“What did he say to that?” Raven wanted to know.
“He stated that your senses and reflexes were even greater than his own but he was more durable, so to be very careful, and let him know what we find out.”
Raven smiled at Rebekka’s answer, Andronicus, so unemotional and calculated in his responses, yet Raven knew the old man did care about all of them, and was their friend. He gave that away by asking when they would visit him again to enjoy the relaxation he had to offer if too much time had passed since their last visit. Raven made a note to go there and visit before the summer feast.
“Very well then, let us press on, we live for adventure!”
This time they made their way down the passage slowly calculating every step as they went. They approached the bend that turned south with no further incident. Turning south they saw that the passage ended in a door.
As Raven took another step south, he felt the hard stone floor give with the sound of a faint click. Immediately he leaped up and backwards in a flip that landed him almost in Rebekka’s arms. At the same instant spears thrust out from both sides of the wall and would surely have impaled him were it not for his cat-like reflexes.
It took Rebekka a moment to register what had taken place, but when she saw the spears thrust out from the wall she recognized how impossible it was to escape such a trap when sprung.
“Raven,” she said, “maybe I was to hasty in my desire to press on. We could go back.”
Raven’s senses were more tuned now than they had been in years. In fact he had not experienced this kind of heightened awareness since the day he fought in the battle with the Wickshields.
“It will be ok,” Raven assured Rebekka, “just stay back until I have discovered any more traps that might be ahead of us.”
With that he drew his families ancient sword and cut the shafts of the spears off where they jutted from the wall to allow them passage. He then made his way very slowly down the passage without further incident and came to the door.
Innately he knew opening the door would spring a trap so he spent some time concentrating and examining the door for signs of any triggering devices.
Rebekka broke the silence with a whisper, “What is wrong. Do you see something?”
“That is just it,” Raven whispered back, “I do not see a thing, but I know this door will trigger another trap.”
He then told Rebekka to go back down the passage to where it makes a bend and wait on the other side of the bend in safety till he called her. Rebekka hesitated for a moment and then walked down the passage to the turn and stopped around the corner and waited.
Raven lifted the latch to the door and pulled it open toward himself, expecting any moment that there would be some instrument of death coming for him, but none did. This perplexed him and worried him even more.
He started to enter the room when he stopped and knelt by the door opening. Something had caught his eye and he was looking for one of the very thin metal strings Rebekka had tripped on earlier. Then he saw it, a dust particle had floated into a tiny beam of faint light.
“Thank the Creator,” Raven said. If it were not for the dust that had accumulated in the passage over the centuries, he would never have seen this. Raven reached down to the floor and scraped up as much dust as he could with his hand and holding it out in front of his face, he blew the dust from his hand into the door way. Now he could see every so often tiny beams of light lacing the doorway so no one could get through without crossing one of them.
Raven knew this was the trap but did not know what would come by setting it off. He was still on his knees so he lay flat on the floor of the passage and reached out and blocked one of the fine streams of faint light. There was a sound from the room to which the door opened and then Raven, with his tuned senses, caught the movement of four crossbow bolts coming toward the doorway. One just missed Raven’s ear as the four arrows passed through the doorway to embed in the wall of the passage where it turned sharply.
Almost instantly he heard Rebekka calling his name, “Raven, Raven, are you all right?”
“Stay where you are, I am fine,” Raven called back.
Rebekka was not about to move seeing the arrows stuck in the wall, not far from her position.
Raven began for the first time to have doubts as to the prudence of continuing on. Even with his enhanced senses and reflexes he could not have avoided four arrows at once coming through the doorway and would probably be dead if he had not been laying down. But the sense of curiosity, as well as a little anger prompted him to press the matter further.
Running his hand through the doorway brought no further response so Raven got to his feet and looked with more interest beyond the door to a room on the other side.
“Not unlike the weapons room in his own castle,” Raven thought, “but much more deadly.” Before Raven entered the room he made a mental note of what he could see of the contents. Torches rested in their holders on the wall with decorative armor here and there, and the Prescott coat of arms was etched on the far wall.
Raven suspected a secret compartment lay behind the Prescott crest, for that was how it was in the weapons room of the king’s castle. There, behind each of the crests of the four dukes and that of the old king was a secret compartment. In that compartment there was a chain that held a colored stone and a note which read:
“We fled the enemy of our first home,
and took with us the sacred stones,
that would protect if he should find,
to where in time we did fly, and the
stones if used the proper way,
will send him back to his own day.”
Further scanning revealed a mosaic in the floor covered by the dust of the centuries in a design he had never seen before. The dust obscured most of the mosaic so he might recognize the picture if the floor were clean. That would have to be taken care of as soon as the room was secure and safe for them to move about.
In a far corner was the only piece of furniture in the room, an ornate chest with gold bindings.
