“You can make it,” he whispered over and over, his mouth suddenly dry. He hung there for several long moments, unable to climb up or descend to the ground below. Eventually, his heartbeat returned to its normal rate and he started climbing once again.
His hand found the ledge and he hoisted himself onto the large outcropping and stepped away from the edge. Several deep breaths later and he was ready to look for the glinting object that attracted his attention and prompted his climb.
Kyle walked toward the towering mass of mud, dirt and grasses. Something didn’t seem right here. Still, he continued to move closer.
Clumped mud and grasses hung in an upside down curve between two straight uprights. He stepped forward and touched the curved object, and it slowly swung back and forth. Grabbing it, he gave it a hard twist and the dried mud broke away revealing a rusty chain. His fingertips followed the chains forward and back, he discovered the remains of a driving harness saddle hooked to thin rusted plate armor. Moving the plates to one side, he revealed rotted cloth padding and the thick, yellowed bones of some kind of hoofed beast.
* * * *
Kyle moved along the debris and found several other tangled clumps of bone, cloth and armor, all in the same condition. Moving back from his starting point, Kyle realized that the large mass must be the coach that the animal team was driving.
“Probably large horses,” he said aloud as he looked left and right along the remains of the team. Stepping over the slippery muck, Kyle tried to imagine how the carriage could be oriented and decided that it probably was lying on its side.
A large chunk of mud formed a small overhang. Kyle ducked under it, stood up on the other side, and gave the overhang more scrutiny. He picked at the still soft mud and managed to scrape off a large enough blob to reveal the remains of a wheel hub. He scooped a squirming earthworm from the hollow of the hub and tossed it into the grass behind him. The heavy wooden spokes had broken off either during the accident that brought this carriage to its doom or sometime during the tumble down the cliff face from the Highland Road.
Kyle stepped to the rear of the coach, and made several rough footholds by repeatedly kicking at the thick mud clumps until they gave way, exposing metalwork that looked able to support his weight. He tested the hold to be sure, so he wouldn’t slip and cut himself. He grabbed a metal ring over his head and hoisted himself to the top of the mound and looked out over the valley. A shudder ran through him when he saw how close the wreckage was to the edge of the ledge.
He was about to slip back down the way he’d come when he saw a curved piece of metal jutting up out of the mud next to his planted knee. It took only a second to recognize it as the handle to the carriage door, and another second to forget the feeling of danger from only a moment earlier.
Kyle grabbed the handle and tried to turn it. It held fast. He scraped away the mud and muck that covered the surface where he knelt. He found only solid metal panels of unyielding armor plate. The door’s hinges were corroded, but were as thick and sturdy as the armored door they supported.
The handle wouldn’t budge. He was about to give up when something below the handle gave. He repositioned himself and twisted the handle again. This time something inside the door cracked.
The handle snapped off the shaft, and Kyle tumbled forward. He caught himself with his outstretched hands, sliding in the soft earth.
“Damn.”
His fingertips ran along the edge of the door and scraped more of the mud away. He picked up the broken handle and worked the thin metal into the channel he’d revealed. Twisting the handle and working it around, the door raised enough to crack the remaining mud around its parameter. He made another pass with the handle, bearing down on it, and managed to lift the door enough to get his fingertips around the edge. Slowly, he pulled. The hinges complained, but eventually the latch gave way and with a final grunted cry, Kyle shoved the door open, revealing the blackness of the windowless carriage’s interior.
The carriage shifted under his feet. He looked out over the valley and a voice inside his head raised an alarm and panic froze him in place, until the gentle rocking stopped. Kyle straddled the opening and with a second look into the compartment, he dismissed the alarm with a whispered assurance that everything would be okay.
Lowering himself into the passenger compartment of the carriage, Kyle held himself up by his forearms until he found solid footing inside. Taking one last look around, he let go of the door frame, his foothold shifted and he slipped in the dim light of the interior and crashed to the bottom of the carriage.
