Eye of the Tempest (16 page)

Smack dab in the center of the cavern, right near where our rope still dangled, it looked like something was trying to come up from the soft dirt of the cave floor.

“It’s kind of like the base of a pedestal or something,” Trill said, her oil-slick voice nervous as she tiptoed toward the disturbed floor.

“It’s gotta be the lock,” I said. “Or the crystals are the lock. Something is a lock for sure.”

“Where did it come from?” Iris asked.

“You were touching the crystals and it just… started to come out,” intoned Caleb.

“Like a red rocket?” I conjectured. Anyan gave me the stink eye. He was obviously sensitive about the red rocket issue, being part dog and all.

“Was it the noise that made it come out?” Nell wondered, strumming her hand along a row of crystals. As if to prove her wrong, the small outcropping in the floor retreated back to wherever it had sprung from.

“How bizarre,” I said. Then I had a thought. “Okay, this is totally
Goonies
, but what if we have to play the right notes?”

“Right notes?” asked Nell. “Like a song?”

“Probably not. Unless you guys see any sheet music anywhere. I’m thinking a resonance… either a scale or a group of one note together.”

Anyan was facing me, but his eyes were closed and his head tilted. It was like he was listening or remembering… or both.

“Yes,” he interrupted. “Right as the ground moved you’d all played a same note… It was sort of like…” And then the barghest sang out a clear, beautiful tone. I had no idea he could sing, leaving me floored.

“Now we have to figure out which crystal plays what,” Iris said, already touching the crystals around her. I was still watching Anyan, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the man could
sing
, too, when he nodded sharply.

“That was it. Whatever you just touched…”

Iris reached out a hand again and touched a crystal. It cried out in the glittering cavern, pure and sweet.

“So how do we find out which one to play?” Trill asked. “They’re not exactly marked.”

“It’s the size,” Caleb rumbled. “They’re different notes for different sizes. Iris’s note is… about as long as her forearm.”

We each looked around, using our own forearms, with an inch or two either added or subtracted depending on how long our arms were, until we each found a few crystals that were about right. Then we took turns strumming them, trying to find the ones with exactly the right pitch. Finally, all six of us had found our exact crystals, but we were still unsure of what to do.

“So, should we just all play them?” I asked. Everyone nodded, and we all obediently touched our crystals. They sang out, but nothing happened.

“No, it was a bigger sound than that. Everyone was going nuts right when the floor moved. Lots and lots of sound, played really furiously. We’re gonna have to do more than just touch ’em,” Anyan said.

“Are you trying to get us to stroke our crystals for you, Mr. Barghest?” Iris said, sweetly, and I rejoiced at the sight of her flirting so openly, even if it was with my own man-dog.

“I’ve been trying to get you to stroke my crystal for years, Iris,” Anyan bantered back. “Now let’s all stroke together… On three, two, one…”

And with that we all started strumming away at our crystals. We began by attempting to be decorous: either whacking at or playing the crystal like one would a tether ball or a guitar. But the sound wasn’t quite cacophonous enough, and eventually we all gave up and stood there, openly jerking our crystals in a more than vaguely masturbatory manner. Whoever had invented this lock should get credit for inspiring the Shake Weight.

As the brilliant sound of the note crashed through the cavern, the floor began to shiver exactly where it had earlier. We kept stroking, any embarrassment at our motions quashed by seeing results. So we stroked harder, faster, watching as the floor rose into the shape of a steep pyramid, about three and a half feet tall. Then all the music ceased, and our crystals were dead in our hands.

Ouch, chafing
, I thought, letting go of my crystal and stretching out my hand before shaking it a bit. Everyone else was making similar motions.
That much stroking is hard on a body
, I thought, wondering how Alexander Portnoy had done it.

I also wondered who in the hell had created this “lock,” and whether they were totally clueless or had a great sense of humor. Knowing the often emotionless Alfar of today, unless things had changed dramatically since the ancient Alfar walked the earth, I figured it was the former.

Together, we walked toward the pyramid, stopping to form a circle a few feet away from it.

“What is it?” Iris asked. Caleb shrugged, clearly stumped. And it didn’t look like any of the rest of us had a clue.

“Let me see,” Nell said, and I felt her give the pyramid a gentle probing. As if on cue, more crystals sprang from the sides of the pyramid.

We frowned at each other, wondering what to do next, when Iris reached forward.

“Makes sense that what we did before should work now, too,” she said. Before we could stop her, she’d reached out and touched a crystal that looked the same as the one we’d just been group-fondling before.

The now familiar sound zoomed out through the room, and the previously exhausted crystals all began not only to sing with the pyramid’s crystal but to glow, faintly. We all took a step back as the glowing increased, eventually blinding us with its brightness. Shielding my eyes, I, for one, was figuring we were done for, when suddenly the light ceased, leaving the cavern in darkness again.

Blinded by the light, our eyes took a few seconds to adjust. But when they finally did, we saw that it was only our abused vision that had assumed it was entirely dark again. For floating a few inches above the tip of the central pyramid hung what looked like a mirror, its surface showing a series of sinuous shapes that changed with every second. Frowning in confusion, we all took a step forward.

“What is it?” I breathed.

