by Odom, Mel
“You should be real familiar with that,” Hekkel said, “after what happened to the Whamite Isles. Heard there’s a lot of dead up walking around over there.”
“Take that back,” Aran said angrily. “Take that back or you’ll be sorry!”
“Oh yeah?” Hekkel said. “And why will I be sorry?”
“Because I’ll catch you sleeping,” Aran said. “I’ll catch you sleeping and I’ll cut off your ears. You’ll never pass a mirror again without realizing how sorry you were for saying that.”
“You little runt,” Hekkel said.
Cerril considered turning around and slapping them both down—their strident voices whipped the pounding between his temples into a renewed frenzy—then the closed door at the back of the charity crypt caught his eye. He stared at the wooden marker embossed with the flowing river of Eldath on it.
“Quiet,” Two-Fingers ordered. “Cerril’s found something.”
Instantly, all other noise inside the charity crypt stopped.
Cerril could almost hear the group stop breathing behind him. He stepped forward and tried the door. The handle refused to turn, and the door wouldn’t budge. Cerril stepped back and raised his voice.
“Two-Fingers.”
“Yeah.”
“Open the door.”
Two-Fingers moved forward, almost big enough to fill the front of the door.
“Do you want it all in one piece?” he asked.
“I don’t care.”
Bracing himself, Two-Fingers slammed a shoulder against the door. The old, rotted wood shattered. Instead of the door breaking open, though, a hole appeared and Two-Fingers accidentally staggered through.
The bigger boy turned around, shocked by his own success, and said, “It’s open.”
The door opened onto a small room that once must have housed a record keeper’s office. A scribe’s inkpot lay shattered on the stone floor, and moldering books lined shelves built into the walls.
“Light a candle,” Cerril said as he stared around the room.
Someone took one of the candle stubs from a mounting on the wall and lit it. The wavering yellow flame filled the small room with light and hard-carved shadows that danced on the walls.
“I don’t see any treasure,” Hekkel commented.
Cerril went through the books, not knowing exactly what it was that he hoped to find. There was nothing in the book stacks, and equally nothing in the small desk against the wall. He knelt down, checking under the drawers because he’d learned that people often stuck secreted items there. None of the drawers had anything stuck under them.
He noticed a shattered inkpot on the floor. The small, fragmented glass pieces reflected light from the candle. The ink had been spilled dozens of years before and had dried to a solid black spot. However, the pool of dried liquid inscribed two fairly straight lines that ran perpendicular to one another.
Cerril knee-walked over to the lines. Seeing the way the ink seemed to have suddenly stopped in both places, he drew his dagger and traced the blade’s sharp point along the edges.
“Two-Fingers,” he said, “there’s a hidden entrance here. Can you open it?”
Two-Fingers removed two L-shaped shims from his clothing. Holding them tightly, he hooked the shims into the floor, getting in behind the concealed trapdoor. Growling with effort, he lifted a section of the floor away.
Hekkel pushed forward the lighted candle he held. The flickering flame chewed down through the darkness that filled the opening.
“It’s a passageway,” Two-Fingers said.
“I know,” Cerril said, then eased down into the opening, following the spiral staircase down into the bowels of the graveyard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The wolf gazed down from a rocky promontory forty feet above Haarn.
Druz Talimsir, unaware of the wolf’s vigilance, threaded through the forest only a little ahead of the druid. She’d grown quiet in her anger and had become competitive. Two days had passed since the confrontation with the slavers.
Drawing back into the shadows of a gnarled oak tree whose growth had split a boulder as tall as a man on the mountainside, Haarn studied the wolf. The animal was huge, standing half again as tall as the bitch wolf that stood at his right.
A jagged streak of lightning cut through the night, spearing through several clouds. In the night’s usual darkness the clouds hadn’t been visible, but with the lightning passing through them, they had length and width and breadth that faded away between blinks. The superheated air prickled Haarn’s nose. The druid knew rain was going to come at any moment. He could feel the air laden with moisture as it wrapped around his body.
