Fearless (8 page)

Jacob examined what was left of the crest on the gold-plated door: a crowned wolf, a cup of blood, and there was the crossbow . . .

Behind them, the Giantling was leaning against the wall.

Fox eyed him pensively. ‘Your guard’s suspiciously sleepy,’ she said to Valiant.

‘Elven dust,’ the Dwarf replied. ‘These big idiots always have some in their pockets. Can’t get them off that stuff.’

Jacob listened, but all he could hear was the Giantling’s heavy breathing. Elven dust? Maybe. He pulled a pair of gloves from his bag. Fox had given them to him after a tomb’s protective spell had nearly cost him his fingers. Like all shape-shifters, she was immune to such spells.

Valiant looked uneasily at Jacob. ‘Why the gloves?’

‘You don’t need them, as long as you don’t touch anything. Are you sure you want to come with us?’

‘Sure.’ The Dwarf didn’t sound too convinced, but there was serious loot to be had, and that outweighed even his fear of a dead Warlock.

Jacob exchanged a quick glance with Fox, then he put his hand against the crowned wolf. It didn’t take much force to open the door. He could feel that others had already done it before him.

The scent wafting towards them was barely noticeable. Tomb-cloves were a simple method to protect the dead from the greed of the living. Their poisonous pollen could survive over centuries. Jacob held Valiant back. Fox took a pouch from her belt. The seeds she offered were barely bigger than the pips of an apple.

‘Eat!’ she told Valiant, who eyed her suspiciously. ‘Unless you want to look like a mouldy loaf of bread after a few steps.’

‘Watch your step!’ Jacob whispered. ‘Don’t touch anything and keep your mouth shut, especially if something asks you a question.’

‘A question? Something?’ Valiant popped the seeds into his mouth. His wide eyes stared into the dark tunnel in front of them.

The walls were lined with burial niches. Fox grabbed the Dwarf just before he stumbled into one of the mummified corpses.

‘Why do you think they were buried here?’ she hissed at him while Jacob pushed the mummy back into its niche. ‘This is the tomb of a Warlock. I’m sure they are easily woken.’

The man they found a few steps in had been dead only a few days. The tomb-cloves had covered him with a carpet of deadly green blossoms. The whispers began as soon as Fox stepped over his corpse.

‘Who are you?’ The voices came from the burial niches.

Valiant froze, but Jacob pushed him along. ‘Don’t answer!’ he breathed. ‘They are harmless as long as you don’t reply.’

The mummies wore weapons belts and armoured breastplates over their rotting clothes. Most of Guismond’s knights had followed him to his death, though if historic records were to be believed, only few of them had done so voluntarily.

They found five more fresh corpses: the treasure hunters who hadn’t returned. In addition to being covered in tomb-cloves, some of them also showed sword wounds. And the dead whispered all around them. Jacob had never seen so much fear on Valiant’s cunning face. Even Chanute used to grow a little paler in tombs than in other places. Jacob was usually not affected. In his experience, the places of the living were much more dangerous. Yet as he walked past the burial niches, he could feel the moth like a cold hand on his chest.
Look at them, Jacob. Soon you’ll look like them. The leather-like skin, teeth exposed, and spiders nesting where your eyes used to be.
His breathing grew laboured, and Fox noticed. She silently pushed past him and walked ahead, as though that could draw death’s attention from him. The tunnel took a bend. The scent of the tomb-cloves was now so heavy that it clung to their skins like perfume, and then they came upon the curtain of corpses. Twelve mummified knights hanging from the ceiling, blocking their path, but one of the bodies ended beneath the ribcage. Someone had hacked off the rest with a sabre. Not the most elegant way to get through a corpse curtain, but it did the trick. Maybe the Dwarfs hadn’t hired only amateurs after all.

Valiant cursed disgustedly, though he was the only one who could walk upright under the mutilated corpse. The reward came just beyond the curtain: another door, inlaid with the golden likeness of a man.

The crown identified him as a King, and the cat-fur coat showed him to be a Warlock. On his shoulder sat a Gold-Raven, the symbol of limitless wealth, and his feet stood in seven-league boots to symbolise the vastness of his empire. He was holding the crossbow in his right hand. Supposedly, the Witch Slayer had sold his soul to the Devil to get it. Stories. However, Jacob had already seen too many of them proved true on this side of the mirror to dismiss this one.

