by Jack Heckel
“I still say that we should wait till dark,” Seamus opined as he ran a rag over his bare head.
It was considerably hotter in this valley than it had been in the mountain pass, and we were all beginning to feel the effects of the sun.
“I’m not entering a place called the Tomb of Terrors at night,” I said for the fifth time in the last twenty minutes. “That’s just asking for trouble.”
“We should vote on it,” Seamus said cheerfully.
Both Rook and I groaned. Seamus had started this whole “vote on it” thing after Valdara and Drake left and, to be fair, after I refused to step up as company leader. Like elections everywhere, it was a torturously slow process, involving multiple ballot proposals, speeches in support and against, caucuses, and round after round of votes and vote counts. All I can say is thank the gods the Hooded Riders showed up. (Wait, I can’t believe I just wrote that.)
“Hooded Riders!” shouted Sam, who had been on Hooded Rider watch.
The entire company rushed over to him, weapons already drawn. Sure enough, on the top of a hill no more than a mile away were three riders, their shapes bending and twisting in the midday heat. “What do we do?” Luke asked, his eyes wide as saucers.
“There’s no escape,” Ariella wailed.
“She’s right,” Rook growled. “If we make run for it, they’ll cut us down like dogs in the wasteland, and if we stay here they’ll just wait till dark and gut us like fish.” He punctuated this speech by gruesomely pantomiming his guts falling out.
“Why don’t we vote!” shouted Seamus.
At that moment the riders began to advance toward us. I pointed and cried out, “No time! Here they come! Leave the horses and grab your packs. We’re going to make a run for the temple. Maybe we can seal ourselves in.”
It is a testament to how terrified the company was of the Hooded Riders that the idea of sealing themselves into a crypt with something called a semi-lich sounded like a great idea. Nevertheless, soon we were all sprinting down the hill and across the desert toward the mound.
I was sure we were going to be cut down halfway across the waste (this conviction being helped along by Sam, who stated it as definite fact every minute or so during our flight), but we made it, sweating and panting, to the top of the mound as the riders reached the edge of the waste.
“The riders will be on us in minutes!” Luke shouted.
“Well, stop starin’ at them and look for an entrance to the tomb!” Rook shouted back.
We all scrambled about, but there was not much to see of the dreaded Tomb of Terrors except a circular disc of stone lying on the ground at the mound’s center. It was about six feet across and had some indecipherable symbols carved into its face.
“There’s no way in,” wailed Sam, who I think was being really negatively affected by all the doom and gloom.
“It’s a trap!” cried Luke.
“No,” Seamus said as he ran his sleeve over his head. “I think the stone is covering the entrance.”
Rook and Seamus, who had both somehow managed to carry their ten-foot poles and fifty-foot lengths of ropes with them across the waste, set to work at once on moving the stone. They pried at it with their poles. They yanked on it with their ropes. The disc wouldn’t budge.
I stared back out at the wasteland. An approaching cloud of dust marked the progress of the riders. Rook was right; they really would be on us in minutes. I walked back to the dwarfs as they took turns hacking at the edge of the disc with their pickaxes. “Keep at it,” I said, trying to be calm and failing. “We will try and hold them off as long as we can.”
“Aye, laddie, we’ll fight to the end,” Rook growled defiantly.
Seamus rose and grasped my arm in his hand in what I had learned was a traditional dwarven farewell. “But between the three of us, our fates are sealed and we all know it.” Rook nodded his agreement.
On that optimistic note, the rest of us formed a circle around the base of the mound and waited for the riders, who were now no more than a hundred yards or so away. The dust obscured them, which made facing them a little easier, but the drumbeat of their horses as they charged, and the unholy screams and shouts they made, were enough to frighten the bravest of men, and I think we’ve established that I’m not the bravest of men. I was petrified.
Fortunately, we had barely gotten into position when the dwarfs called out, “It’s open!”
I turned to see that they had somehow managed to rotate the stone covering to the side, revealing a man-sized hole. We all rushed over and stared down into a pit of utter darkness.
