The Viper's Fangs (Book 2) (25 page)

11

There was little light left when they began making camp, and
when they finished hobbling the horses and setting up the tent, it was almost
pitch black—and would have been, if there hadn’t been a handful of stars
peeking out from behind the gathering clouds. Once Ortis had the fire going,
Hobart reached for a piece of branch and lit the end of it. When it was burning
well, he stood up, and said, “I’m going to take a look at that well. If I can
get the winch to work, I’ll bring back some water to soak my padding.”

“I’ll go with you,” Giorge eagerly volunteered. “I want to
get another look at what’s down there.”

“No,” Angus said. “You need to stay off your foot, and there
isn’t anything you can do about it until tomorrow.”
Let him go. If he kills
himself, then it’s over.
Angus frowned at the intrusive thought that didn’t
seem to come from him, but quickly shrugged it off.

“Nonsense,” Giorge said as he stood up. He winced when he
put weight on his left foot, but it didn’t stop him from limping to the tent
flap.

Angus sighed and stood up. “I’ll go with you.”

“Why?” Giorge asked.

Angus ignored him and barely waited for him to get out of
the tent before moving to catch up with Hobart. The sudden chill of the night
air sent a shiver through him, and he quickly pulled his cloak around him. But
it wasn’t enough; he had gotten so used to wearing his robe that he wasn’t
coping well with his sudden, renewed awareness of the cold. He would do
whatever he could to help Hobart get the water and wash his padding and cloak
so he could get his robe back and feel warm again.

The drift was high enough to cover their heads, and the weak
starlight gave it a faint blue-gray glow that made it seem like frozen fog.
Hobart’s long strides quickly took him down its length, and Angus found himself
almost jogging in his effort to keep up. By the time they reached the well, he
was feeling somewhat warmer from the effort.

“Wait,” Angus said as Hobart fumbled at the frozen knot. “We
don’t want the rope to snap, do we?” Angus pushed the cloak back over his
shoulders and grimaced.
Still the mind.
He thought.
Still the body.
He didn’t know if he needed the mantra or not, but he didn’t want to risk
shivering in the middle of casting Lamplight, even if it was a simple knot.
Still
the mind.
Once he had it in his palm, he compressed it to a fraction of its
normal size, increasing the intensity and generating a considerable amount of
heat.
Still the body.
He held it close to the rope and waited until the
ice covering it slipped free and then untangled the loose knot holding it in
place.
Still the mind
. He handed the rope to Hobart and enlarged the
Lamplight to its normal, easy glow.

Hobart took the rope and tried to lower the bucket into the
well. But it didn’t budge.

“The winch is frozen up,” Giorge said as he limped into
view. “I saw it when we got here. There’s a bunch of ice and snow on the
northwest side, probably from that storm a few days ago.”

Angus nodded; he had seen it, too, but it hadn’t really
registered. He was too absorbed in tracking the magic to worry about the snow
and ice. Besides, he was planning to use Flame Bubble to melt it after he had
primed his spells in the morning. But now they were here, and he had the
Lamplight spell in hand. He could use it like he had on the rope’s knot, but
the more intense the light, the greater the heat would be and the shorter the
spell would last. That wasn’t very important at the moment, though; he didn’t
need the light for long. So he jumped gracefully to the top of the well wall
and reached up to the roof for support with his right hand. With his left, he
reached forward with Lamplight and squeezed it tight enough that it felt like
it was going to burn through his palm. He attached it to the winch mechanism
and pulled his hand away, shaking it vigorously as he jumped down to pick up a
handful of snow.

“That’s a neat trick,” Hobart said. “What did you call that
spell again?”

“Lamplight,” Giorge offered, leaning over the wall and
looking down the well. “I wonder if you can put it on the bucket when we lower
it so we can see how far down it goes.”

