The Golden Key (Book 3) (21 page)

16

Giorge and his mother ran for all of ten seconds. It was an
unsettling ten seconds. They were surrounded by an abyssal darkness so deep
that it seemed to go on forever, and if it weren’t for the Viper’s Eye they
would have been lost in its murkiness for eternity. But the Eye led him
unerringly through the magical tunnel as it disintegrated around them. The
complex knots holding the energy in place snapped soundlessly apart and the
streams of color broke away like silent, fraying whips. Then, quite suddenly,
the darkness was gone.

Giorge stumbled into an almost blinding, shadowy gloom, and
the smooth floor of the magical tunnel changed to loose, gritty rock. His left
foot caught on a sharp-edged rock protruding up from the floor, and he fell forward.
He rolled instinctively onto his back as he fell, dragging his mother with him
to the rough, rock-strewn ground. She fell heavily upon his chest, knocking the
breath out of him. Giorge clung to her as he gasped for breath. Then he gently,
forcefully, pushed her off of his chest.

His mother crouched and looked down the tunnel as Giorge
rolled onto his side, crumpled up, and sucked in air. Rock dust tickled his
nostrils, and he sneezed—an almost airless sneeze—and felt a sharp twinge of
pain in his right side. He probed the area with his fingertips and found
tenderness and a rigid bump near the little rib at the bottom. The rib had
probably broken when his mother’s elbow jabbed into his side when she landed on
him.

By the time he was able to sit up, his eyes had adjusted to
the dim lighting, and he was able to pick shapes out of the deep shadows. He
looked behind him, to see what had tripped him, and frowned. He should have
brought the torch with him instead of throwing it at the witch. At least the
witch hadn’t followed them—or had been trapped by the magic if she had. Then
his mother was at his side.

“Can you stand?” she asked, her voice barely above a
whisper.

He looked at her, then past her down the narrow tunnel. It
twisted upward at a slight angle, and at the edge of his vision, it widened and
turned. Diffuse light filled that end of it, suggesting an opening of some
sort. But an opening to what?

Giorge nodded and let her help him to his feet. But as soon
as he put weight on his left foot, pain shot through his ankle and he sucked in
a deep, wincing breath. He leaned heavily on his mother’s shoulder, and she
sagged down before she was able to brace herself. She was so tiny that it was almost
like leaning on a child, and he quickly shifted his weight to his right foot
and hopped backward to lean against the tunnel’s wall. It was a rough, natural
formation, and bits of it crumbled off as he brushed up against it.

She looked at him, concern in her dark eyes, and asked, “How
bad?”

He grimaced. “I think my left ankle might be broken,” he
said as he pressed his right hand to his side. “And a cracked rib.”

She frowned and knelt down before him. She didn’t take off
his boot; instead, she ran her thin fingers along the outside of it and pressed
firmly against its soft leather. There was discomfort but not the pain he had
felt when he had put his weight on it. When she finished, she said, “I don’t
think it’s broken, but it has already swollen up. Can you walk on it?”

He shrugged and tested it to see if it could hold his
weight, and then quickly leaned back again. “I’ll manage,” he said through
clenched teeth before turning away from her. He scrunched up his eyes and took
a few deep breaths to steady himself. When he opened them again, they were
blurry. He blinked a few times, and when his vision cleared he looked at the
back of the cave. It was the just a rough, natural wall; the portal was gone. There
was something on the ground in front of it that he hadn’t noticed before he had
fallen: a small box, half-hidden in the shadows. Even though he couldn’t see it
clearly, he knew that it would be stained with a chocolate brown varnish and
studded with silver inlays. But that wasn’t what drew his attention; it was the
thing beside it.

“No,” he muttered. “It can’t be.”

“What is it?” his mother asked, stepping around him. She
stopped and convulsively squeezed his arm when she saw the box. “Leave it,” she
hissed tugging on his elbow. “We don’t have to open it.”

He didn’t let her pull him away. It wasn’t the box that
captivated him; it was the thing beside it. He had thought it was a pile of
rocks at first, but there was something amid those rocks that held his
attention: a large, half-rotten claw.

Giorge turned and looked down the corridor at the dimly lit
opening. “It can’t be,” he said again.

“What is it?” his mother asked as they plodded forward.

He shook his head and focused on taking shallow breaths,
squelching the jagged pain they caused. The air was thin and crisp, as if they
were standing high in the mountains. But he was used to that; he had been
traveling at high altitude for weeks before waking up in Symptata’s tomb.

Giorge steadied himself with his left hand against the wall
to give his ankle a rest and realized both his hands were empty. He frowned and
looked down at his feet. “Where is it?” he asked as he scanned the floor near
where he had fallen. “The Viper’s Eye,” he muttered. “I dropped it.”

“I don’t know,” his mother said, still trying to prop him
up.

He reached into the pouch he had hidden in his tunic and
brought out the second Eye. It was barely visible in the gloomy, dust-riddled
tunnel, and if he hadn’t been holding it, it would have blended into the
shadows and been lost there. They needed some light—or luck—to find it, and he
doubted he would find either of them in this tunnel. He should have kept the
torch, instead of throwing it at the old hag—

His eyes widened.
The old hag! If she had followed—

He lifted the gem to his eye and saw nothing in the murky
innards of the star sapphire. Was the passage gone? Was
the magic
gone?
He lowered the gem from his eye and was about to put it away when he paused. He
lifted it slowly up to his
other
eye and looked through it. There was
still no magical portal, but the magic around him pulsed and shimmered like it
had when the Eyes had been grafted to him. There was even a tightly bound mass
of energy not far from his feet, and he fixed his gaze on the spot as he
lowered the gem. It was a palm-sized rock, and he hobbled up to it. He smiled:
the other Eye was nestled in between it and the tunnel wall. He knelt down to
pick it up and slumped gingerly to the floor. Then he turned to his mother and
said, “Why don’t you go find out where that light is coming from? If I’m right,
this tunnel will open up into a cave on a ledge overlooking a cul-de-sac. To
the west, you’ll see a waterfall—if it isn’t frozen—and a plateau. The ledge
leads to it, and we’ll only be about a mile from where it drops down to meet it.
To the east, there will be a long mountain stretching south. It will be further
away than it looks; it took us over a day on horseback to make it across the
ledge.”

His mother stared at him and her eyebrows pinched in on the
bridge of her nose. “How do you know that?” she asked.

Giorge shrugged. “Go and find out if I’m right,” he said. “I
might not be. But if that—” he pointed at the claw “—is what I think it is,
that’s what you’ll find.” He paused and tilted his head toward the claw. “You
know, it makes sense. I turned twenty-one last fall, and that was when the
curse was supposed to begin. When it didn’t, I thought I had escaped it. Later,
when I found the box in the fletching nest, it surprised me and I assumed I had
been wrong about my age. Now I don’t think so.”

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 too 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.