The Golden Key (Book 3)

by Robert P. Hansen

  He reached for a brown strand that looked different from all the others and pulled it to him. He didn’t know if it were umber or not, but at least it was unique among those around him, and Angus had said that umber was rare. If the spell worked, fine; if not.…

  He shrugged, took a deep breath, and clung to the magical threads with a tenacity that made his burned fingertips throb. He slowly tied the white and blue strands together, taking his time with each knot until he reached the point when he was supposed to weave the umber strand through them. Then he paused. How long would it be before they arrived to torture him? How long would he be able to hang onto the Cloaking spell? Would it even work? Or would it leave him fluttering about like a shiny blue ghost? If the strand wasn’t umber, what would it do to him? How would it affect the spell?

  He was still considering the possibilities when he heard a sharp click in the wall. He knew what that click meant and quickly finished the spell. The door was already opening by the time he reached for the knife with his left hand and the barbed hook with his right. He moved quietly to the edge of the opening door, and through the growing crack he saw Thaddius staring right at him, as if he saw nothing.

  Typhus smiled as he lifted the hook and braced himself.

  6

  It was dark when Angus woke up, and the moonlight barely made the shadows around him take shape; lumpy shapes that could be almost anything. But most—all?—of them were rocks. Would he be able to see well enough to climb over them or past them? Should he risk it? He was still exhausted; perhaps more rest, instead?

  No, he thought. The weakness will only get worse. I must go while I am able enough to do so. Still, he stayed in the crevice for a few more minutes before gradually making his way along the mountainside just above the snowline. He was uncomfortable trusting the breeches to keep him glued to the mountain, but with their aid it was much more like walking than climbing and he made far better progress than he otherwise would have. He was almost around the edge of the outcropping when the magic around him blared to life in a splendid array of gray and white and black. He gasped and almost lost his grip on the mountain before he realized what he was seeing. Once he settled into place again, he blinked rapidly and studied the array of strange colors. What was wrong with the magic? Why could he see magic now but couldn’t see it before? How was he seeing it? He frowned; he hadn’t even thought about looking at the magic, but there it was.

  He turned his attention to the magic within him—but still couldn’t see it. It didn’t make any sense. How could he see the magic around him but not the magic within him? Then, quite suddenly, he realized what was happening. He wasn’t looking at the magic around him; he was looking at the magic around Typhus! It was Typhus who was focusing on the magic, not Angus, and his awareness of it was somehow bleeding through to him in the same way it had when the healer was tending to Typhus’s wounds.

  Can I use this magic? he wondered. He took a deep breath and reached out for the magic around him, and the pattern changed dramatically, as if there were two overlapping sets of images. Both images were still only strands of gray and white and black, but the arrangement of those strands was considerably different. He tried to reach out for one from the new image and it came to him! Almost immediately, he let it go again and reached for another one. He let that one go a moment later, and then concentrated on the color scheme, trying to decipher which shades of gray would match up to the colors he was familiar with. It was no use; he couldn’t tell which shade of gray was red, which was blue, which was green… The only ones he was truly confident about were the black and white; they had to be the same as always.

  He needed to fly if he could, but he still couldn’t see the magic within him and wasn’t ready to risk casting that spell. It would be better to cast Lamplight first; he could do it reflexively, and he didn’t need to see the magic within himself to cast it. He concentrated on the strands around him, studying their behavior, the way they pulsed, the way they crossed over each other, the way they twisted and twirled. Then he reached out for one he thought was acting like a flame-based strand and brought it to him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let his hand do what it needed to do. A moment later, a bright burst of light filtered through his eyelids, and he turned his head away from it.

  He opened his eyes slowly, giving them time to adjust to the sudden glare of the Lamplight spell. But it wasn’t the usual yellow-orange glow he was accustomed to seeing; it was a murky, soft, blue-white glare that reminded him of the aura that resulted from an incomplete Cloaking spell. He frowned. Had he grabbed the wrong type of magic? If he had, the spell should not have worked at all, but the spell had worked—just not the way it had always worked before. Would other spells do the same thing?

