Chapter 1

The prophet was essentially a man of the future: he did not live in the past, the past lived in him. Hyman Enelow

The fearful braying of trumpets across the city was giving Borner a headache. After a long night of chilling anticipation, the Cormoran army had decided to finish their siege of Andamathea in the darkness just before the dawn. The sky was lit with their flaming balls of death launched from catapults outside the city walls. Borner rubbed his bleary eyes wondering why the trumpets had to blare when every damn fool behind the walls knew the end was upon them. After besieging the city for three weeks and cutting off all access, Borner and rest of the city had been waiting for the death knell. The only question had been whether sickness and starvation did them in first.

Dawn broke across the sky. Standing on the parapet of the ancient temple, Borner watched the first city wall crumble. The brick and masonry fell inwards on the unfortunate houses in front of it. Stones that had withstood weather and threat for centuries heaved over on their sides. The screams began to reach him, rattling what little calm he had left. He watched as the hordes in their blackened leather armor poured through the breach. The resistance was strong and resolute to be sure, but Borner was keenly aware of the ten thousand troops that were stationed outside with their armor and their rage.

He took the solitary messenger pigeon from the cage and tied his last communication to its leg. There was one remaining retreat in the Westerlies Mountains although it was not self-sustaining; it was more a summering roost. Borner had to tell someone though, and there was nowhere else to send. He released the bird and watched it fly away safely in the rising dawn. He was envious.

Borner had read all the reports that had come to him. Brothers and sisters who escaped the towns and cities engulfed in the Cormoran conquest wrote at length of the rape and slaughter of the defenseless. Worse, the temples of Arimas were singled out for particular persecution; the captured brothers and sisters were sources of gruesome entertainments that could last days in the public square. Their half dead bodies would be wrapped in sodden parchments of the holy scrolls and slowly burnt to death on pyres. Why the Cormoran hated the people of Arimas with thorough excess was an unanswered question, one that would not be answered today.

A fireball fell in the courtyard with a ferocious explosion. The building shook.

Borner turned on his heel and made for the stairs. He had stripped the few elderly brothers and sisters who had not escaped earlier of their distinctive clothes, sending them into hiding in every corner of the city. There was no place left to flee. Perhaps they would survive the onslaught and continue living as slaves to the Cormoran. The symbols of the Mystery burned into their limbs were impossible to hide, though. Maybe the children would survive but none with the knowledge of the Mystery that the prophet Arimas brought to the world.

At the bottom of the stairs, he darted through a side door into the sanctuary and made for the altar. Bracing himself, he shifted one of the large stones hidden from sight by the massive carved lectern and grasped the ladder underneath, climbing down. As soon as his head was clear, he seized the metal anchor on the underside of the floor stone and slid the shaped rock back into place. Taking a moment to light the taper that was in his robe, Borner then grabbed the thick piece of lumber that rested on metal brackets and slid it across, blocking the metal anchor from moving.

The ladder always surprised Borner, being taller than he expected. On the floor of the hidden basement, he retrieved his travel sack and his travel clothes, lying at the foot of the ladder. He threw off his master’s robe and sandals, probably for the last time. He was the last master of the last temple of Arimas, and these were his final acts; there would be no more rites or rituals. Another fireball landing thundered over his head.

Hastily he tied the laces of his journey boots and slung the bag over his shoulder. His metal shod juntu staff was in his right hand and the candle was in his left. To his right was a small storeroom that, as far as he knew, housed the only surviving copy of the Scrolls of the Mystery, in sealed ceramic jars. He left them where they lay and walked onward towards the promised passage hinted in one brief line in the earliest records of the building. The warning in the ancient parchment of mixed Bodi script and early block print was clear, only one master would be permitted to pass through the perilous passage.

The ancient hidden way was paved with stone, but piles of dirt accumulated over the centuries made his walk unsteady. Borner had never traveled far down the path before. An explosion rumbled over his head and falling dirt sparkled in the glow of his candle.

Water had accumulated into a foul pool. Borner had no choice but to step through the stinking black mess which came up and over his ankles. Something thick brushed his left boot and he leapt to the other side, bruising his head against the stone roof as he did so.

He walked too far in near darkness to retain a sense of time although he was sure that hours had passed. He was down to the last of his last candle. The path suddenly turned right, and descending steps appeared. What choice did he have? He climbed down, counting each step as he went: 10, 20, 50, 75, 112, 213. He stepped out onto a ledge of uneven rock. His candle was near its end although a red glow from somewhere down below broke the darkness from which he emerged.

Borner had expected to pop out of a crypt in the graveyard or perhaps from the floor of a forgotten granary. Nothing in the writings had prepared him for such a journey into the depths, into the furnaces of Hell, if the folktales were to be believed. He was not a superstitious man by nature but circumstances being what they were, he wished mightily that he had never heard such horrors.

He stopped himself with a bark of derision deep in his throat. His land, the land of his ancestors, lay in ruins. His people were being slaughtered or shackled. All that he had once believed in, all that he had built was a smoking ruin. Knowledge of Arimas’s existence was extinguished. He was already in Hell, his whole being consumed and turned to ash even though the lungs still blew and the heart still beat. His body could still feel pain, but his spirit was already decimated.

This rock passage was ... this was another, unexpected page of the Mystery if he were to use the language of Arimas. Borner had traveled a long way and further down into the earth to bury his body than he had anticipated. Curiosity prodded him to continue.

His candle flickered wildly and then died with a spurt of hot wax. Borner threw the scorching remnants into the near darkness muttering that he would have reddened splotches where the wax had dripped. As his eyes adjusted to the reddish glow, he spied a path leading to his left, a switchback, if he had to guess.