The World of Shannara Page 7

  The king himself was carried through the far doors of the Tomb, to the Assembly, where his body was placed on the stone altar, the Pyre of the Dead, before the reflecting pool. The priests performed the necessary rituals, then left the body to be guarded by the great serpent of the pool, Valg. The king’s body would lie in state on this stone altar for a certain number of days, the number determined by his rank and station. During this time, his soul would be judged. If the soul was found worthy, the spirit would free itself of its mortal shell to journey on to the afterlife and the body was preserved so that the spirit might make use of it in the next life. If the soul was unworthy, the dragon Valg devoured the body so the soul would never be free. The spirit was then dammed to eternity in the land of the lost.

  At the end of the required period of mourning the body of one found worthy would be interred in the Tomb of Kings in a vault set into the rotunda wall, which was carved with the ruler’s name and a song of his deeds. A statue prepared by artisans during the period of mourning would be placed before the vault, facing the center of the great rotunda. The statue may have served as a second home for the spirit in the afterlife. The treasures and possessions of the ruler, now deadly to living tissue, were placed at the foot of the statue so that the deceased could have access to his most prized personal possessions in the afterlife. In their time, the ruler’s family would be interred near him, though only those who were themselves kings would have a statue to mark their graves.

  It was believed that so long as his body and treasures were protected on this plane, the king and his family would have full use of them in the afterlife. He was expected to continue his reign among the subjects of the netherworld.

  The Druid historians believe the hall was built sometime between the Great Wars and the First War of the Races, probably during the first thousand years. At that time, the magic unleashed during the final cataclysms was still strong in the land. Civilization was sparse and consisted primarily of many small warring kingdoms. The priests who built the Hall of Kings and controlled it served a pantheon of ancient gods of death. The names of those gods have been lost along with those of the kingdoms whose royalty was interred here. But the magical creatures they unleashed to protect the tomb, ancient and powerful creatures from the time of Faerie, survived their masters and are still very much alive. Because the priests were able to harness these creatures, it has been suggested that they may have been early Druids, or at least men who had the use of the magic in a fashion similar to that of the first Druids. Whoever they were, very little remains except their temple and the deadly guardians within.

  Built within an existing series of ancient caverns, the hall was designed to make use of the naturally winding pathways of the caverns to protect the dead and confuse the living. The largest rooms were utilized for the tomb itself, and to house the creatures that guarded the dead. The original system of caverns is the largest cavern known to exist within the Four Lands. While no one is certain of the exact size of the complex, it probably covers at least fifteen square miles, and it is suspected to contain over fifty miles of passageways on various levels.

  To ensure that the dead would travel safely to the afterlife with all their possessions intact, the builders placed their magical creatures along the passageways in a series of deadly traps designed to kill anything that entered. These ancient priests wanted to be certain that the world of the living and that of the dead stayed clearly separated. Since the time of the War of the Races, only a few have dared venture within. The survivors are alive only because they were protected by strong Druid magic. For anyone else, to enter the Hall of Kings is to embrace certain death. Even for the Druids, it presents a severe test of strength and will.

  The Druids discovered the existence of the hall sometime during the period in which the first Druid Council was in place, and they attempted to explore and map it. There is no record of how many lives were lost during that first expedition, but the numbers were high enough to cause the Druids to bar their own order from further explorations. After the ban, only those with great strength of will and magic ever dared to pass into the cavern. At least one of those early Druids survived long enough to learn of the dangers and create a few rudimentary maps. These maps are kept hidden within the pages of the Druid Histories to prevent casual discovery.

  The great Druid Allanon survived the passage at least twice, though only the latter expedition has been documented. The only non-Druids known to have survived passage through the caverns were the five men who were part of that famous expedition. They were there not to explore the hall or partake of the treasure, but simply to find safe passage through the mountains that were otherwise blocked by the Warlock Lord’s armies. Since that time, only one other man is known to have survived a journey to the Hall of Kings: Walker Boh, who later became a Druid. He did not survive unscathed, however, paying for his passage with the loss of his arm.

  The entrance to the hall leads to a maze of winding passageways and chambers. The purpose of most of these chambers has never been discerned. It is likely that many of them are living quarters for the priests and their retinues. Due to the dangers involved, even the Druids are unwilling to study them for further clues.

  Most of the walls are of rough stone carved out over millennia by water seepage, but the floors have been smoothed of all irregularities by human hands. In some cases, the floors appear to have been covered with a coating of sand or fine stone dust.

  Approximately a half-mile or so along one of the passageways lies the first major room of the cavern, the Cave of the Sphinxes, and the first major hazard, the Sphinxes themselves. There are no accurate descriptions of the Cave or the amazing living statues that inhabit it. Any who have looked upon its denizens have been turned to stone by the mere sight. As a result, scholars have had to depend on other clues provided by blindfolded survivors or the visions provided by Druid magic to determine the details of the room. The chamber is known to be quite large, as it generates substantial echoes, and measures at least 150 yards across at the point where the pathway passes through it.