“It’s funny actually,” Rook was saying as he scratched the top of his head. “It opened quite easily.”
“It even had instructions,” Seamus added, wiping the shine from his head.
“Well, now what?” Ariella asked.
“We go down the hole,” I said, and made a welcoming gesture in case anyone wanted to take the lead.
“Shouldn’t we be worried about getting ambushed when we go down there?” Sam asked reasonably.
We were all pondering this when the thunder of hooves reminded me what else we were up against. “It’s either the pit or the Hooded Riders!” I reminded myself and everyone else with a shout, and jumped into the hole.
It was only as I was descending through the darkness that I heard Ariella say in her usual bright tones, “Anyway, Sam, the semi-lich doesn’t ambush people. I’m not even sure that he has monsters in there with him. It’s the traps that’ll get you.”
Hearing this I had a number of thoughts as I fell. I will place them in the order in which I had them for your amusement.
Traps! That would have been nice to know before I leapt into the hole.
If this semi-lich is known for his traps, then he’s bound to have put a really good one at the entrance.
I hope it isn’t a pit of snakes. I hate snakes.
Although spikes would be worse. I hate being impaled even more than I hate snakes.
This fall is sure taking a long time.
What if this is a bottomless pit of some kind?
The real question is how do you die in a bottomless pit? Starvation? Dehydration?
Probably dehydration.
I wonder if I brought any water with me.
I was feeling around for my water skin when: Thump! My feet hit the ground. There were no snakes or spikes, just ground—solid ground. I looked up and saw Sam and Ariella peering down from the hole, which was about five feet from the top of my head.
“Seems fine,” I called up, glad that the darkness hid the blush of my embarrassment.
The concealment did not last long. The others began to jump down behind me. When Sam landed, he pulled a glass orb from his pouch (a purchase he’d made in Hamlet that he was excessively proud of) and with a flick of his wrist and a couple of muttered words it was glowing like a hundred-watt bulb. It was a clever bit of magic that I wished I could duplicate with as much facility, but the last few times I’d tried to use Mysterium magic to do something even moderately simple, like lighting a fire or summoning a fresh pair of underwear, I had either almost collapsed from the effort or nearly blown a hole into reality. I had tried to learn how Sam worked his spell, but it was like trying to speak a foreign language with a lot of those little symbols above the letters; my accent wasn’t right.
The dwarfs came last. “They’re nearly at the mound, laddie,” Rook panted as soon as he’d landed.
“With us sitting down in this hole and them up there, it’ll be like shooting swamp rats in a barrel,” Luke cried out.
Seamus, who had wandered over to one of the walls of the chamber, raised a finger. “Or we could pull this lever that says pull to close.”
“What’s the use of that?” Sam asked. “They’ll just open it again.”
“Possibly,” Seamus said calmly. “But we could lock the door.”
“How?” Rook asked, tapping his foot irritably. Overhead I heard the hoofbeats of the riders’
horses on the mound.
“Well, the sign also says twist handle to right to lock.”
A shadow fell across the opening.
“Just do it!” everyone shouted.
From above a shrill, almost inhuman voice screeched, “Stop . . .”
Seamus threw the lever and the disc swiveled smoothly into place, silencing the cries of the Hooded Rider. Then he gave the handle a sharp twist to the right and there was a satisfyingly solid clunk as of a bolt sliding into place. Everyone gave a cheer.
“Now we’re safe!” I said with a contented sigh, and then remembered where we were. “Sort of.”
Despite the fact that we were now locked in a crypt with a semi-lich, everyone seemed much more relaxed. We looked around at our new refuge. The chamber was a rough cylinder about ten feet high and thirty feet across. A single doorway led off into the darkness. The only notable feature, apart from the lever Seamus had manipulated, was that every inch of the walls was covered with writing and pictograms.
