He couldn’t see what was causing the strange orange glow, but it was much too diffuse and dim to be a torch or candle. It was steady and soft like Angus’s Lamplight spell, but it wasn’t shaped like a ball. It wasn’t shaped like anything, really; it looked as if someone had painted it onto the wall and had done a horrid job of it. It was thick and wide and brightest in the far corner but tapered to a narrow slit halfway down the wall to his left. It was a long wall, and there were several sarcophagi evenly spaced along its length. He couldn’t see the details of the sarcophagi; the light smothering them was too dim to note any details at this distance. They lined the wall to the left, curled around the well-lit corner, and continued all along the far wall until they disappeared into the darkness.
Giorge gulped and twisted around on his knees, turning right until he was facing the direction from which he had emerged. There were more sarcophagi along that wall, emerging from the darkness concealing the wall to his right, but they were open and empty, as if they were patiently waiting for occupants. The last empty one was directly behind him, about eight feet away, with its lid dangling from a broken hinge. Why was I in that? Giorge wondered as he tried to stand up and his foot slid out from under him. He moved to catch himself, but the floor was too slick and he barely managed to keep from banging his head as he fell flat again. He stayed there for a long moment, and then gradually worked his way to his feet. He looked down at the floor and tested his footing as he took each step in the goo, and even with those precautions, he had to adjust his center of gravity several times to keep from falling. It was like walking on ice covered in a thick layer of lamp oil.
When he was close to the sarcophagus, he took hold of the lid and swung it closed. He shuddered as he stared at the image on the lid: it was his image. Even in the shadows, it was like looking in a tarnished mirror, so amazing were the details of the workmanship. He ran his fingers over the face of the image, wondering how the craftsman had managed to mimic so perfectly the shape of his eyebrows, the curve of his nose, the glint in his eyes…. The wood carving was ancient and looked as if it had been chiseled in an age that had long since passed. How had that long-dead craftsman known his image so well that he could duplicate it?
Symptata’s son, Giorge thought. The line….
Giorge frowned. He was not surprised that he looked like Symptata’s son—it was part of the curse—but this image was identical to his own. Only the heir can break the curse, he thought. What were the lines of the poem? He reached into the sling for the scroll tube, but it wasn’t there. Had he dropped it? He looked around in the muck but couldn’t see it. There were clumps that might be large enough to conceal it, but he didn’t need the scroll to remember the poem. It was the last stanza, wasn’t it? “He cursed her line of thieving whores,” he muttered, “and lies in death, awaiting yours.”
Giorge glanced at the sarcophagi waiting to be filled. “There’s a lot of death here,” he whispered, “but I’m not dead.” He frowned and looked down at the sling. The dull ache in his arm wasn’t plaguing him any longer. He flexed his fingers and rotated his wrist, but it didn’t hurt like it had been since he had injured it in the fall from his horse. He lifted it easily in the sling, and finally pulled it out of the sling altogether. Ortis said it was sprained and needed weeks to heal, he thought as he checked his full range of motion without any hint of pain or injury. He rolled up the sleeve of his tunic and his eyes widened: the fletching scars were gone! And what about when he fell—
“The frost elemental,” he almost shouted, the sound falling as silent as the dead around him. “It killed me, didn’t it?” he muttered, remembering the blistering cold that had smothered him, pulled him from the lift, harassed him as he fell. Yes, he had died, he must have died—and yet, he felt as healthy as he ever had.
He took off the sling and let it fall to the floor. He put his hand to his chest and felt around for the familiar lump of the Viper’s Breath—but it was gone! He gulped and asked the chill air around him, “Am I dead?” He paused for an answer, but when none came, he asked, his voice sharp and much too loud, “By Onus’s Blood, what is going on here?”