  According to Druid records, the Sphinxes within the room are creatures that predate the Great Wars, and they may even predate human existence on this world. They do not have the attributes of living beings at all, but appear to be carved from solid stone, much like the warriors that stand as sentries at the cavern entrance. The Sphinxes are huge, probably in excess of a hundred feet tall, with great beastly bodies topped by human heads and faces. Still as the stone of which they are carved, they do not kill by physically attacking their victim. They do not move at all, but instead compel their victims to look upon them by the sheer overwhelming force of their will. This force is great enough that men of strong purpose, even Druids, have admitted that the compulsion completely superseded all rational thought. Those who were prevented from looking up by blindfolds or who were protected by magic reported that the images sent into their minds were as vivid as reality.

  Walker Boh wrote of his own near-fatal journey: “My eyes were well covered, but within my mind I could see the great Sphinxes towering over me, wondrous in their terrible beauty—older than time and all powerful. I could feel their burning red gaze boring into me, as if my eyes were open and my spells were for naught. Their voices called out to me, demanding that I pay homage to their glory with an insistence that was almost physical—I who was a mere mortal and unworthy of their presence.”

  The power of the compulsion is only a lure for the real power of the Sphinx: its deadly gaze. If a victim glances up at them, even for an instant, he or she is immediately turned to stone. The Druids claim that there are at least a hundred unfortunate statues standing along the path, lured by tales of the treasures that were buried here, only to be frozen in stone, forever paying homage to the glory of the Sphinx.

  Beyond the cave, the passageway narrows, twisting and turning back on itself as it winds downwards into the rock. Some sections of the tunnel are natural, while others appear to have be
en hollowed out with tools. The rough stone walls of this tunnel emit a greenish phosphorescence, possibly caused by bioluminous animals, or by residual magic. The glow is bright enough to allow passage over the smooth floor without torches, though not enough to make out detail. This phenomenon may be a recurring natural effect, and is found throughout the cavern system. The eerie luminescence continues within the corridor for a little over a mile, then abruptly fades at a bend in the passage. At this point, the tunnel walls and ceiling recede into uninterrupted darkness, heralding the next major room in the cavern system, the Corridor of the Winds. Within this chamber, the darkness is so encompassing that the brightest of torches cannot reach either walls or ceiling. All accounts of the room reported that torches are always extinguished soon after entering the vast room by sudden winds that scream out of nowhere, wailing with the voices of lost and tortured souls. In each case, the travelers were left in oppressive darkness. Shea Ohmsford wrote: “As with the Sphinxes’ domain, only the floor was real and certain. But this darkness was all the more terrifying because this time my eyes were wide open and straining, and the winds seemed to tear at me as if they were alive.”

  Asphinx

  Believed to be the most deadly snake in the world, the Asphinx is not really a snake at all, but a creature from the age of Faerie. It has the body and outward appearance of an asp, but it is more closely related to its cousins, the Sphinxes. Like the asp, it hides, tightly coiled, in small hidden spaces until disturbed, and then it uses its considerable speed to strike at its victim and bury its fangs within the victim’s flesh. Like the Sphinx, its weapon is its ability to turn its victims to stone.

  The Sphinx is unaffected by the use of its magic, but the Asphinx can strike only once—the release of venom turns both the snake and its victim to stone. For the snake, the transformation is instantaneous; for the victim, it is a slow and painful process that can take anywhere from a few hours to several days, depending upon the strength of the victim. The horror is compounded by the fact that the Asphinx fuses its body to both the victim and its resting place at the moment of transformation, effectively trapping the victim in place while the poison works. The victim suffers fever and chills, nausea, and extreme pain while watching his or her body slowly change to stone. Mercifully, the victim usually lapses into unconsciousness and then dies long before the entire body transforms.

  The poison cannot be countered by most known forms of medicine or magic. Amputation of the affected limb may slow the process and allow the victim to gain freedom, but it will not stop the process. The poison infiltrates the entire body on contact. Druid magic or medicinal compounds also serve only to postpone the inevitable. Walker Boh is the sole person known to have survived the bite of an Asphinx, but only through both amputation and the intervention of a powerful Faerie elemental. The remains of his arm still lie within the Tomb of Kings, locked within the embrace of the Asphinx.

  It is believed that the Stone King placed the snake that bit Walker within the hidden recess in an attempt to cover the fact that he had stolen the Black Elfstone originally placed there by the Druids for safekeeping. The priests of the death gods probably used the deadly creatures as guardians in other areas of the hall from which this one was transplanted. Unlike mortal snakes, the Asphinx does not require food or water, and it is content to remain within the area it is set to guard until something disturbs it and triggers its deadly attack.

  These winds are the corridor’s namesake, but they are much more than wind—they are the voices of the Banshees, invisible creatures named after the legendary harbingers of death. They cry of damnation and torturous death until those who cannot escape their screams are driven insane. The Banshees’ only weapon is their voices, but the danger is quite deadly, for once driven mad, the victim becomes lost in the darkness and is then easy prey for the many other deadly creatures within the caverns. Some have written that the voices were accompanied by crazed flashes of colored lightning that blinded, but which illuminated nothing. Some have said that the cavern itself rumbled and shivered with the sound as if from a quake.