Ariella pointed at it and read: “‘I am the Semi-Lich Aldric. Welcome to my Tomb of Terrors. Within the chambers and corridors below lie the incalculable riches and treasures that I have gathered, including many artifacts of the Dark Lord himself. However, if you enter, you will face not only the power of my dark magic, but also my genius. I will be waiting and watching . . . and laughing. Enjoy!’
“It repeats the message over and over again in every language that I know and a number that I don’t,” she said.
I was reading it along with the others when I saw something scrawled in fine print right at the base of the wall. I read it aloud without thinking.
“‘Entrants take all responsibility for any instant annihilation, sudden gender changes, asphyxiation, drowning, bludgeoning, burning, evisceration, decapitation, extreme frustration, or sudden and unexplained death. Adventurers should be in extremely good health before entering this tomb and free from high blood pressure, heart, back or neck problems, motion sickness, or other conditions. Expectant mothers should not enter this tomb under any circumstances. No eating or drinking outside food or beverages within the tomb. Note, management is not responsible for lost, stolen, or damaged property.’”
For reasons that should be self-explanatory, this warning seemed to take the shine off of our escape. The wonder and relaxed calm of moments before was replaced for most by abject terror.
“S-so where’s the semi-lich, do you think?” Sam stuttered.
Rook seemed to be the exception. He had promptly reverted back to his normal unflappable self. “Hidden at the center of his maze of traps,” he said with an unfortunate amount of enthusiasm. “They are supposed to be devilishly fiendish.”
“Well, which . . . which way do we go?” Luke asked.
“I’d wager he’s in that direction,” Rook said, pointing his finger at the one door in the room.
Something suddenly struck me about this quest that I was surprised we’d never discussed. “Before we go on, does anyone know what the semi-lich is besides a lich?”
The question seemed to confuse everyone. “What da ya mean, laddie?” asked Rook, giving voice to the puzzlement of rest of the company.
“Well, if the lich . . .”
“Aldric,” Ariella supplied helpfully.
“Yes.” I nodded with a roll of my eyes. “If Aldric were all lich, then he would just be called a lich.”
“True enough,” Rook agreed.
“But he calls himself a semi-lich,” I pointed out, by actually pointing at the word on the wall. “This would mean that he is only half or partially or almost a lich, but not a full lich.”
“I thought semi-lich was a kind of rank,” Sam said. “You know, that he was a lich, but sort of an inferior lich.”
“Rot!” Seamus shouted. “Anyone that’s ever seen the semi-lich will tell you he’s inferior to no lich.”
Sam looked a bit crestfallen at this rebuke. Ariella put an arm around him and said, “I think you’re thinking of a demi-lich, not a semi-lich, Sam. A demi-lich is by definition an inferior or diminutive lich, like a demigod, which is a being that is godlike, but not quite as godlike as a god. On the other hand, a semi-lich, as Avery suggests, would be a partial lich, like a semicircle is partly a circle and partly not a circle. Being a semi-lich doesn’t mean that he is necessarily less powerful than a full lich though. For example, a semi-lich could be partly a lich and partly a god, which would actually make him more powerful that a full lich.”
“Technically, wouldn’t a half-god/half-lich be a semidemigod?” Rook asked.
Ariella shook her head. “I think the proper term would be a demisemigod, like a demisemiquaver.”
She sung a note that I supposed must be a demisemiquaver, and then all three of them turned to me as though their exchange had answered my question. I explained to them patiently that it hadn’t, which meant I shouted, “So, do any of you know what the semi part of the semi-lich is?”
“Nope,” said Luke.
“Sorry, laddie,” replied Rook. “Accordin’ to Jennifer’s map, no one’s ever seen him and survived.”
“We will be the first!” Ariella stated optimistically. The rest of the group nodded their agreement.
“Wait. That’s not possible!” I shouted.
“That’s bein’ a little pessimistic, don’t you think, Avery?” Rook said, giving me a sideways look.