He didn’t wait for an answer; instead, he decided to take action. The floor was slick, but he had leverage; he could use the sarcophagi to propel him around the edge of the room, and with luck, he’d find a dry spot to stand on. At the very least, he needed to know more about where he was, and that meant exploring the room. He looked at the empty sarcophagi and tried to peer through the shadows to the wall at the end. But it was too dark. He should go there first, if only because he couldn’t see what was there, and he already knew there were sarcophagi along all the other walls. Full sarcophagi? But he wasn’t ready to search that gloomy bit of the room; he wanted to find out more about what he could see first. He wanted to know what was causing the wall to glow; if it could be moved, it would make it a lot easier to search the darkness to his right. And what about the sarcophagi? One seemed to have been made for him, but what about the others? Were the empty ones for his children and grandchildren? If so, the others—
He turned sharply toward the sarcophagus next to his, the first one whose lid was closed. The image on the lid, though half-hidden in shadow, was of a young woman with long, wavy black hair draped over her shoulders; sweet brown eyes filled with love and kindness; a narrow, sharp smile that was quick with a laugh or a harsh word when needed; a rounded little nose; and soft, smooth, caramel-colored skin. The image on the lid had none of these colors—it was just the drab gray-brown of aged wood—but what he saw in the image was so lifelike, so realistic, that he sagged to his knees. “Mother,” he gasped as he clung tightly to the lid of his sarcophagus with his left hand. His right hand, quivering, stretched out for his mother’s sarcophagus. He slid closer to it, and his fingertips brushed across the cold wood of his mother’s hand. A moment later, he lunged forward, grappling the wooden sarcophagus as if he were a small boy clinging to his mother’s legs to prevent her from leaving. “Momma,” he whimpered as the tears cascaded down his cheeks and the sobs burbled in his chest.
3
Angus half-opened his eyes and looked around without moving. He saw nothing except the peculiar bluish glow of sunlight passing through a thick layer of ice. It was an attractive color, one that reminded him of the watery depths of Embril’s eye. Only her eye was a bit darker, a bit deeper, and far less deadly than the blueness pressing down upon him.
There was something in his left hand. It was thin and round and cold, and he grasped it as tightly as he would his last breath. It was the right size for a quill, but it wasn’t like any quill he had ever used. Quills were nearly smooth, and the imperfections on their surfaces were infrequent and random. This thin, cylindrical object’s surface was etched with complex patterns, and some of them felt familiar to him. They were similar to the knots he used to cast the flying spell.
Magic! He thought suddenly, fiercely, and his eyes snapped fully open. I lost my magic! That’s why I fell—I couldn’t fly! Sardach dropped me and I couldn’t see the magic!
A sharp pain riddled through his chest as he gasped, and he forced himself to calm down, to take slow, shallow breaths. Broken ribs? Yes, they were broken. His chest felt like it had been crushed by the unrelenting coils of a giant snake. He lifted his left hand—it moved easily, painlessly—and a sharp pain radiated out from his lower back as he shifted against something hard and jagged beneath him. It had the shape and texture of a burl and bit painfully into his lower back. There was something else beneath him, and it felt like a thick, leafless branch. He tried to shift his weight from the knothole onto the branch, but an intense pain erupted in his right shoulder as soon as he began to move. He winced and settled back down on the knothole; it was an inconvenient pain, not a mind-wrenching, debilitating one like his shoulder.
He closed his eyes and focused on the pain, trying to force it away. It wasn’t a branch he was lying on; it was his right arm. It was pinned beneath him, twisted into an u
nnatural position. He couldn’t feel it, but his right shoulder felt like the arm had been pulled from its socket, and bones had grated against each other when he had shifted position. He lay still until the pain eased, and then tried to wiggle his toes. His right thigh answered with a dull throbbing sensation, but he couldn’t feel his left foot. Was it gone? Or was it numb, like his right arm? It didn’t matter; he was alive. He should be dead.
