A City Lost In Time: PART 5 by Jeni Meadows
This is part 5 of Jeni Meadows’ serial A City Lost By Time. Click here to read part 4 first.
One of the staring faces immediately began to shout. Other voices answered from within the cave, and very quickly the space in front of the third tunnel swarmed with unfamiliar people. The crowd swelled, until a line of them stretched along the cavern wall, staring wide-eyed, whether in fear or surprise Staven couldn’t tell. Their chatter rose into the air like a flock of gulls.
“Any idea what they’re saying?” Taire murmured to Anneli.
“Give me a minute,” she muttered back.
“I’m not sure we have a minute,” Taire retorted, as three taller figures emerged from the tunnel and pushed their way through the crowd. As they got closer it became clear that their height was due to the intricately decorated helmets they were wearing. The two on either side bore symmetrical black domes etched with silver patterns, while the person in the middle had atop their head a huge, gold piece made up of interlocking arches that wound around each other so intricately that it looked more like an artistic sculpture than a practical helmet. A red feather sprouted from its highest arch and quivered with every movement.
For a moment both sides just stood there, staring at each other. Then Tall Hat took three steps towards them, and spoke in a quick, staccato language.
“Can you talk to them?” Staven asked.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Anneli shot back, not taking her eyes from Tall Hat. They began to gesture wildly, their voice getting louder and more angry with every word. They stepped closer still. The workers behind them began to glance at each other nervously.
Anneli drew her sword and pointed it under Tall Hat’s chin. A ripple of noise waved through the crowd and was shushed immediately by one of the Shorter Hats. The other one rushed to Tall Hat’s side, drawing a sword of their own. Taire drew his and stopped them in their tracks. The tomcat hissed on Staven’s shoulder.
Anneli stood taller than Tall Hat, headpiece notwithstanding, and bore down on them with an iron stare that made beads of sweat sprout on their temples and trickle down their face. She did not break eye contact, and for a long, slow minute, nobody in that cavern moved.
“You two, go behind me and slowly back towards the exit,” Anneli whispered eventually. “They’re not going to retreat in front of their people, but they won’t try to stop you.”
Staven wasn’t entirely sure how she’d established this, but he was not about to argue. He moved back and to his right, mirroring Taire in front of him, keeping his eyes fixed on the Shorter Hat with the sword. That lieutenant said something to Tall Hat, who barked back a terse response. Staven and Taire kept moving round until they had their backs to the wooden ladder and the gaping hole that would lead them up to the surface. Anneli stepped back to join them, and together they slowly retreated beyond the reach of the crowd of strangers.
Once they had gone back about ten feet or so, Tall Hat turned to their lieutenants and began an intense whispered conversation.
“What about Theodora?” Taire asked. “We can’t leave without her.”
“I’ve caught up with what they’re saying,” Anneli declared. “They’re discussing whether or not to let us leave. If we can’t find her before they make that decision, then she’s on her own. Keep backing up.”
Slowly, they took step after agonising step back towards the exit. They still had over half the cavern floor to cover if they had to make a run for it. Staven didn’t want to think about what might happen if they were too slow.
Something moved quickly in the background by the three tunnels. Staven tapped Anneli on the shoulder.
“Theodora,” he whispered. “Eleven o’clock, over Tall Hat’s shoulder.”
“I see.”
Theodora poked her head out from behind a storage crate and waved at them apologetically. She had something in her hand, which she quickly stuffed into a pocket. Anneli sighed.
“Ms Peerson,” she called, her voice unsettlingly loud. It made the cat fidget on Staven’s shoulder. The three hat-wearing leaders all whirled around, and when they saw who Anneli was calling to, their arguing became even more frantic.
“Could you come over here, please?” Anneli called again. Theodora gingerly stepped out of her hiding place. The whole crowd watched her, and began to chatter among themselves again.
“Taire, meet her in the middle.”
Taire nodded and slowly retraced the circle they had just made around the group. One of the lieutenants watched his every move, and once Taire reached Theodora, they pointed. Whatever they said next made the other two turn and watch.
“What was that?” Staven asked.
“That was the observation that they don’t know how much Theodora has learned about what they’re doing down here,” Anneli mumbled. Her fingers fidgeted on the hilt of her sword. “I’m getting the impression that when it was just us three, they were inclined towards letting us go. Now, I’m not so sure.”
Anneli took another step back towards the exit, and Tall Hat threw up a hand towards her with a shout. The hand moved to point at Taire as he and Theodora reached them.
“Who’s on our side here?” Taire asked.
“None of them,” Anneli said bluntly. “They absolutely do not want us to leave. They’re just trying to decide whether letting us go has worse consequences than keeping us here.”
