Sianim 01 - Masques

of brush into a narrow aisle of grass. In the center of it sat a suggestively shaped altar dedicated to one of the old gods. It was heavily overgrown with moss and lichen until it was almost impossible to tell the original color of the stone. There was nothing unusual about finding the altar, as such remnants dotted the landscape from well before the Wizard Wars. However, the altar itself was flanked by a pair of unusually shaped monoliths.
    “Oh dear,” said Aralorn drolly, crawling halfway down his arm to get a good look. “Look. Two of them. I suppose that it must have belonged to one of the fertility gods, hmm?”
    The southern monolith was broken about halfway up, but the northernmost stood as tall as a man and almost as big around. When Wolf touched it, it slid sideways with a creak and a groan. He slipped inside the dark hole that was revealed and started down the ladder. Aralorn darted off his arm altogether and checked out the ladder.
    “The ladder is a lot newer than the altar,” she commented, flashing back to her post and tucking a paw inside his collar.
    “I put it up myself when I saw that there was some kind of exit from the secret tunnels up here. There was no sign of another one, so I suppose it must have rotted completely away. Plague it, Aralorn, you’re going to fall and kill yourself if you don’t stay put!”
    She’d darted back out to his arm to get a closer look at the tile work on the wall. He picked her off his wrist and set her firmly back on his shoulder. “Just wait until we get down, and you can have a better look.”
    Once on the floor, he closed the opening with a wave and a thread of magic. As soon as it was shut, he let his staff light the hall in which they stood.

    Aralorn scrambled to the floor and took her own shape, sneezing a bit from the dust. She scuffed a foot on the floor, revealing a dark, polished surface. The ceiling was as high or higher than the great hall in the castle, and the walls were covered with detailed mosaic patterns of outdoor revelries of times gone by. The ceiling was painted like the night sky, giving the overall impression of being outdoors. Or at least that was what Aralorn assumed. The years had covered the tile on the walls with cracks and knocked down whole sections. The ceiling was badly water-damaged, showing the stonework that held it up through gaps left by fallen plaster.
    Reluctant to leave the room without adequate exploration, Aralorn dragged behind Wolf, who’d already ducked through a gap in the wall leading to a drab little tunnel that looked as if a giant mole had dug through the earth. Much less interesting than the room they’d climbed down into, it branched several times. Wolf never hesitated as he chose their way.
    “How many times did you get lost exploring this?”
    Wolf shot her an amused look. “Several, but I found a book hidden in one of the old libraries that detailed some of the passages, and I found a copy of the master plans in the library—my library. The passages are extensive; it’s a wonder the whole thing hasn’t collapsed. There are only fifteen or twenty large rooms like the one we started in, most of them about in the same condition. If we make it through the next few days, I’ll show you a library that makes the one we have in the Northlands look small. I don’t know all of the passages. There are a lot of secret panels and hidden doors, magical and mundane, that make it difficult to find most of the interesting places. Like this one.” Wolf waved a hand, and a large section of the tunnel just disappeared into a finished and ornate corridor.
    When they stepped through, the opening disappeared—leaving a blank wall in its place. The end of the corridor widened into a huge room with a fountain at its center. The floor had once been wood, which was mostly rotted away, leaving a walkway that was uneven and hazardous.

    He wanted to linger and watch her.
    Aralorn stumbled and tripped forward instead of walking, because she was too busy staring at the frescoed ceiling and the elaborate stone carvings on the walls to pick her way through the debris that littered the floor. When she started muttering about “where the fourth Lord Protector of Such and Such Port met with the Queen to defeat the Sorcerer What’s-His-Face,” Wolf put a firm hand on her shoulder and led her patiently around the old traps and pitfalls.
    He enjoyed her enthusiasm quietly, as any comment on his part was likely to spark a