Haarn knew his and the woman’s scents hadn’t alerted the wolf because he’d been careful to keep them downwind of the pack. Broadfoot had roamed a lot while Haarn had kept his pace down to something Druz could handle, and the bear had never gotten upwind of the wolf pack that they followed. Something else had set the wolf onto them.
A chill storm wind whipped the wolf’s thick gray and black fur. A narrow thatch of fur stood up along the wolf’s backbone, running from his hindquarters to the top of his skull. Jagged lightning scored the sky again, striking bright light with the sudden intensity of a blacksmith’s hammer.
Druz fought her way up the precarious incline Haarn’s tracking skills had led them to. The spoor left by the wolves had been hidden and spread out. The delays had led Druz to accuse Haarn of delaying the confrontation with the wolf. Haarn had made no response to the accusation, and Druz had remained with him. Both of them knew she had no real choice.
The mercenary’s anger showed in every line of her body and in the forced movements during her struggle to gain ground up the hill. Her foot slipped on the muddy loam and Haarn knew it was from fatigue. The woman had pushed herself too hard and too far. The druid had done the best he could to pace her, but she wasn’t one to hold back. It was an admirable quality, but one that was misplaced in their current venture.
Guilt touched Haarn. Druz Talimsir was worn out and near exhaustion. The druid knew it was his fault; he’d gotten caught up in the hunt, torn between his own convictions as they’d neared their goal, and hadn’t noticed her struggles.
Rock and mud clods tumbled down the mountainside as Druz pushed up another half-dozen steps. She came to a stop along the ledge. Frustration showed in the hard lines of her back. The trail they followed was little more than a game run, too narrow and too ill defined for easy passage.
Lightning seared the sky again, bleaching the charcoal gray rock into the color of white bone. The wolf’s eyes blazed orange like chunks of coal as it peered down from the ledge. Silver saliva gleamed on the black muzzle. The wolf’s nose wrinkled, then the lips pulled back and revealed sharp teeth.
He’s hunting, Haarn realized. Anxious.
Ill ease shifted in the druid’s stomach. Animals killed to eat. That was something he understood. That was natural, but an animal that killed for sport was sickening. That trait made them almost human.
Broadfoot coughed, revealing his presence in the shadows a few yards away. The bear grew impatient, and Haarn sensed a little confusion as well. Broadfoot didn’t maintain a large attention span, and bears never made a practice of hunting red meat, keeping their tastes limited to nuts, fruits, tubers, and honey.
After the past two days, Broadfoot knew they were searching for the wolf, though he wasn’t clear on why. Even after spending years with the bear, Haarn knew that each of them had concepts that the other couldn’t understand. Broadfoot followed not out of duty or curiosity, but because Haarn led. The bond between them had lasted for years and ran bone deep.
On the precipice above, the wolf’s lean haunches trembled. Excitement thrilled through the creature’s thick chest. He swayed, shifting his weight from paw to paw. The bitch at his side eased forward. She held her ears flattened and tight to her head, her tail tucked between her legs.
He’s taught them to hunt humans, Haarn realized.
The sickness in his stomach soured. Bile bubbled and burned at the back of his throat. He scanned the promontory, looking for the other wolves in the pack.
The bitch got too close to the edge for the lead wolf’s liking. He snapped at her, white fangs flashing, grazing flesh beneath her pelt at her shoulder. Red blood flecked on the wolf’s teeth. The bitch jerked back as if scalded. More blood matted her fur as the wound continued to dribble.
As she turned, Haarn saw that the bitch was heavy with unborn pups. She looked scrawny, almost used up by the coming birth. Her eyes rolled white as she continued backing away, and her muzzle dipped low to the ground.
Druz cursed, and her words seemed to crash through even the storm sounds echoing throughout the forest. The rolling thunder was a natural sound in the forest, but a human voice wasn’t.
Haarn glanced up at the wolf.
Impatient, the wolf paced on silent pads along the promontory.
