Light shone through the ancient hall’s narrow, arched windows, glowing on the old but unfaded tapestries wrapped snugly around the two sleeping wanderers. The campfire of the night before had died down into cold soot and charcoal, and one of the sleepers stirred as a stray breeze from the mountain slopes outside darted through the vaulted chamber, pressing cold and insistent against his hide. He raised a hoof and rubbed at his mild blue eyes, gave an enormous yawn, and looked down at the pegasus sleeping beside him, the soft hair on her face still matted and stained with tears. She ain’t never growed up, thought the Mule. All this time, and she’s still the same hurt, angry foal that they done left outside the Hollow Shades to look arter herself. She got older, she got stronger, she got smarter, but she ain’t never growed up.
He shook his head. Lifting himself to his hooves, he clomped over to one of the chamber’s windows, scarcely more than a slit in the heavy stone wall, and peered through it, squinting in the brilliant sunlight. A vista of rock, ice, and sky greeted him. Huge, twisting glaciers, their craggy surfaces shining a painfully bright white, plowed through the gaps between the great mountains of the Eiglophian range, each one jutting in titanic majesty into the empty sky above. The Mule gave a long, low whistle of appreciation. They’d been traveling through Hippoborea for more than a month, now, but he still found himself awestruck by the sheer scale of this land. It had been a little hard to appreciate the beauty of the place this past week or so--Voormithadreth had overwhelmed everything else with its presence--but now that the mountain was out of sight, the wilderness’ glory truly showed itself.
There was a soft rustle of cloth behind him, and turning, the Mule saw Sassaflash shift beneath the tapestries and lift her head, blinking blearily in the daylight. The old creature gestured towards the window with a smile. “Mighty fine day, miss.”
“Mm.” The Dark Lord nodded absently, her tail sweeping back and forth across the dusty floor like a cat’s. “That’s good. Very good.” She extended a forelimb across the stony floor, then slowly drew it back, her hoof scraping on the rock.
Tilting his head, the Mule inquired, “You okay, miss?”
“I have been better, Mr. Mule. I have been better.” Lifting herself up on to all fours, Sassaflash began to fold up her covering with listless motions of her hooves. “It is just--I’ve never faced this pain before. It’s always been grayed out by the worrywort, and now--now it’s not, and I feel like I just--just lost--” She turned her head aside, hiding her face. In a controlled monotone, she continued, “My apologies. This burden is not yours to bear. I should not have told you of it last night; I don’t really know why I did. I’ve never told anypony else.”
The Mule ambled over to her side and laid a gentle hoof on her shoulder. “I don’t reckon you could’a not told it. You had to tell somepony.”
“No.” Turning to look at him, Sassaflash shook her head. “Not ‘somepony.’ Had it been anypony else, I think I would have just soaked in the misery. But you--I could tell you, somehow. You’re not…” She struggled for a word, and then concluded, a little uncertainly, “unreasonable. But that’s not quite what I mean. I don’t know what I mean. But I knew you would listen, and I knew I could bear to have you listen.”
A warm smile creased the Mule’s long face. “That’s what friends are for, Miss Sassaflash. Listening when they ain’t nopony else who will.”
“Friends. Yes.” She paused, considering. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had a friend before.” The long, quiet moment that followed was broken by a sharp snort from the Dark Lord. In something more closely resembling her usual peremptory tones, she added, “And I don’t believe I’ve ever been so insufferably maudlin before, either. Mr. Mule, this is absurd. I am content to--to think well of you, and to have concern for your welfare, and it contents me that you reciprocate this. However, that is no reason to engage in such ridiculous insipidity. We have many serious matters to attend to today, and my emotional state is not relevant to any of them. Is it, Mr. Mule?”
“No, Miss Sassaflash.”
-----
After a short breakfast of several melodramas and a romance, the Dark Lord and her minion set out to explore the rest of the complex. The building they had taken shelter in proved disappointing; it seemed to have been some sort of meeting chamber or gathering place, and nothing resembling a library or the remnants of a mage’s tower was to be found. Once they were satisfied that the building had no more secrets to yield, they stacked several more pieces of furniture with the rest of their supplies, in case the ruins proved large enough to necessitate staying more than one night, and ventured out into the plaza that their shelter adjoined.
