Giorge paused. “Why?” he asked.
His mother pulled her hand away from his wrist, and her voice was strangely soft as she said, “Please. Don’t let him out.”
Giorge looked at the sarcophagus and frowned. The image on the lid looked a lot like him but there were differences. The way the man wore his hair long, the moustache full, and the eyes had an angry cast to them. He didn’t recognize the man, but it was clear from her reaction that his mother had. He hesitated. All it would take was a sharp twist of the blade to pop the lid free from the bolt. If he didn’t do it, the man inside would die. Who was he? Why did his mother want to leave him in there? My great uncle? he suddenly wondered. Everyone said I looked like him.
The thumping was more insistent now, and accompanied by incoherent grumblings that barely made it through the thick wood. The man inside knew someone had tried to open the lid and had stopped.
“Why not?” Giorge asked again. He was not at all squeamish about letting a man suffocate if he deserved it, but what if he didn’t deserve it? His mother seemed to think he did, and that was almost enough, but he needed to know why, especially if the man inside was his great uncle.
Instead of answering him, his mother turned her pained eyes away and walked to the next sarcophagus. She didn’t hesitate when she reached it and forced her poniards into the seam to pry it open. As soon as it gave way, she leapt back, slid to a stop, and held her poniards at the ready.
A hairy forearm draped in silver bracelets pushed the lid open, and a tall, roguish-looking man with long blonde hair and an artfully trimmed beard stepped out. A gold earring with a large opal cradled in it dangled from his ear, and he wore a handful of rings studded with smaller stones, mainly garnets, agates, and fragments of diamonds or rubies. He wore an iron breastplate and had a long sword at his side.
“Archibald?” his mother asked in astonishment.
The man squinted down at her and asked, “Do I know you? It is difficult to tell with your loveliness so heavily masked.”
“No,” his mother said. “But I have heard stories about you.”
He grinned and said, “They are all true, no doubt. Perhaps you and I could make a few more?” He took a step forward, saw Giorge—who had his sword at the ready—and his smile froze into place.
“It will have to wait,” Giorge’s mother said. “We have others to let out.” She moved easily around him, and he followed her with his eyes as she went to the next sarcophagus. When she began working on the seam, Archibald moved quickly up behind her, drawing his long sword as he went.
Giorge shouted a strangled, wordless warning and lunged after him—but it was too late; the sword was already plunging forward, into the crack above his mother’s head. A moment later, the sarcophagus’s lid flew open as Archibald jerked his sword free and whirled around to face Giorge’s attack.
Giorge’s mother stepped quickly around Archibald and shouted, “Stop!”
Their swords rang against each other once, and then Giorge backed away.
“Giorgie—” his mother began.
“I thought—”
Archibald laughed and shook his head. “No harm done,” he said, waving his sword. “It is a good reminder.” He looked around for the first time and added, “We seem to be in a dangerous place. But have no fear, young man, I bear only gratitude toward those who have released me from that hideous prison. I will reserve my ill will for that wretched beast who trapped me here. If I should find him, his head shall be mine.”
“Symptata’s been dead a long time,” Giorge said, his heart pounding in his chest as he half-lowered his sword. He couldn’t bring himself to apologize for his attack, and he doubted Archibald would care anyway. “This is his tomb, and we—”
“Excuse me.” It was a woman’s voice that sounded almost grandmotherly in its polite tone. “Did you say this is Symptata’s tomb?”
Archibald snapped around. “By Onus’s Bloody Eye!” he cried, “You’re dead!”
“So were you,” Giorge’s mother told him.
And you, Giorge thought as he struggled to understand what was happening. And me? He wondered. He had been attacked by a frost elemental and hadn’t survived the assault—had he?
The pounding on the sarcophagus behind him, the one holding his great uncle, was becoming intolerably insistent. He turned and went back to it. His mother didn’t want him to open it, but she hadn’t told him why. He looked at her, and she abruptly turned away, moving quickly to the next sarcophagus in line.