“Are you coming?”
Haarn glanced toward the mercenary and found her staring at him. Her accusation stood out from her body. Mud streaked her face and matted her hair. Her clothing was damp and hung heavy with sweat and soil.
Above them, on the promontory, the wolf shifted. He stepped backward, all but disappearing in the brush that topped the ledge.
Haarn didn’t know if the wolf would run or try to stand his ground. It was evident that the wolf had understood that Druz wasn’t alone. Remaining silent, Haarn stepped from concealment and crossed the ledge to join the mercenary.
“I thought you’d given up,” Druz said.
“No,” Haarn replied. He glanced up at the promontory, but the angle he was at denied him sight of the wolf.
“What are you looking at?”
Haarn shook his head. Though Druz seemed incapable of seeing most things that took place in the lands around her, she read people well. Perhaps she hadn’t spotted the wolf above her, but she knew that his attitude about the night and the things in it had changed.
“What?” Druz stepped in front of him, preventing him from attempting the climb she’d tried to make.
“I’m going to climb up,” Haarn said. Claws clicked against stone above, but the sound was too slight for Druz to notice.
Druz’s eyes held his. “Something’s up there.”
Haarn held an answer back from her for only a heartbeat. “Yes.”
“The wolf?”
“Yes.”
Druz’s face tightened. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wanted to watch the wolf as he watched you.”
The hard look on Druz’s face softened. “The wolf is watching me?”
“He was,” Haarn said.
The mercenary looked up. “And now?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to climb up and see.”
“What if he’s gone?”
Haarn surveyed the muddy mountainside, seeking small places, secure places, that his hands and feet could work with. Druz was good. If they could have waited till morning, when the light was better and she was more rested, she could have made the climb.
“If he’s gone, we track him some more,” the druid replied. “One of the bitches is heavy with pups. That’s why they’ve been traveling so slowly.”
“Slowly?” Druz shook her head. “The pack hasn’t been traveling slowly. We’ve only now caught up with them.”
Haarn reached up and flattened himself against the mountainside. His fingers traced the hold he’d spotted—a small piece of jutting rock—and he tested it. When the rock held his weight, he pulled himself up. Mud slid along the front of his clothes. He knew the wolf could hear them coming.
“I don’t think he’s planning to go any farther tonight,” Haarn said.
“He’s stopping?”
Haarn reached above and found another hold. Now that he had the rhythm, scaling the mountainside got easier. He eased himself up, fitting his fingers and moccasins into place.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because they haven’t eaten in the last two days.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because we’ve been trailing them,” Haarn replied. The muscles in his arms, legs, and back warmed against the storm’s chill. “If they’d eaten much, there would have been sign.”
“They’re planning to eat us?”
“Yes,” Haarn said. “If they weren’t interested in that, they’d have been gone as soon as they’d seen you.”
“What are we going to do?” Druz asked.
Haarn smiled and said, “Try to not get eaten.”
He kept climbing.
Cerril followed the flickering glow of the candle he’d taken from Hekkel down into the bowels of the secret crypt beneath the burial house. The spiral staircase had either been crooked when it had been installed, or it had shifted during the decades or perhaps hundreds of years it had been there. Cerril had to lean away from the central pole at times and against it at others.
Still, the spiral staircase was a short trip to the rooms below.
Once he gained the ground, Cerril discovered that the floor there had been hewn from bedrock then covered over with stone. Dank, bare earth walls drank down the candle’s glow. In a half-dozen places, though, small streams of water trickled along the walls and ran through cracks between the stone flooring. The thick, cloying smell of damp earth and rancid water tickled his nose as he stared around the chamber.
The other boys gathered around Cerril. They stayed behind him and well within the fragile safety of the candle.
“We shouldn’t be here,” one of the boys said. “This is a bad place. I can feel it.”
“Damn,” Two-Fingers said. “This is a cemetery. It’s a bad place for anybody.”
