“Knowing what we have experienced so far,” Vaxor said, “I would wager that the arch is currently set to send whoever walks through it to a particularly deadly location. The trick will be unlocking the right sequence for a safe journey.”
“Who should attempt the sequence?” Gerwyth asked. “There could be further traps built into the arch that Phathas hasn’t detected.”
It only took a few moments for Majandra to make her decision. “I will,” she said with all of the confidence she could muster. “I have had some instruction in the ways of magic.” The bard smiled as she looked at Phathas. “And, if there are any physical traps—well, I have some experience dealing with those as well.”
This last she said with a great deal of nonchalance, hoping to slip that bit of information by her companions, who would no doubt be surprised by such a revelation.
She failed.
Amid the whispered murmurs of surprise, it was Vaxor whose voice she heard frame the question she had most wanted to avoid. “And how, my dear,” the cleric asked in the most colored of paternal tones, “did you come to possess such an expertise?”
The half-elf blushed, hoping that the pulsating lights of the archway masked her discomfort. “Well,” she said in an even tone, “you don’t think I spent all my time in Rel Mord poring over ancient parchments and rehearsing fragments of old songs, did you? Let’s just say that I had some colorful friends and leave it at that, shall we?”
With that, Majandra withdrew a small pouch of tools from within a hidden fold of her cloak and set about examining the stonework around the archway. A few minutes later, after she had poked and prodded and searched the area on and about the arch, the half-elf turned to the rest of the waiting company. “Seems clear to me,” she said. “I’m heading up.” And with a single note, she tapped into the still-active levitation spell she had cast when examining the rune-inlayed mosaic. Gently, the bard floated up toward the top of the arch. Gingerly, she pressed her palm against the pulsing blue stone and was rewarded as the incandescence solidified. Slowly she returned to the floor and touched the orange and then the yellow pulsing stones. Each in turn burned with a solid light until Majandra was finished.
Nothing happened for a few moments—and then, with a bright burst of light, each of the glowing stones pulsed once again.
“I sense no change within the magical construct,” Phathas said.
Majandra acknowledged the wizard’s comment with a sigh of frustration and then quickly tried a new sequence. Again, nothing happened. Determined to uncover the correct order with the least amount of time wasted, she kept trying. It wasn’t until her last attempt, when Majandra touched the yellow, blue, and orange stones in that order that the arch emitted a single sharp sound. Within seconds, the swirling mist faded, until Majandra could see a passageway heading off into darkness.
There was a collective sigh, as if the entire company had been holding its breath, waiting to see the outcome of her attempts. She turned and was rewarded by the mage’s beaming smile. “Well done, my child,” Phathas said, and she could hear the pride evident in his thin voice.
With the path clear ahead of them, the company resumed its former marching order and continued their march. The half-elf’s inability to see anything ahead of her should have offered a warning. However, flushed with her recent success, Majandra wasn’t paying much attention. She could do no more than scream when, with a sudden, deep lurching motion, she felt first the floor, then the walls, and soon the entire tomb itself fall away from her, replaced by a blackness so impenetrable that she knew it had no end.
Kaerion felt a moment of disorientation as the darkness receded. The bard’s scream had offered him a few seconds of warning before the complete and total annihilation of light, and so he was not caught in total surprise. As the spinning in his head gradually receded, he blinked, trying to make sense of what his eyes were showing him. The long hall had disappeared, and now the members of the expedition were crammed into a small room, holding their heads as if each nursed one of the hangovers that he had woken up with every morning for more than ten years. Wherever they were, the teleporting arch had clearly worked as designed.
He cast another glance over his companions. Satisfied that no one had suffered any permanent harm, Kaerion gave his surroundings a more thorough search. The room itself was no more than ten feet wide and, judging by the way Vaxor’s pulsing light reached from end to end, it was less than twenty feet long. In the center of the room, glaring at him with an expression of hatred locked in solid stone, stood an imposing statue of a gargoyle. Though startled enough to draw his sword at first sight of the creature, Kaerion’s heart settled as his eyes registered that one of the monster’s four gruesomely muscled arms lay on the floor at its clawed feet.