The light of day showed the ruins to be far more extensive than they had originally supposed. The plaza itself was not particularly grand, and most of the buildings surrounding it were impressive but compact, looming tall over the courtyard beneath them and packed tightly against one another. At the back of the open space, however, what they had taken for a tower similar to the others clustered around it was revealed to be only the entranceway to what had once been a far greater structure, its gigantic stones lying in jumbled ruin across the mountainside beyond. Here and there crumbling walls or chambers poked up out of the mass of fallen blocks, and even from their poor vantage point the mule and pegasus could make out the remnants of a long central hall and rising stairs on either side, bared to the wind and Sun by eons of neglect. In its day it had clearly been some mighty citadel or castle, clinging fast to the mountain’s slopes and rising tall and many-spired in proud defiance of all around it--but it had long since fallen, worn away by the passage of time. Still, as the center of power in the ancient complex, Sassaflash decided that it should be their first target in their search for lingering magics that might transport them home again.
They spent all that morning and a good part of the afternoon picking their way through the rubble, shifting stones that were light enough to be moved and squeezing past those that were too massive. Hidden rooms, lit by occasional bursts of fire summoned into being by the Dark Lord’s magic, were uncovered and explored. They found carved statues of long-dead Unicornian nobles and royalty. They found murals, shattered by the collapse of the castle but still offering their testament to the skill of the ancient artists. They found another stash of scrolls, none of which were grimoires but some of which were written on edible papyrus. Perversely, several of these last were cookbooks, lusciously illustrated with strange but delicious-looking dishes. Sassaflash again refused to translate, possibly out of mercy, but the Mule could see her mouth watering as she glanced over the lists of ingredients. They found the relics of many ancient lives, scattered throughout the ruins and slowly disintegrating in the dark: a room strewn with stiff, brown dresses that crumbled into dust at a touch; an odd ceramic mask broken in half and lying out in the open; a little rigid doll, frozen solid.
Scattered here and there throughout the ruins were more of the peculiar icy boulders they had observed when they had first arrived at the complex the night before, all a bit taller than the two travelers and always grouped in twos and threes--sometimes four, never by themselves.
Curious, Sassaflash stepped up to one of the icy blocks and, holding her hoof against its cracked, frost-obscured surface, muttered the word “fm’latgh.” Fire spat out from beneath her hoof, hissing against the ice and melting it to glassy, transparent smoothness, and the Dark Lord peered into the depths of the ice boulder, shading her eyes. For a few moments she simply squinted at whatever was inside, a puzzled expression on her face and one ear cocked in confusion--then her eyes widened and a look of appalled realization spread across her face. The Mule started towards the chunk of ice, curious himself.
“No!” Sassaflash extended a hoof, holding it up in warning. “Do not look. Step back.” Her expression a curious blend of pity and horror, she raised her hoof and chipped away at the smooth spot she had created on the boulder’s face, marring it into cracked obscurity once again. “Some things should not be seen. Some things should not be known.”
“But--”
With an exasperated snort, the Dark Lord said, “What part of ‘some things should not be seen’ is unclear to you? It is not a wholesome thing to be made aware of! Be thankful you have not seen and understood. Leave it!”
Casting a doubtful look at the jagged chunk of ice, the Mule said, “Well, alright. if’n you say so. Is they dangerous, though? Should we steer clear of ‘em?”
“No. At least...no, I do not think so. They should be quite harmless.” Sassaflash shuddered. “Nonetheless, I would feel more comfortable if we kept our distance in future. I would prefer not to be reminded of them. Let us continue our search.” As she turned, the Mule thought he heard her mutter under her breath, “Poor wretches.”