I wanted to point out the irony of that statement given everyone’s recent behavior, but thought there was a good chance it would lead to a long argument over the difference between irony and situational irony, and so I gave it a skip. “No, no,” I clarified. “I don’t mean that it’s not possible that we are going to survive meeting the semi-lich. Although I think our chances would be improved if we knew whether he was a half-lich/half-god or a half-lich/half-squirrel. I mean how is it possible for anyone to know anything about the semi-lich if no one’s ever seen him and survived? If no one has seen him and survived, how does anyone know that there’s a semi-lich here at all?”
There was much head scratching at this. Finally, Seamus pointed at the wall and offered, “Well, it does say that there is one right there on the sign.”
“He’s got a point,” agreed Rook.
I gave up. It didn’t matter whether there was a semi-lich or not. I needed to retrieve Justice Cleaver, defeat Vivian, and stop this world from colliding with Mysterium. Oh, and save my dissertation! “Let’s go,” I said wearily, and began walking toward the door.
“Wait a minute!” Seamus cried.
“What now?” I asked. “We’ve argued about how to get to the mound, how to get into the mound, how to close the door to the mound, what a semi-lich is, and whether it does or does not exist. What else could we possibly argue about?”
“Marching order!”
Everyone groaned.
Chapter 26
IT’S A TRAP
As we lined up, it suddenly struck me how few in number we were. At one point, I couldn’t keep track of all the members of our group, but now we were six: Seamus and Rook, Ariella, Sam, Luke, and me.
I hadn’t had much time to reflect on what we’d all been through. The argument over marching order gave me that time. I missed Drake and Valdara. Not just because having them would have meant more swords and staves to bring against the semi-lich, but because I missed their company. I missed Drake’s gravelly voice and his animated eyebrows. I missed Valdara’s cool competence, her fierce devotion to her companions, and of course her body-hugging armor. Hell, I even missed Barth and the three to five gnomes. I missed them, but even if we survived this and won a great victory over Vivian, all of them would be dead in two years. I began to understand why some magi drank so heavily.
I was still wandering through these gloomy corridors of feeling when I realized that Rook was trying to get my attention. “Avery?” he said, waving a hand in front of my face.
“What?” I asked, blinking at him.
“You’re behind Seamus and Lu
ke,” he said, pointing to the line that had formed in front of the door.
As soon as I was in place Rook, who was in the rear, barked, “Forward!”
Immediately, Sam began narrating. “The group leaves the round entrance chamber and starts walking down a ten-foot-wide corridor that extends into the darkness at least sixty feet.” I found his voice strangely comforting.
What was not comforting was the background music. Moments ago it had been a chorus of sad violins as I thought about the ephemeral nature of these people; suddenly it dropped to an ominous growl. That got my attention. “Be careful, everyone!” I shouted.
There was a loud metal on stone clang from somewhere near the front of the line that nearly made me jump out of my clothes.
“Pit trap!” shouted Luke.
“Good thing we brought these poles,” Seamus said, and gave a stern glance back at me.
“Watch everything,” Rook shouted from the back. “Traps could be in the ceilings, the floors, the walls, everything and anything.”
“Um, I have a spell for revealing traps,” Sam said, holding up his book. “Would that be helpful?”
Everyone glared at him.
“Why didn’t you mention that before, laddie?” growled Rook.
“I haven’t had it long,” he explained with a sheepish grin. “It seems to have written itself into my spell book last night.”
“It what?” I asked.
“Last night I was reading my spell book,” he said unnecessarily, since he did this every night, “and then I turned a page it was there.”
“Seems a little convenient to me,” Seamus said suspiciously.
The others began to argue about whether it would be possible for the semi-lich to insert a false spell into Sam’s book to sabotage our attempts to get to him. My mind was spinning along other avenues, like whether this was my spell at work again or the simply the inherently goofy nature of Trelari magic and, if it was my spell, whether it was a bad sign that it seemed to be increasing the obviousness with which it was influencing events. I had written the spell to try and conceal its actions through implausible coincidence, but this went well beyond that.