He searched for what had broken his fall and was horrified to see jagged bone and bits of rotten cloth. Jumping quickly to his feet, he stepped away as far as the cramped quarters would allow. Nausea overcame him as his empty stomach clutched several times. He took several deep breaths until the feeling passed and he could face the dead passengers again.
Kneeling, he looked at the crumpled mass of humanity. He could make out rusted chain mail covered by bits of cloth that were faded and disintegrated enough that any emblems were impossible to discern. Kyle decided there were two passengers, and the chain mail indicated soldiers or men of some importance. He thought of what their last trip must have been like as they tumbled to their deaths and he shuddered.
When he’d seen enough, he looked for something to step on to climb out of the tomb and back into the fresh air. His hand grabbed onto what must have been one of the bench seats and instead of it being sturdy, he found it moved easily, swinging away from his hand on a hinge.
“What…” was all that he managed before his voice was drowned out by the sound of clattering metal and a disorienting shift of the carriage itself. Immediately, Kyle’s mind leapt to the image of the carriage resting on the edge of the ledge, and knew he’d overstayed his welcome.
In the dim light, Kyle could make out the source of the clattering metal. Two short swords lay on the floor of the carriage. They were covered with the faint remnants of their rotted leather scabbards. Pulling his pack free from his back, he unlashed one of the straps that held the flap closed, and gathered up the weapons. The scabbards fell away when he picked them up, exposing the swords which shined in the dim light. Kyle slipped them inside his pack as well as he could.
The hilts were still visible as he fastened the flap down. He tossed the bag free of the cabin and readied himself to climb out, but his eye caught sight of something small and irregular in the hinged seat’s storage compartment.
His hand found a small wooden storage chest jammed in the bottom corner. Jerking it free by the metal handle on one end, he hoisted it up over his head and settled it on the outside of the carriage. Kyle used the now empty seat as a foothold and climbed free of the carriage and closed the armored door. He slid to the edge of the metal frame, dragging the small chest behind. After a cursory look for safety, he jumped to the soggy earth below.
The coach rocked closer to the edge as his weight shifted. Stepping away from the dangerous mass, he walked back toward where the dead team of horses had once been hitched and put the chest down next to his pack. He took another long look at the wreckage and in the mid-morning sun, something shimmered near one of the harnesses.
Cautiously he inched toward the wreckage again. The rocking of the coach spooked him, and a feeling of unease came over him. Twisted into one of the harnesses was the shredded remains of a pageant that covered the back of one of the beasts that pulled the coach.
Sewn onto the soiled cloth was a silver button.
Kyle took another tentative step forward, looked down the length of the muddy tomb and reached for the button.
He pulled firmly but the ancient thread refused to break and the remains of the cloth caught between two pieces of the underlying metal armor plate.
The sound was quiet at first, but gained in amplitude quickly. The slippery sound of something sliding free of the mud that once held it in place. It was the massive bulk of the doomed caravan slipping from its
temporary resting place on the edge of the ledge.
Kyle froze, unable to leap from the dangerous situation unfolding before his eyes. His hand still grasped the silver button while his eyes registered the rear of the carriage as it slipped from the edge and disappeared. The dull sound of metal pieces striking each other as it slipped down the hillside, muffled by the caked-on mud and vegetation. The sound grew louder as the weight of the massive cart pulled the rest of the wreckage with it.
When the remains of the team’s harnesses closest to the coach lifted up in the air, Kyle’s paralysis finally broke.
Chains whipped past him, looking like metal serpents, crisscrossing the ground and lashing out, striking Kyle and knocking him onto his back. Knifing pain shot through his shoulder where the chains landed.
With a final groan, the black mass slipped over the edge of the cliff. Kyle scrambled to his feet and hurried to the edge and looked down toward the valley floor. With the momentum it gained in the fall, it easily cleared the edge of the Pit and seemed to hang for several seconds before splashing and sinking beneath the muddy water.
Harsh ripples moved across the muck followed by a stream of increasingly weaker ones until, at last, the surface stilled and the remains of the coach and its team disappeared into the stagnant depths.