The wreckage of the ancient castle extended in a long sweep around the mountain, the fortress' northernmost ramparts--or what was left of them--clinging to an outflung ridge of rock that overlooked a broad basin between several of the neighboring mountains. As the two travelers picked their way through the decaying citadel, they saw that the peaks were ranged against the advance of the ice sheet beyond the mountains, leaving the rocky basin exposed and dry. Surprisingly, there were no signs that the Unicornians had ever settled the area; no roads crossed the depression, and no walls or remnants of buildings were visible. That did not mean, though, that the ancient builders had left the valley alone; far from it. Scattered throughout the iceless expanse, seemingly at random, were a number of immense stone towers, tall and needle-like. Many had fallen in the millennia since their builders had abandoned them and now lay in broken chunks on the valley floor, but a few remained intact, still reaching for the heavens as they had for the past five thousand years.
The Dark Lord and her minion paused in their search through the castle ruins to look down at the valley, standing atop a huge block of solid granite while the wind whistled against the stones around them. Turning to Sassaflash and raising a hoof to keep his ears from flopping around in the wind, the Mule asked, “What was all them towers for?”
“I don’t know.” The Dark Lord gazed down at the strange structures, her brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “I’ve never read of anything like this.”
“Reckon we ought to take a look-see? Maybe they’s some magic or other abouten ‘em.”
With a nod, the pegasus began to clamber down from their perch. “That would be prudent, I think. They are unusual, and in our present circumstances ‘unusual’ merits thorough investigation. There are some magics that can only be accessed via large-scale structures, designed to tap into the resonances between leylines, and these might be such a thing. Perhaps some power lingers around them that we might use. It would be best, of course, if we could pinpoint objects of interest before descending...” Bending her head around, she removed the telescope from their small collection of supplies and flotsam found along the way that was tied to her sides. She raised the ancient instrument and peered through it at the spires far below.
The Mule climbed down from the block as well, sending pebbles skittering over the stones as he slid the last yard or so. “What do you see?”
“Nothing notable. No runes on their sides, that I can tell. No earthworks to funnel power surrounding them. Judging from the fallen towers, though, they don’t appear to have been hollow; just solid stonework, all the way through. Perhaps some ceremonial purpose--”
“What about that white thing yonder?”
“Where?”
“There.” The Mule pointed with his forehoof, and after looking up from the telescope and squinting a bit, the Dark Lord spotted it as well: a thin wisp of whiteness, shining in the lee of one of the nearer towers. The telescope soon showed it to be steam or mist, rising in streaming clouds from a low, domed structure, not unlike a kiln in shape, hunkered down amidst the boulders strewn across the plain. After gazing at it for some moments, the Dark Lord lowered the telescope and said, “I have not the faintest clue what that thing is.”
“I reckon we ought to find out, then.”
Sassaflash nodded. “I concur with your reckoning. Let us be off.”
It took some time before they were able to find a way out of the jumbled blocks of the collapsed citadel, but they eventually managed it, and were soon edging their way down the mountain’s face towards the basin below.
As they descended in careful zigzags, the Mule noticed that the Dark Lord was moving listlessly, and stumbling over rocks that she should have seen. She made few remarks as they traveled--fewer, even, than usual--and even when the Mule casually mentioned the basic goodness of reality and the enjoyability of life (after having “casually” worked up to that point over a period of about half an hour), the only response he received was an absent “Mm, yes. I suppose some might view it that way,” rather than the lengthy diatribe against the foolishness of hope he had been fishing for.
“Careful, miss!” called the Mule, looking up at the pegasus as she picked her way down a steep incline towards him. She was taking the slope slowly enough, but her movements seemed vague and undirected, as though she were just going through the motions of climbing to satisfy a demanding critic without really caring whether she did it well. “I’d feel real bad if you took a fall!”
Sassaflash looked up, and in a voice tinged, the Mule was pleased to note, with some of her customary irritation, she responded, “I would appreciate it, Mr. Mule, if you would not provide me with these little insights into your feelings, well-meant as they no doubt are. I find them irksome.”
It was a spark of her usual fire, at least. “Why not?”
“They are distracting, of course. Moreover--” She paused as she edged her way down an overhanging ledge, swinging her body over the brink to bring herself as close to the slope below as possible before letting go. “Moreover, they make me care, and at present I would prefer not to care. I don’t feel that this is too much to ask. Let me wallow, Mr. Mule, and save your worry for some later date.”
“But we’s a-climbing down this here mountain right now.”