“Easily,” Angus said, cupping a handful of snow in his left
hand and jumping back onto the well wall. He put his right hand on the roof
again and leaned forward to nudge the small, intense orb of light a few inches
to the side. Even though he moved quickly, the snow in his hand softened
noticeably before he could retract it. He did it a few more times before Hobart
moved over to the drift and cut a chunk out of it. He brought it back to the
well and handed it up to Angus.

Giorge glanced up at the bright little spot and shuddered.
“Is that what you did to me in Wyrmwood? Make it small like that?”

Angus half-smiled and nudged the orb to the right again,
squinting against the glare. “No,” he said. “But I threatened to do it.” Then
the ice fell from the winch mechanism and he grasped the Lamplight and enlarged
it to its normal size. It cooled considerably, and he leaned over the well and
attached it to the rope just above the bucket’s handle. When he was back out of
the way, Hobart tried to lower the bucket, and it still wouldn’t move.

Angus frowned, reached for the Lamplight again, and studied
the winch mechanism for several seconds. “It isn’t iced up anymore,” he said. “If
there is a brake holding it in place, I don’t see it.”

Giorge leaned against the wall and made his way over to
stand near Angus’s feet. “Help me up,” he said, reaching for Angus’s left hand.
“I need a closer look.”

Before Angus could do little more than reposition himself
for a more stable center of balance, Hobart let go of the rope, paused for a
moment to make sure the bucket didn’t drop, and stepped around to lift Giorge
onto the wall. He stayed there, holding onto Giorge’s waist as he studied the
winch mechanism.

“I need to see the ends and the other side,” Giorge said a
minute later. Angus nodded and attached the Lamplight to Giorge’s shoulder.
Hobart held onto him firmly as he hobbled around the winch, and when he
finished his examination, he muttered, “That’s silly.”

“What is?” Angus asked.

“The winch only turns one way,” Giorge said. “We can’t use
it to lower the bucket down because the winch doesn’t turn that way.”

“That’s stupid,” Hobart said. “How would they get the water
back up?”

“Not stupid,” Angus said. “Symptata’s tormenting Giorge. He’s
brought him this close to the Viper’s Eyes and not any closer.”

“I can climb down,” Giorge said, looking as if he wanted to
jump into the well.

“No,” Hobart said, gripping him a little more firmly.
“You’re in no condition for climbing.”

“Sure I am,” Giorge said. “I can do what Angus showed us
when we got the fletching eggs. I can still brace myself with my legs and
back,
and if my ankle and arm were in better shape, I could easily climb down this
well without the rope.”

Angus frowned and looked at the winch mechanism. Would
Symptata have made it that way to challenge a thief’s ability? That didn’t make
sense, did it? He wouldn’t reward a thief who had made the attempt; he was
infuriated with Giorge’s far-removed grandmother, and that led him to make the
curse in the first place. This had to be part of the plague of woe, didn’t it?
Or could it be the ill fortune met? A temptation teasing the thief into making
such an attempt, and in the attempt—what? Would he die?

No. It wasn’t time for that, yet. The Viper’s Eyes shouldn’t
release the death magic; it should release the snow, ice—whatever chilling
surprise Symptata had in store for him. Would
that
kill Giorge? Angus
didn’t think so; Giorge had said he would have three weeks. But that was before
the giant snake had attacked them. Maybe the scrolls were written in the wrong
order?

Why would someone make a winch that only turned one way? You
could lower the bucket down or you could raise it up, but not both. Once it got
where it was going, it was stuck there. And right now, the bucket was stuck at
the top and wouldn’t go back down. But it had to go back down, didn’t it? It
had to have been at the bottom when it was pulled up. Unless—

Angus laughed and moved quickly along the top of the wall
until he was next to Giorge on the south side. He reached out for the bucket
and brought it close to him. Then he reached over and snatched away Lamplight,
condensed it, and used it to thaw the knots securing the rope to the bucket.
Once they were pliable enough he enlarged Lamplight and quickly untied the
bucket from the rope.

