The Golden Key (Book 3)

by Robert P. Hansen

  He shifted position to ease the pressure on his cracked rib as he talked. “That creature shouldn’t have been here. Angus said it was a sea creature that’s a lot like a trapdoor spider. It digs a hole and hides in it with stuff stuck to its shell—like those rocks—and then grabs whatever comes close to it. But we’re in the mountains.” He took a deep breath and smiled. “The air is thin here, and has the chill of early spring. That creature shouldn’t even be here.”

  “How do you know that?” his mother demanded in a skeptical tone. “There are lots of creatures we don’t know anything about.”

  Giorge smiled as he answered. “Think about it,” he said. “Symptata’s tomb was underwater. There was water leaking into his sarcophagus, but there shouldn’t have been. There wasn’t any leak there that I could see. Could you? And what about that side tunnel you wanted to use? I think that thing dug its hole there, and when the portal opened up to put that box here, it came with it.” He paused and nodded. “It had to have been that way,” he said. “It couldn’t live for long out of the water, but it was very much alive when I was here last time—if we are where I think we are.”

  His mother sucked in the middle of her lower lip the way she always did when she was torn between punishing him and hugging him because he had done something he shouldn’t have done but for a very good reason. After a few seconds, she nodded, turned sharply, and skulked down the tunnel toward the light.

  When she was far enough away that he was certain she wasn’t going to turn back to look at him, Giorge struggled up to his feet and moved closer to the claw. It was dark enough in the back of the cave that he had trouble making out details, but it was evident that there was more in the pile of rubble than the claw. Fragments of its hard outer shell were there, but there was no flesh that he could see. It was as if something had snapped it open and devoured what was inside it. A bear? He frowned and looked at his mother’s receding back. She was near the twist in the tunnel, and it wouldn’t be long before she reached it. Should he shout a warning? If he did, would the bear—if there was one—hear it too? He watched until she disappeared around the corner, and when no screams followed, he turned back to Symptata’s box.

  It was foolish. It was reckless. It was stupid. But he did it anyway: he picked it up.

  It was like the other boxes he had found: finely crafted, stained with a rich chocolate varnish, and the lock was as complicated as the others. He could pick it, of course, but there was no compulsion to do so, no urge to find out what was inside it. Why not? When he had found the other box, he couldn’t help himself; he had to open it. But this time? He almost dropped it, but instead, he gingerly sat down and put it on his lap. He had time while he waited for his mother to return, and he reached for the few picks he always carried with him. He set them on the box and looked back at the tunnel entrance. He didn’t have to pick the lock.

  He didn’t have to.

  17

  “So,” Lieutenant Jarhad said when he and Darby joined her in the well-lit cavern. “What’s this plan of yours?” He filled the entrance to the cavern and held his large hand on the hilt of his sword, the knuckles white from gripping it too firmly. His legs were spaced comfortably apart, as if he were bracing himself for a quick movement.

  Embril nodded from inside the cavern and gestured past him. “That tunnel is large enough for the horses to pass through if they duck,” she began, “and this cavern is large enough to hold them all.”

  The muscles along Lieutenant Jarhad’s jaw bulged but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he stepped inside the cavern and looked around. He nodded, “Yes,” he said, his voice tight. “It will be a good place for a temporary camp. What of it?”

  “We will need to stay the night,” she said. “I won’t be able to cast my spells until after the rest of your men arrive. I will also need my books and time to prepare. The casting will take most of the morning.”

  Darby tilted his head and looked narrowly at her for a long moment, and then asked, “What spells do you have in mind?”

  Before Embril could respond, Lieutenant Jarhad said, “None. I won’t have you casting any more spells. We will cross the plateau without them.” He seemed about to turn and storm out, but he hesitated, frowned, shook his head, and leaned against the entryway. “I said I would hear you out.” He crossed his arms across his brawny chest and absently stared at the nail of the forefinger on his right hand.

