The Golden Key (Book 3) (19 page)

Giorge stepped around to the front of the sarcophagus and
asked, “Anything?”

His mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “Whatever is
holding it in place, I can’t find it.”

Giorge sighed. “We won’t open it that way, then,” he said.

His mother joined him at the front of the sarcophagus and
asked, “How do you think it’s set up?”

Giorge frowned. He already knew what would open the
sarcophagus, but he didn’t want to do it. All he had to do was follow the
directions in the poem.
Take the stones—they’re all that’s left
….
“You’re right, mother,” he said. “I have to take the stones.” He handed her the
torch and reached for the Viper’s Breath. It fell into his hand as if it
belonged there. A stream of water shot from out the opening, striking him in
the chest and pushing him backward. He slipped on the slick stone and the
current caught at him. He squatted and barely avoiding sliding down the stair.
The water was cold as it flooded into his breeches, and he squirmed to his
feet.

“It moved forward,” his mother half-shouted over the
crashing water. She stood to the side of the sarcophagus, avoiding the
thickening wall of water fanning out from the lid’s seam and striking the wall
to either side.

While he steadied himself and moved sideways, his mother
reached up for one of the Fangs and tried to pull it free. It didn’t budge. He
slipped the Viper’s Breath into a pouch and approached the sarcophagus at an
angle to avoid the water shooting out from it. When he reached out for the
Fang, it came free so easily that it seemed to jump into his fingers. This time
he had prepared himself, but only a little water dribbled out of the hole it
left behind. A moment later, the other Fang was in his other hand and the lid
grated forward. The wall of water thickened and crashed against the wall.

“You should tell them what we found,” he shouted, nodding to
the main chamber of the tomb. “We don’t know how long we’ll have when it
opens.”
And if you’re in the main chamber, you won’t be struck silly by the
water
, he added to himself.

She hesitated, leaned in toward him, and said. “Keep them
hidden,” she said, “and guard them well.” Her tone was harsh as she added,
“Some of them will have no qualms about taking things from family.”

Giorge nodded and tucked the gems into a pouch he kept under
his tunic. Then he waited until she was well away from the entry before he
reached up for the eyes. Even after she had disappeared into the shadows, he
hesitated before removing them. There was something inside the sarcophagus, and
whatever it was, it would be free soon. But what choice did he have? The only
way out—and he was
certain
of it, even though he had no reason to be
certain about it—was through the tunnel behind the sarcophagus. No, not
behind
it, but
through
it. The sarcophagus was like the trapdoor in the mines:
a portal to another place. But to where? And what would be waiting for him when
he got there? Eyes of flame?

Giorge looked once more to make sure his mother was far
enough away, and then moved to one side of the sarcophagus, away from the lid.
He reached out as far as he could, touched the nearest eye, and it popped out
into his palm. The water that shot out from behind it nearly burned through his
skin as it struck, and he quickly jerked his hand away. Then he ducked down
below the streams, hunched low, and moved to the other side of the sarcophagus.
When he was in position, he reached up for the other eye. When he felt its
smooth round surface in his palm, he jumped backward, almost pinning himself to
the slick wall of the alcove.

The lid scraped against the stone as it inched forward, and
then it swung toward him on an unseen hinge. Water flooded out in a rush, like
the frothy bubbles from a freshly tapped cask, but it subsided quickly. In
moments, it had settled to a weak current, then a slow trickle. By the time he
squeezed around the lid, his mother was hurrying up the steps through the
waterfall as if it wasn’t even there.
How is she doing that?
he
wondered.

He was looking in the sarcophagus when she reached his side,
but there was nothing in it. No corpse. No skeleton. No doorway. No tunnel.
“Where’s the tunnel?” she demanded. He didn’t answer. He
couldn’t
answer. There
had to be
a tunnel. The water couldn’t have come from
nowhere! But where was it? He looked down at the Eye in his hand and lifted it
up to look through it. The tunnel was clearly there—but the fiery eyes were
gone. He stepped forward, into the sarcophagus, and reached out with his hand
to touch the back of it—and his hand went through it! It was as if there was
nothing there! He turned to his mother and saw her facing the main chamber with
her poniard ready and the torch held out defensively in front of her.

Giorge pivoted and drew his short sword in one motion. At
the bottom of the stair, a sliver of polished metal slowly wormed its way
around the frame of the entryway. It caught and reflected the flickering
torchlight, illuminating the tip of a bony finger curled around the hilt of a
thin dirk oozing water. The rest of the fingertips eased into view, and they
were followed by an almost fleshless forearm. A silver bracelet several sizes
too large for the emaciated arm dangled loosely from the parchment-thin skin. A
ragged black sleeve with a badly frayed cuff clung to it like strangling moss
hanging from a dying branch. The elbow was so thin that it was little more than
skin wrapped around a knobby bone, barely covering the bumpy ridges of the
cord-like sinews stretching out from the joint in both directions. The shoulder
protruding from a large hole in the tattered garment looked much the same, but with
moisture glistening on its surface. The bowed head that followed had scraps of
long gray hair randomly sticking out from the rind-like skull. The thing paused
at the bottom of the stair and an incoherent, high-pitched rattle issued from its
shrunken chest.

