begs you to use your stone to heal his child.”
So they followed the Urda down into the deepest bowels of the earth, along narrow ledges around dark sulphurous pits and above fast flowing rivers of molten rock that sparked and flamed, casting their own shadows as grotesque dancing forms high above them.
For hours they walked, wondering every step, until they emerged into a great hall wherein huge sombre monoliths engraved with ancient runes were dwarfed beneath enormous, towering statues of man-like beings with horns and tails and who wore dark, spiky armour and were armed with strange jagged weapons.
Here Tyl and her companions came at last before the enormous black throne that was engraved with the same unknown runes, and on which sat the little king of the Urda.
The crowd of the Urda fell upon their faces before their king as the party remained standing within the protective aura of the Urinda stone. Now the strange little king came down from his dark throne and prostrated himself before Sorac.
“I am Baalt,” said the little king: “I see your light, and beg your name.”
“I am Sorac of Aazyr,'' Sorac replied: “But do not bow. No being shall prostrate himself before me.”
Baalt replied: “Within these halls of the Urda are jewels and gold more than the greatest kingdom upon your world above has ever known. And you may have them them all if only you bring your light from above before my son, for it alone will heal him.”
The shepherd glanced around at his companions.
“Keep your treasure, and take us to the child,” he said.
Baalt led them to the dying child, and when the child saw the light of the Urinda stone he was at once well. Baalt again threw himself at Sorac’s feet sobbing and crying his gratitude, but Sorac knelt down beside him.
''It is not the light we carry that has healed your darling, Baalt, but the power of Eloih and the faith of your own good heart that has done it. Bow to none but Eloih,” he said: "For today we have in you encountered a truly great king.”
+++++++++++++++
So it was that the Aazyrian shepherd and his companions eventually emerged from the caves, blinking in the unaccustomed light, upon the mountains which were the natural border of Llozd.
Some 20 miles to the south, to their right, a big river snaked towards them along the foot of the mountains that divided Llozd from Kaarth before flowing out across the arid plain, like a fertile green ribbon winding through dry scrubland.
Here they left Kym Myaan, parting from Toache with sorrow on both sides, and accepting Sorac’s gift of his bow.
Now Sorac, Tyl and Toache came on foot to a small Llozdian town at the foot of the mountains. The countryside was parched, with only a short dry covering of dusty sheep grass and some resilient bush. They found accommodation at an inn, the gold which the shepherd had received from the girl disciple by the roadside now at last finding a use.
The innkeeper was a hairy, big-bellied man with a thick black moustache and a bald patch in the middle of his head. He showed them to the room and then returned to his wife in the hot kitchen where she was cooking up a sausage and potato stew in a big pot on an iron stove.
The sturdy woman managed the inn herself when her was drunk, which was often, gambling with dice and cards in games with rough frontiersmen that sometimes turned ugly.
Her husband had been playing dice on the porch when she had shouted at him from the kitchen to admit the three travellers, and she now looked up from stirring the pot with a big wooden spoon and raised her eyebrows enquiringly.
“They are from Aazyr,” he said: “They have paid with gold, though they are in need of a wash and change of clothing. They want to buy horses in the morning and then continue on to wherever it is they’re going on horseback.”
“Are they respectable?” she asked him.
“They are ragged with long travel but well-spoken enough -- and they have money,” her husband replied.
“I want to see them first,” she said.
She stumped up to the room.
“You seem all right, I suppose,” she said to the three companions, speaking the Aazyrian language with difficulty: “Did my husband did show you where you can bathe -- down the passage? Afterwards I will call you to eat."
The woman returned to her husband in the kitchen where he was adding pepper to the pot. She slapped his hand away.
“There’s a reward for him,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“There is a reward offered for that man.”
“What man?”
“The Aazyrian. The one who just arrived! The governor is offering a reward.”
“Then we must call the militia to arrest him,” he said.
“And the militia will claim the reward? No – it is you who must arrest him!” she said.
“Are you mad, woman? Have you seen the size of that one with him?”
“It’s a lot of money,” she said.
“It isn’t worth dying for.”
“Well whatever we do must be done soon before anyone else learns he’s here,'' she said. ''The punishment for keeping him is death.”
