by Aaron Bunce
Thorben swallowed and turned, the pesky lump still sitting awkwardly in his throat. The torch light shifted, the pile of bodies falling back into darkness. His mind raced, a multitude of details spinning forth at once. The blood under their bodies was still glossy. It hadn’t dried. The air smelled of death, but not of decomposition. Surely, if the men had not all died together, some had lain there longer than others. And stranger still, there were no flies, no signs of larva. That he could see, at least.
Gor prodded him back towards the middle of the chamber. Hun and Renlo crowded in closer, prodding Jez and Iona towards the platform. Thorben stopped just short, his eyes darting from Jez’s face to Iona and back to the podium and its odd, barrel-shaped contraptions.
“Don’t do it. You’ll die,” Jez whispered, before Hun silenced her with a choking arm. If he refused, then she’d die first, and he would have to watch. The thought was unbearable.
“Turn the keys, clever man, and unlock the gate!” Gor growled.
“I’m not ready. I need to continue studying the chamber…looking for clues…figuring out the order in which to turn the…” Thorben argued, but the spear point bit deeper. He arched his back to avoid the weapon, but the big man maintained the pressure, until he staggered forward, his right foot landing in the middle of the platform.
“No!” Jez cried out, her voice small and strangled.
Gor prodded Thorben forward again, jabbing the spear into the back of his left leg, forcing him to step fully onto the inscribed stone.
“Three chances,” Iona whispered. His voice was almost as strangled as Jez’s, only he didn’t have an arm around his throat.
Thorben looked at the small man, cowering beneath Renlo and Hun’s bulk, his mind twirling in a frantic dance. He looked to Renlo, trying to catch a glimpse or sign in the man’s eyes, but he quickly looked away.
Death and dust, Thorben. Open your eyes and think!
Turning slowly to face the podium, Thorben closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The room stopped spinning, although not for its lack of effort. His hands and legs shook, the impulse to turn and stare at the pile of dead delvers almost overriding his sensibilities. They weren’t just other delvers, but they were owls, like him – all intelligent, crafty men. Most likely had more experience than he.
“Don’t think about them. Think about the keys,” he whispered suddenly, and forced in a quick breath and pushed it back out again. They were gone, and could only serve to distract him. There was too much at stake for Thorben to allow that to happen.
Opening his eyes, Thorben leaned forward, and using the torchlight, inspected the wood keys. He reached for the one on the left, but paused, his finger hovering just above the highly polished surface.
“Will I know…if they are turned in the wrong order?” he asked, pulling his hand back.
“I believe so,” Iona said, his voice thick with something. Pain, fear?
I believe so, Thorben thought, echoing the strange reply. He turned, a question faltering on his lips. Iona’s dark eyes were hooded, their usual sparkle gone. Yes, he would know.
Thorben turned back to the gate, Iona’s words echoing in his mind. I’m his last chance to get into the crypt, he thought. If he failed, it wouldn’t just be his body added to the pile. He tried to believe that the three men wouldn’t harm Jez, but Hun whispered something a heartbeat later, and he realized that hope was folly. With the weight of three lives pressing down on his shoulders, Thorben leaned forward and considered the first key.
Three keys…that means I have one chance in three to get the first one right. Those aren’t horrible odds, he thought, but then remembered that he only had three chances period. The first carving depicted a branching tree, star-like flowers blooming within its foliage. The next showed a skeletal, barren tree set amongst a starry sky, and the last, which he had to lean forward on his tiptoes to see, depicted a small plant, budding to life, a blazing sun behind it. He checked all three keys, confirming each contained the same carvings.
“A budding plant, a full grown tree, and a dead one,” he said, rationalizing the progression in the three carvings. From seed to ash…birth to death. The cycle. Confident in his discovery, Thorben took the first key and turned it. The wooden barrel rotated slowly, a sharp clicking noise punctuating the halting movement. The key clicked a final time, the carving of the budding plant catching the torchlight as it stopped beneath the emerald marker.
