The man took a slow, ponderous step toward Giorge and stopped. He opened his mouth again, and this time, the words were clipped and clearly enunciated. “Kill me,” he said. “Please.”
Giorge stepped warily back and drew his sword. As he did so, his mother gasped and pulled her mask down over her face again. Then she circled stealthily until she was behind the man. She rushed forward with her poniards and thrust both of them into the man’s back.
“Harold!” one of the men behind Giorge yelled—but whatever else he might have said was lost.
The man seemed not to notice his wounds as he stepped forward with his arms extended, a sickly orange, algae-like growth dangling from his outstretched hands.
Giorge stepped back until he was almost lost in shadow, his sword held out in front of him. How could he kill the man without getting infected? The spores…
Archibald towered over him, his long sword in hand and a grim look on his face. “I do not like this,” he said, his voice uncompromising. “It is not right to kill ones’ forebears, even if it is a merciful act.”
Giorge’s mother continued stabbing the man from behind, but it seemed to have little effect on him. When he did take notice of it, he slowly twisted around, swinging his arms and spewing out a putrid orange cloud from his mouth.
“By Onus’s Forked Tongue!” Archibald cried, springing forward and swinging his sword.
His mother easily ducked beneath the man’s arm, but when she saw the sputum, her eyes grew wide—then slammed shut. She dropped to the floor and rolled quickly away.
A moment later, Archibald’s sword cleanly severed the man’s head, sending it flying backward. But no blood spouted from the wound. The body didn’t fall. It continued turning until its arms thudded against Archibald’s breastplate. The contact didn’t stop its momentum as it slowly rotated to the ground. It still wasn’t dead—But was it alive? It lost much of its direction, and the arms flailed the air. Archibald easily avoided them by taking a long step backward. When he was next to Giorge, Giorge gasped and stepped rapidly away from him: his breastplate had a patch of orange film on it, and it was moving.
Before he could do more than notice it, a loud crash shattered the near-silence of the tomb. The lid of one of the sarcophagi in the far corner, where the light was brightest, had fallen to the floor. Something stepped out that had a bright, pumpkin-colored aura enveloping it. It was brighter than the fungus on the wall, almost as bright as one of Angus’s Lamplight spells.
As he was adjusting to the alarming situation, another lid fell.
“Battle formation!” Archibald shouted, taking up a position in front of the others.
Giorge reacted as he always did when Hobart made that command: he sheathed his short sword, moved toward the rear, and took out his throwing knives. Within moments, he was joined by a dozen others, including his mother, leaving Archibald to stand as an army of one against the growing army of luminescent dead-but-nots.
When his mother joined him, he whispered, “He’s got spores all over him. They’re moving.”
She nodded. She had already taken off her mask and thrown it aside. “We need a way out,” she said.
“Or fire,” someone beside them suggested. “We can burn them if we can make a fire.”
“The sarcophagi are made of wood,” another said. “Who has flint and steel?”
Several voices replied in the affirmative.
“Any axes?” one asked as they moved toward the nearest sarcophagus. “It will be easier to dismantle the sarcophagi with an axe.”
After a few seconds of silence, a few of them began sawing at them with their knives and swords. Then one said, “Make some shavings for kindling. I’ll get the fire going.”
Giorge stared at Archibald’s back. He wasn’t planning to engage in the conflict if he could help it; he was more concerned about what the fungus was doing to Archibald. It had been radiating outward on his breastplate like an expanding pool of water seeking the easiest way to escape the confines of its puddle. What would he do if Archibald became infected? Fire? he suddenly thought. They need kindling. “That way,” he said, gesturing down the wall toward the crumpled heaps beyond his own sarcophagus. “There’s kindling aplenty down there.” He heard footfalls running, and he quickly added, “Mind the slime!”
“Look!” one of them called. “Over there!”