They pondered the problem for a while. It was she who solved it: “We’ll have to find something to put in their food to knock them out.”
“What would I do without you, woman?” he said.
So it was, when Tyl and Toache woke from their drugged sleep, Sorac was gone.
(end of chapter fourteen)
Book Three: Angel Brother
Chapter Fourteen of Erlos
At the age of sixty-one Hamish El Tyrone, the governor of Quod province in Llozd, still had most of his hair, though it was grey now. He was an unremarkable looking man in height and build, with tired eyes and a belly that protruded slightly.
El Tyrone was in his library where below his open window human beings competed for space in the dusty streets and markets of the town with braying donkeys and with oxen and camels, and with carts and barrows, and dogs and chickens amidst a din of voices and shouting of the merchants.
He was writing at his desk when he was disturbed by a loud knocking on the door. His library was private. It was not his office. After a third bout of knocking, Hamish, irritated, opened the door to a Ukonaai rider with dusty boots.
"What is it?" Hamish asked.
“I bring a letter from the Emperor,” the rider said.
"Give it to me."
The rider reached into his bag and passed into El Tyrone’s hand a bulky letter, sealed with wax. El Tyrone carefully inspected the Emperor’s seal then dropped the letter onto his desk as if unwilling to touch it with anything but his eyes.
The rider remained standing. El Tyrone sighed. He dropped a few coins into the rider’s hand, at which the rider nodded and left without closing the door.
Hamish got up again, shaking his head, and shut the door.
He went and sat down again and looked at the letter for quite a long time before reaching for it. He used an expensive ivory paper-knife to break Mykros’ seal and then leaned back in his chair to read the document.
The contents, as expected, ordered new taxes and made other demands -- including a death warrant. The subject of the death warrant was an Aazyrian – a simple shepherd. A reward was offered for his capture and execution by the governor.
There was a further reward offered for a green stone that the shepherd was believed to be carrying. The penalty for anyone who sheltered the shepherd, was death
In fact, Mykros had learned about the Urinda stone and had decided to change his mind about Sorac: one able to come by such a powerful artifact ought not perhaps to be so lightly considered – and besides that, why should not Mykros have the stone for himself? Mykros lived with one foot in the spirit world of ghosts and demons.
Hamish El Tyrone read the letter a third time. He sighed. More taxes. He took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. The pressure of his knuckles caused zig-zag patterns behind his eyelids. He shuffled the pages together and stuffed them back into the envelope, then fiddled in his pocket for a key. He unlocked the top drawer of the desk with it and dropped the letter into the drawer and went downstairs to join his wife for tea.
“You're tired," Clarissa said, as her smooth hands tipped the silver teapot: "Would you prefer we skip the theatre tonight?”
El Tyrone accepted a cup from his wife. “No I just have get some new edicts circulated,” he said. “It won’t take long.”
“Food taxes?”
“A death warrant, too.”
“The people know they’re not your edicts or taxes,” she said.
“Do they?” El Tyrone, stirred his tea: “Anyway, I despise myself.”
“Don’t talk like that, Hamish.”
“We must leave soon, Clarissa.”
“You will do what is right.” She sipped from a thin china cup: “You are my husband, and I will follow you.”
He finished his tea and stood up: “I’ll be done as soon as I can.”
He paused at the door. He turned with his fingers on the handle of the door: "I love you."
"And I love you too, Hamish darling."
Much had changed in Llozd, too, since the days of the King Dumarion Ben of Aazyr. Now each man lived for himself. The old Llozdian patterns of free trade had long ago broken down since Aazyr’s daily free caravans had ceased to arrive. Now everything in Llozd had a price, and a large percentage of that price went to Mykros as tax.
Dusk came warm over the city of Quod, its flat white roofs and open buildings suited to arid clime. It was still a beautiful city, thought El Tyrone, in spite of ugly changes in the hearts of men. He spent the next two hours dictating to scribes and sending out couriers to announce the new tax laws and to warn against sheltering the Aazyrian shepherd, should he be found, while making public the reward offered for his capture.
But Hamish carefully avoided saying anything about the green stone.