Thorben excitedly moved towards the second key, but a deep hum sounded at his feet, the stone platform vibrating beneath him. A tingle formed in his feet, and trickled up his legs. Thorben tried to shift his feet, to shake away the uncomfortable sensation, but discovered in horror that he couldn’t move his legs.
“Wait! I can’t move,” he cried out in alarm. He twisted about, the tingling sensation burning all the way into his thighs. Jez sobbed, her face already streaked with tears. Iona met his gaze, his mouth turned down in a pitiful, sour mask. He’d told him. Once he turned the keys, he could not step off the platform. And unless he discovered the correct order, he never would.
Thorben turned back to the three keys, a silent prayer forming on his lips. He reached up and started turning the second key. The wood was cool in his hand, the surface so finely polished it almost felt like crystal.
Hold Dennica in your keeping, watch over Dennah, and help her become a strong woman, like her mother. Allow my boys to become good men, this world needs them, he thought, the key clicking and stopping, the ruby marker pointing to the carving of the fully-grown tree .
Thorben reached over to the third key, and before he could stop himself, turned it to the last carving, the skeletal, dead tree and sparkling stars glimmering in the torchlight beneath the diamond. As soon as the key clicked into place, the platform beneath his feet started to buzz. He could feel it in his feet and ankles, accompanied by a hum so low he could barely make it out.
His gaze snapped up to the gate, but it hung unmoving, silently mocking his desperation. Thorben waited another lengthy moment, hoping that some noise would split the chamber’s horrible silence, and the gate would start to open.
“Birth to death…several of the others surmised that as well,” Iona said, suddenly, appearing next to him without warning.
“Could you not have shared that bit of helpfulness before I started?” Thorben groused, eyeing the keys before looking back to the small man.
“Apologies!” Iona whispered, hovering next to him.
“I need all the information I can get, otherwise I’m just poking about in the dark…hoping for a prayer.”
Iona nodded and then promptly shook his head, his shoulders sagging. Thorben watched him for a moment. This wasn’t the man he remembered – a cutthroat, strong willed, brash, and yet, decidedly compassionate merchant – a crook, maybe even a villain in the right people’s eyes, but not evil or uncaring. He’d picked up on some early signs, but now it was apparent. Iona looked changed, worn down, perhaps even broken. Thorben looked up to Gor and his cronies, Jez trapped in their midst, and wondered what had happened to him in the thaws since they parted ways.
Gor mentioned the River Guild, which Thorben had only ever heard about in stories. They were a small group of merchants and boatmen, organized out of desperation. He’d heard whispers that they were honest men once, coming together to fight against the Council’s oppressive taxes on the river folk.
Their influence and strength grew quickly, winning them more than a reprieve from the burdensome taxes, but affording leverage over the very men lording over them before. Corruption and darkness seeped in, and the men who once sought only fairness, became the very thing they once cursed and despised.
His thoughts immediately flooded back to Lamtrop’s Woolery, and considered that Iona and Jez’s story likely wasn’t too dissimilar to his own – Iona needed money, and the River Guild stepped forward. Part of him wondered what the crooked river men demanded in return.
Thorben reached down and gently rubbed
his side, the skin and muscles beneath the damp fabric still sore to the touch. Gor and Rance were the same monster, just shrouded in different skin. Their leashes were held by different masters, true, but the motivations were one and the same. Whoever Gor’s masters were, they wanted the treasure locked away behind the gate in front of him.
A weapon, Thorben suddenly thought, remembering something Iona said. He’d mentioned that swords of incredible power were rumored to be locked away in one of the dalan crypts. He’d heard stories of ancient weapons, powerful enough to kill men and beasts by the droves. His skin instantly turned clammy at the thought, as he imagined Gor turning such a weapon on him.
Turning back to the keys, Thorben cleared his throat and cracked his knuckles. He refused to be added to a pile of corpses. He would figure out the key to open the crypts, and then maybe, he would figure out a way to prize them all away from men like Gor and Lamtrop. And if a weapon lay within the crypt, keep it out of their grasp.