“Grave robbers steal from them that are fresh dead,” Hekkel said. “Only reason they don’t steal from them that are old-dead is because somebody done got to them.”
Cerril raised the flickering candle and said, “Nobody’s been here since this place was sealed.”
“You don’t know that,” Hekkel said.
Feeling Malar’s coin warm and heavy in his hand, Cerril said, “Yes, I do.”
He moved forward, drawn by the coin’s pull. The candlelight slid across the ceiling. For a moment he thought none of the others were going to follow him, then he heard the rustle of their clothing.
The trickle of water running down the walls echoed throughout the room. Boots and bare feet slapped against the wet floor.
“It’s raining outside,” Hekkel said. “Coming harder now.”
Cerril knew that. The sound of the storm rumbled in the distance, and the sibilant rush of rain threaded through the burial house.
“Who built this place?” Two-Fingers asked.
“Eldath’s priests,” Cerril answered.
Cerril followed a curving, narrow passageway from the chamber the ladder had led down into. The candlelight had no problem illuminating the height or the width of the passageway, but it didn’t penetrate the depth.
“Why?” Two-Fingers asked.
“To keep people away from whatever is being kept in here,” Hekkel said. “Any half-brained lummox could have figured that out.”
“Probably got all kinds of gold and treasures down here,” someone said. “We’ll fill up our pockets and get out of here before anyone can stop us.”
“Yeah,” another boy said. “Alaghôn is a city filled with secrets. It could be somebody stuck a corpse down here and then forgot all about it. Whatever they left on it will be our gain.”
“I’ll bet they didn’t leave anything on the corpse,” Hekkel griped. “I don’t see how anything could be left as long as this thing must have been left here. Chances are that rats have been at whatever was left. I’ll bet you can’t even strip the clothes from the body, wash them, and sell them to a ragman.”
“We’re not here for rags,” Cerril said.
He wanted the other boys to stay brave, to stay behind him.
“Something more. Otherwise Malar’s coin wouldn’t be pulling me.”
Cerril stepped with more care, following the downward slope of the uneven floor. He wondered if the whole underground area had somehow been wrenched out of kilter at some time in the past.
“Should have let that man keep it,” a boy farther back in the crowd muttered.
Cerril started to turn around and curse the boy, if he could find him, but his attention was riveted to the end of the passageway. The candlelight caught the walls surrounding them, twisting shadows as the flame danced, but only revealed the tilted rectangle of darkness at the passageway’s end.
Blood boomed in Cerril’s ears as he raised the candle to get a better look.
“There’s something in there,” someone said.
“I thought I saw someone moving,” another boy said.
“That’s just your imagination,” Two-Fingers growled, but a quaver of fear rang in his voice. “Whatever’s in there has been dead a long time.”
“Just because it’s dead don’t mean it can’t hurt you.”
“We should leave,” Hekkel whispered. “Just turn around and walk back out of this place and forget it ever existed.”
Cerril wished they could do that too, but the coin wouldn’t let him turn or take a backward step. It drew him on like a moth to flame. His hand trembled as he stepped toward the waiting darkness, but the shifting shadows of the underground crypt disguised that.
“You leave,” Two-Fingers said. “I’ll be glad to take your share.”
With his heart thundering in his chest and feeling as though it was going to explode at any instant, Cerril stepped through the darkened doorway. Two steps later, the candlelight revealed an elaborate coffin that occupied the center of the room.
“Rats!” Hekkel exclaimed.
“They ain’t going to hurt you,” Two-Fingers said. “They’re … they’re all dead.”
Cerril gazed down at the floor in front of the mysterious coffin. Dozens of rats, most of them reaching from the tips of his fingers to his elbow in length, lay stretched out on the floor. Only a few of the creatures had come to their deaths in recent times. Most of them were skeletons. Spiders, once industrious enough to make elaborate webs, hung dead in the center of their creations or on the floor. One of the arachnids struggled in its web. The legs twitched, but the spider gave no indication that it would ever get free.
