The Heart In Stone

Part 2: The Heart Of Andilos

The Dark Wizard stood alone by the highest window of the white tower, looking out at the great city. He is coming, he thought anxiously.

"and I must prepare."

*****

When the old man got off the bus that afternoon the sun was still burning bright and hot as it made it's way west. The air about him seemed to shimmer in the blazing heat. The sky overhead was a beautiful and serene pale blue scattered with faint little whisps of white clouds that almost looked like slowly melting puffs of foam. A ghostly full moon could be seen dawdling along the eastern sky.

Ahead of him stretched out, as far as he could see, scorched grey-white sands scattered with small dead brown bushes and a variety of stubborn desert weeds. The bus had dropped him off a little way off from his destination, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere with no other vehicles in sight and no other signs of life. He doubted if anyone except the odd stray had found themselves where he stood. He looked up at the sky again, deep in thought, for a moment before following the sun.

His journey was long and slow. For what seemed like hours he walked around the desert-like stretch of land, the heat of the sun threatening to bake him alive where he stood. His feet had begun to ache not long into the journey and now his hips and back had begun to throe. Sweat trickled down his brows even though he could barely feel the scorch.

And for some time he was unable to find even a small dirt road as he walked through dried, overgrown grass and thick spickey bushes.

It was almost sunset when he finally found the trail. And it took the old man a while to recognise it for what it was; for in the direction he had come in most of it had been blanketed over by the fine white sand. The old cobbled stone road was cracked, potholed and ,in some places, had caved-in on itself.

A twilight glow graced the early evening sky as the ruin of an old city emerged just in front of the setting sun.

Not that there was anything left to see.

The ruin, which was no less than a vast collection of big pale yellow stone bolders, stretched on as far as the old man could see, from left to right, steadily sloping down towards the  dark body of waters ahead.

What remained of what was once the city walls rose no higher than his knees, and indeed as the old man observed that no structure in the entire city rose higher than his thighs except a fragile-looking, wide, tall arch right in the middle of the wall of the city that looked to have been where the city gate might have been. But it too was in such a state of disrepair that the old man thought it wouldn't last another week standing.

For a moment the old man stood quite still in front of the dilapidated arch. Somehow he knew what he must do next.

He then closed his eyes, inhaled deeply and stepped right through.

The first thing he felt was warmth. For as long as he could remember be had never truly been able to feel heat before. It had always seemed distant, and his body always seemed incapable of producing or sustaining it for too long. But at that moment he felt warmth as if experiencing it for the first time in his life. The very air seemed heavy with it.

When he opened his eyes he found himself in the middle of an empty square with three story grey stone buildings that were stacked closely together on either side, bright yellow light glowing from every window. The old ruin was no more and right before him lay a great medieval city still in its prime. Even as he looked back the way he came he saw that the old archway had transformed into a closed wooden gate that formed part of an imposing wall which stretched for miles in both direction. The wall was so high that it towered over the buildings themselves.