Further scanning revealed nothing so Raven moved cautiously into the room. He thought it best to go straight to the middle of the room to give himself space to maneuver if any more traps were sprung. He stepped purposefully on the mosaic in case it would trigger any traps as well, but nothing happened. Raven moved toward the Prescott coat of arms carved in the wall facing the door and still no traps were sprung.
“It must be the opening of the compartment that will bring the surprise,” Raven thought to himself. He felt the coat of arms and found the release catch. As he depressed it, he readied himself for any deadly assault, but again nothing happened as the hidden panel swung open.
At that moment he heard Rebekka calling to him and turned his attention from the hidden compartment to the rest of the room. Walking quickly around, he found there were no more traps so he called to Rebekka and told her to come down and join him. He waited by the door for her, just in case there was something he missed. When she entered, he told her of the ingenious light traps of the doorway. Both of their nerves were a bit on edge but they began to settle as they surveyed the room once again together.
Then Rebekka asked the question that had been haunting Raven the whole time. “Why would the ancients want to harm us, or anyone for that matter.”
And then indignantly added. “And of all people my ancestors set these traps!”
“I do not know,” Raven replied. “But the answers to those questions I believe are here. There is something here that Duke Prescott did not want anyone to find and hid it here behind all these deadly traps.”
Rebekka pointed to the chest and they both walked over to it to examine it further. It was beautiful and ornate. As they examined how to open its latch both discovered at the same time it required one of the rings the ancients had made of their crests to open it. Raven knew right away that his crest would not fit the pattern, it would have to be the seal
of the Prescott dukeship to make it work.
Rebekka likewise realized this and said; “The latch requires the ring of our family crest to open this chest. I recognize the inverted seal of our family. It is too bad that we have lost our families ring over the centuries.”
Raven knew that no amount of prying would open the chest. It was built too well to be broken open, just like the other things the ancients had built. So he turned his attention to the open compartment behind the Prescott family seal. He and Rebekka walked over to the open compartment in the wall and began to view its contents. There was a piece of cloth, and something else that Raven could not see well at the back.
Rebekka started to reach up toward the opening when Raven stopped her.
She looked at him and said. “What is it Raven? There are no traps in this room, it is safe here.”
“That is what I am worried about,” stated Raven. “The sense of security that comes from the lack of traps in this room would lull someone into the casual placement of their hand into this compartment.”
Raven looked around the room and quickly went over to one of the torches and removed it from its holder on the wall and returned to where Rebekka was waiting. He then took the wooden handle and slowly inserted it into the opening. There was a slight hiss and three sharp needles plunged into the wood from three different angles, making it impossible to have escaped being jabbed.
Rebekka jumped back at the action and even Raven was surprised a little by the sudden trap.
“Your ancestor was a devious man. I realize now that we are both lucky to be alive, for I am certain that there is deadly poison in these needles that would kill very quickly.”
Raven twisted the torch and pulled it back and two of the needles broke off. He then pried on the third until it broke as well. Inserting of the torch handle again brought no further action or traps, so Raven knew the danger was over, yet he still used the torch to drag the scrap of cloth to the opening, not trusting anything to chance. He knew there would be writing on the piece of cloth because it was like that which they had found in the chamber at happiness creek years before. When he held it up to read, Rebekka looked over his shoulder, and they were both astounded at what they saw. The note read:
“My dearest friend Uriah, you are reading this note because I have been murdered and you are searching for answers to who is responsible for my death. You are the only one outside of my immediate family that now knows of this secret room. I apologize for the traps, but thought it prudent to protect what I have left here for you in case someone else by some action or accident finds this secret passage, especially my assassin. The first trap would kill an ordinary man but someone trained would easily escape it. I knew that would alert you to the rest of the traps set here which even the trained would fail to avoid. I knew your genetic reflexes and heightened senses coupled with the knowledge you have of how I think, will see you through the other traps to this note. It is impossible to think that someone else may be reading this, and if they are then they are better than you, and no one is better at this than you my friend. So take the spare ring from the compartment and open the chest. In it is all the information I have gathered on the possible suspects of betrayal. I know we all swore to destroy all of our high-tec weapons, but under the mosaic in the floor is stored some lasers and other weapons I kept back. If you need them only you will know how to open this vault. Farewell my friend, and watch your back.”
Raven folded up the note, and using the torch, fished out the spare Prescott ring needed to open the chest. Placing the note back inside the compartment, he closed it back up and walked over to the chest with Rebekka following. At the chest he knelt and placed the ring into the receptacle made for it and pushed. There was a faint click and the chest unlocked. Raven raised the lid slowly but did not expect any more traps and his assumptions were proved true when nothing happened.
Inside the chest were two scrolls and an ornate sliver box with the name “Othellia” inscribed on it. Raven took the silver box out and handed it to Rebekka and started to reach for the scrolls when he stopped, not out of fear of a trap but at the contrast in the two scrolls. One was made of the durable material the ancients used to preserve their important writings on, but the other was made of ordinary parchment. Raven took the durable scroll out and handed it to Rebekka as well but when he touched the other scroll lightly it began to crumble to dust.