Giorge turned long enough to see where the woman was pointing, and when he looked in that direction, he gulped. The headless body of the man who had asked to be killed was on its feet again. This time, its movements weren’t aimless: it was heading straight for them. The others, glowing steadily as they emerged from the corner, were also trundling toward them.
“They’re slow,” his mother said. “We can easily avoid them if we need to—at least for a short while. We will tire eventually.” She put her hand lightly on his elbow and asked, “How came you here?”
Giorge frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “I—” he paused. He had died, hadn’t he? “Whatever brought me here did so without my knowledge,” he hedged. “When I woke, I was in my own sarcophagus.”
She digested this, and nodded. “As did I,” she said. “Did you find a way out?”
Giorge shook his head. “I was only free for a short time before you—” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence, so he stopped and shrugged. “I haven’t had time to explore.”
“We best hurry to do so, then,” his mother suggested. “If we can’t find a way out of here, we’ll die. There isn’t enough wood to burn all of them.” She paused as she urged him past their ancestors hacking away at the sarcophagi’s lids, slowly prying off narrow strips of wood and adding them to a growing pile. She stooped down to pick up one, taking care to avoid splinters, and then led him along the wall. They stepped carefully over the slime until they reached his sarcophagus. Some of the others were gathering handfuls of the rotted sarcophagi beyond his, and as one of them passed, she held out her hand to stop him. It was his great uncle, and her voice caught in her throat.
“Magdel,” he said. “I had hoped—”
“We are not finished,” she interrupted, her voice icy, venomous. “I will tend to you later.” She took a slow, deep breath, letting her stare speak for her. When she released his arm, she took a handful of the rotted wood shards from him and turned to Giorge. “We need a torch,” she said. “Do you have flint and steel?”
Giorge nodded and reached for a pouch at his side. He held it out to her.
“Good,” his mother said, thrusting his great uncle from her. “We can’t build a fire on this floor; it’s too wet. We’ll have to build it here.” She urged him up to his sarcophagus and dropped the wood fragments on its dry base. She took the flint and steel, and patiently coaxed a tiny fire to life. She held the end of the strip of wood over it until it was burning well and then handed the makeshift torch to Giorge. She paused to stomp out the little fire and said, “They will need all the wood they can scavenge.”
“Which way?” Giorge asked, looking around the room.
“Do you see any doors?” she asked in a sarcastic tone. “I don’t. We go where there is no light.”
Giorge nodded, but they only took a few steps before his mother stopped and bent down. She took off her glove and dipped her finger in the mud. “This isn’t just moist,” she said. “It’s wet. The water has to be coming from somewhere over there.” She pointed to the shadows along the wall opposite the fungus. “Either that, or it’s seeping up through the floor in the far corner.”
“Yes,” Giorge said. “We would see the water if it was water trickling down that wall,” he added, pointing at the fungus-covered wall. “The floor was dry over there.”
His mother stood up, took the torch from him, and walked carefully into the growing shadows. There was no way to tell how deep those shadows were, but one thing was certain: If there was an exit, it was either very well hidden or it was somewhere in the dark along that wall. He followed after her, amazed by
how graceful and sure-footed she was as she walked through the mud. He vowed to ask her how she did it—if they lived long enough.
9
The best way to understand a horse, Barnham had written, is to become one. Here’s how to do it…. Embril would have to remember to annotate it to let other wizards know they couldn’t use magic while in horse form. If she had known that, she wouldn’t have done it. Barnham also hadn’t included a description of how different the world looked to a horse.
Her vision was disorienting at first, but she quickly adjusted to it. Except for the blind spot directly in front of her, she could see what was ahead of her well enough, but that was only a small part of her visual field. To the right and left were two flat side views that had no depth whatsoever. They were like the illustrations in Barnham’s book: two dimensional. She couldn’t tell how near or far something was to her, and she bumped into a lot of things because of it. Combined with the depth of the frontal view, it created an odd wrap-around effect that made her feel like she was moving inside an elongated bubble that stretched behind her to infinity. It wasn’t a complete bubble, though; she couldn’t see anything behind her unless she turned her eye that way.