The old woman lifted her head and looked at him with eyes
that burned like embers breathed to angry life, their intensity drowning out
the torch’s flame. They held him in place as she climbed over the first step,
and shuffled toward the second.

His mother held the torch forward, and the corpse-like hag
hissed and turned her fiery gaze toward her. The torch began to shake in his
mother’s hand as she braced herself.

Giorge blinked. The old hag’s gaze had transfixed him, and
now it held his mother in place. He blinked again as the old crone’s face came
into focus. Her cheeks were drawn in so deeply it seemed like there was no skin
left. He gulped in a sharp breath as a chill sweat formed at the base of his
neck. His short sword shivered and his hand shook as he gripped the Viper’s Eye
so tightly that it hurt his knuckles. The witch smiled at his mother. It was a
hideous thing to see, a grotesque mockery of a skull-like grin.

The witch disappeared
….

A strange, silent pall descended upon him like a suspended
thought.

Strips of drenched, tattered rags clung from the emaciated
form like a thin veil concealing little of the wrinkled, dry, corpse-like flesh
beneath it. Her ribs were prominent, and the stomach had collapsed in upon
itself like a pumpkin slowly rotting away. She reached the third step….

A shallow tongue, shaped like a crumpled maple leaf, flickered
out as her mouth moved. There was no sound at first, just the movement, and
then came a wispy, strangled rattle. As she approached the fourth step, the
rattle settled into an ill-formed, unintelligible word that droned on for a few
torturous seconds. Her tongue continued to work in her mouth as she climbed the
step. She would be in range of the torch’s flame soon, but she seemed
unconcerned. Then, quite clearly and sharply, the witch barked, “Fydh!”

Fydh?
Giorge wondered. Wasn’t that the archaic form
of—

Food!

She clambered toward the next step.

13

Embril shivered as the ice-cold water dripped off her cold,
naked body. Her robe waffled in her hands as the brisk wind whipped it about as
she flew away from the waterfall, and by the time she landed on the ledge near
the cave opening, she was completely dry and chilled through and through. A
moment later, she snatched up one of the flame-based strands of magic and spun it
into a simple looping knot that she wrapped around herself. She squeezed it gradually
tighter, letting the timid heat it released warm her up. When she finished, she
turned toward the cave entrance. It was at least a quarter mile away, a safe
enough distance to avoid being detected by the hermitog—if that was what Angus
had seen. Based on his description, that’s what she thought it was, and she was
prepared to face it. But if it was something else.…

Embril edged toward the cave entrance and stopped when she
was about a dozen yards from it. She stood still for several seconds, testing
to see if the hermitog had noticed her, and then cast Soft Passage. It was a
complex spell that combined air, earth, and life magic together. The air magic lightened
her step, making her move as lightly as a butterfly flaps its breathy wings,
and the earth magic caused her feet to merge with the stone or dirt beneath her
feet. The life magic nudged plants out of her way, allowing her to pass through
them as if they weren’t there. The overall effect made it seem like she hadn’t
even passed through the area, making it very difficult for anyone following her
to know where she had gone. But she didn’t cast Soft Passage to conceal her
passage from the hermitog; she cast it because it muted her footfalls until
they made almost no sound and, more importantly, produced no more vibration
than a feather landing in tall grass. Since the hermitog hunted by sensing the
vibrations of its prey as it passed by the hermitog’s place of concealment, the
spell would make it possible for her to get quite close to the creature without
being noticed. If she wasn’t noticed, then she would have the distinct
advantage of being able to cast other spells.

When she had Soft Passage wrapped around her and anchored
into place, she turned to the second spell. The hermitog had a nearly
impenetrable shell. Arrows would bounce off it; swords were useless unless they
struck the joints in its arms, legs, or eyestalks; and even maces and flails
were only marginally effective—and nearly useless underwater. But that shell
also made it vulnerable, and she knew how to exploit that vulnerability if she
could see it. Lamplight—that’s what Angus called it, and she liked his name for
it much better than Glow Ball, the name used by Wizard School—would provide her
with the light she needed to see the hermitog. She attached it behind her right
shoulder and made her way to the cave entrance.

At the entrance she took a deep breath and peeked around the
corner. There was nothing unexpected: it was a dimly lit cave. From what Angus
had said, the hermitog laired deep in the shadows, shadows that disappeared as
she entered the cave with the Lamplight in tow. There was no sign of the
hermitog near the entrance, but the cave narrowed near the back and then
turned. She moved carefully up to the turn and hesitated. Angus hadn’t gone
into the cave himself so he didn’t know much about what it was like inside it.
All he had noted was the size of the entrance and an estimation of the cave’s
depth. About twenty feet inside, it narrowed, the ceiling lowered, and the rest
was lost in shadow. He assumed the cave either burrowed deeper into those
shadows or ended. It didn’t end.

