by Laura R Cole
CHAPTER 34
Jezebel sniffed her disdain at having to lift her skirts and soil her new shoes in the dank caverns of the ruins. She'd have to go buy three more pairs just to make up for the indignity.
The King was ahead of her, snaking through the maze of caves like he lived there. She gave another sniff, he was certainly showing the true colors of his non-royal blood; no one of true breeding would find themselves caught dead in here. She had debated revealing what she knew about his past to him, but his close-minded obsession with finding whoever this person was distracting him from everything else. She had decided to save the morsel for when he would properly digest it.
She was still insatiably curious why the King was so hell-bent on coming all the way here. He was offering up no insight for her, and his actions were just as baffling.
They had arrived in Dunlop earlier that day, and the King had had a secret meeting with two men in black hooded cloaks. He had not required her attendance at this meeting, so Jezebel had taken the chance to have a look around.
The Dark King's castle had, of course, been easy to locate being the vast structure that it was, and Jezebel was awed by the sheer power that had gone into the making of it. She would have loved to have spent the day exploring. However, she had put aside her desire to search the fortress, and had spent the day looking for her two little problems instead. She was determined to find them while she was here so they could be properly dealt with.
She had gotten information that the two had indeed stayed at the Phoenix Inn last night, but no one would tell her where they were headed today. Before she could look further into it, the King had returned and asked that she accompany him. Then the same two men with whom he’d had the meeting led them to the sacred entrance, as they called it.
Jezebel called it a cave. A dank, slimy, smelly cave.
Jezebel had no doubt that these two men were members of the Order, and she was once again impressed despite herself at the reach of the organization. She didn't know exactly what the King hoped to find in whatever place it was that this secret entrance led to, or what the Order would have to do with the person he was after. He had not even asked around in town for this girl he was supposedly looking for. Jezebel half wondered if the story about finding the girl had just been his excuse to come here and look through the old ruins himself. But the King didn't need an excuse to do anything, so why bother?
She had at first been furious when the King interrupted her own search by insisting that she come along on this mission of his, tramping around in the forest to find a cave. But she was becoming more and more curious to see if it really was some secret entrance as the cloaked men had claimed. Perhaps it was an entrance into one of the old ruins where there might be some relic left behind. If so, she supposed perhaps it was worth putting off her search for the two miscreants for a few hours longer.
The trek through the woods had been tedious, but the cavern itself was mystifying: There were runes along the walls, some of which Jezebel recognized from her book, and many new ones which she tried to commit to memory for later research. It was intriguing, leading her to the small hope that maybe it would be worth the discomfort after all. Perhaps I'll find a book about a new torture that I can inflict upon the two renegades. Wouldn't that be wonderful.
The hounds formed a single-file line behind her, and she smiled at their obedience. Soon she would have the whole country in the palm of her hand, just like the hounds.
Jezebel tripped over a loose rock, and she brought her attention back to watching her step. There had better be something worth her time in here after all this.
The King wound around the corridors with an ease that made Jezebel suspicious. He stopped before a door and moved his hands over the runes in a specific pattern.
The door rumbled and opened before him and Jezebel raised a brow. It certainly looks as though he's been here before. Her regard for him was raised another notch despite herself, and she couldn't help but be impressed by his advances in gaining access to such a long-held secret place; if, in fact, it was that place. Her respect was slightly tarnished by the fact that it still was a disgusting cave, however.
“What is this place?” she asked, half expecting him not to answer.
“The entrance to the tomb of the Dark King,” he replied to her surprise, and she shivered excitedly. Perhaps there was truth to the hooded men’s claim after all. The power that must be held in there!
It was said that when the Bloodguard stole his body and reburied the King in the secret tomb, that they buried with him the books that had been saved from the fires. When they had prepared his body for his eventual reincarnation, they included with his remains everything he would need upon his return. And unlike the looted ruins on the outside, the tomb had never before been breached, or in fact even found. If it really was the tomb…Jezebel stopped worrying about her shoes, and walked faster.
They rounded a corner, and Jezebel almost ran into the King, who had stopped dead in front of her. Jezebel rolled her eyes and stepped carefully around him so that she could get into the room and see why he had stopped. The passageway disappeared behind her as the hounds slipped through, shimmering into a very real illusion of solid rock, and Jezebel peered around the room.
It was a large cavern with two doors on opposite sides of the room – or rather one door and one now-solid rock pathway – and one large doorway to their left. Large stalactites hung down from the huge ceiling, though the rest of the cave was polished smooth.
The one main door was magnificent, and Jezebel's breath caught in her throat. Surely that is the entrance to the tomb of a King! I am so close to knowledge that would help to let me take my rightful place in the world: On the top!
She started towards the door eagerly, but was struck speechless as the door opposite them opened and the King spoke.
“Ah, there you are, my dear.”