Angus held what was in his hand up in front of his eyes and tried to focus on it. It was an ivory wand, the one that—
Yes, that was what had happened. He had fallen a long way and used the wand to deflect himself away from the mountainside. It was a desperate gamble, but what choice had he had? He couldn’t fly, and hitting the mountainside at that speed would have killed him. Even so, it shouldn’t have worked—but it must have done enough for him to survive. He frowned. How had he gotten buried in the ice?
He looked up through the vertical shaft. It was ovular, and had smooth, irregular walls as if something warm had gradually melted through the ice and left behind the meandering shaft. Could he have done it? It was the right dimensions if his body had toppled over itself on the way down, and his robe did keep his body temperature constant. If he had been pressed against the ice for long enough… It was a long tunnel, and he would have dropped even further if he hadn’t landed on something that hadn’t melted. A rock shelf? A ledge? The thing pressing into his lower back was rough like a rock, but it could be the sharp end of a broken bone.
He set the wand down beside him and began the slow process of checking his wounds. He started by tentatively probing his chest, fully expecting to find tiny barbs of bone sticking out at odd angles. But there were none. He frowned; it felt like he had broken ribs, but his fingers were telling him differently. He ran them over his chest, pressing down more firmly on his ribcage, but there were no breaks, no cracks, no pain. He took a deep, welcome breath, one that felt normal, healthy, except for the throbbing in his back and the resurgent, sharp pain in his right shoulder as he shifted slightly on the rock shelf.
Why did his chest feel like it had been crushed when it hadn’t been? It didn’t matter; it wasn’t crushed, and he needed to focus on the injuries that were real. He reached across his chest and gently touched his right shoulder. Pain shot down his arm and up his neck. He winced and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. At the very least, his shoulder was dislocated, but what about the arm? After a moment, he gritted his teeth and continued his gentle exploration. It didn’t last long; his arm was bent backward and lay at an odd angle beneath him.
Still the mind, he thought, wondering if he would ever be able to use his arm again. Still the body. If he couldn’t, how would he cast spells? Almost all of them required two hands to manipulate the magic into their knotted patterns. Still the mind. Still the body. He focused on the mantra for over a minute before he was able to continue his diagnosis.
His right arm was a mess, but he didn’t know any more than that. His ribcage felt like it was in tatters, but it wasn’t. He reached inward with his mind, looking for the magic that he had lost and found a faint wisp of a response. It wasn’t the magic he was familiar with; rather, it was like the afterimage of a candle’s flame plastered on the eyelid after turning away from it. It was as if he were seeing the magic from a great distance, and it had an unfamiliar quality to it. He tried to bring it into focus, but it stayed at the fringe of his awareness like a hazy, smoky memory that he couldn’t quite dispel or bring to the forefront of his mind.
He shifted his legs slowly, one at a time, beginning with his right leg. The throbbing in his thigh was mild compared to the wretched pain that gouged into his lower back as his weight shifted. He would have to move soon, before the sharp edges of the rock bit more deeply into his flesh.
He still couldn’t feel his left foot, but there was no pain in it when he straightened his leg as best he could. What could be wrong with it? It felt like it had fallen asleep. Could it be as simple as that? Would it tingle to life when he started moving? Or was it something worse, much worse? He flexed his left leg for several seconds as he tried to will sensation back into his foot, but it did no good.
The rock bit a little deeper into his back. He would have to move, but there was little room to maneuver. The tunnel above him was scarcely large enough for him to squeeze through, and the little spot that had melted around him was as closed in as a coffin. Still, he was in a more comfortable position than he had been, and if he could roll over on his belly, it might free up his right arm for a close examination of the damage. But which way to roll?
He turned his head slightly to the left. There was a 20 degree upslope, perhaps more—and then to the right. His weight shifted as he turned his head, and the rock digging into his back suddenly gave way. He slid sideways, tilted, and most of his weight pressed down on his right shoulder as he tipped over into a shallow pool of water. His right arm dropped limply down beside him as if it were no longer attached to his body, and a horrid wave of pain drove through the shield he was building with the mantra. The agony in his shoulder drenched his mind just as the ice-cold water drenched his face. He gasped and sputtered as he tried to lever himself back up onto the shelf, but all he managed to do was get his left arm beneath his head. It was barely enough to keep his nose above the shallow waterline.