“Careful, Kaerion,” Gerwyth said as Kaerion slowly approached the statue. “Give a shout if it starts to move.”
The fighter grunted his affirmative as he stalked silently over to the gargoyle, sword drawn and held ready for a sudden attack. The elf was right to warn caution. Both of them had seen enough animated statues in their time to be forever wary about stone constructions.
Vaxor’s light grew brighter as he and the other members of the expedition drew closer to the statue. Satisfied that the looming block of worked stone before him was simply a statue and nothing more, Kaerion bent and picked up the gargoyle’s splintered arm. Like each of the other three arms, the stone appendage possessed a round indentation in the center of the palm; its flint-gray claws curled slightly around it. As Kaerion called the others over to examine this new discovery, one of the guards shouted out her own find—a narrow tunnel that sloped away from the room at an angle.
“Landra,” he heard the cleric of Heironeous say, “take three guards and set them to watch the tunnel’s mouth. I don’t want any surprises.”
“A fearsome beast,” Gerwyth remarked as the guard captain signaled her compliance. “I’m just glad that we don’t have to face the tearing claws of this thing in battle.”
The elf was right, of course, Kaerion thought as he traced the gargoyle’s palm indentation with a calloused finger. The statue itself was over eight feet tall, and each of the beast’s teeth looked sharp enough to cut through the thickest armor. He’d settle for poking around an old statue any day.
“This depression looks deep enough to hold a large stone,” he said to the others, each of whom were poking and prodding the statue.
“A stone,” replied Majandra, whose hands, Kaerion could see, were sliding expertly across the ridged lines of the statue, “or a large gem.”
The half-elf rummaged through the leather pouches hanging from her belt until she produced several red-hued stones, each with many crystalline facets. The gems gleamed in the surrounding light. “Perhaps you should all step back,” the bard said as she reached out and gently placed one of the gems in the gargoyles upturned hand.
Kaerion fell back quickly, his long sword in guard position. Briefly, he wondered where the bard had come across such large gemstones. Full of surprises, that one, he thought, a brief smile flickering across his face—replaced quickly by a frown as he remembered where they were. There would be time for such idle speculation later.
Nothing happened.
Kaerion let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and saw the others do the same. Poised for flight before the statue, Majandra relaxed and held out a second gemstone. Again, she placed it in one of the gargoyle’s hands.
Again nothing happened.
Kaerion saw her cast Phathas a rueful grin as the wizard leaned on his staff, staring with interest at the stone monster. The half-elf placed a third gem into the creature’s hand, and Kaerion let out a cry of warning as he saw the gargoyle’s fingers twitch slightly. A moment later, the beast’s claws closed sharply about the stones. Running toward Majandra, Kaerion heard a loud grinding sound, and a spray of glistening red powder erupted from the statue’s hands.
Pulling the half-elf away from
the gargoyle, he was surprised at the string of invective that issued forth from the bard’s mouth. Kaerion was certain he caught fragments of at least four different languages he was familiar with in the torrent of curses that poured out of her mouth, and at least as many languages that he had never heard before.
Stunned silence filled the room as Majandra finally brought herself under control. Several of the guards shifted from foot to foot, obviously amused in the wake of the half-elf’s blistering anger, but too respectful to comment on it.
“My dear child,” Phathas said at last, breaking the silence, “you do understand that our goal here is to collect treasure from this dreadful tomb and bring it back with us to Rel Mord, and not the other way around?”
Even in the pale light, Kaerion could see the tips of the half-elf’s ears turning red. Companionable laughter broke the tension and soon even the normally dour Heironean cleric chuckled at Majandra’s discomfort. Kaerion turned away from the embarrassed half-elf, who had finally given up on trying to maintain any semblance of dignity and now wiped tears of laughter from her own eyes, to check on Adrys, who had remained silent through this entire exchange.
