Turning back to the new opening, I shouldered my pack, held my torch out, and took a step down.
It turned out there were four hundred and seventy-two steps in all, and although we started out slow, by the time we were halfway through we were descending at a pretty brisk clip. There was a natural bannister cut into the side of the rock wall tunnels leading down, and the steps were much smoother than the tunnel above had been.
Almost as if tens of thousands of feet had walked down the steps, making them smooth, I thought.
But finally, we reached the bottom. The staircase emptied into a vast, dark room. We couldn’t see very far, but our voices echoed, letting us know the size of the chamber we were in.
As we moved into the room with our torches, we saw that the walls were carved with great designs and lines. When we’d gone fifty feet, I glanced back and saw the arch leading to the stairway was now gone. I shrugged. This place likes to fool with our heads, I thought. We crossed to the other side of the large room and through two double doors made of oak that looked ancient.
They were extremely heavy: It took two or three of us to get them open. But at least they aren’t locked. They fell shut with a loud thud as we passed through them. This new room was small, very plain, empty of everything but a great stone table in the middle, and yet another door and hallway led away from it. We passed through this, too, ignoring the stone table. I hope it’s not significant, I thought.
Kym walked next to me and slipped her small hand into mine. I glanced down and smiled encouragingly, and I was rewarded with a small smile in return.
We walked through the door and hallway.
And into the treasure room.
Chapter Thirty-One
Riches Beyond Imagining
The room was a vast, grand hall, with treasure piled high as the eye could see. A bright light shone down from the ceiling far above, seemingly magical in origin.
Gold coins were spilled out on the floor, along with gems and gold jewelry, and emerald-encrusted crowns.
I saw thrones with rubies embedded on the silver arms and backs, swords so ornate I wondered if they would even be useful in battle, an ebony ax carved in swirls and covered in what looked like silver stardust.
The items were varied and endless.
We all just stood there, staring at it all. Christianne let out a gasp of amazement.
Kym broke the spell by letting out a loud ‘WOOP!’ and running toward the nearest mountain of gold. She took a flying leap and landed feet first, and flapped her arms, laughing, until she was buried to her knees in coins.
We all laughed then, and moved forward to explore everything.
I was drawn to a suit of leather armor that was the finest I’d ever seen: It was tooled with intricate designs in elaborate colors. “This is almost too fine to wear into battle,” I said to Caroline. But she was distracted by a huge pile of gold goblets, each so ornate it was fit for a king.
There were reams of the finest silk I’ve ever seen, and Tupu was soon immersed in touching it all. Christianne was amazed by a side shelf that rose ten feet high, and was full to bursting with massive old books.
There were small chests filled with loose gems, all cut perfectly and gleaming from dozens of facets. I held one up, and the light coming from the ceiling hit the gem and sprayed color to a hundred beams, making me squint.
The small chests themselves looked like they were made of gold and silver. I tried to lift one and could barely get it up an inch.
There were several small rooms off the main hall, and these were laden high with different treasures, as well.
I walked down the center of the large hall, peeking through arched doorways. The treasure contained within these halls was amazing.
I wondered why this was called the ‘Tomb of Ancients’ and said as much to Caroline, who walked beside me.
“Perhaps there are crypts farther in, Miss?”
“Maybe,” I said, craning my neck to look beyond the mountains of treasure.
The hall seemed to stretch for a hundred yards, and although I tried to reach the far wall, the piles of coins, gold artifacts, and gem- encrusted jewelry got higher the farther I climbed, until I just ended up sliding down the slippery hills.
“Let me try,” said Kym, and shivered as she transformed into her true self.
The great chimera might have weighed far more than any of us, but she had four legs, and easily sprang up the slippery sliding mountains of treasure.
In leaps and bounds, Kym jumped up and far, until she was at the back of the hall, high above our heads.
It looks like the same sort of stuff is back here, too,” she called in her gruff, deep chimera’s voice. She paced back and forth, looking at everything.
Christianne leaned toward me and whispered, “Kym is so much more impressive than all this wealth, don’t you think?”
I nodded in agreement.
“Wait, there’s something here,” Kym called.
We waited.
The chimera disappeared.
“Where’d she go?” asked Caroline.
I wondered the same thing. The chimera was huge. And if the hall here was filled with treasure and coins, the way a bowl is filled with grapes, where could she have gone?
“Kym?” I called.
“KYM!” Christianne called.
Suddenly, Kym reappeared, popping up her head along the far wall.
I exhaled a sigh of relief.
“Hey, there’s a chest down here. It looks different,” she called. “I’m bringing it out.”
The chimera’s lion’s body appeared, climbing backward, pulling a large, white chest behind her. Her four legs shuffled and shimmied, and at the last she was sliding backward down a huge hill of gold coins.
We jumped out of the way, and she landed at our feet in a small waterfall of gold. She pulled the white chest forward and tapped it, looking proudly at her accomplishment before shimmering back to her little girl form.
The chest was several feet long, and about fourteen inches deep and wide. A gold lock gleamed against the white surface.
