‘I can shield us from scrying and other arcane detection,’ said Macros.
‘And I will ensure we are not seen,’ said Pug.
A brief discussion of how they would manage this feat was followed by the two older magicians chanting their spells, and then Magnus began his.
Soon everyone was invisible but voices out of thin air indicated that the three servants were unable to endure the experience silently. Pug realized it must be an unnerving experience for them to feel themselves picked up by invisible forces and be suspended above the ground.
Magnus directed them to where Macros had indicated the best route lay, and they began to speed over the city. Pug found looking down exhilarating, as much for the novelty as for the view; he couldn’t remember the last time he had flown without having to employ his own abilities. He didn’t much care for the experience, as it always left him fatigued and with a mild headache. But this time his son was doing all the work, and he was free simply to enjoy the journey. Macros had a harder task: concentrating on discovering any scrying magic and counteracting it as quickly as possible, but with Pug’s spell for rendering them invisible now in place, he had no work left to do.
The scene below again drove home to Pug just how alien the Dasati were. He had called many places on both Midkemia and Kelewan home, and had visited a dozen worlds containing intelligent beings exotic in both appearance and nature, but the strangest race he had so far encountered looked like family compared to these people.
The city stretched on for miles in all directions. Pug couldn’t begin to imagine the labour required to build these … he couldn’t call them buildings, for every single one was interconnected, all appearing to be of a piece. He was certain that sections have been added over centuries, but in such a way as to make everything appear seamless, integrated, without boundary. Completely lacking were the endless varieties of design found in even the most homogeneous culture – the Tsurani, whose city buildings were almost all uniformly painted white, indulged in a vast variety of murals and good luck symbols. But here … everywhere the eye travelled there were edifices of stone, dark grey blackened doorways which were almost perfectly uniformed, the only relief being a play of subtle energies throughout the stone that would have been invisible to the human eye. If you looked more closely you would find scintillating hot reds and deep vibrating purples and plays of gleaming sparkles that looked like tiny gleaming reflections of sunlight on mother-of-pearl, glimpsed for a moment, then fading. Pug thought that such touches would have been beautiful if they were not adorning such grim surroundings. Other than that, the Dasati architecture was very formalized. There were six windows set between each doorway, with a tunnel into the heart of the building every four doorways. Above the street, each storey had a landing and a balconied walkway, the design was repeated over and over. The monotony was disrupted only by vast interconnecting walls that had broad boulevards upon their spines, highways hundreds of feet above the ground upon the which much of the travel and commerce of Dasati society depended.
Amongst the buildings were areas of open plaza or parkland. Each open space, be it parkland, hunting range, agricultural raion, or market-place, was miles long on each side. But even these, Pug could observe as they rose higher, were uniform in placement and design.
Aloud he said, ‘The Dasati lack originality.’
‘Not entirely,’ said Macros, ‘but they do have a decided tendency to stick with something once they judge it to be useful. As densely packed as the population can be towards the city centre, these arrangements of parklands and agricultural districts provide an efficient system of getting goods to market.
‘The only different environment to be seen is along the shores of the oceans. The sea is far less amenable to being formed than the land, so compromises had to be made. Yet even in the coastal cities the attempt to replicate this design is evident. They have bridges and networks of vast rafts, even pilings driven deep into the sea bottom just so that they can do this.’
‘Why?’ asked Nakor. ‘I appreciate a good design as well as any man, but one must accommodate to changing circumstances.’
‘Not the Dasati,’ said Magnus. ‘If the design doesn’t fit the circumstances they change the circumstances.’
Pug was surprised at how relaxed his son sounded. He knew that had he been transporting everyone he would not have been so relaxed. Magnus was just coming into his power still relatively young as magicians went, and already there were things he was capable of that would be difficult for both his mother and father.
Pug’s mind returned to that terrible day, so many years before, when he had stood before Lims-Kragma, after his foolish attempt to overpower the demon Jakan, and the horrifying choice he had been given. He would do what needed to be done, return to the living to finish the tasks an unkind fate and the gods had put before him, but in exchange for that respite from death he would have to pay a price. He would have to watch everyone he loved die before him.
When those of advancing age died it was hard enough. He recalled losing his first teacher, Kulgan, Father Tully, later Prince Arutha and his good friend Laurie. The untimely deaths were more difficult to accept than those lost in war to a capricious fate. But nothing had prepared him to anticipate the loss of his children before their time. He had already lost two: William, who had died on the walls of Krondor before the onslaught of the Emerald Queen’s army, and his adopted daughter Gamina, lost in the same struggle with her husband, Lord James. Yet both of them had led full lives, Gamina having come to know her grandchildren.
Pug considered ruefully that he had distant family, people he hardly knew. His great-grandchildren, Jimmy and Dash, had fathered children and Pug wondered for a bitter moment if they too would be lost before him.
His reverie was broken by Nakor asking, ‘What is that?’
It took only seconds for Pug to see what ‘that’ was. In the distance, against the rising sun, a black tower of something that resembled smoke rose up, but as they approached Pug could see that it wasn’t smoke. It was an energy of some kind, and it while it was wispy and smoke-like it was not rising but rather being drawn downwards.
‘We must move now,’ came Macros’s voice.
‘What is it?’ Nakor asked again.
‘The Temple of the Black Heart,’ said Macros. ‘The holiest of holies on this world. It is the entrance to the domain of the Dark God.’
‘What are those energies?’ asked Pug.
‘Life,’ said Macros. ‘Given your unusual perspective in this realm, you can see it, as can I, but to the average Dasati, even to the Deathpriests and Hierophants, the air above the temple is clear. You are seeing the life essence of thousands of the dying rushing to that monstrous entity. It is feeding on them. It is growing stronger.’
‘To what end?’ asked Magnus.
‘That we must find out,’ said Macros. ‘Move us to the right, in line with that flickering light to the south-east. It is a lake within the next raion and beyond that lies the Grove of Delmat-Ama. It is there we shall begin to gather information and assess what has occurred, and see if we can make some sense of this insanity.’
Pug remained silent, but he wondered if sense could ever be made from insanity. Thinking of that, he wondered how went the hunt for Leso Varen on Kelewan, and for a brief moment he ached to hear from Miranda and wondered if he would ever hear from her again. Pushing aside such black musings, he turned his attention to keeping them invisible from the thousands of Dasati hiding below.
They sped along in the direction Macros had indicated, until they were again over a series of parks and temples. The parks were almost always on lower rooftops, merely four or five storeys above the ground, not on top of the highest blocks of structures. If there was a single building in the centre, with high-peaked steeples and turreted towers, that would be a temple to His Darkness.
These parks had been