The sky was dark outside the open window when he had finished what he had to do. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and massaged his temples with the tips of his fingers.
+++++++++++++++
As it had fallen to Eldrinda Benkilte to lead the vortexian crossings, so now it fell to Justin Leobin of Victoria City to execute Erlos’ judgment and sentence upon Bueloess.
All the weight was laid on him. There was silence as he weighed the issue. In that silence Erlos knew that the angels of Cephanti were with Justin Leobin bringing wisdom to bear on the choice facing him – as his mind reached out to Bueloess, seeking any spark of light with which he might negotiate, but finding only a deadly hatred that attacked his mind with awful images of pain.
What Justin Leobin discovered there was far beyond the limits of his tolerance, and would disturb his sleep with nightmares for the rest of his long life. Though he struggled to maintain his thought-probe so that the event could be properly recorded on the Aksh Tapes for future generations, the horror of the contact was so unbearable that he could maintain it only for short periods before having to withdraw his mind to rest, while his body shuddered and his clothes were soaked in sweat.
At last he spoke.
“Does Eloih create evil?” he quietly asked: “What is evil in the sight of Eloih? Upon the great plains of Aazyr the lion must hunt the antelope, or starve. For one to live, the other must die. A child knows these things. So -- what is evil?
''Erlos knows only this: that evil is what threatens the safety its own world, and the life of its children. Eloih alone knows why these things must be, according to His own eternal purpose.
''So what then is this ancient serpent Bueloess that in its terrible hunger must feed on other worlds, and seeks now to devour both Erlos and Aelutia in order to sustain itself?
''Does Erlos sin today if Erlos take the life of this ancient serpent, to save its own people and the people of Aelutia, and the lives of countless others yet unborn upon both Erlos and Aelutia?''
His calm eyes moved around the room, from face to face.
''This is the choice that today falls upon Erlos," he said: "For how can Erlos destroy Bueloess’ power-base, yet leave the world-foundation upon which the ancient fortress stands?"
''We know there can be no such solution," he said: "For that would be to kill the serpent but leave behind a serpent’s egg, from which in time a new Bueloess will one day grow. Our duty is not only to ourselves and to Aelutia, but also to the ten thousand worlds ravaged by Bueloess, and to another hundred thousand future worlds.
“Erlos cannot avoid its duty today, nor venture any compromise with what we now see before us. There is no shred of mitigation.”
He paused again: ''Therefore before passing Erlos' judgement upon Bueloess, Victoria City requests Spectra and Astra Cities to speak, if they have mitigation.''
“Spectra finds none,” said Mycyl.
“Astra finds none,” Eldrinda said.
Now Justin Leobin passed sentence:
“We, Erlos, judge the world of Bueloess to be a peril to the greater whole, of which Erlos is a part. Therefore, by Erlos’ own power -- and by the power bestowed on Erlos by Cephanti, Angel Chieftan of the Arc, whose Badge Erlos wears today – shall Erlos fulfil its duty to utterly and for evermore destroy this planet which is the foundation of the fortress of Bueloess power.”
Bueloess reaction was to send out swarms of fighters, like wasps from a disturbed nest. But they were blinded by the light of Erlos and the pathetic resistance was quickly annihilated without a single Erlotian casualty.
A terrible silence followed, as the three Erlotian Cities burned brightly in the darkness, drawing power for their weapon, and Bueloess was made to quail within his fortress and blinded by the light of Erlos.
Erlos had always possessed their sound weapon but, like the vortexian capability of their cities, they had never before used it.
Certain now of his course, Leobin held The Three locked as a triangle of power.
At first the mountains of Bueloess began to shake, and then to crack and splinter. More and more powerful became the waves of sound, penetrating ever deeper into the heart of the planet, as mountains fell into deep fissures and eruptions of hot magma plumed hundreds of miles into the atmosphere.
Still the vibrations grew.
The crust of the planet began to convulse and then to tear. Still deeper penetrated the terrible sound as the violence of planet waves increased like storm waves on the ocean until, with a final and terrible explosion, the planet Bueloess shattered into fragments, and was no more.
The Erlotians had lost not a single fighter.
