The Tomb of Horrors (37 page)

Numbness swept over the bard, and a familiar ache that she
had come to associate with this evil place. She had little time to reflect on
their loss, however, as Bredeth gave a sudden shout. The half-elf looked in his
direction, terrified of what she might see. To her relief, both Kaerion and the
young noble were still alive—though Bredeth held the gleaming scepter gingerly
in his hand. Both of them stood gaping at the throne, which had begun to sink
beneath the dais.

“There’s a passageway beneath the throne!” Kaerion shouted.

Wiping the burgeoning tears from her eyes, Majandra walked
toward them, wondering just how many of them would have to die before they
reached their goal.

* * *

Durgoth watched the Nyrondese from the shadows of the stair’s
landing, a cruel smile playing upon his face. The fools had no idea how close
they were to their doom—not even that overly perceptive elf. Only Bredeth, their
unwilling accomplice, seemed to sense the presence of his party. The young fool
kept glancing behind him, peering into the darkness. Having witnessed the power
of the link forged into being between the nobleman and Durgoth’s pet sorcerer,
he didn’t doubt that the pitiful man could in fact detect their presence. He was
confident, however, in Sydra’s ability to silence the man’s tongue.

Beside him, wrapped in deep shadows like a cloak, Eltanel
observed their enemies with a practiced eye. “Should we attack now, blessed
one?” the thief asked, his voice barely a whisper. “They are completely unaware
of us. It wouldn’t take much for us to kill them now.”

Durgoth shook his head, belatedly realizing that the thief
could see his reaction. “No, Eltanel,” he whispered. “I need them alive just a
little while longer.”

Which was a shame, he thought, for the thief had been
correct. Ever since the Nyrondese had dropped into the passage beneath the
throne, they had given little thought to their own protection. Durgoth and his
followers had been only tens of feet away when that damned bard had scooped up a
large cylindrical key from the steps leading farther down.

Now, the fools stood before a set of imposing doors over
twenty feet high. Even from here Durgoth could see that the portal was composed
entirely of silver, catching the torchlight and sending shimmering waves of
illumination cascading throughout the room. Beyond that door, however, the
cleric could sense a brooding presence. It beat against his mind even now,
threatening to rip away thought and sanity in a wave of darkness. Durgoth
steeled himself against its power, recalling a defensive spell, and managed a
small smile as the pressure in his head receded.

A cry of pain from the assembled Nyrondese drew his
attention. The fire-haired bard stood to the left of her oafish warrior, who had
fallen to his knees. In the fighter’s right hand, Durgoth could see the
cylindrical key, still glowing from whatever spell had activated when he had
pressed it to the door.

“I’m all right,” he heard the man say as he rose unsteadily
to his feet, “but I don’t think this is the right key.”

“Perhaps we should use the first key we found in the
preparation room?” This came from the elf.

The bard shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

Durgoth ground his teeth in frustration. It was impossible to
imagine how these fools had managed to penetrate so far into the tomb. He
watched the assembled Nyrondese as they debated their next course of action, and
he was almost as surprised as they when Bredeth gave a cry of anger and swung
his blade at the door. The door gave out a sonorous peal when the sword
rebounded off its face.

And then it began to bleed. At first, the deep crimson liquid
trickled from the spot of contact, but it soon increased its flow until a steady
stream of blood shot out from the door. Durgoth watched as the party recovered
from its initial shock, but it soon became clear that, despite their efforts to
staunch the bizarre wound, the blood would continue to stream out of the door.
Already, it covered the steps and pooled thinly around the cleric’s feet.

They were arguing now, heatedly trying to determine their
next move. This time, Durgoth found himself fighting the urge to order an
attack, but he needed them to bypass the tomb’s remaining traps and summon the
presence of Acererak. Once that had been accomplished, he would kill each one of
them with impunity.

“Enough, all of you!” shouted the bard, and to Durgoth’s
great surprise, they all listened. “I think I’ve found out how to bypass this
door,” she said. “Acererak’s riddle speaks of the throne that’s key and keyed.
Well, we know that the throne itself was keyed. Bredeth used the scepter to
unlock the passage beneath it.” She cast a grateful glance at the young noble.
“What if the scepter is also the key for this door?”

“You speak wisdom,” the decrepit mage responded, turning to
the rest of the group. Durgoth, still hiding in the shadows, shook his head. A
part of him longed to snap the patronizing nobleman’s brittle neck. Only a few
more minutes, he thought, and I can rid myself of all of them.

“What side of the scepter did you use to unlock the throne?”
the wizard asked.

“The side with the silver knob,” the young man responded.

The mage nodded and took the scepter from the bard. Durgoth
watched as the old man placed the implement’s gold ball against a depression in
the doors. There was a moment of complete silence. The stream of blood slowed to
a trickle and finally stopped.

Durgoth watched with barely contained excitement as the doors
swung silently open. He crept to the back of the passage where the remainder of
his followers waited expectantly. In a short while, his quest would be complete.
Years of patient struggle and endless plotting would finally pay off.

And the killing would begin.

Kaerion entered the imposing chamber with his sword drawn,
ready for an attack—and nearly dropped the weapon as a bright wave of
illumination assaulted his eyes. Blinking hard to adjust his vision, he called
out a warning to the rest of the party. They entered slowly, cautious of the
dangers that might lay hidden in this room.

Unlike the halls within the rest of the tomb, this square
chamber contained elaborately crafted gold sconces spaced regularly along the
walls. A bright yellow flame burned hotly within each of the gilded holders.
Like the ceiling in the foyer from whence the party had come, polished silver
covered the roof of this room, reflecting and magnifying the light from each
sconce so intensely that it took Kaerion a few moments to realize that the
flames burned with an unearthly power. They neither flickered nor reacted to the
passage of the party in any way.