“I think it’s made of clouds,” Kym said.
I bent forward, examining the chest closely, tapping the white, hard surface and noticing it shone with rainbow colors.
“It’s mother-of-pearl,” I stated matter-of-factly.
I fingered the lock. Hmmm. All the other chests had been standing open, displaying what was inside. This one appeared to be locked.
If there was a key, I wouldn’t know where to look for it in these millions of piled artifacts and coins.
“I can open it,” said Tupu, hefting a silver ax she’d found.
I shrugged. “Be my guest,” I said.
She hefted the heavy ax above her head and brought it down on the chest’s golden lock ... which did not budge. She tried again, with the same result.
“Hey, let’s try the key to the outer door,” Caroline suggested.
I withdrew the ebony box from my pack. It was as black as the chest was white, and the contrast was eye-pleasing.
I soon had the key in hand, and was fitting it into the chest’s golden lock. It slid in easily and popped open with a click when I turned it.
Well, what do you know, it worked! I thought with a smile. I was especially happy because the mother-of-pearl chest was actually quite beautiful, and I’d hated the thought of breaking it.
I lifted the chest’s lid, and we looked inside.
It was empty except for a tarnished old oil lamp wrapped in a dark, oily rag that looked like it had seen better days.
“Awww,” said Kym.
Feeling disappointed, I sighed.
“Okay, well, I think we should camp here tonight, gather what treasure we’re taking out with us, and get some sleep,” I said. “That party following us along the coast might attack us as we leave the Tomb, we need to be well rested to meet any challenge.”
We stuffed handfuls of gems into our pockets, and I held one ruby
the size of my palm up to the light, idly wondering how much it was worth.
It was late, and although the light from the room was bright and constant, our aching bodies and repeated yawns told a different picture.
It may be nearing the midnight hour, I thought, yawning again.
We made camp toward the front of the great hall, as this was the space that was most easily cleared. The ceiling above us was so high, I wondered if it was made of mother-of-pearl as well. It looked white, and I imagined I could see blue swirling among white clouds up there. They seemed to be moving, but I concluded it must be an optical illusion, a trick of the light. My eyes could not be seeing the sky, could they?
We are quite far deep into the earth, Charlotte, those are NOT clouds in a blue sky you’re seeing.
I wondered idly what the ceiling was made of as I laid back in my bedroll, the white mother-of-pearl chest pulled up against me and piled high with the treasure I’d selected. It was heavy, and I was not looking forward to hauling it up those many stairs.
As if reading my thoughts, Khepri was telling Tupu much the same thing. “Pack lighter than that, or you’ll never get it out of these caves.”
Glancing about, I realized this WAS an elaborate cave system, albeit very highly decorated and planned out. We are in a massive stone mountain.
“Miss?” Caroline spoke next to me.
“Mhmm, Carrie?” I answered lazily. I was tired from the day’s efforts.
“I am wondering where the crypts are in this tomb,” she said, softly.
“That is a very good question, Carrie,” I said. “I find myself wondering the very same thing.”
Kym walked up then, chewing on a date. “Are you two hungry?” she asked, holding out a bag of dates.
“I ate already, sweetheart,” I answered.
Caroline took the offered bag and drew several dates out, handing the bag back to the child, who sat down next to us to eat.
I thought for a minute. “Kym?” She looked up at me, and I continued. “Did you see anything resembling a crypt when you were up there at the end of the room?”
“What’s a crypt?” Kym asked.
I proceeded to explain what a crypt was and what it might look like.
Caroline smiled.
As I finished, Kym thought for a moment, a faraway look in her eyes as she chewed.
“Hmmm,” she said. You mean like those?” And she pointed up high on the walls.
My gaze drifted upward, past the mounds of treasure, up the walls, which I saw now were covered with ornate gold and ivory tiles that had blended in seamlessly with the mounds of coins and gilt riches that surrounded us all. My eyes made it almost to the white-and-blue ceiling before they were able to focus and see the crypts.
They appeared small from this distance, at least seventy-five feet above our heads, but there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all lining the wall space I could see. They had been all but invisible to the naked eye. Fascinating.
The lower and middle sections of the walls were covered by the mounds of treasure, but I suspected the crypts continued to the floor, at least that was the visual implication. Crypts from floor to ceiling, covering every square foot. There were probably tens of thousands, I thought.
I gazed up at them, until the others followed my line of sight and discovered what had been hidden before our eyes.
A shiver ran up my spine at the thought of what surrounded us.
“Whoa,” said Khepri. Whoa, indeed, I thought.
We decided that, since it was so late and everything was so quiet and still, we needed to sleep before our curiosity sent us out on any expeditions to explore the crypts more closely, so we retreated to our bedrolls and covered our faces with any available cloths, and fell asleep. Soft snores rising from the camp were the last sounds I heard before falling asleep myself. A thought entered my mind as I drifted off.
Why had it been so easy? I sleepily wondered.
Exhausted and content, I slept soundly.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Not as Easy as One Would Think
I should have known. I should have sensed it coming.