He tried to reassert control over his body with the mantra, tried to push aside the pain, but it took a long time for it to have any effect. A part of him was clinically pleased by the pain; it meant the arm was still there, could still feel pain, and that meant he would be able to cast spells again after it healed. If it healed. If he got out of the ice before he starved to death.
He focused on the mantra and on his breathing, and as the pain gradually ebbed to a tolerable level, he thought about his situation. Despite his injuries, he would have to find a way out of the ice if he hoped to survive. His right arm was useless. His left arm was fine. His left foot was numb and his right leg was sore. His chest was not crushed, even though it still felt like it was. He had no food. He had no magic—yet. That brief glimpse of the magic in the distance had been promising, and if he could bring it closer, he might have a chance. But his backpack was strapped to Gretchen, and the spells he had primed for were missing. Or were they? Would he find the priming intact if—when—he regained his sense of magic? Or would he have to prime for them all over again—if he could still prime them at all?
No sense dwelling on what he didn’t have; he needed to focus on what he did have. The wand. It only had four or five spells left in it, but he could use them to make a tunnel through the ice if he needed to. He had dropped it on the shelf when he fell off of it, and he would have to remember to retrieve it before he climbed out of the ice. If he could climb out of the ice. What good was his left foot? It was completely numb, and without sensation, he wouldn’t be able to feel for gaps in the ice. And his hands would warm the ice to a slick sheet in moments.
First things first, he thought as he opened his eyes and looked at the murky pool of water beneath him. He needed water to survive. He bent forward and drank deeply from the fresh, ice-cold water. At least he had that much. But what to do about his right arm? He couldn’t have it flopping around uselessly; it would get in the way and bump into things. Even when he shifted it only slightly, the sudden jolt of pain was almost unbearable, and the mantra was struggling to compensate for that pain.
He rested for a long time, but when the water began to trickle into his nostril, he lifted his head and opened his eyes again. The pool was deeper than it had been. Before, it had not covered his arm, and his head was at least an inch and a half above its surface. Now, his arm was completely covered, and water was seeping into his nose and ear. He shifted his left arm and found a neat little indentation had formed beneath it. The water hadn’t risen that much; the ice beneath him had melted while he had lain there—and it was still melting. How long had he rested? A few minutes? An hour? There was no way for him to tell, b
ut he did know one thing: he couldn’t stay there much longer.
He turned to his right. The rock shelf was only about six inches above him, but in his present condition, it was more than a minor obstacle. His right hand was still on the shelf, twisted around the wrong way, and there was no way he could use it to help him get up to the shelf. But his legs worked, and he slowly brought his knees up under him. He winced as his back muscles stretched painfully across the wound the jagged rock had left behind. It started to bleed, and the warm liquid trickled down his tilted spine to the base of his neck. He gritted his teeth and used his left arm to lift his head and chest until they were almost even with the rock shelf. It was difficult to maintain his position on the slick, wet ice as he nudged himself to the right, toward the shelf.
Crushing pain erupted from his shoulder as his limp arm pressed against it, and he sagged against the shelf’s edge. He needed to stabilize his arm if he hoped to make it back onto the shelf, and there was only one way he could do it. He had to tuck it inside his robe and use his belt to hold it in place. To do that, he needed to be on his back. He lifted himself with his left arm until his chin was on the edge of the shelf, and then used his chin to brace himself as he brought his left arm and leg under him. When they were in place, he pushed away from the shelf with his left hand and rolled onto his back, his right arm dragging along behind as it flopped lifelessly across his chest.
The Golden Key (Book 3) Page 2