“We are not going to read what is on that scroll,” Raven said out loud, “so we shall leave it where it is.” Raven closed the lid to the chest and heard it lock. He turned to Rebekka and said. “Shall we go?”
Rebekka paused for a moment and then said. “I would like to see the weapons they have hidden under the mosaic, if your armor is incredible, what would the weapons they have hidden here be like?”
With that she set the scroll and the silver box on the floor and scurried over to the mosaic, kneeled and began brushing off the dust that had accumulated over the centuries. Raven stood where he was for a moment, sighed and went over to help Rebekka clean the floor. When it was brushed off they could see the beautiful picture inlaid in the stone floor. A farming scene seemed to jump to life with sheaves of grain stacked in a field by a red barn, with a family sitting down to lunch, taking a break from their work. It was a wondrous scene that captured the essence of a family content with their life on a farm.
Raven closed his eyes and ran his hands over the mosaic, but to his discouragement found nothing out of place. He did the same thing again with no better results, though he concentrated much harder. There were thousands of pieces of little tiles, but none of them felt any different.
Raven looked at Rebekka and said, “I do not think I will be able to open this, I have no Idea how. It is better anyway.”
“What do you mean,” Rebekka wanted to know.
“If these weapons were to be destroyed, they must be terrible indeed, and it is better they are left alone.” With that they rose and picked up the scroll and the silver box and headed back down the secret passage to their room.
Once back inside their room, Raven handed Rebekka the Prescott family ring and said; “We should give this to your father and emphasize that it should be passed on to his son and his son’s son to many generations. And remind him it is as old as the armor and comes to us from the ancients.”
Rebekka nodded, taking the ring from Raven and sat upon the bed to study it. After a long look at the ancient ring she looked at Raven and spoke with emotion.
“Our family’s ring has been restored to us, a treasure I am sure they will not appreciate, especially its use.”
Raven nodded, knowing Rebekka referred to using the ring to reach the top of Brickens’ Falls where Andronicus stayed keeping the wisdom of the ancients.
“What if it is lost again in another thousand years Raven? Should we take that kind of chance?”
“What are we to do?” Raven replied. “Keep these things from those whose right it is to possess them? It is true in a millennia it may be lost, but to keep it from them now would be like it was lost already. Here we have a chance to start once again with the heritage of our fathers. No, we must give it to your father, it is the rightful seal of his dukeship.”
Rebekka sat upright as Raven finished with an odd look on her face, perplexing Raven until it dawned on him she was communicating with Andronicus.
She looked at Raven and said, “Andronicus wants to know if all was well, and if we have found out the reason for all the traps in the secret passage.”
“Tell him,” Raven started to say, and then commented. “I wish I could speak to him myself, it is so hard relaying messages.”
Rebekka smiled and said, “I can talk to Andronicus, and I can talk to your mind as well, maybe I can bring you into our conversation if I think of both of you at once.”
Rebekka concentrated and spoke to Raven’s mind, “can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Raven responded.
“Try a
nd talk to Andronicus,” encouraged Rebekka.
“Andronicus,” Raven asked tentatively.
“Yes, King Raven,” came the reply.
It almost shocked Raven for he had never heard anyone else in his mind besides Rebekka.
“Have you become telepathic,” Andronicus asked perplexed?
“No,” Raven answered, “Rebekka is helping us talk to each other.”
“I have never known that to be done before,” Andronicus spoke with astonishment. “Please continue, King Raven.”
“I disarmed all of the traps and found a note that spoke of a possible traitor and betrayal of the ancients. Duke Prescott said if someone were reading this note, then it could only be his friend Uriah investigating his murder. We found a spare Prescott ring and it opened a chest with a two scrolls in it, one crumbled but the other is made of the durable cloth like that of the happiness creek chamber. Do you know of any conspiracy?”
There was a pause for a moment and Raven thought that maybe Andronicus had lost the link he had with Raven until his words came again.
“To hear of a possible conspiracy King Raven, troubles me, for I know nothing of any of this. Uriah and Amnon Prescott were very close friends and at times secretive but I heard nothing of conspiracy. Uriah was security chief for all of Glenfair in the beginning of the kingdom, and he often confided in Amnon. Amnon and Uriah both died of old age, there was never a murder. I am impressed that you are still alive if these traps were set to eliminate every one but Uriah, he was the greatest of all weapons masters. I have much to tell you of the ancients. It was not all picture perfect in the beginning, so do come to see me soon.”
“I will,” answered Raven, “before the summer feast.” With that he looked at Rebekka and she sank back on the bed with her face flushed.
“Are you all right,” Raven asked her.
“Yes,” Rebekka said, “it was a strain to keep you both talking. I do not think I will do that again unless it is necessary.”
The King's Ancestors Page 4
