Kellory the Warlock

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3THE AVENUE OF AUTOMATONS

Kellory fell to his knees before the frowning portcullis of the Enchanter’s castle, panting for breath, stifling in the sulphurous air of the moat, eyes streaming.

He had traversed the burning bridge by a simple expedient. Thoroughly soaking his leathern sandals in water from the moontree gourd that hung at his waist, he had dared the arch of glowing steel. The boy could run like a deer: many tunes his fleetness of foot had saved him from capture by a Thungoda war party man-hunting in the mountains; now his flying feet had carried him safely across the span of red-hot iron. But his sandals, dried in the baking heat, were charred and smoldering. He tore them from his blistered feet with shaking fingers, and hurled them into the flaming moat, together with the spear strapped to his shoulders, which encumbered his movements. Gingerly favoring his raw and tender feet, he climbed erect and looked about him. He stood before the palace gate…and it stood open, a titanic valve of ancient black wood that must have weighed a ton. The Sigil of Phazdaliom was worked on the front of this enormous door: an open, unsleeping Eye picked out in glittering dust of emeralds.

He glided silently within the open port and crept into the inky shadows of a great pillar.

Without, all had been baking heat and sulphurous smoke. But the moment he crossed the threshold of the dark palace, it was as if an invisible barricade held back the beating flames of the lava moat. For here within, the air was fresh and clean and dewy. Bruised, aching, running with oily perspiration and smeared from crown to heel with ashes and dirt, the tired boy leaned against the cool stone of the column, drinking in the pure sweet air thankfully.

But there was no time to rest. The intolerable thirst for vengeance had driven him this far—where no man else of all the world below had ever dared to come—and it would be an irony of ironies, should the unseen hand of the Enchanter strike him down before he had pierced the inner heart of the citadel. So he went forward on hesitant feet, green eyes burning like some jungle beast’s as they searched the night-black shadows, alert for a trap, wary for the slightest motion, sound, or sign of peril.

He traversed a column-lined arcade and found himself at the mouth of a long avenue lined with statues. Beyond, at the end of this way, rose the inner castle, a gloomy mass against the pearly curtain of dawn: a fantastic thronging of minarets, arcades, towers and turrets, that lifted tier by tier into the clear morning. He saw that the castle was a mass of brooding blackness—save for one ominous window, tall and narrow and pointed, that burned with green light like an unsleeping eye; like the emerald Eye emblazoned on the wizard’s door. It gazed down at him, a blank, cold glaze of icy phosphorescence, like the vigilant orb of some colossal ebon-mailed dragon, coiled about a secret treasure. A chill went through him as he looked at that one ominous window, blazing with light while all the castle else went slumbering and dark. But he went on.

The avenue, he perceived by the nacreous morning light, was strewn with crushed diamonds. They caught the morning in a tangle of dazzling rays, like the wink and glitter of some enormous ice field that shimmered and sparkled under the slow uncoiling fires of the aurora. Strange it was to tread that incredible pave, strewn—almost contemptuously—with the wealth of a thousand Emperors. But he went down the avenue of statues with a lightsome tread, one hand on the hilt of his dagger, eyes roaming warily the thick-mantled shadows that lay beyond. And ever and anon his gaze lifted to meet again the cold phosphorescent scrutiny of that window that burned like a dragon’s open eye.

And then he froze with incredulous horror.

For the statues…moved!

He had thought them mere idols of hewn and carven stone, but now he saw they were fashioned each from shining steel. Like fantastic suits of goblin armor they stood in their ranked scores, lining the glittering avenue of diamonds. But, if armor, not…untenanted. For steel arms raised, stiffly brandishing fantastic pikes and scimitars of burnished steel, and, behind the frozen leer of mask-like visors, eyes of sentient crystal flashed with yellow topaz fire. Weirdly crested helms turned creakingly to face the dawn, and claw-like metal hands lifted mace and brand and morning star with jerking, mechanical movement.

A thrill of unbelief went through the shrinking boy. But he remembered, then: the old shaman of his tribe, that once had been a high priest of the gods in the greatness of the Lost Kingdom, had told him in whispers of these creatures. The automatons of the Enchanter—the living warriors of soulless steel! How could he have forgotten the terrible and undying guardians of the dark palace?

But—oddly—they seemed to see him not. The crystalline gaze that burned mindlessly behind the mask-like visors was lifted only to the morn. A wave of relief went through him, and he crept on down the avenue of shattered diamonds as the mechanical automatons of Phazdaliom made their salute to the new-born day.