Pierrot's Song

Chapter 2 - Hidden Depths-1

Chapter 2 Hidden DepthsSofia and Mina were only a few steps from the cave, but under a rain of daggers even that short distance was impossibly far. A scream of warning tore itself from Luka’s throat. ‘Run. Above you!’

Sofia and Mina both looked up. Though her heart started pounding with what she saw, Sofia did not break stride. Instead, she smoothly reached for her hood and pulled it over her head, wrapping her cloak tight around her to create a protective barrier. She felt the daggers glancing off the bag slung over her back and heard them clattering against rock as they landed all around her. As she reached the cave, she glanced behind, ready to offer Mina help. What she saw occurred so swiftly, she could barely make sense of it.

Mina looked up and saw the danger above. Her eyes widened, but instead of speeding up, she stopped running. Even as Sofia stumbled into the cave, daggers bouncing off her cloak and skidding across the floor, Mina stood completely still in the open air. Sofia twisted around to watch Mina, nearly falling over as the momentum of her desperate run combined with the twisting motion threw her off balance. Luka caught her and helped her steady herself. They both stared at their companion.

Mina was standing under the deadly rain of knives, her eyes closed and her face to the sky. Slowly she raised her arms from her sides, palms up, until they were as high as her shoulders. Daggers still clattered to the ground with the sharp, ringing beat of metal on stone. Sofia flinched, expecting one to hit her apprentice at any moment. They fell endlessly, yet there seemed to be a circle around Mina, within which she stood untouched.

Beyond the loud metallic noise of the dagger fall, Sofia became aware of a growing hum, layered with harmonics. As soon as she heard it she couldn’t unhear it, noticing how it built in beauty and depth, until it soared like an impossible, unseen choir. Mina still stood completely still amid the falling daggers, not one of the plunging blades hitting her. Sofia felt rather than saw the shimmer of Tarya surround Mina, swirling in a tight circle, like a breeze trapped in an invisible column.

Mina raised her arms even higher, then swept them down and outward. The shimmering air radiated from where she stood, a ripple in an unseen pond. Sofia and Luka took a step back as it came toward them, but felt only the faintest gust as it washed over them like a wave.

As the shimmering air passed them, the daggers changed, their hard edges softening and curling into themselves. At first Sofia thought they had been transformed back into giant flakes of snow again, but their curling motion turned into an unfurling as each seemed to grow larger and more cup-shaped. Over the space of seconds colour leached into them until they were in shades of soft pink and lavender, with a rich green underneath. Their deadly momentum had become a gentle floating.

‘Flowers! They’re flowers,’ Luka said.

‘Lotus blossoms,’ Sofia gasped. She had never seen such flowers in anything other than artworks sold in Aurea by travellers from the far east, but she did not doubt that was what they were.

All around Mina the blossoms drifted slowly down to cover the mountainside. As they descended, they grew, until they were as large as a bowl, their petals satiny, cupped like hands held out for a gift. Beyond Mina snow still fell, the daggers completely gone, but in her immediate vicinity blossoms floated to the ground, piling one on another. The rocks were transformed into a glorious garden. With a final upward glance, Mina brought her arms back in to her sides, and the rain stopped, a last few flowers drifting gently down. Smiling at her friends, Mina walked gently over the carpet of lotus blossoms, careful not to crush them, and reached the cave in safety.

‘Don’t ask how I did that,’ she quickly said, stalling their questions. ‘I don’t know. I just had to.’

‘Look,’ Luka said, and pointed at one of the knives that had been knocked into the cave by Sofia. Mina had just moved past it when it too transformed, becoming a lotus flower, perfect and beautiful. In the half dark of the cave, it seemed to glow—the gentle, borrowed glow of moonlight. Then it evaporated before their eyes. Nothing remained. They looked outside and saw the same thing was happening to the bed of flowers. One moment the stone was covered with blossoms, then they broke apart, starlight petals drifting upward in ever-thinning spirals. And then the stone was only stone, unmarked in any way by the passing of such a miraculous event.

‘How …?’ Sofia asked, her eyes wide. ‘They were solid. I felt them, hitting my bag and cloak. This was no illusion. You should have been killed …’

‘Perhaps one day I’ll understand everything I can do in Tarya,’ Mina said. ‘For now, it just seems to be instinct.’

She walked past the others, deeper into the cave. Luka and Sofia glanced at each other.

‘Good instincts,’ Luka quipped.

Dawn’s fingers reached into the cave, whose entrance was angled in such a way the morning light lit much of its interior. Later in the day this effect would be gone as swiftly as it had now appeared. Without discussion, the three separated, Luka walking to one side, Sofia to the other, and Mina to the back of the cave. Its size meant they needed to raise their voices a little to be heard clearly, although the size mainly came from width rather than depth.

‘Nothing here that I can see,’ Luka called.

‘I haven’t found anything important either,’ Sofia replied. ‘I thought this had to be it. If those knives don’t count as “spells”, what does?’

Mina’s voice came from the darkness. ‘Can we light a torch?’

‘What have you found?’ Luka hurried over to her.

‘A carving on the wall.’

Sofia was slower to join them. She took a moment to take out a torch from the bag she carried and light its bound end with a flint and fusy. As she came near with the light, she saw Mina take Luka’s hand and run it along jagged marks on the wall, black against the grey stone. Still a short distance from the others, Sofia couldn’t see a clear design to the marks. She watched Luka feel them with his hands, first one, then another.