Kyle stepped back from the edge and opened his clenched hand. In the middle of his grimy palm was a silver button whose face consisted of a dagger over a crest.
Chapter Two
Kyle flexed his bruised shoulder where he was struck and winced at the dull ache. Nothing broken. He smiled as he squeezed the silver button he’d inadvertently rescued.
He stuffed the silver object into his pocket and warily went to where his pack and the small chest lay.
Kyle pulled the short swords free from his pack and examined them. He didn’t have much knowledge about the craftsmanship of the weapons, but even he could tell they were of a high quality. The blades were almost completely free of the decay that seemed to plague the carriage. Their edges were still relatively sharp, and the hilt grips were firm and didn’t show any signs of decay or rot.
He pulled his spare set of clothes from the pack and wrapped the swords with them, protecting and keeping them from making noise as he carried the pack. Next he turned his attention to the wooden box.
Where the swords were almost entirely free of corrosion, the same couldn’t be said for the iron bands holding the small chest together. Kyle pulled rusted flakes from the bands and dropped them to the ground.
He located a stone that looked solid enough to break the chest open. As he held the stone over his head, he imagined the small fortune in gold coins, silver pieces or handfuls of gems he was sure the chest contained. Gripping the stone firmly, he brought it crashing down on the chest. He repeated the beating until the firm wood finally gave way. Kyle tossed the rock to one side, grabbed the broken pieces of the chest, and twisted them free of the bent metal bands holding them in place. The final wooden scrap he pulled free was snagged on the contents of the box. When the splinter snapped free, a jagged piece of a red velvet bag jutted upward like the ear of a curious rabbit. He pulled the bag loose, gave the interior another look, and, satisfied it was empty, dropped the box to the ground.
The red velvet bag was heavy and fingering the object inside through the cloth, Kyle imagined it was some kind of medal or oversized coin. From the weight it was either iron or, he hoped, gold. He debated for a long moment bringing the bag home and waiting for his father so the two of them could open it together. The debate ended when he looked again at the spot where not so long ago a mud encrusted carriage lay resting on its side. If he had shifted his weight the wrong way while inside, he would be dead right now, crushed possibly, drowned assuredly, at the age of seventeen, and none would have been the wiser to his fate.
Digging with his fingernail and then resorting to gnawing at the twisted cotton, he loosened the knot enough to get the string free. Holding the black drawstring in his fingers, he stopped again as a strange feeling came over him. It was a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. He took a quick look around, but of course, he was alone.
Wait. No sounds. The valley was quiet. He could hear the sounds of birds, but they were impossibly far away, like a distant memory. In the valley, the wildlife seemed to be holding its collective breath.
His imagination. That’s all it was. Was it just that he imagined the valley would be noisy with the sounds of birds? He couldn’t remember the sounds when he entered it several hours earlier. Probably exhaustion or just being spooked by the events of the last thirty minutes. With a casual shrug of his shoulders, he pulled the mouth of the bag open wide with his two fingers and dumped its contents into his outstretched palm.
A gold medallion slipped free of the red velvet bag and landed in Kyle’s hand. As it touched his skin, a blue glow grew from his palm and enveloped his entire hand, warming his skin as it traveled. The light continued its flow up his wrist, losing its opaqueness until it was transparent at his elbow. Kyle closed his eyes tight, shook his head in an attempt to assure himself that the glow wasn’t an illusion of some kind.
When he opened his eyes, the landscape around Kyle had changed to darkness. He could see a small barred window in front of him, and through it, a cobblestone road with deep green woods on either side. The wind blew past his face from the two side windows. The world moved past the windows with an urgency.
He saw two men, covered in chain mail, sleeping on the padded wooden bench, that he recognized as the one inside the carriage, rotted and reduced to splinters. The cry of a carriage driver rang out and suddenly the clatter of the wheels on the left against the cobblestone stopped. Kyle felt the vehicle violently dip in that direction. The two soldiers awoke, startled, and began to curse the driver for his poor control. Their cursing became muffled cries as the armored wagon began to tumble over the edge of the hillside.