  Embril nodded. “All right,” she said. “You don’t want magic to be openly displayed. Fine. This cave will keep that magic from being observed. That should satisfy that part of your requirement. As for the second part, the necessity of that magic, I believe you will agree with the usefulness of the spells I have in mind.”

  Lieutenant Jarhad took out his knife and used the tip to pry the dirt out from under his fingernail. He didn’t look up as she continued.

  “The first spell is called Concealment. It’s like Cloaking but instead of bending the air around something to make it invisible, it distorts the thing’s appearance to make it blend into its surroundings. I plan to cast it on both the horses and the men to camouflage them.”

  “All of them?” Darby asked. “I thought it only worked on one thing at a time.”

  Embril nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I plan to cast a separate spell on each horse and rider as a unit. It will take time to complete the series of spells, but I think they will last long enough to cross the plateau.”

  Darby frowned and his eyes narrowed. “It will take several days to cross the plateau.”

  Embril shook her head and said, “They will only have to last a few days.”

  “A few days?” Lieutenant Jarhad repeated, his voice barely above a whisper as he turned to another fingernail.

  “Yes,” Embril said. “The Swiftness spell will see to that. It will increase a horse’s endurance considerably, making it possible for it to run at a fast gallop without taxing it any more than an easy walk would.”

  Darby nodded. “I’ve seen wizards use that spell on runners,” he said. “They can run for hours without feeling the effects of the exertion.”

  Lieutenant Jarhad glanced at him but said nothing.

  “It will be more effective on the horses,” Embril said. “They can already run further and longer than we can.” She smiled, remembering how easy it had been to maintain a slow run for hours without tiring.

  “They will make a lot of noise when they gallop,” Lieutenant Jarhad said. “The fishmen will detect us. They probably already have, with you flying about over here. I’m surprised they didn’t attack you before we got here.”

  Embril shrugged. “I doubt we will find any fishmen on the plateau, unless they are near the river,” she said. “But we won’t be going near that river, and Soft Passage will reduce the noise to almost nothing. It also won’t leave a trail to follow.”

  Lieutenant Jarhad lifted his gaze and said, “We have orders to investigate the river and those fires that were seen near it.”

  “That is a small matter and easily accomplished,” Embril said. “Our main task is to investigate the temple where the fishmen were seen to see if there are others there.”

  Darby shook his head and almost laughed. “Embril,” he said, his voice soft, “It isn’t possible to prime for so many spells. How are you going to cast them?”

  Embril shrugged. “I don’t intend to prime for them,” she said. “I plan to cast them from books.”

  “What?” Darby said, his brow furrowing as he looked sharply at her. “The risk—”

  “—is minimal,” Embril interrupted. “I have done it before without any difficulty. That’s how I became a horse, and that was a spell I had never cast before.”

  Darby shook his head. “You are talking about casting dozens of spells,” he said, “from a book.”

  “Three books, actually,” Embril corrected him. “Each spell is in a different text.”

  “No,” Darby said. “It isn’t possible. Without priming, the risk is t
oo high.”

  “I don’t need to prime for them,” Embril said. “I practiced the spells I would need before I left because I knew I would have to cast them from the books without priming. The magic within me will realign itself to them as I go.”

  “Only elves can do that,” Darby countered.

  Embril shrugged. “My grandmother was an elf,” she said, a bit off-handedly.

  Darby’s thin eyebrows disappeared beneath his dark brown hair as he shook his head. “Elves don’t associate with humans,” he said. “Not in that way.”

  Embril lowered her gaze. “It does happen,” she said, “but only rarely or unwillingly.” Before he could respond she continued, “The spells I have primed are primarily for defending us in case we encounter a large group of fishmen. I would rather not use them; they are rather potent. One of them—” she paused, shuddered, and shook her head “—is hideously destructive.”

  Lieutenant Jarhad slowly raised his head, and his eyes were thin slices as he looked at her. “If it is so destructive, why haven’t they been using it to fight back the fishmen incursions in The Borderlands?” he demanded.

  “I suppose it’s because they don’t know about it,” Embril answered.

