by C. L. Wilson
“Don’t be stingy. What’ve you got?”
Sancho hesitated, then turned his back on the late-night shoppers. He motioned for Lance to follow. “Coast is clear. Come back to my office. I’ll show you what just came in.”
A thrill raced through Lance’s blood. Partly because Sancho was frequently the first to know about the most cutting-edge advances in magical technology, but if he was honest—and Lance was always honest—mostly it was because Sancho was right. A price on Lance’s head meant that going home was the worst destination he could’ve chosen. He’d been safer at the pub, although he wouldn’t have been for long. Bounty hunters would be crawling all over the Pawn & Potion at any moment.
He would love to stay and fight, but there wasn’t time to waste on swordplay. He had to save his neck. And his boat.
Sancho shoved his office door closed and beckoned Lance over to the wall safe he kept unimaginatively hidden behind a motel-grade watercolor.
The paintings on Lance’s walls were of much higher quality. And his art didn’t hide wall safes full of valuables. They were his valuables.
With a flourish, Sancho flung open the safe door and pulled out three ten-inch cylinders with a single tiny button on one side. “Check these babies out!”
Lance picked one of the cylinders up doubtfully. Gray plastic wand. Ribbed grip, black accents, red button. “It’s a . . . knockoff lightsaber?”
With a roll of his eyes, Sancho reached out to take it back. “No, man, it’s—”
Lance depressed the button.
With a loud pop and a bright flash, a perfectly spherical three-foot hole appeared in the wall before them.
Acrid smoke laced the air as tiny orange embers floated from the burned circumference toward the floor. With a hiss, ice-cold water sprayed in jets from the ceiling as the automatic fire alarm clanged into action. On the other side of the gaping hole, customers streamed toward the exit, ducking to avoid the water spraying overhead.
“No way,” Lance breathed, cradling the cheap plastic toy with renewed respect. “I’ll take them!”
Sancho looked torn between tossing Lance through the hole he’d just made and clapping his hands with delight over the awesomeness of the destruction. Delight won out. It was clear from the chortles of wild laughter that Sancho hadn’t yet tested the merchandise for himself, and found the results to be undeniably awesome. But then he snatched the lightsaber from Lance’s hands, and tossed it in the garbage.
Lance smacked his hand. “Why are you always throwing the best stuff away?”
Sancho pushed his wet fauxhawk out of his eyes, then disabled the fire alarm from a control panel. “Fire swords are single-use. So now it’s useless.”
“Not useless. Give it to the broom-maker’s kids. I promise they’ll love it.” Lance picked up the other two fire swords and hooked them on to his utility belt, mindful not to press the buttons. “Order about a thousand of these. Maybe do a Facebook ad. You’ll be rich.”
“I wish.” Sancho rifled through a bookcase, then tossed Lance a medium-sized pouch. “Take this, too.”
Lance loosened the drawstring and peeked inside. “A blanket? What are you, my mother?”
“Heat resistant. Clinically proven to provide full protection against fire-breathing dragons.”
“Doubt there’ll be much fire. I’m more likely to run into a pack of yetis. The castle is cursed with impenetrable layers of ice, remember?”
Sancho shrugged. “Then use it to keep warm. Pseudo-microfiber. Stain-resistant and useful for quickly wicking away water.”
“Quickly wicking away—is this really dragon-proof?” Lance asked suspiciously. “Or is this another of your late-night infomercial purchases?”
“Oh, here’s a spellbook,” Sancho said without answering the question. He tossed Lance a leather-bound volume before taking a slow glance around the shop. “Can you think of anything else?”
“Snacks?” Lance suggested hopefully. He always carried a decent supply of high protein power bars, but sometimes a man wanted to eat something with little-to-no nutritional value.
After a few seconds of rummaging, Sancho managed to come up with a Snickers bar and a fistful of Slim Jim beef jerky. Fair enough.
