The Tomb of Horrors (29 page)

She looked at the boy once again. Several of the guards were
clapping him companionably on the shoulders, acknowledging the actions that had
just saved their lives. Even Kaerion knelt before the lad and thanked him.
Instead of showing the embarrassment that Majandra would expect from a boy his
age, Adrys merely accepted the congratulations with a brief nod of his head and
a wan smile. There was more to this merchant’s son than met the eye, she
thought, and vowed to keep a closer eye on their newest member.

Decided clearly on their course of action, Majandra and her
companions gathered before the mist-filled archway. Absently, she noted that
both Gerwyth and Kaerion had their weapons drawn and had asked Landra to
position guards at the party’s back. With everything that had happened to them
since they entered the tomb, the bard realized she had forgotten about the
potential danger from any creatures that had made the lost corridors of stone
their home during the many years since Acererak’s minions had constructed his
resting place. She was glad that her companions had the presence of mind to keep
watch. Perhaps Phathas was right. Maybe their commitment and their strength
would prevail over the ancient evil lurking within these halls.

Once again, the wizened mage stood in front of the group.
This time, however, he raised both hands, fingers slightly curled, in front of
his eyes and spoke the words of power. When he was finished, the base stones on
the left and right of the arch pulsed with a yellow and orange light, while the
keystone within the archway flickered with a blue incandescence.

Majandra watched as the mage stood before the archway in
silence, studying the mystic construction with eyes that had always seen far and
deeply. “There is strong magic woven into the very heart of this stone,” he
said. “I believe that the arch itself functions as a teleportation device. The
stones that are glowing are part of a key that will change the coordinates of
the target area.”

“Knowing what we have experienced so far,” Vaxor said, “I
would wager that the arch is currently set to send whoever walks through it to a
particularly deadly location. The trick will be unlocking the right sequence for
a safe journey.”

“Who should attempt the sequence?” Gerwyth asked. “There
could be further traps built into the arch that Phathas hasn’t detected.”

It only took a few moments for Majandra to make her decision.
“I will,” she said with all of the confidence she could muster. “I have had some
instruction in the ways of magic.” The bard smiled as she looked at Phathas.
“And, if there are any physical traps—well, I have some experience dealing with
those as well.”

This last she said with a great deal of nonchalance, hoping
to slip that bit of information by her companions, who would no doubt be
surprised by such a revelation.

She failed.

Amid the whispered murmurs of surprise, it was Vaxor whose
voice she heard frame the question she had most wanted to avoid. “And how, my
dear,” the cleric asked in the most colored of paternal tones, “did you come to
possess such an expertise?”

The half-elf blushed, hoping that the pulsating lights of the
archway masked her discomfort. “Well,” she said in an even tone, “you don’t
think I spent all my time in Rel Mord poring over ancient parchments and
rehearsing fragments of old songs, did you? Let’s just say that I had some
colorful friends and leave it at that, shall we?”

With that, Majandra withdrew a small pouch of tools from
within a hidden fold of her cloak and set about examining the stonework around
the archway. A few minutes later, after she had poked and prodded and searched
the area on and about the arch, the half-elf turned to the rest of the waiting
company. “Seems clear to me,” she said. “I’m heading up.” And with a single
note, she tapped into the still-active levitation spell she had cast when
examining the rune-inlayed mosaic. Gently, the bard floated up toward the top of
the arch. Gingerly, she pressed her palm against the pulsing blue stone and was
rewarded as the incandescence solidified. Slowly she returned to the floor and
touched the orange and then the yellow pulsing stones. Each in turn burned with
a solid light until Majandra was finished.

Nothing happened for a few moments—and then, with a bright
burst of light, each of the glowing stones pulsed once again.

“I sense no change within the magical construct,” Phathas
said.

Majandra acknowledged the wizard’s comment with a sigh of
frustration and then quickly tried a new sequence. Again, nothing happened.
Determined to uncover the correct order with the least amount of time wasted,
she kept trying. It wasn’t until her last attempt, when Majandra touched the
yellow, blue, and orange stones in that order that the arch emitted a single
sharp sound. Within seconds, the swirling mist faded, until Majandra could see a
passageway heading off into darkness.

There was a collective sigh, as if the entire company had
been holding its breath, waiting to see the outcome of her attempts. She turned
and was rewarded by the mage’s beaming smile. “Well done, my child,” Phathas
said, and she could hear the pride evident in his thin voice.

With the path clear ahead of them, the company resumed its
former marching order and continued their march. The half-elf’s inability to see
anything ahead of her should have offered a warning. However, flushed with her
recent success, Majandra wasn’t paying much attention. She could do no more than
scream when, with a sudden, deep lurching motion, she felt first the floor, then
the walls, and soon the entire tomb itself fall away from her, replaced by a
blackness so impenetrable that she knew it had no end.

Kaerion felt a moment of disorientation as the darkness
receded. The bard’s scream had offered him a few seconds of warning before the
complete and total annihilation of light, and so he was not caught in total
surprise. As the spinning in his head gradually receded, he blinked, trying to
make sense of what his eyes were showing him. The long hall had disappeared, and
now the members of the expedition were crammed into a small room, holding their
heads as if each nursed one of the hangovers that he had woken up with every
morning for more than ten years. Wherever they were, the teleporting arch had
clearly worked as designed.