Embril crept around the turn and frowned. The ceiling lowered
until it was only about a foot above her head, and the walls fluctuated between
five and eight feet apart. She
almost
turned back. The hermitog was
nowhere to be seen, and Angus had said it was close to the front of the cave.
He had even heard the rocks on its shell rattling as it breathed. She heard
nothing. Was the hermitog gone? Had it died? Had it acclimatized to the thin
air? It had been a long winter, and a lot could happen in four months….

Embril shook her head. She couldn’t turn back; her plans for
getting across the plateau required the use of the cave, and if the hermitog
was still inside the cave—no matter how deeply—it would attack at some point.
She had to deal with it first. She followed the tunnel for about fifteen feet
before it opened into a large cavern, one that could easily hold all of the men
and horses. She frowned. Why hadn’t Giorge mentioned this cavern to Angus? It
was too large for him not to have noticed—unless the hermitog had concealed its
presence. But that would mean the hermitog was much larger than she expected—or
something else entirely.

Embril stepped into the cavern and studied the ragged walls,
the uneven floor, and the rough ceiling. There were no hermitogs hiding in the
cavern, and the only other way out that she could see was a small tunnel half-hidden
behind an outcropping. It had a low ceiling, and she would have to slouch down
if she followed it, but she didn’t like that idea; the confined space would
make it more difficult to cast the spell. At least it was wide enough for her
to maneuver a little bit, and what she could see of it was fairly straight and
empty. There was something at the end of it that her Lamplight spell couldn’t
illuminate. It could just be a natural formation of rocks, but there seemed to
be something underneath those rocks. Unfortunately, for the spell to work, she had
to get close enough to see the hermitog clearly.
If
it was the hermitog.

She edged into the tunnel and moved slowly forward until a
sudden sense of dread collapsed in upon her. It was a strange sensation, and
she paused long enough to paw at the ground with her right foot before shaking
it off. Even if it was the hermitog, she didn’t have anything to worry about.
She could move much more quickly than it could—but not while she was slouching
in the tunnel. She paused again, her heart pounding in her chest, and
half-turned to go back—

Still the mind,
she thought with a sense of urgency.
Still
the body
.

She took a deep, calming breath and turned toward the
hermitog. It
was
the hermitog, and it hadn’t noticed her yet. There was
no need for her anxiety.
Still the mind. Still the body.
She stood still
until she felt the effects of the mantra taking hold, and then moved cautiously
closer to the back of the tunnel. She was still at least twenty feet away from
the hermitog when she stopped and knelt on the floor of the tunnel so she could
straighten her back to cast the spell. It didn’t seem to be aware of her
presence; it wasn’t even moving as it breathed. Was it asleep? Hibernating?
Dead? Could she take the chance?

She studied the magic of the creature, sorting through the
different strands for the water-based ones. There weren’t as many as she had
expected; the hermitog was a sea creature, and there should have been a lot
more of them. One thing was certain, though: it wasn’t dead because there
wasn’t any death magic emanating from it at all. There was something wrong with
it, though, but that didn’t matter; it would be dead soon enough.

She drew the creature’s water magic toward her and carefully
secured each strand around the fingers of her left hand, ignoring the pain when
she bumped against her injured fingertips. Then she drew a flame strand to her
and interlaced it through all of the strands. She anchored the flame strand to
her right thumb, bending it at the joint to hold the strand in place, and reached
for another strand of flame. After she had secured three more strands, she
decided she had enough of them and let go of the water magic. It fled back to
the hermitog. The flame magic, still anchored to her thumb, went with it as far
as it could as she took hold of the flame strands with her left hand. She
released her anchor and gripped the strands of flame with her right hand. Then
she gradually fed the flame magic some slack, letting the water magic of the
creature drag it closer and closer to the hermitog.

It was a time-consuming spell, and she had to maintain
eye-contact with the hermitog while she manipulated it. One slip in her
concentration, and the magic would escape. If the hermitog moved….

She wouldn’t see the effects of her spell until the end, but
when she saw the creature’s water magic tow the strands of flame into its shell
she knew what was happening. The heat from the flame magic would gradually
raise the temperature of the water inside the hermitog’s body, and the creature
wouldn’t even know what was happening to it until it was too late.

Minutes went by. The hermitog didn’t move. The spell
continued its magic. Then, quite suddenly, the shell exploded with such force
that it sent the rocks secured to its back scattering.

Embril released her hold on the magic and let her hands fall
to her lap. She sighed, and despite the mantra a spark of sadness threatened to
weaken her resolve.
The hateful deed is done,
she thought, standing up
and slouching to avoid the ceiling. She turned and walked calmly back to the
cavern. When she reached it, she straightened and sighed. She made her way to
the tunnel leading outside and paused at its entrance long enough to attach the
Lamplight to the wall beside it, where it illuminated most of the cavern and
tunnel.

I wish it had already been dead
, she thought as she
went somberly back to the cave entrance and sat down in the sunlight to wait
for Lieutenant Jarhad and his men to arrive. She closed her eyes, and for the
first time since becoming a horse, she fell into a deep, restful sleep, one
whose dreams were flat landscapes sculpted from shades of gray tinged with
blue, green, and yellow. Fortunately, it was a windless day, and nothing jumped
out of that landscape to try to eat her.