“Did they try death to birth?” he asked.
“Yes,” Iona said with a nod, his eyes locked on the keys.
“And?” he pressed, his anxiousness building.
“…we have tried every combination.”
Thorben’s spirits plummeted, his knees going weak. He turned on the smaller man, “you brought me here, knowing that you’ve tried every combination? I don’t want to die, Iona. I want to see my wife again, hold my children. See my sons become men, pass their trials, and serve, maybe even one day put grandchildren on my knee.” A wave of despair accompanied his words, and had his legs not been frozen in place, he would have crumpled to the ground.
“I…I…I’m sorry,” Iona stammered, “I know how you work. You used to thrive in the moment, seemingly coming up with answers when none existed. I…I thought that if I didn’t…If we didn’t overload you with all of our failures, you’d be able to see something we missed…to the truth of things.”
“Or more likely, you didn’t want to mention that those dead bodies over there,” he growled, and pointed towards the pile of dead men shrouded by darkness, “had already tried every practical combination of these three keys. And…and what? I’d pull a miracle out of the air? That I’d manage something they couldn’t? Or was it more likely that I would say no, and fight, or run, and leave you alone with these men?” Thorben glared at Iona, and then back to Gor and the others. He knew the answer, even if none of them…well, save for Jez, would have admitted it. Had they told him, he never would have set foot on the platform, knowing he’d be staring his own death right in the face. A spear in the back while trying to escape seemed wholly preferable, considering he might have at least died on his own terms.
“My death is on your hands,” he hissed, so only Iona could hear, and turned back to the keys. Hands trembling, Thorben reached up and grasped the second key. The barrel spun, stopping only when the fully-grown tree met the ruby marker. He flinched, but nothing happened.
Dennica forgive me, I am a fool, he thought, and reached up and started to turn the third and final key. The wood barrel moved, the unseen mechanism providing more resistance than the first two. It ground and clicked, his arms shaking from the effort, until the bare tree appeared, the carved stars and crescent moon meeting the diamond.
As soon as the key clicked into place, the air around him started to buzz, as if a horde of flies had suddenly taken to flight. The darkness pooling between the braziers grew deeper, the chamber falling into gloom as the light lost a bit of its life. His stomach lurched, and the pressure on his legs grew even more intense. He wanted to curse, to cry out in anger, but even that small task felt monumental.
One, he thought, his heart hiccupping in his chest. Thorben dropped his hands onto the podium, his body sagging from the pressure. It felt like he was in the river again, the invisible, dark water working to crush him into dark oblivion.
Think, you fool. The answer is somewhere, likely hidden in plain sight. You have to find it…you must find it! Thorben took a deep breath, and intentionally avoiding Iona’s gaze, picked his head up and looked around the room. The gate glimmered straight ahead, shining like a prize just out of reach.
His eyes dropped to the keys, the podium, and then to the ground. The deep carvings in the platform beneath his feet were ornate and fantastic, but he couldn’t immediately discern any images trapped in the scrolling, looping designs, nor any patterns for that matter. All he could see was dark blood pooled in places Gor and his men couldn’t wipe away.
The dalan were storytellers, it has to be a puzzle…not straightforward, nothing as simple as birth to death. That was stupid, Thorben. Use your eyes, he thought, and looked to the complicated mural carved on the walls all around him. But it could be anything…
Thorben cued in on the carving immediately to his right, or the creature perched on top of the rock. Just behind it, on a hill, stood a single, full tree, a blazing sun rising directly behind it. He dropped his gaze to the keys. It was the same tree, duplicated in limb, leaf, and trunk. He looked to the wall again, and scanned around him. A glimmer of light caught his eye, one of the crystals in the rotating mobile overhead catching the firelight. A carving stood just beneath the reflection. He searched the image for several labored moments, his eyes struggling in the gloom, but then he saw it…trapped behind the looping swirls of what he thought must be snow. It was a tree, bare of foliage, what looked like stars and a crescent moon hovering in the sky above.