“What are you up to?” Hobart asked.

“I’m going to get you a bucket of water,” Angus said. When
he had the bucket untied, he held the rope with his right hand and half-jumped,
half-swung over to the other side of the well. He landed with perfect balance
and, in one fluid motion, released the rope, pivoted, and reached out for the
end of the rope that had been tied to the spike. He threaded the rope through
the handle of the bucket and secured it with a knot that would hold but would
also be easy to untie. Then he pulled on the rope.

The winch turned easily toward him, and the end of the rope
that had been tied to the bucket moved upward, through the winch mechanism. As
it went, Angus set the bucket onto the well wall and half-smiled and looked at
the other two. “If it will only turn one way, then all we have to do is invert
the rope. We can drop the bucket down, and when it reaches the water, we can
either bring it back up by hand or thread the rope through from the other side
and reel it in.”

“Good enough,” Hobart said, lifting Giorge off the wall and
bending over to gently set him on the ground. “I’ll hold onto the rope while it
drops, and you can feed it through the winch.”

“Don’t forget to attach the Lamplight to it before we drop
it,” Giorge said as he leaned against the well and looked down. “We need to
know how far down it goes.”

Angus nodded and bent over to attach the Lamplight to the
rope just above the bucket’s handle. “This will give us some idea of what’s
down there,” he said, “and it might let us see what’s beneath the water.” He
held the bucket over the well and let it drop at a controlled but fast rate. As
they watched the bucket descend, all they saw was what they would have expected
to see in the inside of a well: the inner wall covered with grit. When the
bucket struck water and submerged, that was still all they saw, but less
clearly because of the distortion of the water.

“So much for that,” Angus said. “We won’t be able to see
anything more without going down there. At least it doesn’t look like the water
is very deep.”

“Why would we do go down there?” Hobart asked. “We’ll have
plenty of water soon enough.”

Angus moved gracefully along the top of the wall and
threaded the rope through the winch. He tested it to make sure it wouldn’t come
back out, and then went back to the other side and pulled it easily through.
Once it tautened, he handed the rope to Hobart, half-smiled, and said, “It’s
your water.”
And your robe
, the voice in his head said, chuckling.

Giorge sighed and pointed down the well. “Hobart,” he said.
“The Viper’s Eyes are down there.”

“What do you mean?” Hobart said, pulling on the rope. “How
do you know that?”

“I can feel it,” Giorge said. “I’m being pulled toward it,
and if the urge gets much stronger, I’ll jump into the well to get down to them
if I have to.”

“I can see it down there,” Angus added. “Not the Eyes, but
the magic drawing Giorge to them.”

Hobart pulled on the rope for several seconds, and then
said. “Well, we can’t do much about it tonight.”

“No,” Angus agreed. “But we can get your padding and cloak clean
and dry.”

“Dry?” Hobart asked. “It will take all night for it to dry.”

Angus shook his head and pointed at the approaching
Lamplight. “That will dry it much more quickly. And my robe,” he added, “will
keep your hands from freezing while you wash it.”

Two minutes later, they were on their way back to the tent,
and an hour after that Angus was huddling in his robe and warm, truly warm, for
the first time in hours….

12

The next morning, Giorge wanted to climb down the well
before dawn, and it was all they could do to keep him in the tent. While he
fretted, Angus picked up his backpack and went to the tent flap. Before opening
it, he turned to Ortis and said, “We’re going to need more firewood. Gather
some up and stack it next to the well.”

“Why?” Ortis said.

“I’m going to cast Flame Bubble around the well,” he said.
“It’s the spell I cast in the other clearing. It should dry the wood so that it
will burn more easily.” He had to prime for it first, and he couldn’t do that
with Giorge prancing about in the tent. So he went outside and found a place to
sit down, and once he was comfortable, he primed for the same spells he had
used the day before: Flame Bubble, Lamplight, and Puffer. When he returned to
the tent, Giorge and two of Ortis were gone, and the other Ortis handed him a
bowl of stew. He accepted it with a nod and quickly ate what was offered
without paying much attention to the taste. While he ate, Hobart finished his
own meal and picked up his bundle of armor. He carried it outside, and that
left Ortis and Angus alone in the tent.