I had turned over, flopped on my side, snoozing. My scimitar lay against me, as always. I’d taken my boots off, and loosened my belt.
The hours ticked by, the room was silent. We slumbered, oblivious.
“wooo-ooo-hooooo”
A soft whisper of sound reached my brain, pulling me out of the deep sleep I’d sunk into.
I sighed and let out a puff of air, turned over, and fell back asleep.
Another few minutes passed.
Then, “whoooo-whoooo-hooooo” whispered the air, the sound made of as much blowing as voice.
I snoozed on.
A gust of wind blew across my legs, strong enough to flap the fabric of my clothing several times.
My consciousness drifted to the surface.
Everything was once again quiet.
I drifted back to sleep.
Another half hour passed.
Then, far away, a single gold coin tinkled down a steep hill of treasure, and I opened one eye. The coin was rolling on its edge, staying impossibly upright, traveling all the way down the hill of gold coins, pinging quietly as it rolled, and came to rest against my leg with a soft ‘thump’.
I breathed deeply, still half asleep. My opened eye stared at the coin, not sure what to make of it.
On some level, I think my brain knew something odd was afoot, but I was so exhausted that my subconscious, my really dumb subconscious, decided it was nothing and instructed me to close my eye and fall back to sleep.
“Hufffffff-whooooo-hoooooorre”
My brain was beginning to wake up. There were just too many disturbances, and these moved my mind from the deep sleep it clearly preferred to a mid-level slumber. Still, I slept on.
And on.
Until ...
“Charlotte…” A barely audible whisper in my ear. Her lips tickled against my face. A hand grabbed my arm and squeezed it tightly. “Charlotte!” The strangled whisper came again. A weight fell against me, and I finally opened my eyes.
I was lying on my side, and Kym was against me, her face touching mine.
My eyes widened at her expression. It was one of deep fear, her dark face a picture of dread, her eyes open so wide in horror that the whites were stark against her curly lashes.
I was instantly awake.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered, copying her style of furtiveness. My eyes were wide and unblinking as I studied her face.
She slowly brought her hand up and extended a finger, pointing to a spot above my head.
I turned slowly and looked.
An opaque, half-transparent ghostly white specter hovered about ten feet behind me, halfway up the hill of coins. My eyes stared, unable to comprehend what I was seeing.
The thing was about the size of a person, but it was clearly not alive. Its ghostly outline encompassed the shady shimmer of its head, dropped off to the side. It looked like it had been messily cleaved from its body.
The ghost’s back was turned to us, and it was studying something in the pile of coins.
Another movement caught my eye, about fifteen feet from the first figure. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck, because the second apparition was far worse.
The shadowy ghost looked like an old man, his robes torn and bloody, and his eyes … I gulped, unable to look away. The second spirit’s eyes had been poked out with something sharp.
There were bloody holes where his eyes should have been, and the eyeballs themselves hung down on his cheeks, dangling there; blood was smeared everywhere. The edges of this phantasm were a cloudy white, and flickered in an out of focus.
This second ghost was looking directly at us.
I lay there, propped up on my elbows, frozen in place. The opaque figure stood suspended as well, those eye sockets staring at us, his hands quaking and trembling at his sides, as if sensing us.
&
nbsp; My breathing quickened, and I felt lightheaded.
Suddenly, the second ghost began moving toward us, its hands shivering in excitement, and I jumped in surprise.
Kym grabbed at my arm and pointed, and I swung back to the first ghost. It had turned around and was also slowly moving toward us.
“Run!” I screamed, jumping up and grasping Kym’s hand. I grabbed my scimitar with my other hand and hopped backward four or five paces, unwilling to turn my back on the apparitions.
But finally, I did turn, so that I could sprint away from them and down the center reach.
The others, wakened by my yell, didn’t take long to notice the phantasms, and they jumped up and followed close behind.
“Ahhh!” Kym cried loudly. I swung around to see what she’d been surprised by, and to my chagrin I saw the ghouls were actually beginning to surround us.
Ghosts were emerging from every direction, drifting out of the walls and the sides of the treasure hills. The crypts! They were coming from the crypts!
“Ohhhh,” I moaned softly, pulling Kym to me, trying to protect her.
“Miss!” Caroline shrieked as she scampered away from the edges of the room and toward us.
“Oh, gods!” cried Tupu. Khepri, pulling Christianne, was not far behind. We all gathered together in a group, facing outward.
The ghosts were of every nightmare imaginable.
A cloudy apparition drifted toward us in the shape of a young girl, not much older than Kym. But this girl was pale, opaque white.
Her eyes were shaded black, all around the orbits, as if she had enormous black eyes from a fight, or from being dead, I thought. Her arms reached out for us, and I hastily backed away from her, shivering in fear.
I turned away and came nearly face to face with the first spook I had seen, the decapitated man. He’d glided down slowly, and had finally reached our level. I could have stretched out my hand and touched him.
I let out a shriek of surprise and backed away, careful to keep my distance from the other phantoms.
The Pirates of Moonlit Bay Page 21