“Yes, well.” With a rattle of falling pebbles, Sassaflash slid down beside him, her hooves unsteady and wings flapping as rocks rolled beneath her. “Fine. I will be cautious. Once we are on level ground, though, I reserve the right to brood. Is that clear?”
A nod. “Yes, Miss Sassaflash.”
“Acceptable. Moving on, then.”
The Dark Lord was as good as her word, and the rest of the journey down the mountain, which took the better part of the remaining daylight hours, was free of mishap other than a few bruises and scrapes. The Sun, shining low in the south, soon vanished behind the mountains, and a deep blue gloom descended on the valley, blending the shadows into one another and softening the harsher lines of the rocks and boulders. Only the very tips of the remaining towers were still in sunlight, poking above the shadow of the mountains, and they blazed with orange light, like gigantic torches flaming above the darkness below.
Fortunately, the shadows were not yet deep enough to blot out the distant whorl of white steam rising from the little domed building across the basin, and the mule and pegasus were able to pick their course towards it without any real difficulty. As they trudged across the basin floor beneath the looming presence of the spires reaching high overhead, they passed by what had been the very top of one of the towers, long since toppled and now lying in broken ruin in the dust. They paused for a few moments by it to rest, and Sassaflash took the opportunity to examine the fallen structure. It was tilted half on its side, the stonework of the top still reasonably intact and sloping upward at a steep angle. There had been--and presumably still was, on the remaining towers--a sort of tiered platform atop the tower, descending in concentric rings of stonework down to a central depression in which a dais had been set, carved with strange characters in looping spirals. By the light of bursts of summoned fire, the Dark Lord read aloud from the script, while the Mule sat by and listened.
“‘Here was the king’--I’m not certain what the name means, it’s some kind of mineral, I think. ‘Stone green as mallow leaves,’ maybe?--’and here he was great. He crafted and built this place, and cunning’--no, wise--’were his plans. Behold! Behold! He has raised himself to the’--roof? Oh, ‘heavens,’ of course--’He has raised himself to the heavens, by magic and by blood, that the stars might descend and take him up as one of their own.’”
The two contemplated this for some moments. Then Sassaflash said, “A Tower of Silence.”
“Beg pardon?”
“It is an ancient funerary tradition. Some Unicornian texts tell of their belief that they were stars, descended from the sky to rule over the ‘lesser’ races of ponykind, and that when they died they would return to the heavens again, to take their rightful place above the world among their heavenly brothers and sisters. But they believed that they could only do this if the stars themselves could see them, to reach down and draw them skyward. So rather than bury their dead, they constructed towers and left them there, to the elements and the carrion birds. It was a...sacrament, of sorts. It also, of course, served to protect them from necromancers; no remains left behind to work with, you understand.”
The Mule tilted his head. “That’s a mighty peculiar way to put it, coming from you.”
“What do you mean?”
With a shrug, the old creature continued, “Only I wouldn’a figured you’d ‘a said they needed protecting from necromancers. From ponies like you.”
The Dark Lord rose to her hooves, stretched, and turned towards the distant stone dome that was their goal, gesturing for the Mule to follow. “Not from ponies like me. Some necromancers forget that the jar of essential salts stored on their shelf and the pony they revive from it are two very different things. They can be callous, bringing ponies back not to save them, but to use them." Her face clouded. "Many necromancers, actually. Most necromancers. The evil reputation of the art is, sadly, not unearned."
“That’s a durn shame,” said the Mule, shaking his head. Gravel crunched beneath his hooves as he detoured around a glacial erratic, lying squat and sharp-shadowed in the twilight. “I reckon a pony could do a lot o’ good with the things you knows, if they was careful.”
“Hm.” Sassaflash frowned. “Caution is certainly necessary, but as with all things it can be overdone.”
The Mule gave an amiable nod. “That’s so. Is it usually, though?”
“Well...no. But it could be.” The pegasus shot a sharp glance at her minion, who simply smiled a vague smile and made the diplomatic observation that they were getting near to their destination. After eyeing him a moment longer, Sassaflash said, “Indeed we are. Am I incorrect, or does it appear to have a small door, off to the right there?”
