Chapter 44 - The Temple Destroyed
Jonko saw the Ciriot moving along the south balcony towards the Altar Room, as well as a scraping sound. The sound stopped, the armoured form crept up the stairs and looked around. Jonko began to move forward to attack when the figure retreated and the scraping sound began again. A short time later, the figure returned dragging something that scraped and clattered on the stairs. In the small space between the stairs and the first bench, the armoured figure stopped to study the placement of the benches, and to examine the room in detail.
Standing still, Jonko watched the newcomer. The flames on the altar were steady and this lack of flickering seemed to reassure the other, as he bent down and picked up Keleb’s armoured figure. Jonko watched as the figure walked around the stone bench, and was ready to block his way to the Altar, but the figure dropped his burden on the circular tiled mosaic, on the floor in front of the Altar. He stared down at it as blood from Keleb’s bleeding head wound spread onto the design.
Nothing happened. Perhaps this Ciriot had expected something. It jerked around as if savagely angry, leapt easily over the stone bench and stalked down the stairs.
Jonko went immediately to his friend. He did not open his armour, but used the suit sensors to reassure him the Keleb was still alive. He looked around, assessing the safest place to put his friend. He saw the flames on the altar flickering and froze for an instant. Then he saw that some kind of breeze was ruffling Keleb’s hair. A cold tremor raced down Jonko’s spine, and at that moment, he also saw a flicker of light go from the Altar to the blood on the tiles, and then it arced up to Keleb, forming a mauve glow around him. Jonko stood immobile, feeling that the power in the room was stirring. He glanced at the floor, and the blood on the tiled design had gone.
The mauve glow faded, and Jonko found he could move and did so, deciding to put Keleb next to the side wall, out of the way of any future fight. His friend was looking better, and the head wound had stopped seeping blood. For extra protection, Jonko reactivated Keleb’s cloaking field.
Jonko turned his attention back to listening for enemies. He glanced down at the meeting room where Kellex had been fighting. The figure in emerald green lay in a crumpled heap, blood soaking into his robes, turning them brown. His blood was defiling yet another of the tiled mosaics.
Many disjointed facts came to his mind – the Warlord dead on the Temple threshold, where his blood had seeped around the tiles that had a simple leaf and tree design. Decorative, rather than religiously significant. However, the shields preventing entry had failed.
Another Warlord dead in the north chamber and a third on the beam-in mosaic, and now Keleb on the Altar room mosaic and a fourth Warlord on the mosaic below. There were at least two unseen killers – probably more – intent on defiling the mosaics.
What did they expect blood to do? What was the significance of blood on the mosaics? He felt he was on the verge of an answer, but he could not grasp it. Instead, the knowledge that he had to protect the Altar returned to him and he went to stand in the centre of the mosaic there.
Knowing that the enemy were cloaked, he concentrated on using all his senses, particularly those honed by Kryslie when they had worked together on the harvests. He sensed the energies within the Temple. The aura was strong around the Altar, and in a bubble around Keleb. He let his mind sense further away. There was a bubble of strong aura in the nearest Royal suite on the north side.
Jonko felt the stirrings of alarm. He had seen Jordan come out of there…hadn’t he? He recalled the memory. No. The armour had tricked him. In the poor light, he had not realised that the Ciriot armour had not lost its enamelled outer surface. That was a real Ciriot he had seen come out…where was it now?
Another bubble of power two suites down…Pyr. Where was Vila?
Jonko sensed all around the upper level of the Temple, and then on the lower level. He had a sense of ‘dead’ in the antechamber between the stair cases – near the front entrance. The last of the Warlords. Nearby, a sense of someone – flickering between ‘evil’ and Tymorean.
“Vila?” he questioned softly, speaking over the suit com on the Tymorean frequency.
The answer didn’t come immediately. “Yes. Where is Jordan? I can’t find him.”
He was about to tell her, but a sudden premonition made Jonko cautious.
“I have lost communication with him,” he told her. It was the truth. Jordan had been silent since he had entered the first of the Royal suites. That should have alerted him to trouble. “Where are you now?”
“Front entrance. Voltec is here…dead.”
That agreed with what Jonko had sensed. “Be alert. I am sure of at least two Ciriot presences. One may be visible – one isn’t.”
Vila didn’t reply. Jonko continued his mental scan of the lower level. His suit sensors showed the Ciriot trails – more of them than before. His own extra senses warned him of the evil down there. He steadied his mind and concentrated. Four evil presences waited near Kellex’s body, one was near the front entrance, one was going down the north stairway.
A voice over the suit comm. startled him.