Her hearing was acute, and every little unfamiliar sound made her jump. Little chirps and squawks, long groans, thunderous thumping—Barnham never said anything about those sounds, and they were unnerving. What was making all those noises? Would they try to eat her? She twitched and jumped at all of them at first, even after Darby had come up beside her and hissed, “Calm down. You’re making the other horses nervous.” That only made her jump again. It was as if he had come from the dark abyss trying to swallow her up from behind. At least she could cope better with the blind spot in front of her. In the end, Darby had led her to the back of the line and they lagged behind the rest of the group. He even put blinders over his horse’s eyes to keep it from seeing her. It didn’t help much. She nickered and whinnied at the slightest suggestion of movement, whether it was a bush swaying in the wind or a rock settling back into place. It was like they were leaping out at her from the flat, mostly gray landscape. There were splotches of color, mainly the blue sky and patches of green, but she had to identify most things by their shape. It took a lot of time to adjust to it.
Embril wasn’t scared, though; her body was scared. It was amazing how her muscles reacted so swiftly to the noises and movements, long before she was even consciously aware of them. Her skin was hypersensitive, and when a slight breeze struck her, every hair on her body felt like a tiny pinprick tugging at her. It didn’t hurt; it was like when she ruffled the edge of the pages of a book with her fingertips. Even the pack frame on her back didn’t bother her; the powerful horse’s muscles made her heavy chest of books feel like they were little more than an inkwell and quill. But when the books shifted position, she noticed it every time, even when it was but a fraction of an inch.
She was fast, too, but they wouldn’t let her run as fast as she could. They went quickly, but not fast, and she thought she could maintain the pace for hours without difficulty. But she missed the other horses and wanted to run faster, to catch up with them. It was a strange desire; she had always preferred to be alone with her books, but there was something about being a horse that made her want to be around the other horses, even the ones that didn’t like her very much.
She hated the mud they plastered to her mane and tail. It had dried quickly, and it jangled as it tugged mercilessly on the roots of her hair and pounded against her neck and backside. Bits of it flaked off and dribbled down her flanks or shoulders, and she kept thinking they were flies trying to eat her. It was most disconcerting.
By the end of the first day, she had catalogued a lengthy list of things she would have to add to Barnham’s book. She wanted to make sure no other wizards were ill-prepared for the effects of the spell, and when she got back to the library she planned to write about her experience as a horse in considerable detail. She liked details, and Barnham’s had a lot of them about the behavior of horses, about how to train them, about how to ride them—seemingly everything except what it was like to be a horse. When they stopped at the end of the day, she even thought about putting a quill between her lips and jotting down some notes, but decided it would be pointless. She couldn’t see in front of her nose well enough to guide the quill, and she didn’t have fine-tuned control of the muscles for the delicate movements that writing required. She would only end up wasting parchment—or eating it. She had strange cravings…. Instead, she made a mental note for each new thing she experienced and was still rehearsing her list when Darby handed her lead rope to Tobar.
Tobar led her to the place where they kept the other horses hobbled. When she realized what he was doing, she stopped in her tracks and stomped her foot. Her ears lowered, her nostrils flared, and she snorted at him.
He stopped, turned, and asked, “Aren’t you hungry?”
It had been a long, enjoyable, unsettling run, and she had been overwhelmed by it. Now she realized she was quite hungry, and since she would be stuck in horse form for three days, she would have to eat what the other horses ate. One more thing to note, she thought as she let him lead her to the grain bag next to the other horses. She twisted her head to look inside the bag with one eye and saw the flat little gray-tinged-with-yellow seeds. She knew it was the grain grown in Tyr, but she was reluctant to eat it. Why couldn’t they give her bread, instead? Then, treating the experience as an experiment, she stuck her nose into the bag and took a quick sniff. Her tongue snaked out to lap up a few of the tasty little seeds, and it wasn’t until her third nibble that she realized what she was doing. Then she paid a lot of attention to how the grain tasted, how it felt on her tongue, how it crunched between her thick teeth, how it felt as she swallowed. By the time she finished, she had composed a full page of description to add to Barnham’s.
