Tales of the Knights Templar Read Online Free PDF Page A

many unfinished drawings. Thierry looked in vain for some sign of a door or a window. If there was any way in or out of these buildings, he could not see any.
    Crossing the square, he struck a wide avenue that ran eastward through a succession of soaring arches. The buildings lining both sides of the avenue might once have been shops, but again there was no visible means of entry or exit. There was not a sound anywhere. The ground seemed to drink up the sound of Thierry’s footbeats, leaving only silence behind.
    The shopfronts gave way to houses, some of them three or four floors high, their foundations decorated with tiles, their roofs overlaid with brass. But here again the walls themselves were featureless, blank-sided as a set of child’s blocks. Thierry hurried past them, averting his gaze from their blind exteriors. Whatever force or agency had sealed this city up within itself was, he felt, still active, and still present.
    At the center of the city lay the palace. Thierry made his way silently through a succession of courtyards mapped out by machicolated walls and overhanging turrets. At the center of the maze stood a great domed edifice flanked on four sides by spires of forge-tempered brass. Here, beneath a colonnaded portico, he at last discovered a doorway.
    The doorway was fitted with a set of brass portals half again the height of a tall man. The portals were standing open and the gap between them was wide enough to have admitted a yoke of oxen. The floor beyond the threshold was of smoothly polished brass. At the center of the floor, dimly mirrored in its tarnished surface, stood an elevated dais surmounted by a canopy of brazen filigree.
    Mounted on the dais was an altar. It had been made from a great slab of black granite laid across two lesser blocks of the same stone. Harsh light, falling through an unseen opening in the vault above, made a pool of brightness on the altar table. At the center of that circle of light stood an ornately finished casket of pure silver.
    Thierry eased his way cautiously across the threshold. When nothing leaped out at him from the shadows, he set out across the floor toward the foot of the dais. As he started up the steps, his eye was drawn toward a dull glimmer of white lurking in the shadows beneath the altar stones. A closer look revealed that it was a human skull.
    More bones were lying nearby. Thierry recognized a pelvis and part of an arm among the fragments of a shattered rib cage. The shank bones had been broken open and sucked clean of marrow. The rest of the skeleton showed the hungry marks of carnivore teeth.
    Thierry sucked in a soft, hissing breath and cast a wary look around him. His straining senses could detect no other presence besides his own. Only slightly reassured, he slipped his sword from the sheath across his back. Gripping it firmly by the hilt, he leaned in to inspect the casket.
    The casket had the look of a reliquary. The panels that made up its flat sides and peaked lid were densely overlaid with interlocking traceries of some arcane form of script. Peering more closely, Thierry discovered a keyhole concealed among the manifold whorls. Warily laying his sword naked before him on the altar top, he opened the amulet and once again took out the key.
    The key fitted smoothly into the lock. Thierry drew a deep breath and gave it a turn. There was a sharp crack and a sudden sulfurous flare. Staggering back a pace, Thierry saw the crystal in the key’s headpiece burst explosively into flame.
    Biting back a cry, he made a reflexive move to snuff it out. The fierce heat scorched his fingers and made him snatch his hand away. Engulfed in fire, the key began to dissolve. In mere seconds, there was nothing left of it but a puddle of molten slag.
    The flame guttered and died. Thin tendrils of evil-smelling smoke leaked from the keyhole. There was a hiss, followed by a thin, metallic chime. As the tone dissipated, the lid of the casket sprang up and the sides