“Archibald,” she said as she stepped quickly past him. “We could use your help.”
Reluctantly, Giorge slid his sword back into the seam. He felt guilty as he popped the lid loose—he had always felt guilty when he displeased his mother—but Archibald was right. They were in a dangerous place, and a little more help to get them out of it couldn’t hurt. Besides, he was curious: why did his mother hate his great uncle so? And why did they look so much alike? He had an idea, one that would explain his mother’s reaction, but it was a difficult thought to contemplate. She had said his father had died, but….
7
Darby had told the soldier to fetch Lieutenant Jarhad forthwith, which was one of Embril’s favorite words. It had a lovely etymology, one that was as elegant as its consonance. She was still ruminating about the word when the tent flap snapped open and Lieutenant Jarhad entered the tent. Or should that be ruminanting about it? She whinnied playfully at her own little pun, even though horses weren’t really ruminants, and Lieutenant Jarhad stopped, stared for a long moment, and then turned on his heels and stomped out. He nearly pulled the tent down as he jerked the flap closed behind him. She stepped quickly forward, intending to talk with him, but Darby was entering the tent and blocked her way.
“Let him deal with it,” he said. “He didn’t quite believe what I told him until he saw you for himself.” He applied pressure to her chest until she stepped back into the tent.
“Will he be back?” she asked.
“Doubtful,” Darby said, his tone dry.
She sighed, which sounded a lot like a long wheezy snort, and they stood in silence for almost five minutes before the soldier who had watched her riding—Tobar?—stepped into the tent. He was carrying a halter and lead rope and had a blanket thrown over his shoulder that made him look even skinnier than he was. He paused and stared at her, his feet shifting uneasily from one foot to another.
“Well?” she demanded, bristling at the sight of the rope.
He cleared his throat and looked at Darby for help, but Darby ignored him. “The Lieutenant sent me in here—” he paused and gulped “—to muzzle you.”
To muzzle me! She thought with surprise. Of all the nerve! She stomped her foot, lowered her head, and snorted at him.
Tobar gulped and lifted the rope again, but he didn’t step forward. “Please?” he asked. “He says it would look suspicious to have a horse with neither rider nor burden when all the other pack animals are so heavily laden.”
She stared at him, her nostrils flaring and her eyes intense. Lieutenant Jarhad was right, and that only made her paw the ground more fiercely. “No one will ride me!”
Tobar shook his head. “No, no,” he quickly clarified. “The Lieutenant said,” he paused and tried to look away. His voice was firm when he continued, but he didn’t look at her while he spoke. “The Lieutenant said, ‘She can carry her own damned box of books. If she refuses, toss the blasted things off the mountain.’”
“How dare he!” Embril almost charged Tobar, but Darby stepped in front of her, leaned forward, and whispered in her ear. “It is not an idle threat, Embril,” he said. “Lieutenant Jarhad will do exactly what he says. If you value what is in that box…” He stepped back from her and added, his voice loud, “What harm can there be from it, anyway? Horses carry heavier burdens than those books all the time.”
She ground her teeth and wondered how ghoulish it would look on a horse, and then, all at once, she let her anger go. It wa
s pointless. There was no way that she would risk losing those books—or what was below them. Darby was right, anyway; it wouldn’t hurt her to carry them. “Fine,” she said, her voice calm, almost serene. “I will carry my own gear. But I refuse to be muzzled.”
The man looked from Embril to Darby a few times before he said, “It would look strange to have a pack animal without one.”
Embril violently shook her head in protest. “The lead rope and no more than that,” she said. “I need no muzzle.”
Darby nodded to him and said, “I will persuade the Lieutenant that it is a reasonable compromise.”
She was compliant as Tobar put on the halter and attached the lead rope, but as soon as his hands were out of the way, she snapped at it with her teeth. It was like wearing an ugly necklace that didn’t fit right. Then he draped the padded blanket over her back and stepped away. He hurried out of the tent, and came back in carrying a heavy wooden rack. She shied away from the ungainly thing as he approached.