  Simple knots are the most powerful ones, Voltari had told him so long ago. They have a versatility that cannot be overestimated. All other knots are derivative combinations of the simple ones.

  All other knots are derivative? Angus frowned and turned the idea over in his head. If the Lamplight knot—one of the most basic ones for flame—could work with other forms of magic, why hadn’t Voltari told him about it? Surely Voltari had known that it would.

  He turned to the Lamplight glowing in his palm and studied it. It wasn’t warm to the touch at all; instead, it was moist and cool, as if it were a tiny, incandescent globe of water, and the light it shed was much dimmer than normal. The range of the light it provided was only about two dozen feet before it bled into the darkness.

  Magic is simple, Voltari had told him. Spells are complex.

  Angus shrugged; there was no point worrying about it now. He had enough blue-tinted light to see by, and that would hasten his progress. He attached it above his left shoulder, just behind his ear where the glare would be mostly hidden. Should he try to cast another spell? Flying would be optimal, but would Typhus keep the magic in focus long enough for him to cast it? And if Typhus quit looking at the magic, would Angus lose his grip on the spell? Perhaps if he skimmed atop the surface of the glacier?

  Angus took a deep breath and brought the magic around him into sharper focus. He studied the shades of gray, of white, of black. He was high in the mountains. There should be plenty of blue, white, and brown. It wasn’t a volcano, so there wouldn’t be very many red strands, and they would be weak. That was the mistake he had made with the first spell; he had chosen one of the abundant gray shades. Had it been a water-based thread or a sky-based thread heavy with water? With all the snow around, it could have been either.

  As he sorted through the strands, trying to group them into ever-tightening categories with a narrow range of shading, he considered what it was he was about to do. It was reckless in the extreme, and it might not work at all. Worse, it could backfire. Still, he had cast the Flying spell so many times over the winter that it was possible his body knew it well enough that it didn’t need priming, and he had primed for it before his encounter with Sardach. He hadn’t been able to cast it during that battle, and it should still be primed. He didn’t know for sure, since he couldn’t see the magic within him, but if it were still there and if his hands remembered the movements, he might succeed in casting it, just as he had the Lamplight spell. If he did, he would be able to make it across to the other mountain in minutes instead of avoiding the valley and creeping along the face of the mountain at a snail’s pace. He sighed and looked down at his useless right hand, still firmly tucked into the belt of his robe. It would be risky to cast the Flying spell with one hand, but at least Voltari had prepared him for it. It had been a harsh lesson, one with far too many lashes from Voltari’s Firewhip, but he had eventually cast Lamplight by using just his left hand. But Flying was a much more complicated series of knots.

  He licked his lips and looked at the magic around him again. He thought he had narrowed down the grouping of sky-based magic, but he wasn’t sure. It was one of two prominent groups, both of which were a light-to-middling color of gray. One would have to be sky, and the
other should be earth; there were simply too many strands for them to be anything else—except, perhaps, the ice-based magic tied to the snow, but that should be a whitish color—or a very pale gray—and the chill white strands looked the same as they always did. The darker gray should be earth; brown was darker than the blues in the sky. He reached out for one of the strands from the lighter grouping and brought it to him.

  I’m too weak to make it back without flying, he rationalized. At least if I die this way, I’ll have died trying to save myself. He sighed, closed his eyes, and the fingers of his left hand began to move.

  7

  The moment Iscara saw Argyle’s new Truthseer she immediately disliked him. He was a scrawny little thing that reminded her of a spider with acne. He was pretty enough in a weird sort of way when you ignored the bulging eyes and big ears, and he was much younger than Fanzool. His arms dangled at his sides as if he didn’t know what to do with them, and he tilted to the right as if his right leg was shorter than the left. He limped, but she was certain it was an affectation; there were no injuries that she could detect, no distortions in the magic within him. He kept his head turned to the right as if he was listening to someone talking to him, but his eye always stared forward. He had two eyes, of course, but only one of them faced forward; the other looked to the right, and that eye bore into her as if it could see her deepest, darkest secrets. Perhaps it did, and that’s why she didn’t like him?