The boy was not there.
All levity leeched from Kaerion’s body as he scanned the room, hoping that the merchant’s son was merely lost in the press of bodies. His hope was crushed, as swiftly and as surely as the gemstones that they had so recently placed in the hands of the gargoyle.
“Has anyone seen Adrys?” he asked, his voice cutting through the surrounding laughter.
“He was just here a moment ago,” one of the guards responded.
“Come on,” Kaerion shouted to his companions, “we have to find him!”
He bolted from the room, lighting a torch and pushing past the guards who stood sentry at the mouth of the tunnel. If anything happened to the lad, the boy’s blood would be on Kaerion’s hands—hands that were already soaked in the blood of innocents.
The tunnel ran at an angle briefly and then straightened. Kaerion cursed as the area quickly narrowed and he was forced to crawl. The tunnel soon opened into a room of similar length and construction as the hall from which they had entered the tomb. Bright paintings covered the smooth walls of the room. Wild colors swirled and ran together with all the energy of a pulsing rainbow. Though different from the paintings that covered the entrance hall, the pictures depicted by the mad brush of the long-dead artist contained the familiar animal/human hybrids that were the subject of so much of the tomb’s artistry. Some of these creatures, however, held globes of bright color between their hands.
Much to his relief, Kaerion found Adrys standing in the middle of the room, a torch held high in one hand. Running over to the lad, Kaerion checked to see that no harm had come to him. Satisfied, he knelt before the boy and cupped his thick hand beneath the boy’s chin.
“Adrys, why did you wander away from us?” Kaerion said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. Now that he had found the boy safe and unharmed, his relief was giving way to irritation at the boy’s disregard for his own safety.
Adrys’ face twisted into a worried frown, and Kaerion could see tears welling up in his eyes. The boy stared at him, lower lip quavering. “I’m sorry. I thought I heard someone calling my name,” he said simply. “It sounded like my father.”
A wave of tenderness crept over Kaerion, cooling his growing anger. The lad had been through a great deal and had lost much. It was possible that the cursed power of the tomb had reached out to capitalize on the boy’s grief and loss. He had no right to be angry with Adrys. He was simply a child and had not meant any mischief.
“It’s all right,” he said gently. “It’s all right, but I want you to promise that you won’t go wandering off again. If you hear someone calling your name, tell me. We’ll get to the bottom of it together. All right?”
The boy nodded once and gave Kaerion a brief smile, wiping at his eyes. “I promise. If anything happens again I’ll come to you.”
Satisfied with the boy’s contrition, Kaerion turned to face the rest of his companions, who had burst into the room with startled exclamations. Each of them stared in wonder at the bright, familiar paintings. They were about to spread out and search the room when Vaxor’s voice boomed, “Hold! Remember the hidden pits. Before anyone moves, we should sweep the room.”
It was solid advice, and Kaerion was disappointed that he had rushed in without thought. In his incautious haste to find the boy, he could have put them both in deadly jeopardy. It took quite a while for the guards to finish their check, sweeping and prodding the stone with the ten-foot poles, but at last they proclaimed the floor pit free. Unfortunately, their search had also turned up only a single entrance from the room—another mist-covered archway in the center of the room’s southernmost wall.
“There may be other ways out of this hall,” Gerwyth said to the group as they assembled near the tunnel’s entrance. “I suggest that we move in pairs, keeping each other in sight, and check the walls for hidden doors.”
The expedition split up, and Kaerion found himself happily partnered with Majandra. Despite their growing closeness and the experience they had shared on the night of the bullywug attack, events since then had prevented them from exploring their newfound bond. Although the peril that they currently found themselves in did not lend itself to lowering their guard and sharing intimacies, Kaerion had to admit that he felt a surge of emotions—all of them pleasant—when the flame-haired bard was nearby.
They had not been searching long when one of the guards posted to the western wall of the room shouted that she had discovered the outlines of a door. Kaerion turned, the words “don’t touch anything” on his lips, when he heard a loud click. Kaerion desperately ran toward the pair of guards, diving the last few feet.