“Giorge is impatient,” Ortis said. “I’ve had to pull him
back from the edge of the well twice already.”

Angus shrugged. “Let him climb down,” he said.
If he
falls, we won’t have to worry about the curse anymore.
“He’s going to have
to at some point, anyway.”

“He’s in no shape for climbing,” Ortis said.

Angus shrugged. “Use the fletching harness and rope, like he
suggested.”

Ortis frowned and his orange-tinted
owl-like
eyes
grew distant for a few seconds. Then he said, “Hobart is using the leather from
the harnesses to fashion new straps for his armor. Some of them ripped when he
pulled it off. He’s already cut one of them into strips, but I stopped him
before he could start on the other. We’ll put Giorge in it and lower him down with
the winch.”

“Setting it up will keep Giorge busy long enough for me to
finish,” Angus said. “Do you have the firewood ready?”

“Yes,” Ortis said. “I stacked enough to last us for a few
days.”

“We should have more,” Angus said, scraping up the last of
his stew and shoveling it into his mouth. He washed it down with ice-cold water
and belched appreciatively. It had been a satisfying meal, but mainly because
he had been quite hungry.

“If Giorge gets the Eyes, what’s going to happen to him?”
Ortis asked.

Angus frowned. He didn’t know, but it wouldn’t be good. Ice,
frost, snow—there were so many ways they could plague a person, so many ways
they could kill. But he did know one thing, and that is what he told Ortis.
“Whatever it is, it won’t be good. But it will be better than what would happen
if he doesn’t.”

Ortis frowned and asked, “Is there anything we can do to
prepare for it?”

Dress warm?
Angus shook his head, mostly to rid
himself of the voice in his head, and then realized Ortis must have taken the
gesture to mean there wasn’t any way to prepare. “Until we have a better idea
of the effects of the magic,” he said, “all we can do is make general
preparations for cold-based attacks. Take the firewood, for instance. We’ll
need a lot of it if we have to deal with unnaturally cold weather, blizzards, and
things like that, but it won’t do a bit of good against a creature like that
giant snake we encountered.”

Ortis nodded slowly and said, “I’ll get more firewood.” Then
he left the tent and Angus reluctantly followed after him. It was time to find
out what dreadful thing Symptata had in store for Giorge, and he was as
well-prepared for it as he could be—and still felt completely ill-prepared. At
least he could melt the snow and ice around the well, dry some wood, and warm
Giorge up when he came back out of the well.
If
he came back out. And
what about himself? Shouldn’t he be the one going down the well first, if only
to see
where
the magic was leading Giorge?

Let it take him,
the voice in his head hissed.
Sardach
knows I’m here.

Sardach? That wizard he had seen? The one who had sought him
out? Why should he be worried about him? It would take weeks for him to get
from the Angst temple to where they had been when the scrying had found him.

The Angst temple? What was Sardach doing there? How did he
know….

When he had traced the scrying back to the caster, he had
entered through a hole in the ceiling. The edges of the stone had been melted.
The floor had been burned. Sardach had cast the scrying in the same place that
Angus had extinguished his Lava Man spell.

Embril would be on her way to the Angst temple soon, if she
wasn’t already. Commander Garret would not wait for Hobart’s banner to return;
he would send his men there without them. He had a copy of the map Voltari had
given him, the one that showed where the temple was.

Let the curse take him,
the voice purred in his mind.
It’s his curse.

Angus shook his head.
No!
he thought back, his own
voice viciously intense.
I have a duty to the banner, and I must do what I
can to help him.
He set his jaw, picked up his backpack, and walked out of
the tent with a fierce sense of newfound purpose.