  Fanzool had been better. He had been a friendly fellow, and she had been able to manipulate him without any difficulty at all. All she had to do was move in close beside the old man, brush up against him, purr something sweet into his ear, and he would blush and bluster until he finally caved in to whatever it was she had wanted him to do. But this one? This—what had Argyle called him? Drub? Drud? Something like that—didn’t blush, and if he ever blustered, it would be the blustering of a blizzard bringing a cold death.

  “We have only one task,” the Truthseer said. “We must find out where he has hidden Argyle’s key.”

  Iscara nodded and turned away from his discomfiting gaze. He was hunched over, too, but there wasn’t any deformity in his spine as far as she could tell. It was only part of the image he had concocted for himself, just like the wizard’s robe draped about him. It was like her healer’s gown, something to let others know what she was. His affectations were a lot more elaborate than hers, especially the staff whose grip was topped with a demon’s head. It had big ears, too. He leaned heavily against that staff as if it were sucking him into the ground as he walked. Maybe that was why he limped and slouched so much?

  “What key?” she asked as they plodded down the hallway toward the corridor where Typhus was sleeping. She would have preferred to move faster, but he could only plod along. If they had to run, what would he do? Plod a bit faster? Or stop the pretense? And it was a pretense; she was certain of it. Everything about his appearance was manufactured, carefully cultivated to make others uncomfortable, to make them think he was weaker than he was. But he couldn’t hide those big, bulging eyes. They were powerful, and she was certain they could look past the surface—past her surface—to penetrate the sordid depths roiling beneath it. Fanzool never made her feel that way. He had pretty, amusing eyes that filmed over with tears when her playthings screamed.

  “A small golden key,” the Truthseer said. “Typhus will know which one.” He shuffled forward at an easy pace, ignoring her impatience—or antagonizing it intentionally; she wasn’t sure which. He struck her as the kind of man who didn’t know how to deal with a strong-willed, independent woman who never fainted at the sight of blood; especially the blood she, herself, had spilled. “Its whereabouts is of the utmost concern to Argyle. If needed, you will assist me in discovering its location.”

  If needed? Iscara frowned. She had always enjoyed assisting Fanzool during his interrogations. It was almost more amusing to see his discomfort than it was to hear her plaything’s screams. She smiled and, despite herself, hoped Fanzool had found a fitting end, one that fit well with his timid nature. Something violent, perhaps? Something that would have made him shriek in terror as it approached? She sighed; if she asked this new Truthseer to show her Fanzool’s death, would it be amusing enough to be worth seeing? Or merely a sad and pathetic end to a sad and pathetic life?

  She hoped the Truthseer would need her assistance. She owed Typhus that much—and more! The way he had left.…

  The funny little man laughed as if he had seen the image in her mind, but she squared her shoulders and ignored him. Yes, she didn’t like him, but Argyle would not be pleased if she acted on that dislike, and she knew what Argyle could do to those who displeased him. She had been the instrument of his displeasure on many, many occasions. Still, if Gimpy—yes, that was what she would call him—gave her much more incentive…. She thought of a particularly vicious game she could play with him, but he showed no sign of noticing.

  As they rounded the corner and neared the door to the chamber in which Typhus had been placed, she slowed down and let Gimpy get ahead of her. Argyle’s lackeys were outside the room, and the door was shut. That was not unusual; there was no way to open the door from within the chamber, and Typhus had been very securely bound. She had even taken away the little bit of metal under his scalp that she had discovered when she healed him. Still, it was Typhus, and if anyone could find a way out of those manacles, it would be him, and it would have been wiser to have some men inside the room watching him from a distance. No, it didn’t bother her that they were outside the room; what bothered her was what wasn’t in the hallway.

