‘Why does he hate you so?’
Kesa Khan’s eyes glittered and his smile was cruel. ‘Many years ago he came to me, seeking to understand the nature of magic. He is a Chiatze, and he was studying the Dark Arts and the origins of the Knights of Blood. I turned him away. He had the wit, but not the courage.’
‘And for this he hates you?’
‘No, not just for this. He crept back to my cave, and I caught him trying to steal …’ the shaman’s eyes were hooded now ‘… objects of value. My guards took him. They wanted to kill him, but I decided to be merciful. I merely cut something from him, gave him a wound to remember me by. He still had his life, but he would never sire life. You understand?’
‘Only too well,’ answered Dardalion coldly.
‘Do not judge me, priest,’ snapped Kesa Khan.
‘It is not for me to judge. You planted the seed of his hatred, and now you are gathering the harvest.’
‘Pah, it is not that simple,’ said the shaman. ‘He was always a creature of evil. I should have killed him. But his hatred I can bear. This fortress, and what it contains, is the second of his desires. There is more powerful sorcery here than has been seen in the world for ten millennia. Zhu Chao wants it… needs it. Once upon a distant time the Elders here performed miracles. They learned how to merge flesh. A man who had lost a leg could grow a new one. Organs riddled with cancer could be replaced, without use of a knife. Bodies could be regenerated, rejuvenated. Here was the secret of immortality. The force was contained within a giant crystal, encased in a covering of pure gold. It radiated power, and only gold and to a lesser extent lead, could imprison it. You saw the valley?’
‘Yes,’ said Dardalion. ‘Nature perverted.’
‘Fifty years ago, a group of robbers came to this place. They found the Crystal Chamber and stripped the gold from its walls, removing the covering from the crystal itself.’ He laughed. ‘It was not a wise action.’
‘What happened to them? Why did they not steal the crystal?’
‘The power they unleashed killed them. The Elders knew how to control it, to focus the forces. Without their skill it has become merely a corrupting, violent, haphazard sorcery.’
‘I sense no power emanating from here,’ said Dardalion.
‘No. Zhu Chao sent men here. They removed the crystal from its setting. It sits now upon a golden floor some two hundred feet below us.’
‘Did these men also die?’
‘I think you could call it a kind of death.’
Dardalion felt cold as he looked into the shaman’s malevolent eyes. ‘What is it that you are not telling me, Kesa Khan? What secret strategies have yet to be unveiled?’
‘Do not be impatient, priest. All will be revealed. Everything is in a delicate state of balance. We cannot win here by might or guile – we must rely on the intangibles. Your friend Waylander, for example. He now hunts Zhu Chao, but can he enter his palace, fight his way through a hundred guards and overcome the sorcery at Zhu Chao’s command? Who knows? Can we hold here? And if not, can we find a way to escape? Or should we use the power of the crystal?’
‘You know the answer to the last question, shaman – no. Else you would have come here years ago. No one knows what destroyed the Elders, save that there are areas of great desolation where once were mighty cities. Everything we know of them speaks of corruption and greed, enormous evils and terrible weapons. Even the wickedness within you recoils at their misdeeds. Is it not so?’
Kesa Khan nodded. ‘I have walked the paths of time, priest. I know what destroyed them. And yes, I wish to see no return to their foul ways. They raped the land and lived like kings while fouling the rivers and lakes, the forests -aye, even the air they breathed. They knew everything and understood nothing. And they were destroyed for it.’
‘But their legacy lives on here,’ said Dardalion softly.