by Layton Green
Rucker snarled in annoyance. “Can you break them?”
“The rune craft is impressive. The wizard who made this was much stronger than I. But, yes, I can disrupt them. The technique is outdated. If I had to guess”—he looked at the bronze door and then at Adaira—“twelfth century is about right. The art of bibliomancy is much evolved since then.”
Rucker turned in a wary circle, eying the cemetery, before letting his gaze rest on the open moor in the distance. “Assuming we get inside the tomb, how strong are your wards?”
“I scored four hundred and seventeen on the runic tensile exam,” Dida said proudly, “and my strongest sigil-glyphic continuum possessed a density rating of thirteen psi.”
“What the bloody hell does that mean?”
The bibliomancer stroked his chin. “For a space this size, I surmise I can effectively ward against an assault by most races of giants. Perhaps even a stone golem.”
Rucker looked impressed.
“As for human wizards, it is unlikely that anyone below an elder mage could unravel a runic construct of my design. Excepting bibliomancers, of course.” Dida bowed his head, embarrassed. “I am still quite young.”
“Good enough for me,” Rucker said. “Get us inside.”
Synne grabbed Dida’s forearm. “What if the tomb conceals something dangerous?”
“Unlikely,” Adaira said. “Myrddin was a benign wizard—at least in our world—and did not keep worldly possessions. Nor was it customary in ancient Albion to safeguard tombs.”
“Then why the wards?” Val asked.
“To prevent desecration, I would assume.”
“Bah,” Rucker said. “It matters not. We have to take a chance. We need rest.”
It took Dida the better part of two hours to break the wards. A sense of foreboding plagued Val the entire time, and more than once he heard scuffing and gnawing sounds coming from the recesses of the cemetery. Small animals, Rucker surmised, after casing the immediate area and seeing nothing. A cane rat or a squirrel. Maybe a wild dog.
Remembering the ghouls outside Londyn, Val wasn’t so sure.
Wiping sweat from his brow, Dida took a deep breath and pushed on the center of the crypt door.
It swung inward without a sound, and stale air rushed out of Myrddin’s tomb. Adaira’s light spell illuminated the interior with a weak sapphire glow, drawing from the veil of mist outside.
Frescoes of forest scenes covered the ancient stone walls. A ring of rune-covered pillars supported the high ceiling, and inside the circle, an azantite sarcophagus rested on a platform of green marble. The outline of a human figure was carved into the azantite.
“The walls and pillars are warded,” Dida said, turning in a slow circle, “though not as strongly as the door. And the wards have degraded over time.”
After ensuring nothing lurked in the recesses of the tomb, Rucker approached the coffin. “That’s a king’s bounty of azantite.”
“I wouldn’t touch that,” Dida warned.
“It’s warded, too?”
“Not on the outside. But the azantite will shield any wards hidden underneath.”
Rucker slowly withdrew his hand.
“Are we in agreement,” Dida said, “that this location will suffice? If so, I shall prepare our defenses.”
No one dissented. Adaira left the door cracked, to allow sufficient airflow. A sealed entrance would not add much to Dida’s wards, and he created the illusion of a closed door to discourage casual discovery.
Rucker and Synne guarded the entrance while Dida worked. The rest of the party laid down blankets and set out rations. After dinner, Val collapsed next to Adaira, too exhausted to take off his boots. A pillar shielded them from the others.
Adaira’s light spell had dissolved into barely visible motes. Synne took first watch, sitting cross-legged by the entrance. As Adaira lay next to Val, the warm contours of her body fitting snugly against his side, she traced a finger along his cheek. He shifted to face her. Despite the chill of the tomb, heat rose through his body, and he had an overwhelming desire to press his lips against hers.
He moved to close the last few inches between them, aware of the warmth of her breath on his face. She put a finger between their mouths and said, “Are you ready to tell me what stands between us?”
Her hair brushed his cheek, and Val shuddered with attraction. As close as he had grown to Adaira, as much as he craved her touch, he didn’t want the daughter of Lord Alistair to know that he was looking for his brothers. Better if they stayed off the Congregation’s radar.