It lasted only until he reached the well and realized he
still had no idea what to do.

Giorge was in the harness, sitting on the edge of the well
waiting for him. He held out the bucket and asked, “How do you untie this knot?”

Angus half-smiled and said, “I’ll show you.” He reached out
for the bucket, looked at the knot, and paused. “You’ve messed with it,” he accused,
studying the disheveled tangle for several seconds. Then he nodded to himself
and set his fingers to work correcting Giorge’s catastrophe. Once it was untangled,
he retied the knot and said, “Next time, ask
before
you try to do it
yourself.” He held the knot out toward Giorge and used two fingers to push a
loop back through the other loops encircling it. When it came out the other
side, the rest of the knot unraveled easily.

“That’s all that was holding it in place?” Giorge asked,
raising his eyes. “How did it stay there?”

Angus shook his head. He could
try
to explain the
mechanics involved, but it had taken him weeks to master the basics for them. Did
he really want to spend that much time explaining how knots worked to someone
who wasn’t likely to live that long? “It’s complicated,” he said as he took the
rope and tied it to the large metal ring on the front of Giorge’s harness. Then
he focused on the magic to cast the Lamplight spell, ignoring as best he could
the vibrant green stream of energy flowing from Giorge’s chest and into the
well like an umbilical cord sucking him dry. He attached the Lamplight to
Giorge’s shoulder and stepped back. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Giorge said, swinging around so his legs dangled
inside the well.

Ortis gripped the rope firmly as Giorge dropped into the
well and swayed back and forth without descending. Ortis gave the rope some
slack, but Giorge still swayed like a pendulum that was losing its momentum.

Angus closed his eyes and shook his head.
Why didn’t I
remember to turn the rope around?

Five minutes later, Giorge was on his way down the well.
When he reached the bottom, there was a loud splash followed by a sharp yelp.

“Giorge?” Ortis called down the well. “Do you need help?”

“No!” Giorge shouted back up. “It’s just cold!” There was a
pause, and then he added, “The water isn’t very deep.”

“Good!” Angus yelled. “We’ll reverse the rope and get ready
to pull you back up.”

“He can’t stay in that water very long,” Ortis
half-whispered. “The cold will do him in fairly quickly.”

Angus nodded and jumped up on the well wall. As he pulled
the rest of the rope through the winch, the voice in his head commanded him to
drop the rope—and he almost did it. But his left hand snatched the end as it
was falling, and he covered up the movement by repositioning himself to feed
the rope back through the winch form the other side. He almost dropped it a
second time before he had it threaded through the winch system. He stepped back
across the well and pulled it through until it was taut again.

“We should pull him up,” Ortis said. “He’s been under the
water too long.”

Under the water?
Angus thought as he looked down the
well. The Lamplight’s glow was clouded by the water, and he could only vaguely
see Giorge’s shape just beyond it. As he watched, Giorge thrashed around a bit,
but otherwise there was little indication of life. “Let him be for a few
minutes,” Angus said. “He’s found something.”

Ortis frowned and shook his head. “No,” he said. “If he
doesn’t resurface soon, I’m pulling him up.”

Angus shrugged. “He can hold his breath for quite a while,”
he said. “You don’t need to worry about him yet. Give him at least five
minutes.”

Ortis frowned and asked, “How do you know that?”

Standard training for a thief
, the voice said. “He
must have said something about it, once. I can’t remember when. You know how
much he talks.”

Giorge plunged up and gasped for breath for a few seconds,
and then plunged quickly back under.

“See?” Angus asked. “He’s all right for now, but when he
does come up, he’ll need to get warm quickly.”

“Yes,” Ortis said. “And it will take a minute or two to reel
him in.”

Five more minutes passed with Giorge bobbing up for air and
submerging again. Then he finally came up with a small box cradled in his arms
and shouted, “B-b-bring m-m-me o-o-out!”

