The Barrow (74 page)

Wilhem Price and Sir Colin Urwed were walking around the Ladies' Tent, marking a sentry circle, scanning the fields and hills around them, when they heard something like a whisper come from up the hill. They turned and looked up the hill just in time to see a plume of dust jet out from the entrance to the barrow some six hundred paces away up the stone steps. The two of them took a few steps toward the hill and stopped, then looked at each other.

Annwyn was sitting before her mirror, singing quietly to herself, when a sudden wind blew through her tent, bringing whispers with it. She stopped singing and turned, looking over her shoulder at the source of the sound.

“My Lady?” asked Malia, standing and frowning. “What was that?”

After a moment, Annwyn turned back and resumed her singing, looking at her reflection with a slight smile.

“What in the Six Hells was that?” asked Wilhem.

“Nothing good,” said Sir Colin. He unshouldered his greatsword and hefted it, about to start heading up the steps to the entrance, when a figure stumbled out of the stone-framed doorway in the hillside, coughing and sweeping dust from his clothes. The figure coughed some more and doubled over, retching a bit before straightening up and putting his hands on his hips and shouting something that sounded like a curse.

“Is that . . . that's one of the Danians we hired on at the Inn, yeah?” asked Sir Colin, squinting up the hill.

“Looks like it,” said Wilhem with a shrug.

The distant figure saw them looking, waved, and turned around and went back into the earth of the hillside.

Malia poked her head out of the tent. “What was that?” she asked.

Sir Colin looked back at her over his shoulder. “No idea,” he said with a shrug.

Muffled coughing and hacking echoed through the chamber as the dust began to clear. Everyone was staring at the unsealed doorway, either waving their hands at the air to clear the dust, covering their mouths and noses with whatever they could, or pointing weapons nervously at the yawning black arch. The lanterns flared and guttered and dimmed, leaving the chamber in partial darkness.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Erim finally whispered, crouched behind a pillar with one hand over her face.

“How am I supposed to know?” Stjepan whispered back, and shrugged. “Could've been a pocket of
damp
: trapped, fouled air . . . miners have different names for it, depending on what the air does:
firedamp
,
blackdamp
,
helldamp
.”

“I done some mining, Black-Heart, down in the Pavas Mole,” said Too Tall in a low muffled voice. “And that didn't sound or act like no
damp
I ever seen.”

“Fucking fantastic. On your guard, everyone!” snarled Godewyn.

As the air began to clear they removed whatever was covering their faces and braved a few breaths of air, weapons ready and pointing. The open door stood before them. The dust cloud settled.

Erim gave Stjepan an unsure look as he prepared a new lantern. As soon as it was lit, he lifted it in his left hand and hefted his falchion in his right, and slipped forward at a crouch to one side of the archway. He peered inside, lifting the lantern high, trying to see into the chamber beyond.

“What do you see?” hissed Gilgwyr.

Stjepan didn't respond, but instead he rose up out of his crouch a bit and stepped through the archway into the dark beyond.

He found himself standing in the entrance of a large, circular room with a domed ceiling, holding his lantern high. From its light he could see that at their base the walls looked like they had been carved out of rough stone, as though the chamber had been hewn out of the very rock of the hill itself. The walls were covered with carved runes and warding symbols, and the stone arched up into a more finely detailed coffered stone ceiling. Each step-sided coffer in the ceiling bore a small bejeweled brass amulet set into its center panel. The floor was of hard packed earth.

And the room was completely empty.

The others began to file into the domed chamber after him, spreading out and setting lanterns about to better light the space.

“I don't understand . . .” said Arduin, looking around with his hands on his armored hips. “There's no exit from this chamber. Is this our destination?”

“What in the Six Hells is going on? This room's fucking empty!” said Godewyn. “Shouldn't there be a stone bier with a body on it, or a stone casket? This ain't my first tomb robbing and that's how it's usually done, yeah?”

“This can't be right,” said Stjepan mostly to himself. He set his lantern down and reached into his satchel for his notebook.

“Of course it's not right! Do you see a dead wizard? Do you see a sword for the taking?
This
is where that fucking map of yours leads?” spat Godewyn harshly.

As the others milled about in various states of anger and confusion, Stjepan, Leigh, and Erim stood in the center of the room, pouring over the notebook in Stjepan's hands. Gilgwyr stumbled off to the side, his head in his hands, and squatted with his back against the stone wall.

“. . . this word,
arath
, should mean
north
, and
dain
would be
west
in any of the old languages of this region,” Stjepan said, explaining his logic. “So it says:
take the first door to the north, and then the west door in the chamber of four pillars
. Look, there's even an image that seemed to point to the end goal being a circular chamber, just like this one.”

“Well,” said Leigh finally. “I don't know this alphabet, old Maerberos was always a bit of a mystery to me; you were always so good with languages and ciphers, far better than I ever was! It's your gift. But I cannot deny the logic of your thinking, at least not at first glance . . .”

“Great,” laughed Godewyn. “So the magician-scholars are agreed: the treasure map leads across the Bale Mole to an empty room!”

Leigh shrugged. “Unless perhaps the order of the doors was reversed? And we should have gone west first?”

“The west door first?” asked Godewyn. He frowned, trying to figure out which door that would have been until it flashed in his mind. He turned to Caider and Too Tall. “Right! Back to the door we ‘open at our peril!'”

“I don't think that's a good idea,” Stjepan said, looking around the chamber with a frown.

But Godewyn stormed out of the room, cursing loudly, followed by Caider Ross and Too Tall. Arduin paused for a moment, gave a doubtful look to Stjepan, and then left with Sir Helgi right behind him. Erim shrugged and left next. Stjepan and Leigh eyed the room but then reluctantly turned and followed.

Gilgwyr was left alone with a single flickering lantern as their shouts faded into the distance. He stood up and walked to the center of the room, stretched out his arms, and made a slow turn.

By the time Stjepan and Leigh arrived back at the first major chamber of the inner barrow, Godewyn, Caider Ross, Too Tall, and Sir Helgi were already at the massive inlaid iron plate, and were pushing and prying at it eagerly with crowbars. Their bags of equipment and tools were haphazardly dropped behind them. Arduin stood nearby, hands on armored hips, as though he was supervising, and Erim stood behind him, watching the proceedings with her head cocked in curiosity.

“Wait! It may be warded!” shouted Leigh, his eyes going wide when he saw what they were doing.

But with a sudden
crack
, the iron plate came free of its mortar and rolled out of the way and there was another shock of air as the doorway was unsealed. Everyone froze. Godewyn's face was still but his eyes darted about the chamber as the dust passed by, but without any seeming effect.

“Fates and Fortune, hear my prayers! Right, follow me!” he said with a laugh. He took a lantern and moved confidently through the revealed archway into the passageway beyond. Caider and Too Tall seemed buoyed, and grabbed up their tools and lanterns and equipment bags and followed him through, with Sir Helgi and Arduin and Leigh close behind.

Erim took a step forward and hesitated, looking over her shoulder for a cue from Stjepan. He sighed and shrugged, nodding that she should follow.