But he didn’t want to lie to her, either. “It’s not another woman.”
He could see the relief in her eyes. She removed her finger and brushed her lips against his. “Whatever it is,” she said in a throaty whisper, “you can trust me.”
Val took her hand and interlaced their fingers. She had risked everything to join him, and he could see the depth of her feelings in her eyes. A starved radiance he suspected she had concealed from him for fear of rejection. Instead of shying away, he was surprised to find that he, too, was caught in the glow.
“One day,” he whispered back.
She gave a sad smile in response. They lay facing each other in the darkness of the tomb, breathing the same breath, slipping silently into sleep.
“To arms!”
The voice was a shouted command in Val’s dream. He shrugged it off, deep in slumber, but it came again and again, insistent and fierce.
“Raise yerselves, wizards! To arms!”
Rucker’s voice. Val blinked and realized Synne was shaking him awake.
He jerked to his feet. Adaira leapt up beside him. Synne pointed to the far side of the tomb where, opposite the entrance, a shirtless male warrior formed of liquid silver stood watching them, holding a spear and shield formed of the same material. The figure looked oddly one-dimensional, as if cut from a mold.
Rucker stood between the group and the silver warrior. He held up his meat cleaver of a sword, backing away as his opponent advanced. Sheathing his longer blade, Rucker drew his hunting knife and sent it spinning through the air at high speed. The being melted and flowed to the side—Val could describe it no other way—then reformed as a wolf of the same color and with the same flat dimensions, head reared in a soundless howl.
Val felt air whoosh by as Adaira tried to push the thing back. The gale passed right through it.
The wolf advanced with ungainly steps, as if it had just learned to walk. Rucker stepped forward and connected with his sword, cleaving through its torso. The liquid silver closed behind the slash as if it had never been cut.
Rucker looked down at his sword and cursed. The middle portion had blackened and started to crumble where it had touched the wolf. After a moment, the entire blade turned to dust.
Synne darted forward. Rucker dropped the useless hilt and fell back. The wolf melted and reformed into a cloaked figure holding a staff with a raven’s head. Synne sparred with the figure, blocking its blows with hardened skin and delivering blow after blow of her own, though the creature evaded each one by melting and reforming before her eyes.
“It changes too fast,” she yelled.
“Wizards, what is this creature?” Rucker called out.
Adaira backed towards the entrance. “I’ve no idea.”
Dida’s hands waved through the air. “Neither me. But it walks through my Shield Runes as if they were air.”
The cloaked figure seemed to be gaining in coordination, and Val realized the staff had disappeared and it was fighting like Synne, utilizing the magic-infused martial arts system peculiar to the majitsu.
Was it copying her?
The thing broke through the majitsu’s defenses, landing a blow to her left arm. Synne screamed, and her elbow blackened where the being had touched it.
“Step back, Synne,” Val said coldly. He had slept enough to recover most of his power, and he felt the magic thrumming through him, begging to be released. Synne dove away as he summon
ed Spirit Fire and sent it arcing into the cloaked figure. The thing exploded into a million drops of silver and yet, before the drops hit the ground, they reformed into a shiny oak tree, a dozen branches lashing out at the party.
The tip of a branch caught Val on the back of the hand. Pain seared through him, as bad as the time he had thrust his hand into molten lava to pass the Abbey’s entrance exam. He screamed, stumbled backward, and lost his grip on his magic.
“I’ve no answers,” Rucker shouted. “Fall back! Into the cemetery!”
Everyone raced for the entrance. The creature morphed again, this time into a beautiful woman with a mournful expression and her hair in a waist-length braid. Faster than Val could follow, the silver woman streaked forward, cutting off Adaira’s access to the bronze door. Adaira had no choice but to fly backwards. The creature held out its hands as if imploring her for something, then walked towards the cuerpomancer, cutting Adaira off whenever she tried to escape, trapping her against the far wall. Adaira flew straight up but the woman rose with her. Adaira descended and, out of options, fingered her black choker and shrank against the wall. Silver hands reached for her throat.