  Lieutenant Jarhad’s voice was chillingly soft as he asked, “Why didn’t you tell them about it?”

  Embril shrugged. “I didn’t know about it either until I started preparing for this mission. I’m not even sure if it will work. The description of it was in a very old, damaged text that no one else has read in centuries. I had to fill in some of the details myself, and I could easily be wrong about them.” She paused and then added, “It may not work at all—or worse.”

  “What is it?” Darby asked when it became apparent that Lieutenant Jarhad was done questioning her for the moment.

  Embril frowned. The fewer wizards who knew about the spell, the better she thought it would be. “I call it Desiccation,” she said. “It’s like a whirlpool of air and fire magic that sucks the water magic out of a large area, dehydrating everything within it.”

  Darby blanched and asked, “How large an area?”

  “Very,” Embril said without clarifying it. It was one of the uncertainties in the spell. The book had claimed it could cover the range of the caster’s vision, but she didn’t quite believe it. Still…. She shrugged. “If it is improperly cast, the whirlpool will swallow up the wizard.” She paused, knowing full well how likely it would be for her to cast it wrong. It would have been so much better to have practiced that spell, but she wasn’t at all sure if it was safe enough to do so. “If the wizard loses control of the spell, it will go wherever it wants, sucking in water magic until it becomes sated. Then it will dissipate.” There had even been a reference to a small desert that had suddenly sprung into existence and stayed for a few decades before it was overgrown again. Another story mentioned a dust devil that seemed to devour anything who ventured near it. “I really don’t want to risk casting it,” she finished, “but it will have a much more pronounced effect on the fishmen than on us. They are more susceptible to dehydration.”

  She fell silent and waited for several seconds, and then Lieutenant Jarhad asked in a disbelieving, derisive tone, “Is that it? Concealing the horses and men, giving the horses greater endurance and speed, and making it so they don’t leave a trail or make noise?” When Embril nodded, he slowly pushed away from the entryway and stepped into the tunnel. He paused a few steps into the tunnel, and then turned around when his plump underling didn’t follow him. “Darby?”

  Darby studied at Embril as his eyes dilated. “Can you do it?” he asked. “Can you cast that many spells in a row?”

  Embril slowly nodded and said, “I believe so.” Was it true, though? She had never cast so many spells, and she might grow tired and make mistakes. Still, she was confident she could do it—she would do it.

  Darby slowly turned and walked out of the cavern to join Lieutenant Jarhad. As they walked, he said, “Lieutenant, if what she says is true, she is a much more powerful than I suspected.” His voice was soft, but the tunnel funneled it into the cavern. “It would take apprentices years of training to be able to master the skills necessary for spells she mentioned, and I’ve never heard of anything as powerful as that Desiccation spell she described.”

  “If she does what she says, how helpful would it be?”

  “Tremendously, Sir,” Darby said. “The combination of spells would cut our passage across the plateau in half, if not more. We’ll be able to cross it in three or four days if we don’t encounter any mischief. I know of many wizards who have used the Soft Passage spell to facilitate scouting, and what she said about it is true. The Concealment spell is beyond me, but if it is similar to Cloaking, it will be very useful.” He paused for a moment, and Embril imagined he was shaking his head as he finished, “She would have to be well-versed in several branches of magic to be able to do what she says, and I have little doubt of that at the moment. If she had come through the training like I did, I wouldn’t be surprised if she easily outranked me—and you.”

  Lieutenant Jarhad said nothing for several seconds, and then asked, “What’s this business about the elves?”

  Darby’s voice was becoming too distant to hear clearly, but she thought he said, “Elves have a more direct connection to magic. They don’t need to prime for spells the way we do; they just need to think about them. They still have to know the spells, but once they do, the magic within them bends easily to their will.”

  “Recommendation?” Lieutenant Jarhad asked, and Embril strained to hear Darby’s response.

  “Let her do it,” Darby said at once, “if she can.”