The door with Guismond’s portrait stood open a crack. The treasure hunter whose corpse they found just inside had probably thought himself at the goal of his quest, and he had obviously forgotten that traps were usually left invitingly open. His body was uninjured, as far as Jacob could make out, but the horror on the pallid face spoke clearly. Fox peered over Jacob’s shoulder.

‘A shadow-spell?’ she whispered.

Yes, probably. Jacob put his lamp on the floor and drew his knife. The resin he rubbed on the blade brought the smell of tree bark into the stale air. Behind him, Fox was shifting shape. Sometimes the vixen’s senses were more useful than an additional pistol.
Forget this is about your life, Jacob. Enjoy the hunt.
There it was again, the familiar thrill mixed with fear and the desire to conquer it. Irresistible. He’d never had to explain that to Fox. She slipped through the door ahead of him.

The tomb was enormous.

The frescoes on the walls still glowed in vibrant colour, thanks to the centuries of darkness that had cocooned them since their creation. They were depictions of hell, rendered so masterfully they made one feel the fire on the skin. One of the walls showed Guismond himself riding through the flames in the armour of a knight. The Devil he was riding towards didn’t have much in common with the Devil Jacob knew from the other side of the mirror. Except for the horns, he looked like an ordinary human dressed in the clothes of a wealthy merchant of the time. The frescoes on the ceiling showed a battlefield, the spirits of the dead departing from their lifeless bodies. The columns that supported the ceiling were hewn from the same black marble as the sarcophagus standing in the centre of the tomb. Four knights knelt around it, each leaning on a sword as black as its wings.

Jacob heard Valiant behind him, muttering a disappointed curse.

The sarcophagus was open.

They were too late.

Jacob looked at Fox. It wasn’t easy to tell what she was feeling when she was wearing her fur, but through the years he’d learnt to read her. The despair he saw in her eyes was even worse than his own. The hope that he might yet save himself hadn’t lasted very long.

The pieces of the sarcophagus’s smashed lid were scattered among the kneeling knights. Between them lay the guard against whom Jacob had prepared his knife: Guismond’s shadow, faceless, and as tall as though it had been cast on to the flagstones by the evening sun. The pool of blood around it indicated that the shadow had been brought to life by a spell only Witches could perform – or those who drank their blood. A shadow like that would kill for his master as silently as he had followed him through life. Jacob leant over the black corpse. A knife stuck out of the shadow’s neck. It smelled of resin. The mistake of pulling it out would immediately bring the shadow back to life. Whoever had killed him knew that. Jacob stood up. For an instant he thought he could hear steps between the columns, but when he spun around, he saw only the vixen behind him.

‘Elven dust?’ She gave Valiant a scornful look.

Jacob leant down to her. ‘Is he still here?’

She lifted her nose to sniff, and shook her head.

Damn!
Jacob tucked his knife back into his belt. Not many treasure hunters knew how to get past a Giantling, or what resin to use to defeat a dead man’s shadow. They usually avoided each other on the hunt, but Jacob knew them all, at least by name and reputation. Which one had done this?

‘Damned bastard!’ Valiant was standing on the debris of the lid, staring down into the open sarcophagus. ‘He even took the crown!’ he clamoured. ‘And who told him to cut out the heart? Are those greybeards in the council now trading with Dark Witches?’

The corpse in the sarcophagus had not decayed at all, but it was missing the right hand and the head, and there was a hole in the chest where the heart had once beaten. The wound, like the ones on the arm and neck, had been sealed with gold. This meant that the body had been buried like this. Valiant reached for the sceptre next to the body, but Jacob pulled him back. ‘You see those leaves he’s lying on? They’re hexed. Why else do you think he looks so fresh?’

He looked around. The tomb’s floor was laid with green marble, and strips of alabaster ran like the dial of a compass from each of the four columns to the sarcophagus. Jacob picked up the mine lamp Valiant had put down next to the sarcophagus, and walked along one of the alabaster strips. It was inlaid with letters cast in white gold. They were barely visible in the white stone.

HOUBIT WESTARHALP

Every treasure hunter knew that language. Fox watched Jacob as he paced off the second and third strip.

HANDU SUNDARHALP

HERZE OSTARHALP

The inscriptions were easy to translate.

