The Golden Key (Book 3) (9 page)

13

Angus rested his body as he watched Iscara, but he didn’t
sleep. Even with the strange, corpse-like skin tone, she had a kind of sinister
beauty to her. Still, after a few minutes of watching her walking down
dark-gray passage after dark-gray passage, the novelty dissipated and he grew
bored. Sleep snuck up on him, threatened him, but he used the mantra to set it
aside so he could watch her some more. It seemed important, if only because it
was his only connection, his only confirmation that Typhus was there, lingering
unseen behind her, hovering, glancing occasionally over her shoulder or down
her bodice. They talked infrequently, and only in hushed tones, and Typhus’s
eyes darted about him as if he thought every little patch of shadow held a gray
monster waiting to swallow him up. His paranoia made it easier for Angus to
remember the turns in the corridors and the location of the sentries they
passed, and after a few minutes he decided it wasn’t a castle.

They’re underground
, he thought,
and it is a large
complex. It has to be beneath a city or town. The tunnel system is like a sewer.
Then they emerged into the early dawn bustling of a busy city street and
quickly made their way through what could only be a large city.
Tyrag?
Angus wondered.
The roads are constructed along a grid-like pattern, just
like in Hellsbreath.
He studied the unfamiliar shops as they hurried by,
recognizing the purpose of many of them but none of their signs. Their journey
absorbed him, despite its simplicity, its repetition, and he soon found himself
on the verge of dozing despite the mantra. But a part of him—perhaps the part
linked to Typhus’s hypervigilance—kept him alert despite the depths of his
body’s repose. So, as they entered an apothecary’s shop, Angus heard the stones
shifting below him. Something was creeping up the slope toward him, and it was
moving with the cautious, careful, sure-footedness of a predator.

Angus didn’t move as he let the magic—the peculiar image of
Iscara—slip to the edge of his awareness. He reduced his breathing to a sliver,
a bare shiver of movement in his chest, and eased the beating of his heart. The
yiffrim had not yet attacked, and it might not attack at all if it thought he
was already dead. If he were lucky….

A few seconds passed, and another rock shifted. This one was
much closer, almost directly below him. He opened his eyes a slit, but he
couldn’t see the yiffrim yet. It was still below the lip of the ledge, making
its way up the slope.
Yiffrim are excellent trackers. They can smell the
faintest of trails
. It had tracked him this far, and all he had to defend
himself was a dagger and a couple of stilettos in his boots.
Does it matter?
he wondered.
I’m half-dead already. How can I defend myself without magic?
Then, as if Typhus was still berating him, he heard his own inner voice shift
to a snide tone and say,
Fool! Use the wand!
It wasn’t really Typhus’s
voice, but it was a good approximation of his tone. He took in a slow, deep
breath and flexed his left arm to release the straps holding the wand in place
and it dropped into his hand. Then he slowly, methodically made the first
movement for activating the wand.

The yiffrim—was it one or two of them?— was sniffing at the
mountainside just over the ledge, and the top of a white-furred ear bobbed up
above the lip. The ear was as large as his hand. Then its eyes appeared, catching
the moonlight and reflecting it back like two pale, glistening black beads. Its
shoulder rippled as it lifted a paw that was large enough to swallow Angus’s
head and dug its six-inch claws into the roadbed. It was stalking him, and now
it had its prey in sight!

Angus slowly made the second movement of the wand as a lump
formed in his throat, strangling the scream that almost wrenched itself from
his mouth.

If the creature saw the movement, it didn’t show it as it
crouched on the ledge with its tail swishing back and forth. It was easily
Angus’s height at the shoulder and twice as long, and as it leaned back, Angus
made the third movement with the same deliberateness that he had had for the
first two.

The yiffrim stared at him—at his left shoulder—and crept a
step to its left. Angus marveled at its long, muscular, white-furred body. It
was a rare, beautiful,
deadly
creature, and if he wasn’t its prey, he
would have left it alone. But it had stalked him and was about to pounce. The
muscles in its hindquarters rippled as it leaned back and flung itself forward
with its front paws outstretched.