  Embril imagined she saw Lieutenant Jarhad slowly nodding, but if they said anything else, it didn’t reach her. She smiled, looked once more at the cavern, and then walked slowly down the tunnel after them. There were preparations to make, but they would have to wait until the rest of the men arrived with the gear. In the meantime, there were still a few hours of sunlight left.

  18

  Giorge tinkered with his picks for nearly a minute before he decided to put them back away. It had been a test to see if he could resist the urge to open the box, and he had passed: there was no compulsion at all. It was easy to put the picks away, and he knew he could throw the box down and leave it behind if he wanted to do it. He almost dropped it, but then a curious thought ran through his mind: The curse is broken. So why is the box still here?

  It was a curious question, and he saw only two answers. It could have been there since his curse began or it had been placed there when the curse ended. If it had been sitting there all winter, it would have had the Viper’s Breath in it, but he had found that in the box behind the fletching’s aerie. He frowned, patted the pouch that held the Viper’s Breath. It was still there, so it couldn’t be in the box. Unless it returned there when he opened it? Or could there be something else in the box? Another part of the curse he had completely avoided? Wouldn’t his mother have said something about it if it were? But when? They had been too busy escaping from Symptata’s tomb to talk about it—and they needed to talk about it. She knew more about the curse than he did, and from what little she had said so far, it was pretty clear Auntie Fie hadn’t told him everything she knew about it. And what about what Auntie Fie had told him? Was it even accurate?

  Giorge shook his head. The other possibility, that it was put there by the curse when it had been broken made more sense. The magic tunnel suggested it. It had still been linked to this place when they had escaped, and that passage couldn’t have been there all this time. Or could it? What did he know about the curse’s magic? Even Angus hadn’t understood it, so how could he? But something—the poem on Symptata’s sarcophagus?—told him it was over, and that troubled him. Symptata hadn’t been in that sarcophagus; it had been the witch who had made the curse. Why had she been there? And where was Symptata? Wasn’t he supposed to join him when the curse ended?

  Giorge frowned. What had
happened to his ancestors? There hadn’t even been time to let them know there was a way out before the portal collapsed. But there was the side tunnel, and they might have escaped through that. Where would they have gone if they had? And would they take that dreadful fungus with them? Giorge shuddered and shook his head. He didn’t have time to speculate about it. His mother—

  Giorge looked at the end of the tunnel and frowned. She should have been back by now. The cave he had been in the year before had been shallow, but the creature inside it had prevented him from getting a good look at it. There could have been side tunnels hidden in the deep shadow behind it. Still….

  Giorge looked down at the box and tucked it under his right arm, carefully avoiding his injured rib. He didn’t have to open it in here, where he couldn’t see what was in it; he could wait and open it later, when he reached the cave entrance where the lighting was better.

  Giorge sighed, gritted his teeth, and used his left arm to pull himself up to a standing position. There was no point staying in the tunnel any longer; he had the box and there was nothing else of interest in the tunnel. He took a step forward, and nearly fell as his left ankle throbbed and the box jostled against his broken rib. He paused to regroup and slid the box down to his hip before taking another step. He leaned heavily against the wall for support, and hobbled slowly, painfully toward the light, wondering what it was that was keeping his mother.

  19

  Embril sighed and rubbed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was another horse and rider in front of her. She couldn’t see them clearly, though; the Concealment spell had worked much better than she had anticipated. It was only supposed to make them blend into their surroundings to make it difficult for others to see them unless they looked closely, but it had done more than that. The horses and riders gathered around her in the cavern were nearly indistinguishable from their surroundings. Some looked like stony outcroppings jutting out from the cavern wall at a sharp angle. Others looked like a large boulder or a pile of rubble. Then there was the one in front of her who looked like an eight foot tall stalagmite. Even knowing what it was, she had difficulty seeing past the illusion to see the outline of the horse and man. But when she focused more closely on the magic, their natural shape—surrounded by the strands of energy—became much clearer to her. She had been concentrating on that magic for most of the morning, and it had taken its toll on her.