CHAPTER FOUR

DarkGlass Mountain, the Tyranny of Isembaard

T he night lay very still about DarkGlass Mountain. The river lapped gently among the reed beds, birds shifted within their roosting places, a few cows wandered through a field a hundred paces away from the pyramid.

One of the cows looked up, watching the pyramid for a few minutes as if entranced, then shook its head and wandered off, the spell broken.

The cow was not what Kanubai wanted.

An hour or so later, when even the birds had stilled, a dog came wandering along the road that led along the river by DarkGlass Mountain. It was a brindle mongrel, with a barrel-shaped body and long spindly legs, and a long tattered tail that showed the scars of many street fights. The dog was hungry, for he had found no food in the streets of Aqhat the previous day, and so had swum the river in the hope of finding something in the fields.

Rats, perhaps, or some crumbs left from one of the fieldworkers’ noon meal.

The dog trotted slowly along the road, stopping now and again to sniff at something on the verge, or within the reed banks, but always wandering off disappointed.

Then it caught the scent of gravy.

It instantly made the hungry dog’s mouth water, and his ears pricked up. His pace quickened and he followed the scent of the gravy…

…without thinking, without any caution, straight through the dog-sized hole in the side of DarkGlass Mountain.

The brindle dog could think of nothing but the scent of the gravy. He trotted, and then ran, along the twisting corridors of fused black glass, not perturbed by the flickering streaks of fire deep within the glass.

There was only the food.

Within a few short minutes the dog arrived within a golden chamber. It was stunningly beautiful, but the dog’s ears drooped in disappointment.

There was no food.

Dejected, he sniffed about the perimeter of the chamber, his cold moist nose brushing against the carved golden glass. He went about two walls in that fashion, but halfway along the third he yelped and tried to pull back.

But his nose was firmly stuck to the glass.

The dog growled and redoubled his efforts.

His nose stuck even more firmly.

And then it began to sink into the glass, dragging the dog with it.

The dog struggled, his breath coming in tight wheezes, more through fear than from his efforts.

Nothing helped. Within heartbeats his head was inside the glass, and then his shoulders and forelegs, and then, in one horrible moment, his entire body vanished behind the glass.

But not quite vanished completely. Shadows twisted behind the glass as the dog continued to struggle with whatever had trapped him.

Then everything went black. The entire chamber, constructed of pure golden glass, turned black.

Outside, for an instant, the massive shadow of a struggling dog appeared beneath the blue-green glass of DarkGlass Mountain.

And then everything was still.

The river lapped gently at the reed banks.

The birds shifted within their roosting.

And a brindle dog loped away from the glass pyramid, heading for the ford back to the palace of Aqhat.

Kanubai might still be trapped, but now he had eyes and ears, and the recently attained knowledge that a Brunelle walked the land gave Kanubai hope that soon he would be able to breathe and walk within his own body.

If only Ba’al’uz would do what he needed of him.