‘I can’t tell what it should look like,’ he said, ‘but there’s a deep groove here. Wait … it’s … a circle. With something inside it.’

He reached up to a point above his head, then traced the circle’s outline. Its lowest point was at ankle height. Sofia came close enough to light up the markings.

In the flickering torchlight the black carvings in the stone wall leaped out vividly. At the centre of the circle was a seven-pointed star. Although the circle was grey, having been chipped from the rock, the star itself glimmered with traces of gold. Luka examined it closely, tracing one of the points with his finger. ‘It’s been gilded. Someone took a great deal of care to place this here.’

‘The seven-pointed star …’ Sofia whispered. ‘Could it be that easy? Have we actually found the right cave?’

‘There’s no reason for it to be here otherwise,’ Mina said. ‘I saw this star everywhere in Aurea—on banners, at the palace.’

‘Of course,’ Sofia said. ‘Because it’s the symbol of the royal family.’

‘But has it always been? The story is so old. Would the symbol have been used back then?’

‘Yes, as far back as the history books show. Even when Ambrosi became king after the plague …’

Mina interrupted her, crowing with excitement. ‘Well, in this case I think it definitely means we’ve found the right cave!’

‘It seems too easy,’ Sofia responded. ‘This seems suspicious to me. There are so many caves. Why should the first one we go into be the right one? I bet every cave has a mark like this in it and there’s some kind of test we have to do to find …’

Her words died away as Luka and Mina started laughing at her. What began as giggles swiftly grew to chuckles, then to full belly laughs.

‘Too easy!’ Luka gasped.

Mina clutched her side. ‘Suspicious. Has to be a test …’

‘Because there haven’t been any so far!’ Luka burst out, and he and Mina fell against each other, their bodies convulsing.

‘Have you gone mad?’ Sofia demanded, watching them slide to the ground, shaking with unrestrained mirth.

Luka looked up at her and between sobbing gasps managed to squeak out ‘Probably.’

Sofia held herself rigid, looking from one to the other. She half turned away, squeezing her jaw together at their amusement. Behind her they continued prattling in between giggles.

‘Giant mountain … no obstacle.’

‘Impassable shale. Easy!’

‘A dark orb of despair.’

‘Oh, that’s good.’

‘I know! As I was saying, a dark orb of despair …’

Mina giggled and interrupted, ‘Simple!’

‘I was going to say enlightening.’

They erupted again at the pun.

Sofia turned back to them. ‘Okay, okay. Then a rain of deadly daggers. Okay, I get it. It hasn’t been that easy.’

She gave them time to calm the remaining bursts of giggles, then helped them to their feet.

‘So, if this part is easy—and I’m still not convinced it is, but let’s say you children are right—what do we do?’

They all turned toward the golden star. Mina hiccupped twice, still trying to quell the crazy laughter she had needed so badly. Luka calmed in an instant though, turning his intense focus onto the image etched into the stone. He tilted his head, first one way, then the other, then gently reached for the circle, one long finger tracing the deep groove of its circumference. Finally, he peered closely at the star.

‘Can you bring the torch closer? As close as you can.’

Sofia moved in close so the torchlight brought out the gold outline once more. Luka mimed for her to move it out from the centre a little. Mina gasped as the points of the star suddenly came to life, glowing like tiny fireflies.

‘Oh! Look at that. There’s a gem at each point! I never saw gems in any of the stars at the palace.’

The seven-pointed star was everywhere in the Royal Palace of Aurea, so ubiquitous they had stopped looking closely at it when they attended the artisan competitions. It had been a plain star, of that they were certain, the arms woven together in a circle where they crossed over at the centre, but other than that free of any sort of decoration. Yet here each point shone a different colour, from red at the centre top, all the way through the rainbow to a faceted amethyst suffused with a purple halo in the glow of the torch.

At the centre of the star, more beautiful than any of the other gems, was an opal of enormous size, perfectly circular. Even under amber light they could tell within its heart it carried the colours of all the other gems, and more besides. Under bright light it would have glowed with brilliant rainbows, much as the crystals of Aurea did during the Festival of Lights.

‘Perhaps we should try this,’ Luka said with a grin, and pushed his hand against the opal. The others watched expectantly. Nothing happened.

‘Did it move?’ Sofia asked finally.

Luka shook his head. ‘Maybe there’s a correct sequence, pressing them all in order?’ he mused.

Mina reached past him. ‘No. I think this is as simple as it seems. May I?’

With a deep bow Luka stepped aside. Mina placed her hand on the opal. She applied no pressure. She just rested her hand lightly against the stone, which felt warm to the touch. There was a soft, distant sound, like a sigh, then the stone wall tilted away in front of them, forming a ramp down to a second cave, lower than the one they were in. Mina stepped onto the lowered door, taking care not to stand on the star and its precious stones, and walked down to the new cave. Sofia followed her, then Luka. The light from Sofia’s torch barely penetrated the space, but immediately on entering the chamber, which felt large, she noticed a bracket on the wall to her right with a torch in it, so she lit that from her own. This gave her enough light to see another bracket further along the wall. She moved to this one and lit it also, spying another and then another. Continuing on in this way, she made a complete circuit of the room, counting eight torches in total. The last one was to the left of the entrance.