They were now near enough to make out more details of the structure by starlight. It was almost a perfect hemisphere, embedded in the gravel of the plain, with its smoothness only interrupted by the rounded stone door Sassaflash had observed and several fluted apertures arranged at regular intervals around its upper surface, out of which faint steaming mists drifted and billowed. As they drew nearer, they saw that what they had taken for random scattered rocks around the structure had been carefully carved and were arranged in polygonal patterns surrounding it; three closest to it, a square of four in the next, a pentagonal arrangement of five beyond that, and so on up to an outer array of seven stones. Sassaflash found herself unable to translate the glyphs carved into the worn rock, although, when pressed by the Mule, she did hazard that the arrangement of the stones was suggestive of some sort of protective spell or ward.
Whatever their purpose, the twenty-five stones surrounding the dome offered no obstacle, magical or otherwise, to the two travelers, who soon found themselves standing in front of the dome’s low door. A flat, perfectly circular stone had been set in place to block the entrance, its rim carved with hoof-sized depressions--presumably to allow it to be easily rolled to one side--and its center bearing a raised disc etched with numerous small blocks of text, written in many different scripts and arranged in a circular pattern around a central spiralling symbol, like a whirlpool or a spiral galaxy.
The Dark Lord bit her lip, squinting at the writing in the gloaming. “A scroll, Mr. Mule, if you please. Yes, that will do.” She raised the scroll upright, holding it with one hoof crooked around it as if she were carrying a stick. Placing her other forehoof flat against it she hissed, “fm’latgh.” Fire burst around the scroll, and after an uncertain moment it caught, the rolls of paper blackening and curling as the flames lapped hungrily at them. Raising her makeshift torch to the letters, the Dark Lord murmured, “This piece is Pegasopolan; I’m not well-acquainted with the language, though. This script I don’t recognize; might be Old Griffish. This bit, here, is the same as the text on those rocks surrounding this place. And this...Ah, Unicornian! Oddly structured, though; I think it’s in verse. Let me see…” She cleared her throat.
“‘Spells and walls of fire, and towers for horned kings, cannot defend against’--I don’t know this word, it’s something to do with magic...Some kind of practitioner of magic?--’bent on stealing their’--dust, maybe. Or ash--’from their rest. But beware! The one who can protect himself does not need protecting. Here he lies, and here he shall return. Awaken him to your defeat, for you cannot best him. I am’--this name I can’t translate; we don’t have a word for it. It’s a mythic herb from Unicornian folklore. ‘Lock plant,’ maybe, might be a decent rendition of it--’and I brought him here, and laid him to rest, as he had commanded. Behold the tomb of…’”
Sassaflash‘s voice trailed off, and her eyes widened. For a moment she just stared at the ancient letters, dumbstruck, and then she turned to look back at the Mule, starlight glittering in her eyes. In an awed voice, she murmured, “Behold the tomb of Starswirl the Bearded.”
The two remained there for some moments, the Dark Lord standing in stunned silence before the carved door and the Mule thinking, head bent. At last the old creature looked up. Lifting a hoof, he gestured towards the tomb and said, “Was he at all important? That name sounds sort o’ familiar.”
“Was he--’Sort of familiar’--You mean you don’t--” Sassaflash briefly lapsed into a fit of incoherent spluttering, and then finally managed, “Yes, Mr. Mule. Starswirl the Bearded was indeed ‘important.’ The greatest mage who has ever lived was at least a little ‘important.’ Fhtagn! Have I not mentioned him to you, at least? I could swear that I--how in Equestria have you lived without knowing about him? How is that even possible!?”
The Mule shrugged. “Not everypony studies these things like you, Miss Sassaflash.”
“Well, yes, but even so...” She stared at her minion, and then shrugged hopelessly. “Fine. Yes. Whatever. Of course you’ve hardly heard of him. I don’t know what I was thinking. Suffice it to say that, Yes, he is indeed important, and to come across his tomb, with, presumably, his remains within--more than old enough to revive--a necromancer’s dream--”
Cocking his head, the Mule observed, “Only that’d be a mighty bad idea, wouldn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Bringing him back. Like that Lock Plant pony said in her carving, he can protect hisself. If he’s really as powerful as you say, and if most ponies wouldn’t take kindly to being brought back by a necromancer, seems as how making him alive again’d be a plumb fool thing to do.”