Taire blew air out through his cheeks. They waited a few more seconds, and in that time Staven didn’t need Anneli’s magic to figure out that Tall Hat had finally reached a decision. They said something, and the second lieutenant drew their sword and all three advanced.
“May I take that as a cue that diplomacy has failed?” Taire asked.
“You may indeed,” Anneli replied.
“Right. Keep moving backwards, and when I tell you to run, go as fast as you can.”
“What?” Theodora spluttered. “I don’t know about you Investigators, but I can’t run that far that fast.”
“You’ll be fine,” Taire said calmly. Staven pulled on Theodora’s arm, guiding her backwards.
They made it five paces before Tall Hat put an arm in the air. The crowd of workers behind them bristled. Taire slid his sword back into its sheath and took a step forward. The look on his face made the lieutenants pause for a moment, in which Taire looked back over his shoulder.
“Run,” he said softly. He spread his arms out to either side, just as Tall Hat’s arm came down and the crowd surged forward. Staven stopped watching after that. He just ran.
Three strides later, he felt an enormous, sudden heat on his back. He glanced behind, saw Taire standing at the foot of a wall of rising flame, and kept running.
Eventually they reached the wooden scaffolding that led to the tunnel, and Staven scrambled to the top. He stood at the edge of the platform, catching his breath, watching the wall of fire flicker and writhe, the smoke it was creating disappearing into the darkness above them. His cheeks began to burn, so he turned away from it and handed Theodora over the lip of the wall and into the tunnel. Anneli climbed in after her.
Taire followed moments behind and stood at the base of the scaffolding, shifting his hands through the air as if he was conducting music, directing his magic to pull a thin tendril of fire away from the wall and snake it across the floor towards them. As he watched it, Staven thought he saw a shape form at the base of the wall of fire, and blinked hard to get the smoke sting out of his eyes. The shape was definitely there, and in a matter of seconds it became the clear outline of a person. More followed it. They cleared the fire and kept running, much faster than Taire’s tendril could crawl.
“Um…” Staven shouted above the roar of the flame.
“What?” Taire called.
“You need to hurry up.”
Taire looked, swore under his breath, and with the wave of a hand he let the wall drop. Staven shivered as the heat disappeared with it. He watched the wave of magic Taire had been using to fuel the fire surge along the tendril on the floor, swelling it and making it surge along the floor towards them. It reached the feet of the scaffolding and latched onto the wood, grasping higher and higher as Taire climbed up ahead of it. It settled, and burned quickly. Staven hopped inside the tunnel. The cat began to yowl and scratched at his neck.
“Everybody move back,” Taire ordered as he joined them in the tunnel. They climbed up the slope, gripping the ropes for support. Taire stood at the entrance, took a deep breath, and braced his hands on the ceiling above his head. The whole tunnel began to shake, and the rock above them started to crumble. Theodora tripped, but kept pushing herself upwards. Staven looked past Taire to the fingers of flame that licked at the top of the scaffolding, and watched one corner of it collapse to the ground before the mouth of the tunnel folded in on itself and plunged them all into darkness.
They emerged from the tunnel stiff with the long climb, but they immediately grabbed their bags and kept walking. Nobody wanted to spend any more time up there than they had to. They made it all the way to the Point before it grew too dark to carry on, barely exchanging more than a few words as they walked, each of them too wrapped up in their own thoughts to make conversation. They slept restlessly, and woke with the dawn.
The next morning, Theodora was the first to speak. She sat staring into the dying embers of their campfire while the other three packed the tent away, and the sun made its first appearance over the horizon. She pulled a roll of paper from the inside pocket of her coat. It looked old. She unfolded it carefully, and stared at it for a few minutes.
“What’s that?” Anneli asked, peering over her shoulder as she fit the remains of her ration kit back into her bag.
“I don’t know,” Theodora admitted. “I took it from where they were working.”
Anneli scooted closer. “Can you read it?” Theodora asked.
“Let’s get going,” Anneli suggested, frowning in concentration. “I’ll have a look at it while we walk.”
They finished packing quickly, and once they’d made their way back around the Point Anneli took the paper and examined it as they went. Staven looked for Taire, to ask him what he knew about Anneli’s magic, but Taire had dropped behind, a deep frown on his face. Staven waited for him to catch up.
“You alright?”
“I… um…” Taire thought for a moment. “Do you think they got out of there?”
“What?”
Taire searched for the right words, and sighed in frustration when he couldn’t find them. “Did I just kill fifty people?” he asked, looking at Staven with such earnestness that whatever humour Staven was going to try to eject into the conversation died on his lips.
“Did the fire keep burning after you closed the tunnel?” he asked, thinking fast.