“Thanks.” Lance glanced around the now-soggy magic shop. A parking lot. Sancho would be lost if his shop got demolished. Lance absolutely had to find the treasure, for both their sakes. “I guess that’s it. Thanks for . . . thanks for the store credit, man.”
Sancho blinked hard, as if he’d heard the words Lance had truly meant, rather than the ones he’d actually spoken.
“One last thing,” the big man said gruffly, reaching up behind his thick neck to untie his cherished necklace. He held it out to Lance. “Never take this off.”
“But . . . the shop!”
“You’re saving the shop and buying both of us pirate ships, remember?” Sancho crossed his arms. “Just don’t bind yourself to something stupid, like a glass of ale.”
Lance stared at the string of human bone fragments coiled in his palm. “Is there a magic word or anything? A ritual to make it stick?”
Sancho shook his head. “The necklace simply binds its owner to whatever they love most. That thing can’t be taken from you as long as you wear the necklace.”
Lance tied the ends behind his neck. Although his reputation for being mercenary and invincible was well-earned, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe Fate wouldn’t someday catch up with him. Every ward helped, but no quantity of talismans was a guarantee of success.
His resolve hardened. Never getting his coveted pirate ship out of layaway was one thing, but leaving Sancho in dire straits was wholly unacceptable.
“If I don’t make it back . . .”
Sancho recoiled, horrified. “You have to make it back. You’ve never failed at anything!”
“I don’t plan on failing this time, either.” Lance purposefully displayed his trademark arrogance in order to keep his best friend’s fears at bay. “But in the meantime, I owe you some rent. You know the three paintings on the wall above my couch?”
“The ones that look like a drunken sailor rolled around in a field of Play-Doh?”
“Watch it. I painted those.” Lance took a deep breath. “Underneath each one is a different work of art. It’s actually . . . The Lost Triptych of Atlantis.”
“The lost—” Sancho’s mouth fell open. “Why even attempt Castle Cavanaugh if you have The Lost Triptych of Atlantis nailed above your couch? It’s got to be worth half a million, at least!”
“Much, much more,” Lance admitted. “If I could prove what it was. Which I can’t. I love it anyway. My dream has always been to hang it in the galley of my pirate ship. I could sail the world for adventure, knowing the greatest treasure of all was already aboard my ship—and no one but me would even know. If you have to sell it, you won’t get anywhere near what it’s worth . . . but it should at least cover my rent.”
“Dude.” Sancho stared at him in disbelief. “I can’t sell your priceless triptych.”
“You run a pawn shop. You’re exactly the person who could fence a priceless painting.” At least, Lance hoped so. He had nothing else to offer. If this Castle Cavanaugh thing went south, Lance was out of other options.
Sancho shook his head. “Even if I could, you’d never get it back. Some collector with billions in the bank would snatch it up and that’s the last you’d ever see of it.”
Lance lifted a shoulder. “If I don’t make it back alive, my art collection will be the least of my concerns.”
They stared at each other in silence. At best, he had a one percent chance of pulling this off. Lance’s throat was unaccountably tight, and for a moment he wasn’t quite sure what he’d say if he could speak. He loved Sancho like a brother—they’d been looking out for each other practically from the cradle—and the thought of dying was almost too much to contemplate.
He was on the brink of shocking Sancho senseless with a quick bear hug, when
a pair of bounty hunters used silver bullets to announce their presence. Four more bounty hunters fell in behind them.
Lance had his sword in hand and through the chest of the closest attacker before the hunter had a chance to pull the trigger a second time. Two razor-edged claymores appeared in Sancho’s mitts from out of nowhere, and for several adrenaline-filled minutes, the only sounds were the clang of swords, the sharp report of gunfire, and a series of wet thuds as the bodies of would-be assassins hit the ground and stayed there.
At last, Sancho tossed his claymores atop his desk with a grin. “Just like old times.”
Lance grinned back. “In the old days, you were faster,” he said as he sheathed his sword. “My grandma has better moves than you.”
“Your grandma once raised an army of mummies from the dead in order to overthrow a terrorist military regime.”
