Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (68 page)

Looking back at the piles of bones G’Taklar
wondered if an army of creatures really had tried to escape this
tomb.

Holding his torch up to better light the
room, G’Taklar spotted a dark hole against the wall to the right of
the door. Climbing over the bones they went and looked at the spot,
it turned out to be a hole
in
the
stone wall. They could see chip marks
all
around
the edges.

“
It looks like something chipped and
clawed its way out of here over many years time,”
Jatar thought
to G’Taklar.

“
How could anything claw its way through
solid stone?”
G’Taklar asked.

“
It would take a long time, but other
than eat his fellows, I don’t think it had anything else to
do,”
Jatar guessed.

“
Is that what you think happened?”
G’Taklar asked in awe.

“
Do you have a better theory?”
Jatar
responded.

“
No,”
then to Rachael he said, “Well,
we have our way out of this chamber, stay behind me,” he added
unnecessarily.

She clasped her hands on either side of his
hips and followed, watching over his shoulder. Once out of the hole
they found themselves in a passage with a high ceiling supported by
tall square pillars. Looking left, they could see the other side of
the locked door into the room of bones.

G’Taklar decided to turn right and see what
they could find in that direction.

As they moved their torch light interacted
with the pillars and cast weird shadows that twisted and moved
along the walls. G’Taklar could feel Rachael shaking
through
her hands attached to his hips.

“You don’t have to hold on to my hips and
walk behind me anymore.”

Her reply was emphatic, “Yes, I do.”

They came to another of the huge doors, like
the one outside the bone chambers. G’Taklar lifted their torch to
illuminate the door. More of the Serinna writing was inscribed, but
unlike the inscription outside, these words were not worn by the
weather.

“It says, ‘Entombed within
dwell
the evil one’s creatures of darkness. Heed
these words, his creatures live unholy lives; let these doors
remain forever closed, lest the evil consume your blood.’”

“
Souldead,”
Jatar said in his
head.

“Are they talking about souldead?” Rachael
asked.

“That’s what we think,” G’Taklar
replied.

“We?” she asked.

“I mean, that’s what I think,” he quickly
corrected.

“Could they really be alive after that many
years?” she asked, shivering.

“If they had enough food, and if there were
a lot of them maybe they could eat each other, it might be
possible. They don’t require much in the way of sustenance to live.
I’ve read stories where they have survived for years with very
little food. Remember, they aren’t even remotely human anymore,
Vorg created them from humans, but he redesigned them to survive
almost anything,” G’Taklar explained.

“It seems so long ago; how can things from
three thousand years ago come out of their crypts to haunt us now?”
she pondered.

“This tomb is only around a thousand years
old, I don’t know for sure that it held souldead,” G’Taklar
said.

“Let’s get moving, I want to get out of here
as soon as possible,” she said, giving his hips a push to get him
going.

They continued down the passage and passed
another of the sealed doors, this time on the opposite side of the
hall. It had the same inscription as the last door, so they moved
on.

They came to a wide chamber. The wall on
their right continued straight, to become part of another hallway
that mirrored the one down which they had traveled. To the
left,
another hall continued off
the pillar lined chamber. Centered in the chamber under a curving
arch in the wall to their right there was a monstrous door. It
split down the middle into two doors and the right side door was
slightly ajar. A large iron bar that had at one time barred the
door lay a few feet away on the floor.

G’Taklar held the torch aloft again to light
the inscription over the door. The carved letters were three times
the size of the prior words they had seen.

He read the inscription aloud. “Here lies
the hidden killer, scourge of the earth, destroyer of the holy,
Desecrator of souls.” G’Taklar paused, and Rachael noticed he was
shaking for the first time.

“What’s wrong, G’Taklar, what’s scaring
you?” she asked, terrified at his fear.

“I only know one being referred to as ‘The
Desecrator’ in all literature. The
evilest
creature to walk the earth, you know his name,
all people know that name. Children are warned to be good or ‘He’
will take them. He is the creature of evil in every recorded
civilization, without exception. He is holy G’lan’s nemesis, the
creature known as: ‘Vorg, The Desecrator’,” G’Taklar intoned
solemnly.