The Dark Lord stared. “Well, there are precautions one takes, of course, when reviving a potentially violent--and powerful--pony. Spells to restrict them. Bindings.” She hesitated. “Of course, he was the most powerful mage in history. Hated necromancers with a passion, too, it’s said. Whether those bindings would be enough…” With a frustrated lash of her tail, Sassaflash stamped her forehoof on the ground. “Blast it all, you’re right. And I could have learned such secrets from him...Well.” She sighed. “I suppose it can’t be helped. Still, we are in great fortune. To find Starswirl the Bearded’s tomb, of all things--But I should have guessed. Who else and what else would be so great as to be allowed to violate the sanctity of the Unicornian kings’ final resting place? Only he would be so honored. Curious that he should not also have had a tower of silence constructed, though, instead of this mausoleum. Seems strange for a Unicornian...”
Looking up at the dome of rock looming over their heads, the Mule said, “Anyhow, if he was such a powerful strong mage, d’you reckon they’s some magic in here we could use to get home?”
“Hm? Ah, yes. Yes indeed.” Sassaflash nodded. “That was why I said we were in good fortune. Magic there will certainly be, although whether it can help us return home remains to be seen. Come, help me open the crypt.”
Putting their shoulders to the door, the two travelers pushed, and before long they were rewarded with the slow, scraping sound of stone grating against stone as the disc rolled out of the way. Drifts of steam rose from out of the clouded darkness within, and a rich, wet, earthy smell filled the cold air, quick and green with life. The scent was overwhelming after the odorless sterility of the wastes, and as it struck them the Dark Lord took a staggering step or two back, choking on the strength of it, while the Mule was overcome by a sudden coughing fit. Sassaflash recovered first, and with a muttered "What in Equestria..." she held her makeshift scroll-torch aloft and stepped forward into the opened crypt, her companion following close behind.
Little round leaflets brushed against their faces as they entered, trailing from slender tendrils that looped and crawled along the interior walls of the tomb. The walls themselves had been carved with deep ridges and furrows, providing ample support for the crawling vines, and the vault’s roof had been set with countless clouded black gems, in appearance like volcanic glass but polished to gleaming smoothness--light stones, enchanted to produce a facsimile of daylight on a regular schedule, as the Dark Lord later informed her minion. The floor of the tomb had been carved into an open lattice, and below the mossy, interlacing spans of stone the sound of dripping water could be heard.
All this they took in later, when they had had a chance to examine the chamber. It was the tree that they noticed first. Gnarled, stunted, and twisted, it sprawled in the center of the chamber, its branches--or its trunk, it was almost impossible to tell the difference--pressing against the carved ceiling and twining in thick growths over the stone surface, while its roots sprawled across the floor, looping in and out of the latticework and braiding around each other as they dangled down to the hidden pool of water beneath. Its bark was smooth, but heavily creased and rumpled, as though it had once been far larger but had been forced to bend and fold in on itself to fit within the cramped confines of the tomb. And sprouting from it everywhere, from its branches, from its twigs, from its trunk, in thick, luxurious profusion, was…
The Mule stepped forward. “Clover? They’s...they’s clover growing all over it!”
“Not over it, Mr. Mule. Not over it,” the Dark Lord murmured, staring at the bizarre growth stretching up like a great, green-clad column from the crypt’s center. “From it. It is clover--she must have left this here, but that was five thousand--surely it hasn’t been growing here ever since--” The pegasus trailed off into a reverent silence.
The two travelers stood there for some moments, staring up at the weird, gnarled growth spreading itself in ancient majesty beneath the carved stonework of the crypt. The Mule stepped forward, and Sassaflash tilted her head, ear cocked. “Mr. Mule? What are you…” She paused, and then, in quite a different voice, said, “Mr. Mule, kindly stop eating the five-thousand year old clover tree.”
Her minion looked up, a sheepish look on his face and a mouth full of leaves. “But I’m hungry!”