“You don’t want the chest on your back,” Tobar said. “The pack frame will distribute the weight and make it much easier for you to carry your chest.”
She pawed the ground and grudgingly stepped forward to let him strap it on her back. Darby bent down to help him with the frame, but when they put it on her back, she ducked under it and squirted forward. Something sharp had jabbed into her back when the weight of the pack frame was put on the blanket. The pack frame almost slid to the ground before they caught it.
“Hold still,” Darby said.
“No,” Embril said, turning her head to look at the spot that had been jabbed. “There’s something in the blanket in that spot,” she said, trying to bite at it. “It’s sharp.”
Darby frowned and they set the pack frame down on the ground. Then he stepped up next to Embril and ran his fingers along the top of the blanket until she nodded, and then he slid his fingers under the blanket. After rummaging around for a few seconds, he sucked in a sharp breath and pulled his fingers out. A little bubble of blood had formed on the end of one of them, and he stared at it. “She’s right,” he told Tobar.
When he folded the blanket up to find out what was underneath it, he pursed his lips and shook his head. A few seconds later, he pried a piece of metal out of its folds. The thing looked like a little ball with spikes on it. “What’s a caltrop doing in here?” he wondered. “It couldn’t have gotten in there by accident. Someone had to put it between the folds of the blanket.” His eyes dilated as he turned to Tobar. “Do you know how it got there?” he demanded.
“No sir,” Tobar replied.
“Where did you get the blanket?”
“It was an extra one packed away with the gear,” he said.
Darby frowned. “Was it stored near the caltrops?”
Tobar nodded, “Yes sir. There was a bag of them hanging next to it.”
Darby digested this before saying, “I suppose one could have fallen out of the bag and worked its way into the blanket. Packs do shift a lot.”
“Yes sir,” Tobar said.
The tent flap opened and a soldier she didn’t recognize stepped inside. He was carrying a bucket full of mud. “I was told you needed this, Sir?” he said as he stared at the strange horse in the Lieutenant’s tent.
Darby looked at him and nodded. “Set it down by the flap,” he said. “Be mindful not to spill any of it.”
The soldier did as instructed and asked, “Will there be anything else, Sir? Lieutenant Jarhad is impatient to leave.”
Darby shook his head, but when the soldier turned to walk out of the entrance, he reconsidered and said, “Yes, there is.”
The soldier turned and waited.
“I want you to check the saddle blanket of the horse Elmer rode yesterday. See if there is anything embedded in its folds that shouldn’t be there. Do a thorough job of it and report to me what you find when you’re finished.”
“Yes, Sir,” the soldier said as he hurried outside.
Darby let the blanket fall back into place. “If there was a caltrop in the blanket you used yesterday, it would explain your horse’s behavior.” He turned to Tobar and asked, “Was the saddle blanket you used for her horse taken from the same pack?”
Tobar nodded, “Yes, Sir.”
“We will need to check that pack horse after we finish here,” Darby said. “There may be a hole in the caltrop container.” They secured the blanket, and this time when they put the pack frame on her back there was no pain, only the light pressure of its weight. They added the chest to her burden and tied it down. Then Darby picked up the bucket and they started plastering her mane with the mud, running their fingers through it to cover as many hairs as possible as they caked it to her neck. By the time they had finished, the other soldier had returned.
He was holding another spiked metal ball in his hand.
8
Giorge followed the others as they moved along the sequence of sarcophagi. Each one they opened led to another brief, startling discovery of a dead ancestor who had been miraculously found alive, another curtailed reunion. As they went, he felt a growing desire for privacy with his mother. He wanted to talk with her—really talk with her—but there wasn’t time. He still hadn’t processed the fact that she was alive, even though he had been certain of it ever since she had removed the black hood. Her long black curls had cascaded over her shoulders when she shook her head, and then she ran her gloved hands through those wavy strands like she had done so many times when he was a child. But the loving brown eyes he remembered were hidden behind the angry glare she had given him when he had freed his great uncle. For a long moment it had looked as if she were about to throw her poniards at him—or at his great uncle, he couldn’t tell which—but she hadn’t; she had just turned away and stomped to the next sarcophagus.