“No!” Val roared. Spirit Fire had already proved ineffective, so he knew Adaira’s choker wouldn’t help her. Without thinking, he flung a hand through the air, sending the azantite sarcophagus flying across the room with a burst of power. It thudded into the silver woman and pinned her against the wall.
“Run!” Rucker cried. “While it’s down!”
Val met Adaira in the middle of the room, took her by the hand, and they flew out of the entrance together. On the way out, his eye caught some of the recurring images on the frescoes covering the walls: wolves baying in the forest, cloaked figures striding through the woods, fair maidens lounging under oak trees with forlorn expressions.
When he and Adaira exited the tomb, they found the others surrounded by a horde of grave wights with maggot-eaten faces and ragged clothing. Before the party could take flight or formulate a plan, the wights attacked, pressing forward with grasping hands.
The shape-shifting creature from the tomb, still in maiden form, burst out of the door behind them. It might have been Val’s imagination, but he thought she looked less substantial than before. She grabbed a wight from behind and the undead creature dissolved in her grasp, blackening and then crumbling into ash.
Val paled. That could have been Adaira. Everyone scrambled to get out of the thing’s reach, even risking the unclean touch of the wights. Val pushed a group of them back with hardened air, but more poured in to replace them. There were dozens of the filthy things.
Despite cradling her injured arm, Synne attacked like a spinning top. Having lost his sword, Rucker fought with his spiked vambrace and helm and boot spurs, knocking back wight after wight as he tried to reach Dida and Adaira, who were surrounded. Forced to take flight, the two mages rose defenseless above the fray. The silver woman followed Adaira, flowing through the air faster than the cuerpomancer could fly, and forced her back down.
They were losing the battle. Val had to do something. He cleared away a group of wights with Spirit Fire, then thought about what had happened inside the tomb. What he had seen. He still didn’t understand what the thing was, but he had an idea.
“Everyone back inside!” he screamed. “Adaira, you and I go last!”
One by one, the party fought their way back to the tomb. Instead of attacking the silver maiden, who seemed impervious to magic, Val used a wizard wind to send wights flying at her to distract her. When everyone but he and Adaira had scurried inside, the silver maiden came straight for her, just as Val had planned. He grabbed Adaira and they flew into the tomb together.
Seeming more at ease with her form, yet even less corporeal, the silver maiden tore through the wights like a scythe through grass, steps behind Val and Adaira. It was going to be close. As soon as they entered the tomb, he summoned his remaining power and, with a gargantuan effort, picked up the fallen lid of the azantite sarcophagus and shoved it upright across the doorway, blocking the entrance.
Darkness. Silence.
Rucker lit a torch.
As everyone tensed, waiting for the creature to burst into the tomb, Dida gasped for breath and patted Val on the back. “Quick thinking, my friend. Azantite is the only thing that has slowed it.”
“Except now we’re stuck in here with limited air and a very angry . . . something . . . on the outside,” Rucker said. “In all my years, I’ve never seen such a creature.”
Val pointed out the frescoes on the wall that corresponded to the entity’s various forms. “I don’t know what it means, but I think it was mimicking the artwork.”
Everyone turned to view the forest scenes. Rucker stepped closer and squinted, then sucked in a breath. “By the Queen. Yer right, boy.”
“Was it put here by an ancient wizard?” Adaira wondered. “Surviving all this time?”
Dida was staring thoughtfully at the wall. He ran a hand down one of the rune-inscribed pillars. “Perhaps it was not a guardian. If not dispelled, all wards disintegrate over time, though the most powerful can last for hundreds—thousands—of years. These oldest of wards have been known to slowly dissolve and can . . . leak . . . magic.”
Adaira frowned. “I’ve heard of this phenomenon, but how does that account for the creature we fought?”
“Given the power in these runes and the time that has passed . . .” Dida shrugged. “I cannot be sure, but I suspect the entity was a residue of old magic. Ignited perhaps by oxygen or even our light spell, forming a half-life, imitating the only forms it knew.”