  The Corridor of Winds is not really a corridor at all, but a huge room. Even the Druids do not know its true size. Some suspect that it may even be partially within another dimension—that of the tortured dead themselves. If true, the feeling of being lost in an infinity of darkness may be an accurate representation of reality, and the screams may well be the voices of the dead crying out their agony at feeling the living so close at hand. Others believe that the room is probably of fairly standard size, but that the magic of the Banshees so affects the minds of those within its influence that they cannot perceive anything save what is presented by the magic. In either case, the effect is limited to the area within the corridor.

  Beyond the corridor, the winds and the cries fade to silence as the cavern narrows into a smooth passageway approximately forty to fifty feet in diameter. The green phosphorescence seen in the earlier passage is also evident on these walls, though this passage is believed to have been carved out of the rock by the builders of the hall, as it is smooth and shows none of the natural edges and formations of some of the higher areas. This cave is the anteroom to the Tomb of Kings, ending at two huge stone doors, the height of the cave.

  These doors are one of the only two sets of actual doors known to exist within the caverns, both of which mark the main burial chamber. The first set marks the entrance to the royal crypt; the other, the passage from the crypt to the final room in the system, the Assembly.

  The doors are intricately carved with runes in the same ancient language as those above the cavern’s main entrance. The runes are said to glow as red as fire, as if the magic burns like embers within each line and curve. The red glow is doubtless quite striking against the green of the walls. Iron bindings and hinges support the huge stone slabs. Despite the tremendous weight of the stone, the doors are balanced so perfectly that even after thousands of years, they open at the lightest touch, swinging easily on their hinges. Whether this is accomplished by a lost feat of engineering or by magic, no one is certain. There is no lock upon the doors. Perhaps magic originally warded the doors and that magic has faded, or perhaps the ancient priests believed that no one would be able to pass the earlier obstacles unless they had a right to enter the tomb.

  The tomb itself consists of a very large circular chamber with recessed crypts built into its smooth walls, each one sealed by a slab of stone carefully fitted into the opening. At first glance it appears to be more a conference chamber than a tomb, for lifelike statues of dead rulers stand at regal attention around the perimeter of the rotunda, each in front of the crypt that bears his or her remains, each facing the altar at the center of the room as if deeply considering some news or philosophy that only the statues can hear. The favored treasures of their lifetime—jewels, furs, weapons, scrolls, and precious metals—lie piled carelessly at their feet, all partially hidden by a thick coating of dust. But though the treasure appears unprotected, it is quite deadly. The priests coated each item with a poison that is lethal to all living things. The potency was probably enhanced by magic. Even now, the slightest touch will cause any would-be thief or admirer to die within a few minutes.

  Behind each statue, the crypts containing the ruler’s remains and those of the ruler’s family and retainers bear inscriptions giving the names and deeds of those within. Above the ruler’s crypt, his or her name is inscribed with the song of deeds below it, listing all the great victories and actions of that ruler, including the manner of death. Scholars believe that the tomb was in use for well over five hundred years. The majority of the inscriptions are written in languages long forgotten, but some are in dialects that are more recent. Most of the rulers depicted have been forgotten outside of this tomb, their names and their nations lost in the long night before the first Druid Council.

  A large stone altar carved in the form of a coiled serpent, an asp with fangs bared, dominates the center of the chamber. The altar is believed
to be a representation of the God of Death and Judgment in his animal form. To many ancient cultures, the serpent was also a symbol of the divine sovereignty of the ruler. The last of the many funeral rites was carried out on this altar at the time of final interment of the body.

  All the earliest recorded descriptions of this room indicate that the ceiling was left in its natural state, containing quartz formations and stalactites. The same green glowing phosphorescence that illuminates the majority of the passageways also illuminated the ceiling within the tomb. A battle during Allanon’s expedition damaged the ceiling, which is now shrouded in darkness. Broken fragments of stone loosened during that battle litter the rotunda floor. The only remaining light now emanates from the upper edge of the walls and the inscriptions on the massive doors at either side of the chamber.

  Only a few yards from the altar, a more recent relic stands as a reminder of the hidden dangers of this place. Protruding from a recessed pocket within the floor is what appears to be the stone sculpture of a man’s arm held in the grip of a coiled snake. But this arm, like the unfortunate statues in the Cave of the Sphinxes, was once flesh and blood. It was within this chamber that Walker Boh sought the Black Elfstone, only to find the Asphinx and very nearly his death. He escaped, but his arm remains as a grisly reminder of the price of arrogance.

  Valg

  Since the dawn of the Four Lands, there have always been legends of dragons. Each of the Races has at least one story of a great serpentlike creature that brought destruction to any who disturbed him. Most people believe these tales were just flights of fancy, but they are in fact remnants of stories about the one the Gnomes called Valg, whose name means “death.” The Druids claim that Valg is older than humanity, having been created in the time of Faerie, before the dawn of the first mortal civilizations. His power is that of the ancient magic, and his loyalty is to unknown masters who long ago abandoned him to his lair beneath the Hall of Kings.