“You’re not trying to tell me that this is
Vorg’s tomb? He died over three thousand years ago, G’lan himself
came back to defeat him! And… and he didn’t die in the desert, it
was
on
some mountain,” Rachael
replied. Everyone knew at least some version of the historical
battle between G’lan and Vorg.

“This is what the rest of the inscription
says: ‘Vorg, The Desecrator, returned from the dead and destroyed
our people by the thousands, but by G’lan’s immortal spirit he was
defeated once again. Let no man open this door lest the world be
destroyed by the evil one’s hand. May his soul never return from
the Dark Plane to wreak havoc among the innocent people of this
world. Leave this tomb sealed or die the death of the souldead,’
and it’s signed, ‘Chamberlain of the Star’, see there is his star
symbol placed at the center of the door,” G’Taklar pointed out.

“Who is the Chamberlain of the Star?” she
asked.

“The ruler of the Serinna,” he answered.

“But the door is open,” she said
quietly.

“Yes, I have seen
that. P
erhaps we had best see what is inside,” G’Taklar
said resignedly.

“Are you insane? I’m not going
in
Vorg’s tomb!” Rachael exclaimed.

Jatar’s calm thoughts spoke in G’Taklar’s
head, “
You’re right, ‘Tak, we need to know what has happened in
that tomb.”

G’Taklar answered Rachael, “Then you’ll have
to wait here while I go in, we need to see what is in there, or not
in there.”

“I’m not staying out here in the dark!” she
answered.

“Then you’ll have to come
in
because that’s where the light is going,” he
explained and headed for the door. Her hands finally released his
hips.

“G’lan, what have I gotten into?” she asked
the air, but nothing answered, except the echo of her own words
around the vast hall.

G’Taklar approached the huge door cautiously
and noted that it stood over twenty feet high. The right side was
open far enough to leave a gap and show that the stone door was two
feet thick.

“
It must have taken a train of horses to
pull this monster open,”
he thought to his cousin’s
imprint.

Jatar didn’t comment.

G’Taklar stuck his torch in through the
opening and looked around without entering. He saw a large room
with a domed ceiling rising high above the floor. The center of the
room had a raised dais, with three steps leading up the oval shape.
On the dais was an immense sarcophagus made of black stone. The
remains of a
log
framework were
still suspended over the top of the sarcophagus, though the ropes,
block,
and tackle had been
removed.

It was obvious that the framework had been
employed to move the lid off the gigantic sarcophagus. The lid
still lay on
top
but skewed to the
side to allow access to the interior of the stone coffin.

Boxes,
chests,
and tables lay strewn and broken over the floor;
this tomb had been plundered.

“
Look in the coffin,”
Jatar
advised.

“
Is that necessary? We know it was
opened, whatever was inside was released,”
G’Taklar
debated.

“
Perhaps, but we need to know,”
Jatar
reasoned.

G’Taklar took a deep breath and then said,
“All right, I’ll look.”
He entered the tomb.

Rachael was suddenly behind him, following
close. G’Taklar went to the sarcophagus, but he had to first move
and then stand on an empty chest to get up high enough to look
inside.

He didn’t find what he had expected.

“It isn’t empty!” he exclaimed.

“Oh G’lan, are you telling me there’s a
grisly rotting body in there?” Rachael asked shivering
uncontrollably from where she was standing next to the chest that
G’Taklar stood upon.

“No, there’s a bit of a skeleton and some
clothes, but everything else has rotted away!” he exclaimed
excitedly.

“Why do you sound so happy about it?” she
demanded, angry at his lack of fear when she was terrified.

“From the state these bones are in, this has
to be the body that was put into this tomb by the Serinna, and that
means that even if this was Vorg, which I now doubt, he is a pile
of dead bones, not alive and escaped from his tomb!” G’Taklar
reasoned.