“So magic—spirit—is alive?” Val said.
“No one knows the answer to that question,” Dida said.
Adaira shivered. “How do we fight it when we leave?”
Dida stroked his chin. “Did anyone notice that it seemed less substantial before we re-entered the tomb? My guess is that it will dissipate with time, absorbed into spirit.”
“How long?” Rucker growled.
“Hours, perhaps.”
“And if yer wrong?”
No one had an answer.
As they waited inside the tomb, Adaira tended to Synne on one of the blankets. Half of the majitsu’s arm had blackened from contact with the silver entity, and she couldn’t seem to bend it. Adaira closed her eyes and laid her hands atop the wound.
The back of Val’s hand had also blackened, and he watched in pain while Adaira worked. Though he had lost the use of his hand, he could still cast spells. The loss of Synne’s fighting prowess would be catastrophic.
While Adaira worked on the majitsu, and Dida puttered around the runes and scrollwork, Val shook off his pain and followed Rucker to the sarcophagus of Myrddin he had tossed across the room. He felt a heaviness descend as they approached the remains of the legendary wizard. Alternate reality or not, this was a man who had affected the course of history on at least two different worlds.
Hesitant and looking strangely bare—but not defenseless—without his wide-bladed sword in hand, Rucker leaned over the tomb. Val stepped beside him and peered inside.
It was a fleshless corpse like any other, gray and lifeless, a discarded puppet of bone. But the remains of Myrddin were not the only contents of the tomb.
A gleaming battle-axe lay across the torso of the corpse, clutched in spindly fingers. Strange, rune-like markings covered the weapon’s azantite handle, and a parallel latticework of silver lines, like the branching of a tree, had been engraved into each half of the two-sided blade.
After finding no sign of a trap, Rucker eased the weapon out of the skeleton’s grasp. The twin blades flared like the wings of a bat. He gave it a few expert twirls. “Azantite handle, and the weight’s not too different from me own blade.” He spat. “Like a son to me, it was. Took it off the champion of the Sultan of Mazdag.”
Val wondered just how many lifetimes of adventure Rucker had experienced.
And why an aging, one-armed war
rior, tough as he was, had risked his life to follow someone he barely knew into the void.
“Why’d you come here, Rucker?” Val said softly, out of earshot of the others.
“I told ye why.”
“And I didn’t believe you. I just didn’t ask any questions.”
“Then don’t start now.”
Rucker wheeled and stomped back to the entrance. Val had no choice but to let him go. On a hunch, he inspected the tomb more closely, tracing his fingers along the cool surface of the azantite and finding nothing. He tried probing in another way, with his magic.
He concentrated on pushing his mind through the azantite, working his way around the sarcophagus. Just beneath the skull of Myrddin, he felt a weak spot in the seemingly impenetrable stone. Val gently lifted the base of the skull and pushed against the surface of the tomb. The pressure of his hand alone did not suffice, so he supplemented again with his mind.
And felt his hand slip through the surface of the azantite, into a concealed opening the size of a grapefruit. Just wide enough for a hand to fit through.
He probed the compartment and felt a metal object inside. Smooth. Circular. A ring.
Val took it out and examined it. Formed of a bluish-white material similar to Salomon’s keys, the ring was crafted in the shape of the ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail.
The same symbol used by the Myrddinus.
Intrigued but wary, Val pocketed the ring, not yet ready to slip it on. When he returned to the others, Adaira was shaking her head, though Synne’s arm looked much improved.
“What happened?”
“It was beyond my power,” she said. “I had to use one of the healing jars. The entire contents.”
Val laid a hand on Synne’s shoulder. “How does it feel?”
“Fine,” she said curtly, as if embarrassed by the display of weakness.
“You’re next,” Adaira said to Val. “Where’s the final jar?”
“In my pack.” He shook his head. “I think we should save it. It hurts, but I can still work magic.”
“We don’t know what effect that wound has,” Adaira said. “I worry if untreated, it will seep into your blood.”