“Of course,” he whispered, scanning to his right and catching sight of the last key image – a budding plant beneath a sky of fluffy clouds and shining sunlight. “The mural is a story, detailing the passing of seasons. Look,” he said, pointing to the first. “The plants bud and grow, basking in the sun of spring. Flowers grow in the spring,” he said, his eye catching on the second key’s ruby marker. “They grow, reveling in the warmth and rain of summer. Forests and fields are green,” he continued, looking to the emerald marker of the first key, and then turned to the diamond on the third key. “Plants wither and shed their leaves before the piling snow and ice of winter. Ice is clear, like diamonds.”
It all seemed to click together, the gems used to mark each key, with the significance depicted in the mural. Thorben reached for the keys, his hands starting to shake. He turned the middle one first, turning it to the picture of the budding flower, his thoughts turning to the red flowers that grew just outside their home every spring. He turned the first one next, lining the emerald up with the lush tree, and fumbled the last key into place, the dead tree lining up with the diamond.
A heartbeat passed after the final key clicked into place, the slight buzzing of the air next to him fading away. Thorben let out a held breath, as a loud click split the air.
I did it! he thought, and tried to step off the pad. The platform started to shake, the vibrations shooting painfully up into his legs. The buzzing filled the air once again, and the weight intensified, pressing in on him with such force that his back nearly buckled.
“No!” he gasped, clutching frantically to the podium. His insides writhed, as if snakes had crawled inside him. Why didn’t it work? It made too much sense not to. No no no!
“I don’t understand. It made perfect sense,” Thorben grumbled, pulling his hand away from the podium to cradle his aching side.
It wasn’t just the injuries from Rance’s beating that ached now, but his entire body. Thorben could feel it. He was dying.
Chapter Eleven
Dying to Enter
The crypt was killing him…something, a curse, a trap, that the dalan left behind to protect their dead. He couldn’t see it, nor could he understand it, but Thorben could feel it, reverberating wickedly in every bone in his body. And it was horrible. He would die here, and his family would never know why, or how.
“I’ve been a fool. I’ve taken love for granted, ignored the beauty all around me, and failed to help those in need. Please forgive me,” he whispered, his forehead smashed against the podium’s cool stone
.
Thorben knew he’d erred badle, passing up every opportunity to turn and run from this eventuality. He told himself that he should have known – should have listened to Jez when she warned him in camp. There was a chance he might have been able to lose Gor and Hun in the woods…but what then? Iona knew where he lived, and thus, so would the others.
He started to think about packing up their most treasured belongings and finding a home elsewhere, but shook the thought away. It didn’t matter – he’d missed the opportunity to run away. He was a fool.
“You have one chance to see them again,” he whispered, pulling his head away from the podium. “Stop being a fool. No one else will pity you.”
Thorben swiped at his eyes, unaware that tears had formed. The chamber was blurry for a moment, the flickering light from the braziers cascading in streaks of orange, yellow, red, and blue through the moisture.
Something danced and moved against the wall to his right. He blinked rapidly, clearing away more of the tears, and identified the movement. It was a spot of colorful light, cast against the stone from the crystal mobile hanging overhead. There were dozens of the colorful spots of light all around the circular chamber, but they were just that, reflections.
Thorben craned his neck and considered the strange construct for a moment, the delicate arms of silver metal and suspended crystals turning ever so slowly. Then one of the crystals shimmered, catching the firelight. They weren’t all clear, as he first thought.
One of the dangling shards is red. The thought stirred something in his mind, and he looked back to the keys. His gaze caught on the second barrel, and the ruby marker.
No, it can’t be, he thought, turning his head painfully back to the mobile. He watched it for a moment, the glimmering structure turning methodically. Clear crystals caught the light, moving into and then back out of firelight, their glimmering reflections splashing across the stone in a dozen places.