“Yeah, she’s feisty.” Lance pushed open the back door to the alley. No hit men in sight. He glanced back over his shoulder, hyperaware this might be the last time he stood at this threshold. No. He refused to consider failure. “See you tomorrow for Christmas dinner?”
Sancho stepped closer. “I’ll bake the turkey. And your shitty paintings will be waiting for you upstairs.”
With a nod, Lance touched his fist to Sancho’s and disappeared into the shadows.
CHAPTER TWO
The number of bounty hunters requiring a quick dispatch dwindled as Lance strayed farther outside the city proper. Eventually, concrete became long-dead forest. By the time he reached the towering cliffs atop which stood the centuries-frozen Castle Cavanaugh, the only signs of life were his own ragged breathing and the occasional shadow of vultures circling high overhead.
Hours later, he was mentally and physically exhausted, but almost to the top. Thank God. He could barely coax his limbs to keep moving. Visibility had disappeared beneath a layer of freezing clouds, and the only thing keeping him moving was the knowledge that a fall from this height would leave his corpse unrecognizable.
When at last he reached the summit—made all the more unwelcoming by the foot-high snowbank atop an equally thick layer of ice—Castle Cavanaugh rose from the next crest, at the highest point of the land. From this vantage point, the shimmering castle looked exactly like what it was: a thousand-year-old fortress frozen in ice and littered with the ash of windswept snow. No lights shone in the windows. Nothing moved, save the slippery shadows of the ice-coated turrets as the sun once again fled behind cover of clouds.
He pushed onward. Boldly go where many explorers had met their deaths before? No problem. Survive and return to safety, treasure in hand? Well, it wouldn’t be called “adventure” if it were easy. Lance snapped his carabiners back on to his utility belt and began the slow, treacherous hike along the skinny path snaking up to the frozen castle.
The whiteness of the snow and the sameness of the vista took on a sinister edge when he realized the macabre difference between this icy deathtrap and his climb to the peak of Mount Everest: no corpses. One nightmarish aspect of his trek through the Himalayas had been the frozen bodies of fallen explorers along the principle pathway.
Although nearly two hundred corpses from previous failed expeditions had never been recovered, that didn’t mean the bodies were lost. They lay right where they fell. Frozen corpses became human statues. Stark reminders of omnipresent mortality, and that for all of us, one adventure was destined to be the last.
Castle Cavanaugh was different. No corpses of past explorers dotted the monotonous white. Rather than calm Lance’s nerves, this lack only heightened them. No corpses meant something even more serious was wrong. He was hardly the first to have attempted the treacherous climb and, as Sancho had so helpfully pointed out, none of the others had returned to tell the tale.
So where were they?
Lance’s stiff fingers brushed against the flame swords dangling at his hips. He had been joking when he’d debated the chances of stumbling across a dragon or a rabid yeti. At least, he’d meant it as a joke. But something had to have happened here. Something terrible. The other explorers had all been clever, experienced adventurers with strong bodies and limitless determination. Centuries of them, braving the fabled curse for a chance at untold riches. Yet none of them had survived.
Lance had assumed the relentless, impossible cold had been their final battle. But there was no indication of struggle. No sign of explorers past. No sign of life, be it plant or animal. There was just . . . nothing. Nothing but snow and ice.
By the time he reached the snow-crusted wall surrounding the castle, his sense of unease had only sharpened. He was striding ever closer to whatever had felled the other men. His steps slowed. Had the previous treasure hunters survived the grueling climb and the banks of snow, only to succumb to whatever evils lurked on the other side of the castle wall?
He squared his shoulders. There was only one way to find out.
He looped his kernmantle rope through one of his grappling hooks and let fly. The hook held fast to an embrasure in the battlement, allowing him to scramble up the ice-coated slope to the wall-walk. Saw-toothed square merlons jutted up along the perimeter like great stone teeth rising from flat, ice-dead gums.
They did little to brighten the sense of impending doom.