Angus lifted the wand and pointed it at the yiffrim.
Deafening thunder erupted around him as he rolled to the right and lunged
forward. A massive disembodied paw struck where his left shoulder had been. His
right shoulder struck the road and intense agony erupted in it. He moaned,
rolled onto his back and lay there, his eyes glazing over. As he lost
consciousness, a fine powder settled on him like a light blanket of snow. Then the
yiffrim’s hindquarters landed, their weight pressing down on his tortured body.
They were still twitching as the world slipped away.

14

The gray dawn was breaking as Hobart and Ortis slipped on
their snowshoes and started across the narrow, ice-covered valley. It had taken
less than an hour to cross it the day before, and they didn’t expect it to take
any longer this time. They were almost across it when a thunderclap snapped through
the silence of the soft, barren snowscape. It seemed to have come from the
mountain they were approaching, and they paused to glance at each other.

“It came from between us and the cave,” Ortis said after a
moment.

Hobart nodded. “He’s in trouble.”

“I’m heading for the lift,” Ortis said. “I might be able to
see something.”

Hobart nodded, and without another word, they hurried across
the last of the little valley, their snowshoes digging into the surface as they
went.

When they reached the other side, they barely took enough
time to sling the snowshoes over their shoulders before clambering up the slope
on their hands and knees. Yesterday, they had slid down it in a fraction of the
time, but this time they had to fall flat against the mountainside several
times to avoid sliding all the way down to the bottom. It took nearly an hour
of scampering before they reached the ledge they had followed around the
mountain to Giorge’s tomb. As they gasped in lungfuls of the thin air, Ortis
shook his head and said, “I can’t see him from the lift.”

“He’s closer to us, then,” Hobart puffed. Even though he was
winded, he broke into a trot and headed west. The nearly smooth surface of the
ledge made for easy running, and normally he could jog in his armor for a long
time before he had to stop for breath, but the thin air made it impossible. It
was crisp and bit into his lungs without providing him a full breath. He knew
he would have to stop to give his lungs a break eventually, but he was
determined to push his endurance to the limit before he did.

Ortis loped easily beside him, his breath puffing out in
little cloudbursts of fog. “It would be faster without your armor,” he said.

Hobart gulped in air and shook his head. Angus had used the
wand, and the way he guarded the precious little thing, he hadn’t done so
lightly. “The wand,” he gasped. Whatever it was that had enticed him to use it,
had to be dangerous. “I’ll need it.” The last time Angus had used it, it was
against the thing that had carried him off, and before that—
he hadn’t even
used it against the snake.
Hobart quickened his pace, trying to ignore the
stabbing pain in his side as his body protested.

Ortis easily kept pace with him, and when Hobart noticed the
ease with which he was running, he gasped, “Go!” When Ortis lingered at his
side, he grumbled, “I’ll catch up!”

Ortis looked at him, nodded, and said, “I’m bringing the
lift down. When I reach the bottom, I’ll come across from the other side.” He
easily outdistanced Hobart, and in minutes, he curled out of sight around the
curve of the mountain.

Hobart kept jogging until his heart pounded in his chest as hard
as a smithy’s hammer on dented armor, until his breathing was as ragged and
empty as a ghost wind, until gray-black spots swarmed around and smothered the
edge of his vision. He finally staggered to a stop when his side felt like it
had been pierced by a fishman’s spear, the barbed point twisting deeper and
deeper into the wound. He had felt that barbed point once before….

Hobart slumped against the rough mountainside for support
and sagged to his knees, scrunching up to relieve some of the harshness of the
pressure in his lungs, the pain in his side.

What good am I in battle if I can’t get to it?
he
scolded himself. He
almost
removed his armor, but instead, once his
breathing subsided to easy, brief snorts, once the pain ebbed to a tolerable
level, he pushed himself to his feet and started jogging again.
Angus needs
help
, he thought as he lumbered forward.
He’s in trouble
. Hobart
focused on his breathing, forcing himself to take long, deep breaths despite
the growing urge to swallow it in short little gasps.
Angus needs me.
He
buried the pain beneath a thick layer of banner duty and kept plodding forward.

Hobart eventually staggered around a small outcropping and
saw Ortis a quarter mile ahead of him. He was relieved when he saw that Ortis
had set aside his bow, and took a few minutes to lean against the mountainside
to catch his breath again. His head was swimming like it had when that fishman had
clouted him with the butt of his spear, and his vision wavered. The danger seemed
to be over; Ortis was kneeling over a dead animal of some sort. A large one by
the look of it, one with thick white fur. But where was Angus?