“Jon?”
“Kel?” Jonko turned to look where he had placed his friend. He heard a soft scuffle as if someone was standing up. “Can you fight?”
“Yes,” Keleb hissed. “I don’t have my weapons, but I don’t need them. Kryslie taught me, remember? And I have a score to settle with Kek. He is the one that got me. He had a star blade. I think that is what hit me.”
“I saw him bring you here. I think he expected your blood on the mural to do something. However, the rest of the Ciriot are cloaked.”
“I used a low range EM pulse,” Keleb said tersely. “I got tired of fighting shadows. Where are the others? Vila went to help Pyr.”
Jonko quickly checked again and interpreted what he sensed. “Jordan is heading down to the meeting room. Vila must have told him she was there. There are five Ciriot down there. Pyr is coming around the balcony – this way.”
“I will go and meet him – bring him back here,” Keleb offered.
Keleb warned Jonko when he was returning, he and Pyr were both cloaked.
“Where are Jordan and Vila?” Pyr wanted to know. His voice was not loud, even over the suit comm. Jonko told him what he knew, and Pyr went to look down into the meeting area.
Jordan was down on the lower level, and he was cautiously approaching Kellex’s body. He knew he was in dangerously open ground, and there were many alcoves from which he could be being watched. He didn’t seem to hear Jonko’s warning. His suit comm. may have been damaged.
Kek came from the side passage, and was on his victim so quickly that Jordan only had microseconds to react. The reflexes of one gifted with Tymorean power saved him. He spun around to defend himself and to try to kill the Ciriot spy.
Up in the altar room, Pyr asked, “Where is Vila? Why doesn’t she go and help him?”
“Pyr, Vila might be being controlled by the Ciriot. She was their prisoner for a long while…”
“NO! Never! She would never betray Jordan, or me.”
Scuffling sounds betrayed Pyr’s dash around the stone bench to the stairs. Keleb cursed, as he recovered his balance after being shoved by Pyr.
“Pyr, I’ll go,” Keleb offered, but the boy probably didn’t hear his unamplified voice.
Jonko flicked open his visor. “Go after him, Kel.”
Jonko controlled his fears. He had doubts that Jordan would be able to defeat Kek, even with help. Pyr was a child without any real fighting experience, and Keleb was unarmed.
He felt more hope when he heard Keleb’s voice on the suit comm. “I found my weapons and helmet. Kek is overconfident. And I think Pyr took a weapon from one of the dead Warlords.”
He needed all the hope he could get, but Jordan was fighting, and being pushed to his limits. He showed flashes of Tymorean power, but none were sustained. Kek was scoring on Jordan more often than the reverse.
His sense of where the Ciriot were told him that the other five ‘evil’ presences were simply watching the fight. Two watched from within the side passage, hidden by one of the archway pillars. The other three were in the meeting area, invisible and keeping out of range of the fight – until an energy burst nearly struck Kek. Then those three began to separate, as if looking for the source.
A second energy burst came from another direction, and a short time later a third. Jordan scored twice on Kek, as he was distracted.
“Kel?” Jonko queried through the suit comm.
“Pyr’s trying to divert attention,” Keleb replied tersely. “I’m going for that Aeronite bred, Ciriot spy.”
Jonko warned him of the watchers, but he sensed the Ciriot were not aware of Keleb’s position. They moved further apart, as if seeking.
Before Keleb could begin his attack on Kek’s rear, the three Ciriot became visible, and he only had Jonko’s brief warning to know that he was too.
The Ciriot had no weapons out, they simply trapped Keleb in the small circle between themselves.
Jonko heard, via Keleb’s suit comm., the translated Ciriot voice. “It’s one of the Halflings. The one that our weak creature said he had killed. That is twice it has survived.”
Then Jonko heard an exclamation of agony, followed by muffled curses. “You rotten bastards are not going to get me that way again,” Keleb forced himself to say.
That told Jonko that the Ciriot were trying to overload Keleb’s empathic senses.
Another burst of energy hit the shield of one of the Ciriot. The subsequent conversation in the Ciriot clicking speech was untranslated.
Keleb fell to his knees, hands trying to press on the sides of his helmet. Jonko sensed that one of the Ciriot was standing over him. That one was possibly the source of the mental agony Keleb was trying to shield against. Jonko began one of the meditative chants, speaking in an undertone through the suit comm. and hoping to help Keleb. At the same time, he was trying to locate Pyr and watch the progress of Jordan’s fight. It seemed like Jordan was getting the upper hand.
