Chapter 2 A distant noise. High, mournful howling, followed by a gruffer noise like a bark. Like a lost dog. Joshua stopped still in mid-pace, a hot-cold wave of adrenaline coursing through his blood. The noise repeated again, unmistakably animal in nature: like a dog, or a wolf, too distinct to have been merely a trick of wind trapped in some chink in the walls. In a strange way-- the thought occurred to him distantly, even as his hand flew to grasp the leather-bound hilt of his sword-- it would have been far less frightening if beasts and demons had come swarming out of the shadows with that first fall of a footstep in the passageway. It would have saved him the heated dread of anticipation, the terror of that which was unknown. And was not lack of knowledge, truly, that which underlay all human fears save the most primal? Drawing his sword, he edged through the doorway into the chamber beyond. The noise had come from that direction, he was certain of it, although it had seemed more an echo than something close by. Holding his torch aloft, he found that the room beyond was considerably larger than any of the small, cramped wine-holding rooms he'd made his way through, both in length and in breadth. Behind an iron grating, set into a slight recess in the wall, were the remains of a fire which presumably had once served as heat and illumination for this room. Whatever had fueled it seemed to have been unaffected by time, as it rekindled easily when Joshua set his torch to it experimentally; the near half of the room sprang into golden light, light and shadows dancing across the high ceiling. Again the noise resonated, distinctly louder this time, and much closer. Involuntarily, Joshua stumbled backwards, trying to maintain some semblance of a fighting-stance. It sounded like an ordinary enough dog, but how could a dog have gotten into the dark, twisting chambers beneath Lea Monde? Even if it was naught more than a normal dog, that was no guarantee of safety either: there had been nothing in all the manuscripts and remains he had pored through to suggest, one way or another, whether the Dark affected animals as it did humans. Did it imbue them with its unknown power as well? Lea Monde holds the key to the Dark Powers. Or, alternately, Lea Monde is the key to the Dark Powers. Again and again, those few surviving manuscripts and fragments had impressed that knowledge upon him. Presumably, with the city itself now reduced mostly to rubble, the Dark Powers could no longer be sought by humans. Yet, though only one human alone could possess the Dark Powers at one time, it was said that the Dark, flowing as it did through the city like a crossways of invisible streams, did kindle a strange power in those it touched. The city, too, held objects of power. Grimoires. Magic. No, even the city's fall would not guarantee him safe passage through these dark tunnels. Joshua backed up against the grating which confined the oddly sweet-scented fire, needles of ice prickling through his blood despite the heat. (to be continued...) back to main back to stories