Nell sighed from where she stood next to me. I hadn’t noticed the gnome’s expression, as she was so much shorter than me.

“It’s an ancient Alfar hieroglyph,” she informed us. “A sigil.”

“Great!” Iris replied. “You know what it is. Can you read it?”

“Of course I can,” the gnome replied, her kindly voice gone bizarrely irritable for someone who was telling us everything was going to be okay.

“But not this one,” Nell concluded, to our regret. “It’s gotta be not only
the
lock, but it also
is
locked. And until it’s unlocked, it’s unreadable.”

It took me a moment to think my way through that, but eventually I nodded to myself. The lock was locked. Or something.

Iris asked the question we all were thinking: “Well, can you unlock it?”

“I have no idea,” Nell replied, staring at the hieroglyph in contemplation. “But there’s only one way to find out,” she finished, as she stepped toward the pedestal.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We braced ourselves as the first waves of magic crashed through the cavern. The force of Nell’s power pushed us back, until Caleb, Iris, Anyan, and I were all pressed against the walls, trying to avoid being shish-kebabed by the decorating scheme of priapic crystals. Meanwhile, the grandmotherly little gnome stood facing the pillar in the middle of the cave, forcing her power upward toward the dangling mirrored surface with its ever-changing sigils.

She pushed and she pushed and she pushed… and nothing happened.

Lowering her arms, she swore a blue streak. I’d first noticed when Conleth had attacked us in Rockabill, all those months ago, that Nell became Pirate Nell, Swearer of the High Seas, whenever she got frustrated with something magical. And today was no exception.

After she’d finished reveling in her theories regarding the probable connection between the ancient Alfar and people who enjoy sexual congress with their own mothers, she lowered her little arms. And then raised them again only to yell, “Motherfuckers!” one last time, before finally lowering them to her side.

She took a long, deep breath before she finally turned around to face us.

“Anyan,” she said, very politely for someone who’d just made even my jaded ears turn purple. “Could you help me, please?”

He grinned and walked toward Nell.

Iris, Caleb, Trill, and I just gave each other sideways looks as we settled ourselves firmly against our safe, relatively crystal-free patches of wall.

Nell’s power had felt strong enough to level mountains. But combined with Anyan’s formidable strength, I wasn’t sure we wouldn’t be crushed. So I quickly threw up the strongest shields I could muster around the four of us against the wall, and I soon felt the others join their own power with mine.

In the center of the room, dust and small chunks of crystal were swirling through the air as Anyan and Nell really poured on the juice. As for the sigil, it had continued its wild changing, but now that I was watching it closely again I could see that every once and a while the permutations would stutter, as if it were starting to wind down.

“Something’s happening!” I called, pointing at the mirrorlike surface.

Anyan’s sharp ears picked up on my shout, and he peered upward before he nodded, letting me know he saw it, too. Then he nudged Nell, gesturing for her to look. When she’d seen what we’d seen, the two of them bombarded the sigil with even more power.

That’s when it started to glow.

I amped up the shields I’d thrown around my friends, knowing I’d need a swim very soon. But I was also beginning to get a bad feeling about all this. Nell had seemed pretty confident she knew how to unlock that sigil so we could read it, but what they were doing felt more like the magical version of kicking in a door. Whoever created that mirror obviously didn’t want it to be read easily, so what else had they done to protect it besides making it hard to find?

The air in the cavern was really getting stuffy as all of Anyan and Nell’s mojo blew the dust around. It was also getting dark as our mage lights winked out, all of our magic channeling into either unlocking the sigil or protecting each other from the unlocking of the sigil. Only that mirrorlike surface floating in the center of the room glowed eerily, until its light began to pulse. I squinted upward, trying to see through the gloom and grit.

It’s not pulsing
, I realized, as I blinked away the grime from the eyes.
It’s spinning
.

Sure enough, the mirrorlike oval was spinning like a top, moving faster the more Anyan and Nell sent their mojo winging its way. Then, suddenly, its light went supernova and became tinged with pink as the mirror began to glow an angry red.

I was just about to scream for them to stop when it exploded. Despite having thrown so much of my power into our shields, we were still badly shaken. I had moved a little bit forward, about to yell, so I had enough space between me and the wall that when I was flung back, I hit my head pretty hard. I didn’t pass out, but it was touch and go there for a second, as I felt myself slide to the floor with a
plop
.

Blinking in the darkness, all I could hear was coughing, barking and a… baby crying?

Why is a baby crying?
I wondered, trying to shake the ringing from my ears. I sat up, weakly, and then flopped down again with a splitting headache.

“Eww, gross, stop licking me, Anyan,” I heard Iris say, from a few feet away. Then I heard a doggie whine, which explained both the barking and why Anyan was licking Iris. Sort of.

Once I no longer felt like a chisel was being driven through my brain, I lit a weak mage light, although I didn’t try to sit up again just yet. As soon as the light went up into the darkness, it was blocked out by a big hairy beast lapping at my face.

“Anyan, dude, what the hell?” I said, swatting his big dog’s head away. Even though he looked like a giant puppy, he was still Anyan inside of there. And while I definitely wouldn’t mind a thorough licking from man-Anyan, it was decidedly weird coming from dog-Anyan.