“I’ll get ready,” Angus said as two of Ortis alternated
pulling on the rope, keeping Giorge moving upward at a steady, rapid, efficient
pace.

Angus moved close to the stack of firewood and estimated how
far the effects of the Flame Bubble would travel, stepped back toward Ortis a
few paces, and glanced at Hobart. He called, “If you want to get warm, Hobart,
you’ll have to get closer to me.”

Hobart stood up and walked to stand next to him, flexing his
hands and rubbing his upper arms. “That robe of yours is amazing,” he said. “But
I’ve been cold as hell ever since you took it back.”

Angus half-smiled; he knew what Hobart meant. Then he
brought the magical energy into focus and gathered in two of the threads of
flame. He held them close together and made the same series of knots in each
one as he went. By the time he had finished, Ortis had Giorge reeled in.

Giorge shivered convulsively and his skin had a blue tinge
to it, but he clutched the box he’d found to his chest as if it contained his
last breath and he didn’t want it to escape.

As soon as Ortis had him situated on the well wall, Angus
slowly released the energy of the spell, sending out a series of short bursts
of heat that rapidly melted the snow and ice. He prolonged the effects of the
spell as long as he could, but the strands broke free with an intense burst of
heat—without flame—in less than a minute.

Giorge was still shivering, and if anything, a more intense
shade of blue flickered about him. Angus frowned; he wasn’t looking at Giorge’s
skin
, but at something wrapped
around
that skin, a thin layer of
blue-white magical energy.
The scroll’s magic has migrated to Giorge,
Angus thought.
Is it going to freeze him to death?
Then the other voice
said, its tone sweetly condescending,
You could give him your robe.
Before he could reply and with a suddenness that shocked him, the energy surrounding
Giorge was gone.

He frowned. Where had the magic of the curse gone now? What
was it doing? Why couldn’t he see it? Why hadn’t he seen it flee? Was it like
the Viper’s Breath? Concealed behind something that shielded its energy from
his perception? If that were the case—

Giorge opened the box and stared into it with a puzzled look
on his face. “It’s empty,” he said.

The green stream of energy no longer flowed from him, but
Angus knew The Viper’s Breath was still there, buried in his chest, waiting—but
for what? Had the other energy joined it? Was it hibernating, waiting for him
to approach whatever was next?

Giorge reached into the box and brought out a small piece of
parchment.
Not quite empty,
Angus thought as Giorge read it, frowned,
and read it again, his lips moving silently as he did so.

Angus stepped cautiously forward, looking for the missing
blue-white aura that had briefly engulfed Giorge before disappearing. But he
saw no sign of it, and by the time he was able to look over Giorge’s shoulder
to read the message, he had given up looking for it. It would return sometime;
he was certain of it.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Giorge said, holding the note at
a different angle to make it easier for Angus to read.

While he read, Angus’s right hand reached around Giorge and
brought the scroll tube out of his pocket without him noticing it.

The pain and danger felt thus far

are but a taste of what’s in store,

for twice the burden are the Eyes,

and twice as swift is your demise.

Halfway home; halfway free;

soon the tomb of misery,

wherein lies the Viper’s Skull

that waits for you to pay its toll.”

Symptata the Beggarman

“How can the eyes be a burden when I don’t have them? There
wasn’t anything in the box but this note.”

Yes there was,
Angus thought, wondering again what
might have attracted the magic away from Giorge. “Is there a false bottom or
other hidden compartment?” Angus asked, turning away from the message long
enough to open the scroll tube. He had intended to find out if the magic was
still in the second scroll—it
could
have retreated, especially if it
were tied to the Viper’s Eyes and they were no longer in the box—but he’d
opened the wrong end. Instead of finding the scrolls, he found the empty black
velvet pouch that had held The Viper’s Fangs. But, it wasn’t empty any longer.
Something was in it. Two somethings that felt like oval orbs….