He had followed her, slipping a bit as he walked too quickly, and then realized she hadn’t been stomping in anger. The slime abruptly turned into a thick layer of grit, and a few steps after that it was but a thin layer of dry dust. He followed her example and stomped the mud from his boots. Whatever was feeding the slime, wherever the moisture was coming from, it didn’t reach this far.
Two ancestors later, they rounded the corner and moved along the wall toward the brightly lit corner some forty feet away. Sarcophagi lined the wall, each about a foot and a half wide and two feet away from the ones next to it. By the time they reached the third sarcophagus, they knew where the light was coming from: a florescent orange fungus.
“I don’t like this,” his mother said. “I have heard tales of such fungi, and it is wise to stay away from it.”
It was the familiar voice, but it didn’t hold the gentle lilting Giorge so fondly remembered. He didn’t look at her when he nodded; he had heard similar tales, himself—probably from her. They were a standard warning for grave robbers. “Perhaps if we cover our noses?” he offered. There were feeble rattles coming from within the next sarcophagus. Is he suffocating? “Your mask, perhaps?”
She nodded and pulled her mask back over her face. “It targets the eyes as well as the nose,” she said. “If it finds a way in, there is no hope—save a healer familiar with it, and that must be done quickly.” She stepped cautiously forward, trying to avoid the fungal growth creeping along the wall with its tendrils gently draped over the top of the sarcophagus. It was already eating into the wood, but he didn’t think it had penetrated too far yet. It was mostly new growth.
There was a puff of orange when the lid popped free, and she hurriedly thrust the lid aside and reached into the sarcophagus.
“Don’t breathe it in!” Giorge called as he jumped back a few paces.
His mother pulled the man out of the sarcophagus and pushed him hurriedly away from it. She followed a step behind, and when they were near Giorge, she lifted her mask and took a deep breath. “We need a better plan,” she said, pointing at the orange cloud spreading out from the sarcophagus behind her. “If those spores get into you, you’re dead. T
he fungus creeps into your skull and devours your brain. It is a slow, agonizing way to die.”
Giorge nodded. He had been told the same thing, perhaps even by the same person who had told his mother. But the next sarcophagus was far from silent; whoever was in it was thudding up against the inside of the lid, trying to break out of it. A thin layer of the luminescent fungus covered the upper half of the sarcophagus, and there would be no way to avoid its spores when they opened it up. If they opened it at all.
The man she had freed stood unsteadily beside her, as if he had forgotten how to stand. His head was bowed, as if he was completely unaware of his surroundings.
“You’re free now,” Giorge told him as gently as he could. “I know it’s disorienting, but we don’t have time right now to explain what we think happened. Others are still trapped.”
When the man lifted his head and turned to Giorge, his eyes were closed. He was young, like all of them, but his face was scarred, as if he had seen many battles and some of them had been unkind to him. A jagged scar ran along his brow, and the beard did little to cover up where he had been badly burned. His nose was ragged, as if it had been broken and set a dozen times. When he opened his mouth, there were few teeth and no words, only a low, rumbling groan. Then his eyes opened, and a fierce orange glow burst free.
Giorge staggered back a step and stopped. Momma! She was right beside the man, within easy reach, ready to give him support if he needed it….
The man tried to speak again, and this time the groan slowly eased into an elongated word, “Kkkkiiillllllllll.” Then his mouth snapped shut, abruptly cutting off the word. He lifted his arms and reached out for Giorge.
“No!” Giorge cried as his mother stepped closer to the man. “He’s infected!”
The reunions behind him fell to an abrupt silence as Giorge’s shout echoed from the walls of the large chamber.
His mother hesitated only a moment before ducking behind the man and hurrying away from the wall painted with fungus. She only took a few steps before turning back, but it was far enough.
The Golden Key (Book 3) Page 15