Free Sword of Caledor by William King Page A

began with the coronation of the current one but it was one thing to listen to those platitudes, it was another thing entirely to find yourself the subject of one of them.
    He smiled. Perhaps he was deceiving even himself. Perhaps he had believed them all along. Perhaps this was the reason why he was seeking Aenarion’s sword. It would be another link in the chain that connected him with his ancestor in the public mind, and in politics that could be a very important thing indeed.
    He admitted it. It was certainly possible that one of the reasons he was here was to advance his political career.
    What young male did not dream of becoming Phoenix King?
    In most of the cases it was an empty dream but Tyrion knew that this was not so for himself. He had the potential to be a candidate backed by one of the great merchant houses of Lothern. If he acquired sufficient acclaim from his adventures, that would count for a great deal with many others who had some say in the process of selection. After all, had not Finubar himself built his reputation on his deeds in the Old World?
    He shook his head; it was funny how these ideas intruded into your mind in the strangest of places. Here he was in the ruins of an ancient city that had been destroyed while Lothern had been a collection of small wooden huts around an empty bay and he was thinking about the consequences of his actions here when he got back home.
    He forced himself to concentrate on his surroundings. None of these speculations would matter if he was cut down by some monster’s blade here in Zultec.
    They passed on through the shadows of the titanic stone buildings, under the glare of massive stylised heads that looked as if they were modelled on some bizarre combination of human, daemon and toad. They moved along massive causeways which ran through gigantic ponds, in whose murky waters strange and frightening shapes swam.
    A shadow fell upon them. Looking up Tyrion saw a monstrous bat-winged flying lizard pass overhead. It screeched once as if in warning and then soared off, rising on the thermals until it was merely a distant point that vanished into the clouds. Tyrion wondered why it had not attacked them. Perhaps it was not hungry. Or perhaps it was spying on them for the benefit of some unseen master.
    ‘I see an opening here,’ said Teclis, pointing to an entrance that had appeared in the side of a crumbling step pyramid they had just passed. ‘Let us get out of the rain and I will try a divination.’
    The humans looked worried, as if he had just announced he was going to summon a daemon. Tyrion hoped there was not going to be any trouble.

Chapter Four
    Warm water tumbled down the sides of the ziggurat and poured over the lip of the entranceway. It ran down the back of Tyrion’s neck and beneath his jerkin as he passed through. He cursed inwardly. It was difficult enough to maintain his gear in these tropical conditions, getting it wet was only going to make that harder.
    Inside the gloomy chamber it smelled of mould and rotting leaves and ancient dampness. A snake slithered out of the light of Teclis’s illumination spell. Tyrion reached up and touched the ceiling. It was low enough for him to do so easily.
    The stone was chill and wet and blotched in places with some sort of fungal growth. This place had been built for a race shorter than humans or elves. He would have suspected dwarfs had something to do with its building if he had not known better. The stonework had some of the monumental quality he associated with the sons of Grungni. Massive blocks had been placed together with great cunning to make this structure.
    It was the carvings in the stone that told a different tale. One look at them and anyone could see that this place had not been built by the dwarfs.
    Pictograms had been chiselled into each stone block, depicting oddly square-looking humanoid lizards going about their incomprehensible business. They were of all different sizes. Some were obviously