He cast another glance over his companions. Satisfied that no
one had suffered any permanent harm, Kaerion gave his surroundings a more
thorough search. The room itself was no more than ten feet wide and, judging by
the way Vaxor’s pulsing light reached from end to end, it was less than twenty
feet long. In the center of the room, glaring at him with an expression of
hatred locked in solid stone, stood an imposing statue of a gargoyle. Though
startled enough to draw his sword at first sight of the creature, Kaerion’s
heart settled as his eyes registered that one of the monster’s four gruesomely
muscled arms lay on the floor at its clawed feet.

“Careful, Kaerion,” Gerwyth said as Kaerion slowly approached
the statue. “Give a shout if it starts to move.”

The fighter grunted his affirmative as he stalked silently
over to the gargoyle, sword drawn and held ready for a sudden attack. The elf
was right to warn caution. Both of them had seen enough animated statues in
their time to be forever wary about stone constructions.

Vaxor’s light grew brighter as he and the other members of
the expedition drew closer to the statue. Satisfied that the looming block of
worked stone before him was simply a statue and nothing more, Kaerion bent and
picked up the gargoyle’s splintered arm. Like each of the other three arms, the
stone appendage possessed a round indentation in the center of the palm; its
flint-gray claws curled slightly around it. As Kaerion called the others over to
examine this new discovery, one of the guards shouted out her own find—a narrow
tunnel that sloped away from the room at an angle.

“Landra,” he heard the cleric of Heironeous say, “take three
guards and set them to watch the tunnel’s mouth. I don’t want any surprises.”

“A fearsome beast,” Gerwyth remarked as the guard captain
signaled her compliance. “I’m just glad that we don’t have to face the tearing
claws of this thing in battle.”

The elf was right, of course, Kaerion thought as he traced
the gargoyle’s palm indentation with a calloused finger. The statue itself was
over eight feet tall, and each of the beast’s teeth looked sharp enough to cut
through the thickest armor. He’d settle for poking around an old statue any day.

“This depression looks deep enough to hold a large stone,” he
said to the others, each of whom were poking and prodding the statue.

“A stone,” replied Majandra, whose hands, Kaerion could see,
were sliding expertly across the ridged lines of the statue, “or a large gem.”

The half-elf rummaged through the leather pouches hanging
from her belt until she produced several red-hued stones, each with many
crystalline facets. The gems gleamed in the surrounding light. “Perhaps you
should all step back,” the bard said as she reached out and gently placed one of
the gems in the gargoyles upturned hand.

Kaerion fell back quickly, his long sword in guard position.
Briefly, he wondered where the bard had come across such large gemstones. Full
of surprises, that one, he thought, a brief smile flickering across his
face—replaced quickly by a frown as he remembered where they were. There would
be time for such idle speculation later.

Nothing happened.

Kaerion let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and
saw the others do the same. Poised for flight before the statue, Majandra
relaxed and held out a second gemstone. Again, she placed it in one of the
gargoyle’s hands.

Again nothing happened.

Kaerion saw her cast Phathas a rueful grin as the wizard
leaned on his staff, staring with interest at the stone monster. The half-elf
placed a third gem into the creature’s hand, and Kaerion let out a cry of
warning as he saw the gargoyle’s fingers twitch slightly. A moment later, the
beast’s claws closed sharply about the stones. Running toward Majandra, Kaerion
heard a loud grinding sound, and a spray of glistening red powder erupted from
the statue’s hands.

Pulling the half-elf away from the gargoyle, he was surprised
at the string of invective that issued forth from the bard’s mouth. Kaerion was
certain he caught fragments of at least four different languages he was familiar
with in the torrent of curses that poured out of her mouth, and at least as many
languages that he had never heard before.

Stunned silence filled the room as Majandra finally brought
herself under control. Several of the guards shifted from foot to foot,
obviously amused in the wake of the half-elf’s blistering anger, but too
respectful to comment on it.

“My dear child,” Phathas said at last, breaking the silence,
“you do understand that our goal here is to collect treasure from this dreadful
tomb and bring it back with us to Rel Mord, and not the other way around?”

Even in the pale light, Kaerion could see the tips of the
half-elf’s ears turning red. Companionable laughter broke the tension and soon
even the normally dour Heironean cleric chuckled at Majandra’s discomfort.
Kaerion turned away from the embarrassed half-elf, who had finally given up on
trying to maintain any semblance of dignity and now wiped tears of laughter from
her own eyes, to check on Adrys, who had remained silent through this entire
exchange.

The boy was not there.

All levity leeched from Kaerion’s body as he scanned the
room, hoping that the merchant’s son was merely lost in the press of bodies. His
hope was crushed, as swiftly and as surely as the gemstones that they had so
recently placed in the hands of the gargoyle.

“Has anyone seen Adrys?” he asked, his voice cutting through
the surrounding laughter.

“He was just here a moment ago,” one of the guards responded.

“Come on,” Kaerion shouted to his companions, “we have to
find him!”

He bolted from the room, lighting a torch and pushing past
the guards who stood sentry at the mouth of the tunnel. If anything happened to
the lad, the boy’s blood would be on Kaerion’s hands—hands that were already
soaked in the blood of innocents.

The tunnel ran at an angle briefly and then straightened.
Kaerion cursed as the area quickly narrowed and he was forced to crawl. The
tunnel soon opened into a room of similar length and construction as the hall
from which they had entered the tomb. Bright paintings covered the smooth walls
of the room. Wild colors swirled and ran together with all the energy of a
pulsing rainbow. Though different from the paintings that covered the entrance
hall, the pictures depicted by the mad brush of the long-dead artist contained
the familiar animal/human hybrids that were the subject of so much of the tomb’s
artistry. Some of these creatures, however, held globes of bright color between
their hands.