He pushed himself away from the mountain and shuffled
unsteadily forward, reaching out for support from the mountainside as he needed
it. As he got closer, he began to see details. Most of the animal was hidden
from him; all he saw were the hind legs, but they would rival his own in size.
Then he realized Ortis wasn’t skinning and butchering the animal; he was doing
something else. Then he saw the boot. It was black, like Angus’s boot, and it
had been slashed and tossed aside. He hurried to hobble over the last dozen
yards, and as he went, he saw more bits and pieces of Angus as Ortis moved
about him.
Is he alive?
he wondered as he came to a stop just behind
Ortis. There was no need to hurry if Angus was dead, and if he wasn’t dead,
Ortis was tending to him and would tell him what to do if he needed help. But
he was no good to either of them if he couldn’t breathe.

Angus was in bad shape. The inside of the boot Ortis had
removed had blood and skin caked on it, and when he saw the foot he cringed; it
had a mottled reddish-black color, and the skin was cracked like a fishman’s after
two days without water, exposing the flesh beneath it, and oozing soupy blood.
But Ortis wasn’t tending to that ugly wound; he was focused on something else,
something Hobart couldn’t see. He stepped around Ortis, and what he saw nauseated
him the way battle wounds always did when he thought it could have been him,
instead of the soldier lying there. But this time he knew it wasn’t true; it
couldn’t
have been him. The creature had come for Angus, and for him alone. Still, he
had to clench his teeth to quell the urge to vomit, and then set aside the
gruesomeness by assessing the damage that had been done to Angus.

Ortis had peeled Angus’s robe from his right side,
displaying a huge, sickly, yellow-brown bruise that ran across his chest and
down his arm. His right shoulder was almost black. Hobart had seen wounds like
that before; they were usually caused by a blow from a mace or flail. The
shoulder blade and the arm bone often broke when those blows struck the
shoulder, and sometimes they even shattered the joint completely. Even then,
Ortis wasn’t working on the shoulder, either, but why would he be? He couldn’t
do anything for an injury like that; it needed the skills of an expert healer.
Or amputation. Instead, Ortis was using a pair of arrows to splint Angus’s
right arm.

“He’s fortunate to be alive,” Ortis said without looking up.
“These wounds may still kill him, and there is little I can do.”

Hobart knelt on one knee and asked, “Is there anything I can
help you with?”

“You can move that thing off him,” Ortis said, nodding at
the animal draped over Angus’s left arm and shoulder. “Check for injuries.”

Hobart nodded and moved to pick up the creature, and then
paused. It wasn’t a creature; it was only the back half of one. The head and shoulders
were missing, and a severed paw was dangling from the stone not far from where
Angus’s head was resting. The white fur barely had any blood on it, as if its
death had been so sudden that it had forgotten to bleed.
The wand
,
Hobart thought as he reached for the hindquarters. Even half the beast was massive,
and he grunted as he struggled to lift it. A soft blue light emerged from
beneath it, and he was able to take only two steps away from Angus before he
had to drop it. But it was far enough, and he returned to kneel beside Angus.

The strange blue Lamplight made it difficult to see his
injuries clearly; it gave everything a blue tint that made him think Angus was
suffering from the cold. Hobart had seen cold sap the life from men before, and
the blue tint to the skin was the harbinger of such a doom. But Hobart knew
what Angus’s robe could do; he had worn it himself, if only for a short time.
It was a remarkable article of clothing, and it would keep Angus from freezing.
He wouldn’t even get cold while he wore it.

The wand was still in Angus’s hand, and Hobart reached down
for it. He set it carefully aside and gently lifted the robe from Angus’s left
side. After a thorough examination, he found no bruising, no broken bones, no
apparent injuries, and draped the robe back over him. “This side seems fine,”
he said. Then he reached for Angus’s head and abruptly stopped. The face was
familiar, but there were differences. He had the scruffy black hair and beard,
but the thinness gave him a sharp, angular jawline instead of a rounded one.
The scar on his neck was gone, and so was the broken nose. The nose wasn’t even
flat, like it had been; it was almost dainty, pert like a woman’s. He took off
his gauntlets and reached out to touch Angus’s forehead and frowned. It was hot
to the touch, despite the cool air. “Fever,” he said as he pried open one of
Angus’s eyes. It was a rich blue instead of silver, but that could be the spell
casting its blue pall on it. Then again.…

Ortis finished securing the splint and turned his attention
to the shoulder. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I can’t do much for his
shoulder or foot yet. They’ll have to wait until I get here with the bandages
and travois. It will be a while,” he added. “The lift was already halfway down
when I got here, and I’m just now getting back to the top. I’ve already
gathered enough branches for the travois, and I’ll build it on the way back
down.”