A few more steps carried him into the center of the chamber.
What he saw nearly took his breath away. Kaerion stood, not upon the familiar
gray stone that had made up most of the tomb, but on top of a floor composed of
a semi-precious material—agate from the look of it—crafted and polished to
gleaming perfection. A granite sarcophagus rested on the floor against the far
wall, and even from his position Kaerion could see the slant and whorl of
ancient glyphs inscribed about its surface. In front of the burial mound stood
an oversized bronze urn. The unmistakable flash of gold filigree caught his eye
as the object’s decorative swirls reflected the light. Kaerion watched warily as
a thin stream of bluish-gray smoke issued forth from a vent near the urn’s brass
stopper.

“Will you look at that,” a voice from behind him said.
Kaerion looked at the speaker and was surprised to find himself regarding
Landra. The guard captain had moved forward with the rest of the party and
stopped in the chamber’s center. She gazed intently at the two massive iron
chests that sat to either side of the sarcophagus.

“This must be Acererak’s treasury,” Landra said in a hushed
voice. If this were any other place at any other time, Kaerion might have
smiled. This was the first time he had seen the veteran awed by anything.

“Be careful about what you touch,” Phathas wheezed. “I don’t
think we’ve reached the heart of this tomb yet.”

Concerned but mindful of the mage’s pride, Kaerion watched as
the old wizard walked unsteadily toward the sarcophagus and lifted his staff
above its granite lid Phathas muttered a few words and then took a step back, a
look of surprise stamped clearly upon his wizened face. “Nothing!” the mage
exclaimed.

“There are no spells on the sarcophagus?” Gerwyth asked as he
walked gracefully up to the man.

“No. I mean that I felt nothing,” the mage explained in a
tone so exasperated that Kaerion winced in sympathy for his friend’s innocent
question. “My spell didn’t work!” Phathas began to cast another spell. Again
nothing happened. “It appears that something is interfering with my magic,” the
old man said. “What about you Majandra?”

It only took a few moments for the bard to determine that she
too was affected by this strange occurrence. “Well,” she said in a tone so
similar to Phathas’ earlier exclamation that Kaerion had to fight off the urge
to smile, “whatever wards are blocking our magic don’t seem to be affecting the
tomb itself.” The bard pointed to the wall sconces.

“Shouldn’t we open the sarcophagus?” Bredeth asked. “It might
be Acererak’s final resting place.”

“No,” Kaerion found himself saying. “Acererak is close, but
he isn’t here.”

The others looked at him, but he merely shrugged. He didn’t
know how he knew, but he did. He could feel the evil wizard’s presence like a
canker in his mind. He’d felt it before—briefly, when they had first entered the
Vast Swamp. There, however, it had been merely a trickle of premonition. Here,
close to the heart of Acererak’s damned crypt, the force of it nearly made him
ill. He hadn’t felt such things since Dorakaa—and the implications of that were
almost more terrifying than the palpable sense of Acererak’s presence.

“Anyway,” Majandra said, interrupting his thoughts, “with the
wards in this room counteracting our magic, it’s too dangerous to go fooling
about with things. We might activate a trap we have no power to overcome.”
Kaerion watched as the half-elf’s gaze raked the room. “Besides,” she continued,
“there is still more to Acererak’s riddle, and I think that something is in this
room. It’s—”

“The statues,” Gerwyth finished, sounding very pleased with
himself. Kaerion sighed as his friend pointed to the hulking iron statues that
guarded each corner of the room. The metal figures stood over eight feet tall,
and each wielded a vicious-looking black iron weapon. Turning to face Majandra,
the ranger composed his features in a mock imitation of the half-elf. “‘The
iron men of visage grim do more than meets the viewer’s eyes,’” he intoned
ominously, and then stuck his tongue out at the bard. “And you thought no one
ever listened to what you had to say.”

Majandra offered the elf her most dazzling smile, and Kaerion
found himself once more feeling uncomfortably jealous. Concentrate on the matter
at hand, he chided himself. “Let’s spread out and search those statues,” he said
to the rest of the group. “And be careful not to spring any traps!”

It took a short while for the group to examine each of the
statues. Only one, the image of a hulking fighter wielding a spike-studded mace,
looked different enough to warrant further investigation. After carefully
checking it for traps, Majandra signaled to Kaerion, Gerwyth, and Bredeth. The
three of them each grabbed a portion of the statue and pushed. Within moments,
they all heard a loud scraping sound as the mass of black iron moved slowly
backward, revealing a chute that spiraled down into darkness.

Kaerion clapped his two assistants on the shoulders heartily
as they rested from their recent exertions. Though the elf offered him his usual
smirk, Kaerion could see that something was troubling Bredeth. The young noble’s
face was twisted into a grimace. “What bothers you, Bredeth?” he asked. For a
moment, Kaerion didn’t think that the nobleman would answer, but eventually the
man’s face composed itself.

“N-nothing, Kaerion,” Bredeth said. “I… I think I might
have twisted something in my back.”

Kaerion nodded. He didn’t quite believe the young man, but he
wasn’t willing to pry. Whatever troubled the nobleman, he’d share it when he was
ready. Kaerion’s experience had taught him that lesson.

“Well, then,” Kaerion said, “I’ll go down first. When I
signal that everything is safe, I want the rest of you to come down slowly. Is
that clear?”

There was no dissent as the fighter sheathed his sword and
crawled feet first into the stone shaft. Before he slipped down into the
darkness, he gave Majandra a crooked smile. The bard smiled in return and said
nothing—but Kaerion heard everything he needed to hear in that silence.

With a final wave of his hand, he slid down the chute.