He was too late.
Moments before he reached the guard, her body shuddered. Twin spears, their wicked blades covered in blood, erupted from the hapless soldier’s back. She fell to her knees and then, with a single gurgling breath, toppled to the floor. By the time Kaerion’s momentum carried him to the body, a line of blood had pooled on the floor.
Vaxor was at the soldier’s side instantly, placing a hand upon her throat. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly, confirming what Kaerion had already suspected—the woman was beyond the cleric’s help. Nodding his own understanding, Kaerion rose to his feet as the priest began a softly spoken prayer to protect the soul’s journey as it sped toward the Arch Paladin. Kaerion wondered if there would be anyone who would pray in such a way for his soul—not that someone who had betrayed their god so deeply would have any right to expect mercy or reward in the afterlife.
The cleric bowed as he spoke the final words of the prayer and rose slowly to his feet. “We must find a suitable resting place for the body,” Kaerion heard him say to Phathas as the mage walked over, laying a heavy hand on the priest’s shoulder. “Then, when we leave this accursed place, we will take the bodies of the fallen back to the temple of Heironeous to see what can be done for them.”
“You are most generous,” Phathas replied, motioning for two guards to do as the priest bid. Once that gruesome work was finished, the party returned once more to their search of the walls.
“I sure hope we find something else here, Kaerion,” the bard said as the two of them knelt below a lurid depiction of two hawk-headed humans. “I’ve no wish to step through another teleporting archway. I still can’t think straight from the last one.”
Kaerion tried to smile at Majandra’s words, but he succeeded in no more than a grimace. “I understand completely,” he said, “though I’d settle for a teleporting arch if it meant we could bypass all the tomb’s traps.”
The half-elf grunted her affirmative and then returned her attention to the section of wall before her. The two sat there in silence for a few moments more. Kaerion had just finished rapping on a block of stone with the hilt of his dagger when Majandra spoke again. “Have you noticed anything strange about B
redeth lately?” she asked.
Kaerion drew his attention away from the wall and looked at his companion. Even now, hundreds of feet below ground, covered in sweat and dirt, he admired the way the torchlight played in her eyes and among her hair. It took a few more moments for him to register that she had repeated the question.
“Hmm? Oh, sorry,” he apologized, feeling his face flush beneath the sudden heat there. He tried to avoid the bard’s eyes, but couldn’t help see the sparkle of amusement glistening in them. “Something strange about Bredeth?” he continued. “Well, he has been a bit subdued since the bullywugs kidnapped him, but experiences like that can affect a person deeply. I’m not sure I’d call that strange.”
“You’re right, of course,” the half-elf said. “He has been subdued, but it’s more than that. He’s been too… agreeable lately. It’s not like him.”
Kaerion nodded and followed her gaze to where the subject of their conversation stood before another section of wall, dutifully searching. He opened his mouth to reassure Majandra, but before he could speak, Gerwyth’s voice echoed across the hall.
“I think I’ve found something!” the elf said excitedly. “It looks like an illusion of some sort.”
Kaerion walked over to where his friend stood. On the wall was a painting of a heavily muscled human with the head of a jackal holding a sphere at his waist. Carefully, Gerwyth extended the shaft of an arrow and touched the brightly painted sphere. To Kaerion’s surprise, the wooden shaft disappeared as it pressed through the sphere. It was clear that Gerwyth remembered their experience at the demonic mouth earlier, for the ranger gingerly pulled the arrow shaft back out of the red circle.
It emerged unscathed.
By now, the rest of the expedition had gathered around. Phathas moved forward and studied the illusory sphere intently. After a few moments of soft muttering, he raised a single gnarled finger and pointed at the vivid picture. There was a bright flash that nearly blinded Kaerion. He cried out, throwing an arm across his face. The others must not have been as quick, for he heard their cursing continue.
The Tomb of Horrors Page 21