Adept (The Essence Gate War, Book 1) - By Michael Arnquist Page 0,68
his companions. They did not appear similarly affected. Instead, they looked back at him, their faces streaked with unearthly luminescence and taut with concern.
Amric shook his head to clear it. He took a deep, steadying breath, and passed through the doorway.
A long stone chamber stretched away before them, not unlike the one they had vacated above in terms of size and aspect. There the resemblance ended, however. This room was free of clutter, and had only the one doorway they had come through without a twin on the opposite side. A huge metal cage squatted at the far end of the room. It was capped top and bottom in large iron slabs, with thick supporting posts at each corner. The bars themselves were not metal; instead, crackling bluish beams of energy draped its sides. In the center of the cage was a heaping pile of cloth, and Amric felt the hairs on the back of his neck stir as he saw that bundle of material rustle and flap as if beat by an unseen wind. The cage was large enough to hold several men, if need be, and Amric spied an empty water pitcher lying on its side as well as a chamber pot pushed to the back corner. His nose wrinkled, informing him that the chamber pot had seen recent use.
The cage, with its sinuous bars of fire, was an unsettling sight, but it was not the only source of shimmering light permeating the chamber. The eyes of all in the room were drawn to one long side of the room, which overlooked a scene that dazzled and baffled the senses. At first it appeared the space was enclosed only on three sides and the entire right side opened onto a vast amphitheater. The tight echo of their own footsteps indicated a enclosed area, however, and the dull sheen hanging in midair soon gave the lie to that first impression. The whole of the wall was forged of a single great sheet of glass, or some other transparent material, several feet thick. Amric stepped over to it and brushed his fingers against it to confirm what his eyes doubted. He rapped his knuckles against the unblemished surface, and was rewarded with a feeble tapping sound that was quickly swallowed in the tomb-like silence. Clear as crystal it might be, but the wall seemed as solid and strong as the outer hide of any castle. Grelthus and the others joined him at the wall of glass, and together they looked upon the spectacle below.
The circular amphitheater was enormous, dwarfing even the expansive architecture they had passed through in their harrowing passage into the dark heart of Stronghold. Colossal stone columns stood like a grim ring of sentries, mounting from the floor far below their vantage point to a vaulted ceiling far above. Past the transparent wall, a wide set of stone stairs fell away before them to spill onto a broad terraced landing. Stairways of more modest size flowed downward and away on either side to one of a series of mezzanines encircling the room. The floor itself was comprised of a series of concentric circles, each dropping in elevation from the last to reach the lowest point at the center of the chamber. The entire gigantic coliseum seemed constructed around that center, focusing inward upon some unnamed, anticipated event there.
Looking down, Amric somehow doubted that the builders of this vast chamber had intended for what he was witnessing now.
A ragged fissure gaped at the center, the stone crumbling at its edges. The force which had torn the floor asunder had been sudden and explosive, for huge shards of granite were scattered from the crater to the distant walls in every direction. Adjusting for distance, Amric observed that some of those chunks of rock were better than the size of a cottage, and yet had been hurled hundreds of yards like the toys of a child. Portions of the surrounding pillars and walls had been torn loose in the passing of those ponderous missiles, with a spider’s web of cracks radiating from each point of impact.
From that angry wound in the ground rose a titanic geyser of flame, spearing upward almost to the ceiling. They watched, open-mouthed, as the fountain jetted and heaved, writhing like a live thing. It changed colors in fitful bursts, sometimes lingering on a multi-hued arrangement for several seconds and other times strobing through luminous colors in a sequence too rapid for the eye to follow.