“That is--this has been growing here for millennia! It was planted, no doubt, by Clover the Clever herself, Starswirl’s personal student and one of the founders of Equestria! It is as close to being sacred as anything in this world can be! It is a wonder of magical history, not a...a salad!
“Mighty tasty, though.” The Mule swallowed, and a puzzled expression passed over his face. “Although it don’t taste much like clover. Ain’t bad, but it’s different.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Stepping forward, Sassaflash gently nudged the Mule away from the tree. “Who knows what the enchantment has done to it over all these years. I would appreciate it if you would not put any more of it in your mouth until I have had a chance to examine--now what!?”
As she stepped up to the plant’s trunk, there was a sudden creaking groan, like the sound of boughs bending in a high gale, and the wood in front of her began to deform. One of the long furrows creasing the tree widened, bark flaking off in thin, brittle sheets as the wood beneath pulled apart to reveal a darkened cavity within the heart of the tree. There, still half-buried in its ebbing wooden cocoon, was a simple ceramic urn, its surface pressed with abstract triangular and linear patterns and scribed with a single line of elegant Unicornian script, and beneath that the same spiralling symbol they had seen etched on the door of the tomb. The Mule looked over Sassaflash‘s shoulder, squinting at the text on the urn, and then turned to the pegasus. “That says ‘Starswirl,’ don’t it?”
“Yes,” breathed Sassaflash. “Yes, it does.” For a moment she said nothing more, simply staring hungrily at the urn. She raised a hoof as if to reach into the alcove, began to extend it--and then pulled back. A shadow flickered across her face. “No. It’s too easy. The door was unlocked. The tomb was unhidden. And here are Starswirl’s remains, sitting here for the taking--and I would wager a great deal that what lies within is not ash, but his essential salts, already prepared and ready for revival.”
The Mule tilted his head. “You reckon it’s a trap?”
With a frown, Sassaflash said, “I think not. A trap would be more subtle than this. No. This isn’t a trap; it’s a dare. ‘Come, necromancer,’ the mage says. ‘Come and revive me. Bind me with your most potent spells, if you wish. Prepare tortures. Take every precaution--and pray that it will be enough.’”
She stepped back, looking around her at the bizarre, overgrown tomb. “If he had just hidden himself away, shown himself to be afraid of the power of the raisers of the dead, somepony would have stepped up to the challenge long ago. But this--he’s hiding nothing. He’s confident. Terrifyingly so! Small wonder that he’s been allowed to rest here, undisturbed.” The mare sighed. “And he’s right, of course. You were right. I don’t dare revive him. I have great confidence in my own skills, but I know that I’m nothing to Starswirl. No mage of our generation is. No, all I can do is leave him here, to rest--as, no doubt, many before me have done.”
The silence that followed was broken by an awkward cough from the Mule. “So...what now?”
“Now?” Sassaflash turned. “Now we do what we came here to do: Try to find some remnant magic that might help us escape. I might as well begin by examining this clover tree; perhaps the charm that gave it its long life could be adapted to us, letting us survive without food or shelter until we were out of the wastes. See if you can locate any further charms that might be of use, if you will.”
So the Mule did. He had chipped one of the light stones out of the wall on the off chance that its enchantment might be useful, and was just trying to find something heavy to help him break through the stone latticework of the floor in case there was something magical about the water below, when he heard a little murmured noise of surprise from the Dark Lord. Ambling around the tree to join her, he found her staring at a sprig of clover plucked from its trunk, eyes narrowed as if she suspected it of some vague misdeed. The Mule looked at the clover. It seemed innocent enough. Turning to Sassaflash, he asked, “You found something, miss?”
“No. At least--nothing useful. Just...odd.” She looked up at him. “I have been sorting through the enchantments laid on this plant, and I can only find one, which as far as I can tell is responsible for its longevity. I can find nothing, though, that would allow it to move as we saw it move, and certainly nothing that would give it sufficient awareness of the motives of those near it to cause it to open for me when I approached it, but not for you. It’s as if those were already inherent in the plant itself. It doesn’t make sense.”
The Mule considered this. “Maybe it’s some manner o’ magic plant that ain’t around no more? It’d be an awful long time since Lock Plant planted it, arter all.”