Grunting with exertion, he hauled himself up over the thick walls with their blocky crenellations. The castle rose from the outer bailey like a kraken from the sea, scraping the barren sky with the pointed spires of each bastion and parapet.
He scanned the horizon for potential dangers. If dragons guarded the gate, they were invisible to the naked eye. Not even footprints marred the marble perfection of the blanketing snow. Pausing against an arrow slit in the stones long enough to secure his grappling hook anew, he began his descent from the curtain wall to the waves of snow lining the keep’s yard.
When he was only a few feet above the surface, he leapt to the ground without retrieving his hook. He needed to leave himself a head start on a quick getaway.
He slipped on snowshoes and trudged toward the huge wooden doors indicating what had to be the great hall. From up close, he could see through the transparent ice to the bone-white masonry beneath. The architecture was perfectly preserved, like a fossil trapped in amber. Even the whitewash appeared freshly applied. It was this, Lance realized suddenly, that had reflected through the ice to give the castle’s silhouette such an improbable, unearthly glow.
When he reached the giant iron-plated door, he considered knocking, but quickly dismissed the idea. He doubted his numb fingers could produce a noise strong enough to echo through several inches of solid wood, and besides . . . if whatever evil had swallowed centuries of seasoned adventurers without so much as a trace still lurked on the other side of the keep’s door, Lance had no intention of giving it a heads-up to his arrival.
The door had to be locked and blockaded from the inside, but he gave the ice-covered iron handle a cautious tug just in case. The oversize door swung open as smoothly and as soundlessly as if the hinges had been greased that very morning.
Lance’s heart thudded in surprise—and alarm. Breaching an unbreachable castle should definitely not be this easy. Yet here he was, staring into the belly of the keep. Solid darkness yawned before him, as if even the blinding glitter of sun upon snow could not penetrate the blackness housed within.
He glanced over his shoulder one last time. His footprints were still there, marking the way home. His grappling hook glinted between the merlons. The length of kernmantle rope fluttered in the arctic wind. Lance turned away. His escape route was as solid as he could make it.
He unsnapped his night-vision goggles from his utility belt and pulled them down over his face. The darkness within the castle snapped from pure black to a faded green. The inner walls stretched high and bare, layer after endless layer of interlocking stones without the slightest adornment. No portraits, no tapestries. Just the occasional empty hook where a torch had once hung.
On the other s
ide of the great hall, several corridors branched off to destinations unknown, waiting to be explored. Lance tightened his belt. Now or never. He rolled back his shoulders, stretched his neck, and stepped across the threshold.
The door immediately swung shut behind him.
A sudden brightness blinded him from all angles, causing him to squeeze his eyes shut in agony. He whipped the night-vision goggles from his head. When he could finally open his eyes, he found he was no longer bathed in darkness, but in light.
Where before the shadowed masonry had tapered upward into blackness, the exterior castle walls were now transparent blocks of ice. Sunlight streamed in from all angles. Even the pitched roof was solid ice. The thickness of the interlocking rectangles along the walls refracted the whitewashed landscape, causing odd little jagged jumps where Lance knew there to be a straight line. It was like looking through a glass half-filled with water, except in this case, the glass completely surrounded him.
His gaze flew to his escape path. His footprints were smudged, but still visible leading out from the door. The rope fluttered in three distorted segments, but held strong to the outer wall. It would be there waiting, whenever he was ready.
Which he hoped was soon.
The transparent ice-roof magnified the rising sun, warming his wind-chapped fingers and returning blood to his toes until every extremity stung with the prickling of a thousand needles. He felt like an ant beneath a magnifying glass. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. The illusion reinforced the unsettling sensation that he was being toyed with. Much like a cat played with a trapped mouse before biting it in two.
He stepped out of his snowshoes and hung his climbing harness on the empty torch-hook beside what had recently been a thick wooden door, but was now an impressive block of door-shaped ice. The castle was virtually translucent. From the distance of even a few yards, his moss-green harness appeared to be hanging on nothing more substantive than a breath of air. He shook his head at the brain-bending illusion.