The Pillar Fields

The one detail Chestin had omitted from his description was that the pillars in the pillar field were lumi reservoirs. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a very important detail but it still caught Sari off guard. She’d never seen so much power in one place before.

The pillar fields were more than just a room or a chamber. Even with the multihued light coming from the mass of lumi pulsing through the room it was impossible to see the ceiling overhead. It was even conceivable that there was no roof to the cavern. Under normal circumstances this much lumi exposed to the open air would be swarming with creatures from the ninth sphere. The pillar fields were already under a swarm of their own.

When Chestin said the great eyes roosted there Sari had assumed he meant like birds roosted on a nest. Perhaps one or at most two of them would perch there, watching. The truth was they roosted more like bats, with five or six of them clinging to a pillar or moving from one to another at any given moment. Then again, from the look on his face Chestin was just as surprised by the quantity of eyes swarming the field as she was.

He kept his peace, though, carefully and quietly slipping from one pillar to another, trying to time his movements with those of creatures moving from pillar to pillar. This put him in the shadow of the creature, making him stand out less in the brightly illuminated field. It was questionable how much that did to hide him from view. There were so many of the giant eyes moving about on their rubbery arms at any moment that at least one or two had to be looking at them at any given time.

However, the amethyst eye that passed them on the stairway had ignored them. Maybe these eyes were willing to do the same so long as they didn’t do anything that alarmed them. So Sari tweaked her veil, kept her head down and carefully matched Chestin’s movements.

The pillars were laid out by color. A row of ocher pillars began to the left and proceeded to the right in the typical order, running through crimson to topaz before repeating themselves again. A dozen rows in total. Most of the rooms she’d seen in the perils so far had been symmetrical so it seemed logical to assume there were one hundred and forty four pillars in total, arranged in a grid. They were sneaking down the aisle between the topaz and verdant rows near the center.

For about fifteen minutes they were safe. Thanks to Chestin’s leading they had crossed between five of the pillars safely, moving individually in the shadows of great eyes overhead. A small structure shaped like a box with four smaller pillars of alternating topaz and crimson lumi built into either side of it stood in the middle of the pillars maybe fifty feet away. A round opening led into the interior. Presumably that was the Child’s temple.

The three of them were gathered, watching the eyes overhead for a chance to cross to the next pillar when she heard Trick suck in a breath. He pointed up towards the verdant pillar to their right. Sari followed his hand up towards an eye that was leaning out across the row, not reaching towards the next verdant pillar but towards the cobalt pillar in the adjacent row. On the opposite side of the aisle another of the giant creatures was also reaching.

It was reaching towards the verdant eye with a mangled, damaged arm that the verdant eye was busy healing with the illumination from its eye.

“Right,” Chestin muttered. “It’s not that far now. When I say it, run. No weapons. No wards. Just haste.”

Sari and Trick made quiet sounds of agreement.

“Get ready.” He took a few deep breaths and braced himself. “Now run.”

The three of them took off at a sprint, breaking from the shadows of the creatures overhead and tearing down the aisle towards the temple as fast as they could go. Their slapping footsteps echoed loudly on the hard ground of the field. It wasn’t that far to go but it was far enough. The eyes took note.

The first sign the eyes saw them wasn’t a roar or a howl. Nor did the creatures drop down off their pillars to confront the trio. They just scoured the ground around them with blinding beams of topaz light, blasts of terrifying power that swept back and forth across the floor in an incredible expenditure of lumi.

One of them swept over Chestin as he ran and the leg it touched went limp. Trick slid to a stop, grabbed one of the other man’s arms and kept him upright, wrapping the limb around his waist and gripping the other’s shoulders to half support, half drag him towards the temple. Another beam swept over Sari’s shoulder.

For a brief second she thought she heard voices echoing in the distance. Maybe it was her imagination. Then again, topaz lumi had the power to effect thoughts and feelings if properly crafted so perhaps it was just because the beam had grazed her ear. Either way, she didn’t let it slow her down.

They kept moving towards the round portal into the temple, a sudden blast of frigid cold nipping at their heels. The wounded cobalt eye was leaping from pillar to pillar, firing blasts at them as it jockeyed to line up shots around the other pillars. The sudden flurry of action confused many of the other eyes that rose up on their pillars and began moving back and forth. As the chaos spread they covered the last few feet and dove through the temple’s door.

The inside was much more cramped than Sari had expected. When she thought of temples she thought of something like Harbek’s armillary. A huge, open place dedicated to the glory of the stars. Instead, she found herself in a cramped hallway running between racks of crystals.

At first she thought this was yet more topaz or crimson lumi, doing whatever it was that the Child Eternal demanded of it. Then she realized these crystals weren’t suited to serving as reservoirs. Instead of the long, clear hexagonal or octagonal shapes that made good lumi crystals these were blocky, square and cloudy. Instead, yellow light pulsed through the racks themselves, moving from the temple walls towards the center.

As Sari stared around at the room Trick was staring at her. “What happened to your hair?”

“What?” She fumbled with her braid until she pulled it around to get a good look at it. Her hair gleamed with some kind of fading luminescence that startled her so badly she flung it out of her hands. The braid swung around her back and whacked her on her opposite side. “What happened?”

“I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I saw,” Chestin said, shaking off Trick and testing his leg to see if it would support his weight. When it did he looked at Sari. “One of the topaz eyes hit your head with a bolt of topaz lumi and it looked almost as if your hair absorbed it. The light is fading now but I think your hair was acting as a reservoir for it.”

“You didn’t know it could do that before?” Trick asked, astonished.

“It can’t,” she replied, grabbing her braid again and working the hair between her fingers. “I’ve handled topaz lumi in a dozen different forms and it’s never done anything to my hair before.”

“But did you intentionally expose your hair to it?”

“No…”

“Get away from the door,” Chestin said.

Confused, Sari turned to look back and started when she realized an enormous cobalt eye was watching them with malevolent intent through the open portal. “Good idea.”

They moved towards the center of the temple and as they went they heard a voice speaking quietly and plaintively from within. A strange look came over Trick’s face. “Chestin…”

“Do you hear that?” The lensman had a stricken look on his face. “Do you understand it?”

Trick took a deep breath and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Sari focused on the voice, trying to make out its words but finding them to be meaningless gibberish. Yet there was a needy, demanding tone to the words that tugged at her. It needed something, she just didn’t know what. No wonder Chestin had been so obsessed with it.

“What is it saying?” From his expression, he was eager to finally have the mystery explained to him.

Yet Trick looked regretful. “Attention, attention. User input required.” He sighed. “That’s not a child, Chestin. It’s a computer.”