Hobart frowned. “It isn’t Angus,” he said. “Look at his
face.”

Ortis glanced up and shrugged. “It looks a lot like him,
doesn’t it? And that thing did something to him, remember?”

Hobart frowned. He was right; there had been
two
of
Angus, and they had looked different from each other. This must be one of them,
but which one? Who was the other?
Where
was the other? “His eyes are
blue,” he muttered. “How do a person’s eyes change color like that?”

Ortis frowned, reached up to check Angus’s eye, and shrugged
again. “At least they look normal. He probably doesn’t have a head injury. He probably
wouldn’t survive one in his condition. He might not survive anyway.”

“We’ll have to watch him closely,” Hobart decided. “If it’s
the other one, the one who wanted to kill Giorge….”

Ortis looked up at him. “Even if it is that one, he’s in no
shape to do us any evil. His shoulder is crushed, Hobart. He must have struck
the rocks with it when he landed. And that foot,” he shook his head. “The boot
was on it so tight that it cut off the circulation to it. He may not be able to
use it again, and when he wakes up—
if
he wakes up—the pain will be
horrid. We may have to amputate it. If I had known how bad it was, I would have
left the boot on.”

“He has magic,” Hobart said, picking up the wand and looking
at it. “Even with these injuries, he can still use that.” He paused and held
the wand out to Ortis. “Put this in your quiver. There’s no sense letting him
have it until we know for sure who he is. I’d like to bind his hands, too.”

“No need,” Ortis said as he took the wand and opened the
flap on the side of his quiver where he kept his spare fletching feathers. He
slid the wand in the center of them and sealed the flap. “He can’t move his
right hand, and the only spell we’ve ever seen him cast with just his left hand
is that one.” He pointed at the Lamplight. “By the look of it, he didn’t do it
right this time.”

Hobart frowned. It was true; the Lamplight didn’t look
right, and not just because of the color; it was also misshapen. All of the
other times he had seen it, it had been a perfect sphere. He gingerly reached
for it and was surprised to find there was no heat emanating from it. Instead,
it was cool and moist, almost wet. “It’s not the same spell,” he said suddenly.
“He must have primed for something else.” He paused, set his jaw, and added,
“Or it isn’t him.”

“He has Angus’s wand and robe,” Ortis said. “If he isn’t
Angus, he’ll know what happened to him.”

“We should have brought some rope,” Hobart said. “If we need
to tie him up—”

“Ha!” Ortis barked. “He’s going to have to make an
astonishing recovery before we need to tie him up, and I don’t see that
happening. We have to get him to a healer as soon as we can, and even then, it
might not be soon enough to save his foot
or
his arm.”

Hobart frowned. Ortis was right; Angus—if it were him—was
too near death to be much of a threat. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t become
one when he began to recover. After that.…

As Ortis eased Angus’s splinted arm up against his side,
bones chafed against each other, popping like twigs beneath a heavy boot. It
was a sound Hobart had heard far too often when he was in battle….

Ortis shook his head and wrapped Angus’s robe around him and
tied the sash firmly to keep the arm in place.

“Not that way,” Hobart said, reaching down to untie the
sash. “He said it had to be tied like this.” He made the looping knot Angus had
shown him when he had lent him his robe.

“That’s all I can do for him now,” Ortis said, leaning back
on his heels. “It’s up to him what happens now.”

Hobart studied Angus for a few more seconds, and then reached
up to pluck a bit of grit from Angus’s hair. The grit had a beige tone, was
warm to the touch, and felt oily. He held it up to his nose, but the scent was
unfamiliar to him. He tasted it and quickly spat it out to clean his tongue of
the fowl taste. He drank from his waterskin and rinsed his mouth for several
seconds, spat it out, and did it again. When the taste had diminished, he
asked, “What was that stuff? It tastes like skunks smell.”