Dragon Bones (Hurog #1)(43)

I took my time, grooming Pansy until his coat gleamed and only a slight roughness showed where his cinch had rubbed. Finally, he stamped his foot, impatient to go out and graze with the others. I put his brush away in a saddlebag and let him go. I didn't hobble him; he'd stay with his herd.

"I'm going to look around," I said. Axiel grunted, but Oreg left his pile of dry tinder where it was and followed me.

Penrod or Axiel had chosen a camping ground some distance from the main buildings. That put us on the northern edge of the hilltop, farthest from Estian with the remains of the temple tower between us and the city.

The top of the hill was a flat field encompassing about six acres. Though the sides of the hill had been covered in tall trees, the top was a grassy meadow. Once, I supposed, most of the acreage had been paved. Now there was soil over the old stones, but it was too shallow for anything but grass.

"Why did you bring us here?" I asked when we were alone.

Oreg ducked his head so I couldn't see his face. "Wait and see. It might be important, most likely not."

I stopped. "Is this dangerous?"

He smiled a little. "Life is dangerous, my lord. Death is the only safety. But the Tamerlain keeps evil spirits away from here. It will be fine, Ward."

I stared at him for a moment. The Tamerlain was the legendary guardian of the temple, a great predator who fed upon the night demons and lived only on the mound of Menogue. Sometimes I wasn't certain whether Oreg was mad or not, but he seemed calm and sincere about our safety. I nodded briefly, mostly because I didn't really want to trek down the hill again, and continued toward the place where the largest section of walls remained standing.

It was a tribute to the Tallvenish fear of Menogue that most of the temple was still here, not carted off as building stones for more humble dwellings. There were stories about nasty things that happened to people who took things away from Menogue, plagues and ill luck. My father had once observed, cynically, that access to a trove of building materials would have upset the natural order of things. Peasants would have had good stone houses just like the merchants. They'd have gotten above themselves. Much better to make the stone off limits to the peasantry, and superstition has always been the cheapest guard.

The end result for us was that as Oreg and I approached the standing walls, we had to scramble over a lot of loose rubble. Some of the fallen bits were taller than I was, and a fair number showed carving, mostly cracked and broken. Even so, I marveled at the quality of the stonework.

"Did the dwarves carve these?" I asked Oreg.

"Eh?" Then he grinned. "You believe the dwarves' claims that they're the only ones who know how to carve stone, too? Not that they weren't masters - they did the carving in Hurog's library - but there were skilled human masons, too, like the ones who carved this. But stone carving fell out of fashion a couple of centuries ago. Plaster and wood carving are cheaper and faster."

The piece of standing wall I approached would have towered above the highest roof at Hurog. At one time it would have been even taller, but the top had tumbled to the ground. The wall was gently curved and layered in four-foot-tall sections, each one a little farther inset than the one below it. I imagined that at one time it was part of a dome. The sections were covered in stone carvings but we were still too far away for me to see them in any detail in the growing shadows of evening.

We skirted a few piles of stone and crawled over another into a small cleared area right next to the wall.

"This was the inner temple," said Oreg a little sadly. "It was painted in brilliant colors, blue and purple, orange and green. There was nothing else like it anywhere."

After he spoke, I could see that the wall had been painted once. Where the panels were undercut, protected by the weather, the paint was obvious. The bottommost panel contained a series of comically exaggerated people who seemed to be occupied holding up the next layer with their stone hands. Upon closer examination, each of them differed in feature and clothing. Some were standing on their hands and supporting the top with their feet instead of the other way around. The lip of the upper layer even bent upward a little where a particularly stout little man pushed on it. Near the first break in the wall, one of the little fellows had a particularly sly look on his face. Upon closer inspection, I could see that neither of his hands were touching the slab above.

The second tier of panels were trees, but they were trees I wasn't familiar with. The one above that...

"Siphern," I exclaimed, sending Oreg, who had been waiting patiently for me to notice, into a fit of laughter.

Like most Tallvenish gods, Aethervon was deity of two opposites: sorrow and merriment. The folks in the third tier looked very merry indeed.

I examined one particular scene. "I didn't know that was possible."

"Only if the woman is very flexible," smirked Oreg.

I looked at him doubtfully. "I don't think I'd want to be this fellow if she loses her balance."

"Some risks," he asserted with all apparent seriousness, though his eyes still danced with fun, "might be worth taking."

I shook my head at him and continued on in my explorations, leaving Oreg to the carvings of the inner temple. I found Ciarra standing on a wide section of broken wall staring at Estian far below. I stepped up behind her to make sure she didn't fall.

"Big, isn't it," I said. Ciarra had never seen Estian before.