THE HEAD IN THE WEST

THE HAND IN THE SOUTH

THE HEART IN THE EAST

Maybe the hunt wasn’t over yet.

Jacob went to fourth strip. Its inscription was much longer than the others:

NIUWAN ZISAMANE BESIZZANT HWAZ

THERO EINAR BIEGEROT.

FIBORGAN HWAR SI ALLIU BIGANNUN.

‘What’ve you got those gloves for? Take that sceptre off him!’ Valiant moaned. ‘And he’s still got his signet ring on the other hand.’

Jacob ignored the Dwarf. He was staring at the letters.

ONLY TOGETHER MAY THEY POSSESS

WHAT EACH DESIRES.

CONCEALED WHERE THEY ALL BEGAN.

No. The other one hadn’t found the crossbow. Not yet.

‘Jacob?’ Fox was still wearing her fur.

Steps . . .

Barely audible.

Jacob lifted the lantern. He thought he could make out a shape between the columns, dark like the stone it was trying to hide behind. Before Jacob could stop her, Fox was dashing towards it. The vixen’s compulsion to hunt made her careless. Jacob ran after her, cursing himself for not having given the tomb a thorough search. He heard Fox yelp, and nearly stumbled over her. She was lying between the columns, already shifting shape as she struggled to her feet. That instant, the Dwarf cried out for help behind them.

The man who shoved Valiant out of his way was wearing clothes of lizard skin over his own, which was as black as onyx. A Goyl. Just as Jacob took aim, Valiant staggered into his line of sight. The Goyl gave him a little taunting wave before pulling the tomb’s door shut behind him. Valiant screamed, stumbling towards the door. He clawed his fingers into the frieze of skulls and yanked at the door so hard that the bones cracked under his hands.

‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’ he yelled. ‘Perishing inside a tomb! Is that your idea of a good death?’

Fox’s forehead was bleeding. Jacob brushed away her hair, but luckily the gash wasn’t deep.

‘Why didn’t you smell him?’

‘He didn’t have a scent.’ She was angry. Angry with herself and with the stranger who’d got the better of her.

No scent. Jacob looked towards the shadow and the resin-covered knife stuck in its neck. The Goyl knew his trade.

‘We’re going to starve!’ Valiant looked around like a rat caught in a trap.

Jacob went back to the alabaster strips and looked at the letters. ‘Suffocation is more likely.’

Fox came to his side. ‘I’ll find his trail,’ she whispered. ‘I promise.’

But Jacob shook his head. ‘Forget about the Goyl. He doesn’t have the crossbow.’ He was still looking at the letters. The words were the trail they’d have to follow.
A dead man
. . . not yet.

‘What the devil are you two doing there?’ Valiant’s voice filled the tomb with Dwarf panic. ‘Do something! This can’t be the first tomb you’ve been trapped in!’

The Dwarf was right about that. Jacob returned to the sarcophagus and, with his gloved hand, reached for the sceptre. The architects of royal tombs often believed that their master was only sleeping and that he would wake up again one day. So they always left him with a key, even though it seemed even more unlikely than usual that a headless King would awaken and need it.

The door swung open as soon as Jacob wrote Guismond’s name in the air with the sceptre. Relieved, Valiant immediately stumbled through the door, but Jacob carefully stepped over the dead treasure hunter in front of it and listened. The hanging knights were swaying gently, and he thought he could hear steps in the distance.

Valiant growled, ‘How did the Goyl know about the tomb? If the Dwarf council hired him behind my back, then—’

Jacob interrupted him: ‘Nonsense. If he was hired by the council, then why would he have gone to the trouble of drugging the Giantling? No.’ He took the jacket off the corpse by the door. ‘They call him the Bastard, and he’s the only Goyl who’s any good at treasure hunting.’

‘The Bastard . . . of course!’ Valiant rubbed his face. The cold sweat of fear still clung to his forehead. ‘He likes to cut off his competitors’ fingers.’

‘Fingers, tongues, noses . . . he’s got quite a reputation.’ Jacob wrapped the sceptre in the dead hunter’s jacket.

‘Don’t you think it’s only right to let me have that?’ Valiant purred, smiling his most innocent smile. ‘For all the hospitality and my invaluable assistance?’