One of the Ciriot moved quickly towards the edge of the room, just after another beam of energy hit Kek. Jonko paused in his chant to warn Pyr, and he had a glimpse of the boy running past the pillars of the arched side of the walkway. He was running towards where Jonko guessed Vila to be. He had deduced that one of the Ciriot presences he was sensing was Vila. He hoped Pyr’s belief in her was true.
One of the Ciriot still watching the fight between Kek and Jordan, spoke derisively. “How long will it take you to finish that Aeronite foundling?”
Kek, panting, retorted, “This one is stronger than its elders, but mere bravado won’t save it.”
Another voice impinged on Jonko’s suit comm. “I know you are here, spawn of weak minded fools. Do you think you will survive when all of your kind are dead? Show yourself and you can serve us and live.”
There was a Ciriot moving slowly along the back passage, looking into each small sleeping cubicle. Pyr was in the same area and Jonko wanted to help him, but dared not leave the altar room undefended.
A new movement down in the meeting room distracted him. He saw Vila race towards Jordan. For an instant, he thought she was going to help him, but instead, she ran into him, knocking him down. Kek threw her aside, and rapidly thrust his knife into two weak parts of Jordan’s usurped Ciriot armour – behind each knee. Jordan thrashed around, but Kek stepped back and dispassionately watched as Jordan realised he could no longer walk.
Jonko watched in horror, and missed seeing where Vila went. He heard more of the clicking speech, and then Pyr’s voice over the suit comm. “Vila!”
“Are you alright, Pyr?” That was Vila’s voice.
“You have to help Jordan” Pyr told her.
“He’s doing fine,” Vila claimed.
“Vila? What are you doing? Vila!” Pyr’s voice rose in fright. Moments later, Jonko saw a struggling child sized figure being dragged into view. Vila had him in a tight grip, and was surely obeying Ciriot commands.
“Is that all of them?” a translated Ciriot voice demanded.
“No, there is one more of them – in the altar room, upstairs,” Vila revealed, unable to lie to her new master.
There was more of the clicking speech, and two of the Ciriot pointed – one at the stained glass mural at the front of the Temple, the other at Jonko’s position.
They would be coming to the Altar room now, Jonko knew, but what did that glass mural mean to them?
Images of dead Warlords, with their blood defiling the tiled floor murals returned to his mind. Were they just wantonly defiling images that they thought were sacred to the Tymoreans? Trying to defile the Temple?
Kek was staring directly at him now, Jonko realised, and holding weapons taken from Jordan. Behind Kek, unobserved by any of the Ciriot for a moment, Keleb was inching backwards and staring at Vila. He seemed to be daring her to mention the movement. Pyr was still struggling futilely.
Keleb began to speak softly into the suit comm. “Vila, let Pyr go. He doesn’t belong in this. Pyr, when you get free, come to me.”
Vila was staring at Keleb, her face contorted; she flicked a glance at the Ciriot, and saw their attention was elsewhere. Keleb kept speaking softly, calmly, and persuasively. “Vila, I know what they have done to you. This is not your fault, and if you release Pyr, you will be thwarting them, resisting them. You don’t want them to torture him too, do you?”
“You will have to kill me,” Vila spoke back. “You must. I can’t defy them. They control my body. I never wanted to betray you, and my brothers.”
Keleb reached for a weapon, but found again that he had been disarmed. His movement, slight as it was, alerted the Ciriot nearest him. He felt the pressure of that vile mind, trying to dominate him again; trying to overwhelm him again with sensations of death and torture. The alien saw Keleb seem to slump again, but had no idea that Keleb was no longer helpless. He had won the fight to shield his mind.
“Finish that business,” a Ciriot directed Kek, and pointed at Keleb.
Kek drew a knife and approached, thinking Keleb helpless. He wasn’t.
Jonko warned Keleb as Kek began his death stroke. Keleb erupted from his kneeling position, initiating moves that had been well drilled into him. Kek suddenly had another fight on his hands as Keleb spoke into his suit comm.
“Jon, stun Vila. Pyr run in behind me.”
Keleb’s plan was suddenly clear to Jonko. He obeyed his friend’s request, instantly. Vila fell, her body disabled by the stun. Pyr wrenched free, and came to cling to Keleb who ducked an attack from Kek and vanished. Moments later, the pair materialised in the Altar room, and Keleb grabbed Pyr to stop him running back down to the meeting room.
“I’ve got to help Vila and Jordan,” Pyr insisted.
“I only stunned Vila,” Jonko assured Pyr.
“She can’t disobey those monsters,” Keleb continued. “Her mind wants to, but her body can’t. Unconscious, they can’t use her and we have four Ciriot and their traitor, Kek, coming here. We have to stop them desecrating this place.”