“‘Lock Plant?’ Oh, of course, the pony mentioned on the tomb’s door. Curious, that, but there’s no doubt that Clover the Clever was the pony who was actually responsible. It is strange, though, that another pony should be credited; that doesn’t really make sense, unless the Unicornians’ mythical Raskovnik--their word for it, you understand, it’s what I translated as “lock plant”--was somehow associated with Clover, or her name was mistranslated…” The Dark Lord halted, her brow creased in thought. She shot a glance over at a tree, looking at it with a very strange expression on her face, and then said, without turning her head, “Mr. Mule? A lock, if you have one. Or...anything which can be undone, opened, or cleared away. A knot, perhaps, if you can tie one; I know many non-unicorns never bother to develop the skill.”
The Mule nodded. “I can tie knots well enough.” Bending his head, he took one of their food scrolls from the bundle at his side, tore off a long strip of paper, held it to the ground, and knotted it with a few deft motions of his hooves. Holding it out to Sassaflash, he asked, “What’re you fixing to do, though?”
“I wish to test an impossible suspicion.” Taking the strip of paper in her mouth, the pegasus approached the tree--and as she drew near, the knot slipped, held for a moment, and then slid smoothly toward the floor, the paper flowing frictionlessly up and through it as it traveled down. The knot reached the bottom of the strip, there was a quick flick and rustle, and then the paper hung free, smooth and untied. Sassaflash dropped it into her hoof and held it up, looking at it with wonder. She turned to the Mule. “A mistranslation. Her name has been mistranslated, all these years.”
“Whose name?”
“Clover the Clever’s! Starswirl’s apprentice!” The Dark Lord made a wild, sweeping gesture with her wing. “And nopony ever caught the mistake! Her name wasn’t ‘Clover;’ it was ‘Raskovnik!’ She was named after the lock plant--the opener of ways, the plant that removes any barrier, overcomes any obstacle! It can appear as any plant, and is almost impossible to correctly identify--but when found, it often looks identical to the common clover. That was where the confusion must have come from.”
The Mule stepped forward, his hooves clicking on the moist stone floor. “So, wait; you bring any lock fornenst this plant, it undoes it? Just...opens it up, just like it done with that paper?”
The Dark Lord blinked. “Assuming that ‘fornenst’ means ‘near to,’ then yes, yes it does. I had thought it was mythical, but apparently not.”
Laying a hoof on the smooth bark of the raskovnik, the Mule said, “Couldn’t you magic up something using it, then? If it can open up ways--well, we got a mighty long way that’s closed to us, on account of us not having no food or shelter and all.”
Raising an eyebrow, Sassaflash said, “It opens real locks, not metaphorical ones, Mr. Mule. Space is not a lock.”
“Knots ain’t locks neither, though,” pointed out the Mule. “And a tree ain’t a lock, even if it’s a-covering up something you’s after. Suppose you rejiggered it so that it thought that the way from here to Ponyville was like a lock? Do you reckon it might be able to open up that way?”
“Doubtful. Granted, there are certain spells that treat space and time as obstacles, and I suppose hypothetically one could adapt Copper Branch’s Conceptual Translator spell to transform some--some--of the raskovnik’s properties to a more usable form, but I hardly think that--I would have to invent a spell, several spells, from the ground up, under harsh conditions, and with no time or opportunity to test them properly. It would be asking for disaster.”
“Ain’t we sort o’ in a disaster right now, though? We can’t live long on these,” the Mule gestured to their remaining papyrus scrolls, “and even the rascal--scurvy--lock plant won’t last us forever.”
Sassaflash eyed him askance. “Hm. Perhaps you’re right. I could make the attempt, I suppose. Do not expect miracles, though, Mr. Mule, and do not expect safety. It could very well go horribly wrong; teleportation spells are tricky enough when one has them hardwired into one’s body, and there are horror stories of unicorns who attempted teleportation when they were not yet ready for it. But if you are willing to face the risk…”
The Mule nodded. “I am.”
“Very well.” The Dark Lord lifted her hoof, gazing at the little slip of untied paper resting on her sole. “Then I will try.”