“You’re sure he didn’t kill a grave robber
and leave him in the tomb?” Rachael suggested, not yet ready to let
her childhood monster die so easily.

“Of course, these logs are fairly recent,
look at the
footprints
in the
dust,” he said pointing to the marks that were obviously different
from their fresh ones.

“
How long do you think it’s been since
they broke in here to steal what treasure they could find?”
G’Taklar asked Jatar.

“
From the thin layer of dust that has
settled in their prints, I’d guess within the last ten years,”
he answered.

“They probably broke in within the past ten
years; a body would still be decomposing if it were that fresh. No,
whoever died here is still very dead. I feel better already,”
G’Taklar said to Rachael.

“I’ve never seen anyone so happy about
finding a corpse,” Rachael said, shaking her head, but G’Taklar’s
enthusiasm was helping to banish her fears.

“What about that creature from the bones
room, wasn’t he still alive?” she suddenly remembered.

“At the time he clawed his way out, yes, but
who knows how long ago that was now? He is either dead or escaped
and gone. It’s still pretty serious if he escaped into the outside
world, any creature that is mean enough to survive hundreds of
years in a tomb with only his fellow monsters to feed upon has got
to be nasty.” G’Taklar reasoned.

Rachael raised a hand and G’Taklar took it
and pulled her up onto the top of the chest next to him. She
glanced over the lip of the sarcophagus and then said in a whisper,
“So this was once Vorg.”

“I don’t think this really was Vorg, it
doesn’t make sense. According to history Vorg lived around three
thousand years ago, this guy,” and he gestured toward the
sarcophagus with his thumb, “is a baby in comparison. He was
probably an evil man, who led the opposing armies. He might even
have been a necromancer, even in this age they are still around
trying to duplicate Vorg’s powers, and have been ever since the
master of evil was destroyed. The Serinna probably caught and
killed this necromancer and then, because he was so evil, they
assumed he was Vorg returned from the dead,” G’Taklar
theorized.

“You’re just making this up,” Rachael
said.

“Yes, but it’s a good theory, perhaps I can
find some facts to validate it!” he exclaimed excitedly.

“
Some other time,”
Jatar thought to
him,
“‘Tak, it’s been longer than you think in here, the
Tchulians may be getting close. You have to find a way out of here
soon or they will corner you,”
Jatar reminded his host.

“
How long has it been?”
G’Taklar
suddenly wondered. He tried to estimate, but they had moved pretty
slowly. It had taken him some time to translate the inscriptions,
and making the torch had used more; crawling over the bones,
helping Rachael through the hole in the wall, all had taken
time.

“Come on Rachael, let’s get out of here,” he
said.

“I’d drink to that if I had anything to
toast with,” she replied, climbing down from the chest and heading
for the large door.

Once outside the door they stood in the
chamber with the three passages leading away. G’Taklar decided to
go down the one perpendicular to the one they had first come down.
They traveled swiftly through the pillar lined halls, eager to
escape this tomb. G’Taklar was worried, he thought they’d used more
time than they should have and if the soldiers had kept riding
during the day they might be very close.

Light suddenly streamed into the hall from
up ahead. The sounds of boards being pull loose from something
echoed down the hall.

G’Taklar and Rachael froze, and then they
heard the unmistakable voice of Sergeant Herms cajoling his men to
greater efforts.

“G’lan, we’re trapped,” G’Taklar cursed in a
whisper. He grabbed Rachael’s hand and turned to run back down the
hall, towing Rachael behind.

A moment later they reached the ‘T’
intersection of the corridors
. “Try the left, we know the right
leads to a dead end,”
Jatar advised.

“
Don’t use those words,”
G’Taklar
pleaded, turning left as Jatar had suggested.

They ran down the hall looking for any place
to hide or escape. On their
way,
they passed three of the large doors that were just like the one
that led into the chamber of bones.
Eventually,
they came to the end of the hall, but there
was no way out.