“Not much. It was only so big because my magic was fuelling it. Without that, they could’ve put it out pretty quickly.”
“Okay, so they could still reach the tunnel. Remember they were down there digging for something. They had the tools. I’m sure they could’ve got it open again in no time.”
“Yeah,” Taire said, unconvincingly. “You’re probably right.” They walked a few more steps in silence. When Staven looked across, Taire’s frown hadn’t moved.
“Hey,” he said, giving Taire a nudge. “You solved the case. You found her.” He pointed to Theodora, deep in conversation with Anneli about a dozen feet ahead of them. A grin slowly replaced the frown on Taire’s face.
“I did, didn’t I?” he said proudly.
“And you helped discover an ancient ruin,” Staven continued. “Your name’s going to be attached to that forever. That’s very cool.”
“That’s amazing,” Taire beamed. The grin spread wider.
“And you were right.”
“I was? About what?”
“About me. I really needed to get out of the house.”
Taire burst out laughing, not unkindly.
“And before you ask, yes, when we get back I will go and see your mother.”
“Thank you!” Taire cried. “She will not stop going on about how you make simply the best tea she’s ever had.”
“What?” Staven gave him a look. “It’s tea. How can anyone make it differently to how I… You know what, never mind. I’ll go over and make her tea.”
Taire bounded across the space between them and wrapped Staven in an awkward, sideways hug that dislodged the cat and almost made them both fall over.
“No, stop it,” Staven protested. “Don’t make it weird.” He tried to push Taire off. Ahead of them, Anneli and Theodora stopped and turned around, wondering what on Earth was going on.
“So my theory,” Anneli declared as they approached the fringes of Ingolst later that day, “is that this is a set of instructions of some kind, to find whatever they were looking for. But not easy ‘turn left at the third dome’ instructions. I think it’s written in code. Or riddles.”
“Does it tell you what they were looking for?” Staven asked.
“Yes, but I don’t recognise the words.”
“We’re going to have to study this in more detail,” Theodora added, “and go back over my research to see if anything recorded from Maerûn bears resemblance to any of this.”
They stepped over the limits of the city, just as the sun was about to dip below the tops of the houses. Staven found it quite surreal to be back among ordinary life after what they’d seen in the last few days.
“My goodness,” Theodora continued, “we really have opened a can of worms with this one, haven’t we?” She looked between the three of them, delighted by the idea.
“We?” Taire spluttered. “We just came to rescue you. You’re the one who did the can-opening.”
“You’re quite right, I do apologise.” She paused again. “Thank you for rescuing me, by the way. I don’t think I’ve said that yet.”
“You’re very welcome, Ms. Peerson,” Anneli said with a smile. “We will need you to come into the Office to give an official statement, although I imagine several people will want to talk to you now, so maybe get a good night’s sleep first.”
But Theodora wasn’t listening. They had rounded the corner that brought to Ingolst’s main street, and she was staring fiercely at a large, black coach emblazoned with a family crest that was parked outside the Investigations Office.
“Oh no,” she grumbled.
“What?”
“That’s my cousin’s.”
“The Royal-Council-Member cousin?” Taire asked nervously.
“The very same.” Theodora looked at them all again. “This is going to get very political.”
The three of them grumbled their displeasure.
“Whatever happens,” Theodora continued, “don’t let him poke his nose around without us. Stick to him like glue. And perhaps let’s keep that to ourselves for now.” She gestured to the paper in Anneli’s hands. She nodded and tucked it away in her coat.
They walked on along the street, a sense of foreboding growing among them.
“Out of curiosity,” Taire murmured to Staven as they drew closer to the Office, “what are you going to do with the cat?”
Staven looked down at it, once again asleep on his shoulder, its tail tickling his ear. “I was thinking about keeping him,” he said. “Although he’s done whatever he likes so far, so that decision is probably up to him.”
Taire nodded slowly, another frown forming. “I still think it’s odd,” he said eventually. “It just showing up like that.”
Staven smiled. “It is a bit,” he agreed, “and for a while I thought he had something to do with all this. But I don’t think so anymore. Sometimes things just happen. I quite like that about life.”
Taire rolled his eyes, and Staven chuckled as he pulled open the door to the Investigations Office. The dingy foyer yawned at them menacingly. He gestured grandly for the others to go through, and followed after them. A cluster of black-clad men lingered in one corner and stared at them as a unit as they walked across the echoing floor. Theodora gave them a little wave.
The front door clicked softly shut behind them.
Written by Jeni Meadows
Jeni's professional life involves customer service and office management at a local charity in Lancaster. When she's not doing that, she's organising the practicalities for a small theatre company, writing a series of increasingly complicated novels, or she's trying to learn sign language. Or she's playing video games to procrastinate doing any of the above.