After she finished, Tobar tied her up with the other horses, and she resented it. She was not a horse, even though she looked and acted a lot like one. She told Tobar exactly that, and he shrugged helplessly as he answered, “Lieutenant Jarhad’s orders.” For him, that was the end of it, and he hobbled her like he did the other horses. She forced herself to stand still as she fumed, but it was not the end of it for her. After Tobar left, she bent down and spent several long minutes loosening the hobble straps with her teeth. When they slid to the ground, she stomped over to Lieutenant Jarhad’s tent. The soldier on guard tried to stop her, but she butted him roughly aside and thrust her head in through the flap. “I am not a horse,” she said in lieu of introducing herself. It sounded a lot like a huffy snort flung out of her nostrils. “I will not be hobbled or tied up.”
Lieutenant Jarhad glared at her for a long time before he put his sword back in its sheath. “As long as you remain in that form,” he said through clenched teeth, “you will be treated accordingly. Now go back to the other horses where you belong.” When she didn’t move, he yelled, “Darby!” and turned away.
She shook her head, stomped her feet, and repeated, “I am not a horse.” Then she backed out of the tent and walked proudly away, ignoring the soldiers staring at her. She wandered around the camp for several minutes, occasionally snorting and shaking her head, and then found herself standing near the other horses. She didn’t really know why, but it felt natural to her.
When Darby joined her, he scolded her. “You need to stop antagonizing the Lieutenant. The only reason he is tolerating your presence is because Commander Garret ordered him to bring you with us.”
She turned her left eye toward him and braced herself with her legs wide apart. “Then tell him to quit treating me like a First Order Apprentice,” she said, her tone imperious despite having the rattling undertone of a whinny.
Darby laughed, “If he were doing that, you would have been flogged by now.”
She stared at him. “If he dared—”
“He won’t,” Darby said, shaking his head and sighing. “But he’s used to having his orders
obeyed without question. He knows the value of wizards, but he’s never been around one that hasn’t also been trained as a soldier. You are as much a thorn in his side as he is in yours.”
She shook her head and snorted. “What have I done to him?” she demanded. “Haven’t we covered more ground today than we would have if he had spent time helping me to ride better?” Her tail swished across her backside, sending shivers of sensation along every hair rustled by the dried clumps of mud rubbing against them. Then she stomped her front feet and shook her head. “No,” she said. “He is the one who is being unreasonable.” Without waiting for a response, she stomped back to the horses. A few of them nickered—friendly, uncertain sounds that made her feel a little better. She stayed close to them for a long time and eventually calmed down enough to think about how she was acting. She set aside her indignation—she knew the source of that!—and focused on the effects of that indignation on her body. Barnham had a lot of information about the movements she was making and what they signified, and she tested his interpretations against the movements related to her emotional states. They were quite accurate, and she decided she would also have to comment on that in her annotations.
When she finally settled down enough to sleep, the horses near her wouldn’t let her. They kept bumping into her and nipped at her flank or withers. She finally settled into a position near the outskirts of the small herd and slept fitfully, waking up frequently as new sounds filled the night. They were scary sounds that made her jumpy.
10
Giorge and his mother had taken only a half dozen steps when their torchlight filled the corner. The wall ranging out of the corner to their left was still in shadow, a deep shadow that avoided the weak flame of their makeshift torch and the pale, distant orange glow of the fungus. They turned that way and plodded along, keeping the wall in sight as they went. Giorge studied the wall carefully as they passed, but saw no sign of a secret passage—or a blatantly obvious door. He continued to watch even after their footfalls began to splash and the wall glistened with moisture. Then his mother stopped and held up her hand.
The Golden Key (Book 3) Page 16