++++++++++++++++++
Back on the planet of Aleutia the jungle was starting to darken as Tyl and Sorac and Toache followed the kradok and began to descend into what appeared to be a crater -- a natural amphitheatre in the lubyar jungle. The kradok, Kym Myaan, was walking on the new artificial foot that Toache had carved for him from wood, as Kierien's magical ointment combined with his own strong animal constitution helped him recover quickly from his wound.
The sky was nearly dark above the forest canopy of trees when they reached the bottom of the crater. Kym Myaan led them to a narrow gap between two boulders that concealed a fissure leading downwards into a cave from which, in the gathering darkness, there emerged a faint blue glow.
Little wonder no man had ever found the home of the legendary kradok deep in the lubyar jungle -- or thought Tyl with a shiver -- that none had lived to tell.
''I'll go down first,'' Sorac said.
''Be careful,'' she said.
She watched him squeeze his way between the boulders and follow the kradok down into the mouth of the cave, then there was silence for a while and then Sorac's voice echoed up. “There's a pool down here. A beautiful blue pool,” he called. ''Come down carefully because it's slippery in places.''
She squeezed her way down between the two boulders. A short, steep climb bought her out onto a wide, gently sloping surface of water-smoothed limestone that sloped further on downward to where a silent blue pool seemed to be lit from within by the strange blue light.
She could not make out where the colour came from. The water itself seemed to glow. Toache had followed her down and they all stood gazing at the lovely pool.
Grey limestone cliffs rose around the mirror-still water to huge heights that opened at the top to a small circle of darkening sky. All was lit with the strange blue radiance. From within the pouch around Sorac's waist the Urinda stone shone with light and when he took the stone out of the pouch, it glowed with the same light that came from the pool, but much brighter.
“It will light the way,” said Tyl. Somehow, she was not afraid.
“Kym will lead,” Toache said.
There were a great many dark cave entrances in the limestone walls around them. Now the kradok led them into labyrinthine darkness as by the light of the Urinda stone they walked like dreamers through huge cathedral-like caves glittering with crystals and along narrow, precarious ledges above black chasms that fell away to dark, unknown depths.
Tyl felt herself tiny beneath magnificent archways and pillars. Delicately folded lace curtains of limestone hung suspended from the roofs of the caves. Priceless gems shone in the walls amidst colossal and contorted natural stone formations that reared and twisted high and huge around her, into the darkness above. As Kym Myaan led them further into the deep of the earth, water dripped from ancient underground cliffs where the fall of a pebble created resounding echoes.
She was no longer weary or hungry but was instead filled with a sense of wonder, though watchful and aware in every sense. She and her companions walked carefully for hours beside a black underground lake, still as a mirror, whose silent waters Kym Myaan warned them not to disturb, lest they arouse leviathan who dwelt within its depths.
In the womb of the earth she had no fear, while the light of the Urinda stone surrounded her. From time to time, within the dark and twisting tunnels, the party encountered other kradoks, but the kradoks would not enter within the aura of the stone.
Kym Myaan warned the other kradoks off with a roar that dislodging loose stalactites from the roof to fall tinkling around them before reverberating away to final silence in the depths of the caverns -- at which the other kradoks slipped silently back into the darkness, allowing the party to pass on unmolested along their way.
But now Tyl and her companions began to feel themselves surrounded by dark entities -- grey shifting forms with glowing orange eyes. The strange little creatures chattered all around them, just beyond the light of the Urinda stone.
The noisy little creatures became more numerous until at last one of them came forward from the others and, communicating through Kym Myaan, asked them to follow.
“No,'' Sorac said: ''We will not go with you.”
More chattering ensued, until eventually the creature said, “We have seen the light of your stone from the world above. We are the Urda and we wish you no harm. Our king, asks that you come to him – for his child is dying and he begs you to use your stone to heal his child.”
So they followed the Urda down into the deepest bowels of the earth, along narrow ledges around dark sulphurous pits and above fast flowing rivers of molten rock that sparked and flamed, casting their own shadows as grotesque dancing forms high above them.