In that instant, Kyle was back again. His hand jerked and sent the medallion into the mud, where it flipped once and was still. He fell back onto the ground and stared at the object lying in the soggy grass as if it had bitten him. He felt his stomach spasm. He quickly turned to one side and vomited into the grass.
He didn’t know how long he sat there looking at the medallion, replaying the images of the scene of the two doomed men and the carriage driver. Was it the heat sickness or some kind of poisoning from the slimy insides of the wreckage? The feeling of nausea edged at him in waves several times before it finally subsided and his stomach was again at peace.
He spit to clear his mouth and it suddenly occurred to him that the shadows around him had changed. The sun had passed overhead and was now headed toward the western horizon. The skies that had been clear and a refreshing blue were now littered with patches of clouds, some of them an ominous shade of gray.
Something was terribly wrong with the object he’d recovered. Getting to his feet again, he decided that gold or not, he was going to be rid of the golden disk.
Kyle moved the tip of his boot to the edge of the medallion, half expecting it to move under its own power. With a hard swallow, he flicked the disk toward The Pit. The golden object turned in the air, catching a few rays of winking sunlight before its arc brought it tumbling down into the dark morass of The Pit.
Kyle stood motionless looking at the spot where the golden object disappeared. He debated whether it had been the best decision to cast away the treasure, but the uneasy feeling was now gone and he was convinced he’d made the right choice. Whatever powers the medallion possessed, were buried in the silt somewhere at the bottom of the sinkhole.
I need to get home, he thought. Walking over to his pack, he decided that whatever it was that happened in the carriage and whatever that golden medallion was, it was a secret that he would keep to himself.
He reached for the straps to his pack, and that’s when he noticed his hand.
* * * *
On the palm of his right hand were two circles,
one small one inside of another. The area between the inner and outer circles was segmented into thirteen equal arcs. Each arc contained a collection of light blue lines arranged into symbols Kyle had never seen before. The blue lines glowed faintly. When he touched them with the tip of his finger, all he could feel was skin, as if the lines were inked onto his hand.
“What the gods?” Kyle spit out and rubbed his open hands onto the muddy ground over and over again.
He rubbed his palm with the fingers of his opposite hand, feeling the grit from the mud dig and scrub into his skin. He stopped long enough to examine his work and was relieved when he didn’t see anything but dirty hands. The working hands of a farm boy.
“Good,” he breathed deeply and wiped his muddy hands on the seat of his pants. Reaching for his pack, he caught sight of this palm again and stopped.
The circular pattern was still drawn on his palm’s surface in faded blue lines, glowing weakly.
Kyle traced the thin lines again. “Impossible.”
He found a dry patch of earth nearby, sat down cross-legged, and stared at his affected hand. The glow never got brighter or dimmer. Where the lines crossed his skin, it didn’t feel any different than his unmarked skin.
“What are you?” He asked the artwork on his skin. While he stared, he thought of the visions in the carriage, when it suddenly came to him.
“Magic,” he whispered.
Opening his pack, he pulled his work gloves on and shouldered the pack. There was one person he knew of who would know about the symbols and what could be done to remove them from his skin. He’s never met him before, but knew of an elder magic user by reputation. He would have to keep the markings a secret for now, but in the morning he would go to town and speak to the elder Kalaldi.
* * * *
Kyle opened the door to his home and was both relieved and anxious to see his father sitting at their little dining table. His back was to the door and sitting across from him was a man Kyle had never seen before. Between the two men was a map drawn on a piece of yellowing parchment. He could see the valley with the Pit featured prominently in the center and Beggar’s Stream running down through the middle of it all. Near the valley’s pass, in the middle of the stream was a small circle with a cross through the center of it. He looked at the stranger again and then turned casually and set his pack down carefully in the small alcove near the door.
Medallion of the Undead Page 2
