Read Online Sword of Caledor by William King - Free Book Online Page B

about half a league away,’ Tyrion told them, to add to the good cheer.
    ‘What about the monsters that attacked you the last time you were here?’ Teclis asked, always ready to spread a little gloom when things started to get too light-hearted.
    Leiber nodded at this. ‘We should move slowly and cautiously and try not to raise any ruckus. Once we find the gold we’ll make a grab for it and do a runner.’
    ‘You are supposed to help us find what we are looking for. That’s what you are getting paid for,’ said Teclis.
    ‘That’s what I meant,’ said Leiber. ‘We’re all looking for treasure.’
    ‘We’re looking for a very specific treasure,’ said Tyrion. ‘And we won’t be leaving until we find it.’
    ‘Argentes died here. His burning sword will be here still. You’ll find it.’
    ‘Let us hope so,’ said Tyrion. ‘And let us hope no lizardman has made off with it. That will make finding it a lot harder.’
    That did not lighten the mood any either, Tyrion thought. Maybe he was acquiring some of Teclis’s talent for depressing people. The humans looked at him as if he had just announced a plan to start cutting off their noses one at a time.
    ‘You might never leave if the lizards find you,’ said Leiber. It was a good point.
    ‘We’ll all do better if we stick together,’ Teclis said.
    ‘No lie there,’ said Leiber. ‘We could all leave our bones bleaching in this jungle if we are not careful.’
    ‘Can you remember where Argentes fell?’ Teclis asked. There was an urgency in his voice too now. He was excited by the fact they were close to their goal.
    ‘It was a lot closer to the centre, I think, in a pyramid much bigger than these ones,’ Leiber said.
    ‘Then we’d better get moving.’
    They made their way through the streets of Zultec, pushing through the undergrowth and hacking their way through the bushes when they became too dense. All of them were nervous now as well as excited. All of them feared that death might spring upon them from the shadows at any time, and all of them held themselves ready to meet that threat. It would be a terrible thing to be slain so close to their goal.
    Tyrion studied their surroundings. It would be an excellent setting for an ambush. The jungle and the ruins of ancient buildings provided so much cover. The sound of the rain would drown out any stealthy approach made by aggressors, aided and abetted by the natural noises of the jungle itself – the chattering of the monkeys, the screaming of the birds, the distant roar of the big predatory carnosaurs as they sought prey.
    He did not like this place.
    It had an atmosphere to it that made him uneasy and there were very few places in this world that had that effect on him. He was an elf; he was used to living in places that had an aura of antiquity. But they had been built by his own people.
    This was more ancient than any place in Ulthuan and it had not been built by anything remotely like the elves. Minds, alien almost beyond his comprehension, had conceived the strange geometry of the architecture. He could look at structures created by humans and dwarfs and he could see that they were the product of a sensibility at least close to his own. Such was not the case here.
    These buildings have been created by beings that thought in a very different way, according to a very different system. There was a pattern here but he could just not tell what it was. He doubted that he ever would be able to.
    It had something to do with numbers. The builders had obviously been obsessed by them. If he counted the number of statues on the sides of each building, as he found himself unconsciously doing, he got the sense that they fitted into some numerical pattern, although he could not tell what that pattern was. He suspected it had something to do with basic mathematical formulae, but he could not tell what that formula was.
    Perhaps Teclis could; he had a gift for solving such puzzles. His mind was more flexible.