  “Where are they?” she called, coming to an abrupt stop a few yards from the door’s edge.

  Gimpy stopped and turned to the right until his left eye was staring at her. “Pardon?”

  “Where are my things!” she almost shouted, staying well away from the others.

  “What things?” he asked.

  “We put them inside,” Crooked Knife said. “No sense in having them sitting out here when you’re going to be using them in there, now, is there?”

  “No sense!” She half-screamed. “That’s exactly what you have, you fool. It’s Typhus in there, and you just let him have what he needs to kill all of us. How could you be so stupid?”

  “Now see here, young lady,” Gimpy began, somehow putting a sneer in his puffed-up voice as he chastised her. “I don’t care who it is in there; no one could break out of those manacles I put on him.”

  She stared at the Truthseer’s eye and began to giggle. “No one?” she repeated. “He isn’t no one; he’s Typhus, the most resourceful assassin you will ever meet—if you live long enough. He even found a way to hide from Fanzool for nearly two years.”

  “Fanzool was incompetent,” Gimpy said with derision in his voice as he straightened somewhat. “I am not.” Then, quite abruptly, he turned and gestured to the lackeys. “Open that door,” he said.

  The lackey-with-no-brains drew his nasty looking crooked knife and positioned himself in front of where the door would open. Once in place, he nodded to his companion. Gimpy hobbled up beside him while the other lackey pressed the panel on the wall that would release the door’s lock. A loud click echoed down the corridor, one that was loud enough by far to give Typhus plenty of warning of their approach. It was meant to give that warning, to let the prisoners know the game was about to begin. The door slowly peeled itself away from the wall, and a bright light burst out through the crack that formed.

  After a moment, Iscara’s eyes widened. The light was too bright to be a candle and too steady to be a torch. It could only be—

  “Magic!” Iscara gasped, but before she could give warning, Crooked Knife began to gurgle and suddenly staggered backward with his hand clutching at his throat. Blood spouted out from between his fingers.

  The Truthseer barely lifted his hands before his knees buckled and he crumpled to the floor.

  The door continued to crank open as the other lackey watched. Light fl
ooded into the corridor. Nothing stepped out of the room.

  The lackey at the door mechanism finally reached for his sword—but it wasn’t there. Something had already pulled it from its scabbard and struck him with it from behind. He shuddered, the kind of shudder that rattles a man’s bones, as the bloody tip sprouted from his chest. As he sagged to the floor, Iscara screamed and ran down the corridor.

  8

  Sweat flowed easily down his cheek as Angus finished the last knot of the Flying spell. It had taken much longer than normal to tie those knots, and he knew they were shakily done. But the magic hadn’t escaped from him, nor had it done something noticeably unpredictable. It was an encouraging sign, but not a definitive one. He had to try to fly before he would know if it had worked. He looked down at the snow a half dozen feet below him and decided to climb down closer to it. If he leapt from the mountainside and couldn’t fly, at least he wouldn’t fall far and the snow might soften his landing a little bit. When he reached the edge of the snow, he knelt down on it. He didn’t have to fly high above the glacier, did he? He lunged forward, tweaking the magic in his left hand so that he would fly horizontally—but he didn’t fly. He dropped.

  He grimaced in anticipation of the pain of landing on his right arm, but there was no pain. Instead, he passed through the snow and, when he hit the ice, he sunk into it and shot forward at a rapid rate. His eyes widened, and he quickly tweaked the spell to bring himself to a hasty stop. He rolled over and sat up, his torso rising above the snow. Where’s my trail? he wondered as looked behind him. He bent his right knee and stared in amazement as his foot went deeper the ice as if it wasn’t even there. He gulped and tweaked the spell, intending to fly to the left at a slow pace, and sidled along the ice for several feet before he remembered to stop.