Pyr seemed mutinous. Then he let out a howl of denial and twisted from Keleb’s grasp. He went to look down to the lower level. Keleb looked too when he felt the boy’s grief. Vila lay in a pool of her own blood.
“Kel – they are almost here. Two each side,” Jonko warned. There was no time now to grieve. He tossed a weapon to Pyr after the brief warning to ‘catch’. “Kel, have my spare knife.”
Pyr caught the disintegrator, and his face took on a look of determination and he stood straighter.
“Find a place to stand, out of the way,” Jonko told him. “If you stand very still, the power here will hide you. Aim for the armour joints. You will be our secret weapon. They will think, that because they disabled our cloaking fields, that we cannot hide from them. These Ciriot are about to find out the difference between mere Aeronites and true Tymoreans.”
Keleb moved to be ready to defend the north entrance to the altar room, as Jonko was doing for the south. Into the suit comm., he spoke to Jonko, but realising that he didn’t want Pyr to hear what he had to say, he switched to his native Earth English.
“The Ciriot killed Vila. Pyr saw, I think. There is blood spreading over the stones down there.”
“I had hoped they would forget about her,” Jonko admitted. “I had hoped that when Krys and Tymos got here, they could help her.”
“They need to get here soon,” Keleb said. “No matter how good we are - we can’t hold them forever. Those creatures are strong, and well protected.”
“Don’t forget that we can draw on the power here to sustain us,” Jonko countered. “We have to stop them desecrating this place. I don’t know what they are trying to do, but it is something about blood, on the tile murals. They tried by killing the Warlords.”
“Aeronite blood is irrelevant,” Keleb noted.
“And ours. We are commoners,” Jonko added.
They had no more chance to think, both of them suddenly had two opponents.
Pyr spoke on the suit comm., “Where is the other one? He’s got Jordan.”
He got no answer; neither Jonko nor Keleb had any concentration to spare. The Ciriot were deadly fighters, even though these four Ciri Princes usually preferred others to fight for them. Yet, for all their skill, the Princes were too egocentric to fight as a team. This weakness was used against them.
Time lost any meaning as the two defenders fought to keep the Ciriot from entering fully into the Altar chamber. Early in the confrontation, the Ciriot realised that beam weapons were ineffective against the fighting Tymorean furies. Swords and knives were the only weapons that could penetrate the force shields. Their own armour was vulnerable to knives, and to well-aimed bursts of their own disintegrators.
Pyr followed Jonko’s advice, and was effectively invisible. Even when his accurately aimed bursts took away pieces of Ciriot armour, the aliens could not see him to retaliate. Each burst, distracted them from trying to dodge past the defenders.
Jonko and Keleb kept fighting, knowing they were the last defenders, and they were not unscathed. Every blow from their opponent, every knife thrust that hit their armour, felt like solid blows to their flesh. But they doggedly fought on, praying that Tymos and Kryslie and Llaimos would come soon.
The coloured glass window behind the altar shattered with deafening suddenness. Both Jonko and Keleb reacted to the new threat, only for a second, and then Pyr was firing at the figure that was climbing in. He stopped abruptly, realising that the traitor, Kek, was using an unarmoured Jordan as a shield.
Keleb’s momentary distraction had given one of his opponents the opening needed to get past him. He reacted quickly, spinning around and giving that Ciriot a kick to the elbow joint, and an excellent reason to keep his attention on the fight.
Jordan was not a completely helpless victim, even with his legs useless. He was struggling, and making it hard for Kek to hold onto him. Keleb, glancing that way, realised that Jordan’s wounds were no longer bleeding. He hoped that the power in the Temple was healing him.
Jonko’s opponents continued attacking him with single-minded determination. When Kek appeared, they were aware of Jonko’s reaction, but not quick enough to gain advantage. Instead, they began to play their mind games on him.
“You’ve lost. You’ve no hope. Our creature will spill blood on the mural. This place will be despoiled – your so called fortress – the portal through which your cowardly elders fled – will never again open to let them return.”
Jonko resisted the insidious voice, the projected emotion of despair. “You tried that! It didn’t work,” he retorted.
“Aeronite trash and Halfling discards,” the Ciri Prince countered. “Blood like water. But our creature has one with true Royal blood.”
That was true, Jonko realised, succumbing to the terror. He looked over his shoulder towards Kek, heard Pyr’s scream of anger and outrage. His opponents overpowered him.
Kek had Jordan prone on the mural, about to thrust his knife into the Tymorean’s heart. Keleb was still fighting, but as he turned and tried to make a dive for Kek and his weapon, his opponents grabbed him.