For hours they walked, wondering every step, until they emerged into a great hall wherein huge sombre monoliths engraved with ancient runes were dwarfed beneath enormous, towering statues of man-like beings with horns and tails and who wore dark, spiky armour and were armed with strange jagged weapons.
Here Tyl and her companions came at last before the enormous black throne that was engraved with the same unknown runes, and on which sat the little king of the Urda.
The crowd of the Urda fell upon their faces before their king as the party remained standing within the protective aura of the Urinda stone. Now the strange little king came down from his dark throne and prostrated himself before Sorac.
“I am Baalt,” said the little king: “I see your light, and beg your name.”
“I am Sorac of Aazyr,'' Sorac replied: “But do not bow. No being shall prostrate himself before me.”
Baalt replied: “Within these halls of the Urda are jewels and gold more than the greatest kingdom upon your world above has ever known. And you may have them them all if only you bring your light from above before my son, for it alone will heal him.”
The shepherd glanced around at his companions.
“Keep your treasure, and take us to the child,” he said.
Baalt led them to the dying child, and when the child saw the light of the Urinda stone he was at once well. Baalt again threw himself at Sorac’s feet sobbing and crying his gratitude, but Sorac knelt down beside him.
''It is not the light we carry that has healed your darling, Baalt, but the power of Eloih and the faith of your own good heart that has done it. Bow to none but Eloih,” he said: "For today we have in you encountered a truly great king.”
+++++++++++++++
So it was that the Aazyrian shepherd and his companions eventually emerged from the caves, blinking in the unaccustomed light, upon the mountains which were the natural border of Llozd.
Some 20 miles to the south, to their right, a big river snaked towards them along the foot of the mountains that divided Llozd from Kaarth before flowing out across the arid plain, like a fertile green ribbon winding through dry scrubland.
Here they left Kym Myaan, parting from Toache with sorrow on both sides, and accepting Sorac’s gift of his bow.
Now Sorac, Tyl and Toache came on foot to a small Llozdian town at the foot of the mountains. The countryside was parched, with only a short dry covering of dusty sheep grass and some resilient bush. They found accommodation at an inn, the gold which the shepherd had received from the girl disciple by the roadside now at last finding a use.
The innkeeper was a hairy, big-bellied man with a thick black moustache and a bald patch in the middle of his head. He showed them to the room and then returned to his wife in the hot kitchen where she was cooking up a sausage and potato stew in a big pot on an iron stove.
The sturdy woman managed the inn herself when her was drunk, which was often, gambling with dice and cards in games with rough frontiersmen that sometimes turned ugly.
Her husband had been playing dice on the porch when she had shouted at him from the kitchen to admit the three travellers, and she now looked up from stirring the pot with a big wooden spoon and raised her eyebrows enquiringly.
“They are from Aazyr,” he said: “They have paid with gold, though they are in need of a wash and change of clothing. They want to buy horses in the morning and then continue on to wherever it is they’re going on horseback.”
“Are they respectable?” she asked him.
“They are ragged with long travel but well-spoken enough -- and they have money,” her husband replied.
“I want to see them first,” she said.
She stumped up to the room.
“You seem all right, I suppose,” she said to the three companions, speaking the Aazyrian language with difficulty: “Did my husband did show you where you can bathe -- down the passage? Afterwards I will call you to eat."
The woman returned to her husband in the kitchen where he was adding pepper to the pot. She slapped his hand away.
“There’s a reward for him,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“There is a reward offered for that man.”
“What man?”
“The Aazyrian. The one who just arrived! The governor is offering a reward.”
“Then we must call the militia to arrest him,” he said.
“And the militia will claim the reward? No – it is you who must arrest him!” she said.
“Are you mad, woman? Have you seen the size of that one with him?”
“It’s a lot of money,” she said.
“It isn’t worth dying for.”
“Well whatever we do must be done soon before anyone else learns he’s here,'' she said. ''The punishment for keeping him is death.”
They pondered the problem for a while. It was she who solved it: “We’ll have to find something to put in their food to knock them out.”
“What would I do without you, woman?” he said.
So it was, when Tyl and Toache woke from their drugged sleep, Sorac was gone.
(end of chapter fourteen)
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You are good at writing 