The light in the Altar chamber began to grow in intensity. Jonko tore his eyes from the suddenly still Kek, and looked at the light, seeming to hover above the altar. Vaguely, he could make out three figures, beginning to materialise. His mind yelled, “Krys, Tym, Llaimos…HURRY!”
The Ciriot saw the figures too, and all four drew their disintegrators and fired at the energy outlines, even as they held their struggling captives.
Kek’s poised knife vanished in a fifth disintegrating beam; he tossed the useless hilt aside and drew another.
A Ciri Prince spoke urgently, and his translator box issued, “Hurry, kill him now! On the Altar ! The Altar! Not the picture!”
Jonko increased his desperate struggles. He could no longer see the three shapes in the light, or feel the nearness of his friends. Pyr became visible, scrambling from his position atop one of the stone benches, to throw himself at Kek. He jumped, landing on Kek’s shoulders, but he might as well have been a rag cloak. Kek reached behind him, plucked the boy from his shoulders and tossed him aside. He did not stop dragging Jordan to the Altar.
Before Pyr could launch himself again, Kek had tossed Jordan onto the marble-topped stone. Jordan was unconscious now.
Jonko and Keleb drew on the power around them, broke free and tried to reach Kek, to stop him. They failed. Blood spurted onto the white marble.
It seemed in that moment, that the very air within the Temple solidified. The sudden silence seemed louder than the noise made by the Ciriot tossing their prisoners aside.
“You precious Tymoreans are finished,” one Ciri Prince claimed loudly. He began to make an awful clacking sound, as he grabbed Jonko’s helmet and yanked it off. “You failed. It doesn’t even matter if we kill you or not – you can’t stop us now. We will become masters of all worlds.”
In spite of the crushing sense of failure, Jonko still resisted. He didn’t want to think that Tymos, and Kryslie had been destroyed, but he forced that thought aside. Some perverse part of his human heritage wanted to spoil the Ciriot victory. “You haven’t killed all the Tymoreans. The cities are safe.”
“A momentary situation. We will have those commoners as slaves.”
“The animals are safe,” Keleb added. His helmet had also been yanked off.
“We do not need vermin for food. When we destroy the protections, they will die. This world is polluted beyond recovery. Your own fault for hiding the treasures from us. You last puny specimens will not outlast the thousand or so years that it will take for the poisons to break up.”
Pyr pushed himself up to stand and added his own defiance. “You will die here too, you cowards. You let all of the other Ciriot, the ones that served you and expected your protection, you let them die. But none of you can leave either. There is a shield around this world – like that around the cities.”
He drew the attention of all four Ciriot, but did not flinch as they moved menacingly closer. “You will tell us how to remove it.”
Calmly, although Keleb knew he was terrified, Pyr stated, “It is too late. You have unleashed a power that you cannot comprehend.”
The four Ciriot began the weird clacking sound. One spoke down at Pyr. “We have won. Your elders knew that blood spilled here, desecrating this Temple, would destroy the portal to that other plane. The cowards should have stayed to fight and not left the defence to children. We are supreme. We stand in your Temple. I think your claim of a planetary shield is nonsense. You are merely a lying brat of a child – full of bravado.”
Kek spoke up, turning so everyone saw he was spattered with blood. “If such a shield exists, the controls will be in their palace. I know where…”
“You see,” one of the other Princes spoke maliciously. “We will live – you will die or be our slaves.”
Pyr edged closer to Jonko when the Ciri Princes moved away from him. Like Jonko and Keleb, he stood straight and defiant – all were expecting death.
Then they each felt power building in the Altar room, but did not look around as the Ciri Princes were beginning to do. A high-pitched shriek was growing in volume.
“We cannot be harmed here,” Jonko stated his belief, defiantly. He was no longer sure – Jordan and Vila had died.
“You think you destroyed the Great Ones, but you haven’t.” He wanted desperately for that to be true.
The Ciri Princes laughed louder than the shrieking noise.
Keleb nudged Jonko and shrugged a shoulder at the Altar. Jordan’s body was beginning to shimmer and glitter. Kek saw the direction of their attention and strode back to his last victim. His armoured hand swiped at the body, passed through it and sent gold and silver flecks into the still air. He spun around, sensing danger and suddenly screamed as he became a blindingly bright pillar of incandescence.
The sight silenced the Ciri Princes, but even as they drew breath to continue their malicious taunting, they began to shriek too. Four more incandescent torches formed as the chamber filled with blinding light.
The Altar exploded.