This would have to be handled with delicacy. “I know, Tradan. But I need Jekka to read the door. And I need to be ready to help him if there’s anything on the other side.” She nodded once and stepped away before Tradan could object. “What’s it say, Jekka?”
“‘Behold now,’” Jekka read haltingly, “‘the final works of Reklaniss, Opener of the Ways, and … most learned of … human studiers.’ I do not know an elegant translation of the phrase, my sister. It means scholars and experts, with the word for lesser beings, and humans, and also suggests mastery. And subjugation.”
Mirian grunted. “It’s clear enough. Can you open it?”
“I believe so.”
She glanced over her shoulder to ensure Tradan and Venthan really were watching the hole, then turned in time to see Jekka finish sweeping his fingers over the text set in the door. The lizardfolk lettering glowed faintly blue, and then the door rose slowly into the ceiling with a rumble of stone running against stone.
Mirian readied her cutlass. Jekka bent his knees, spear clasped tight.
Their light spilled upon a lizard man sitting upright in a throne with flared arms.
Jekka completely ignored every protocol and darted through the doorway toward him, his tongue testing the air.
“Jekka, be careful!”
She followed after, eyes roving over floor panels, ceiling, the floor to left and right. She gained a vague impression of a small rectangular chamber lined with shelves that supported dozens of strange objects, but otherwise empty of figures.
Jekka halted in silent regard, and Mirian, still watching her foot placement on the square stone tiles, drew up beside him.
The figure’s skin was a dried-out husk under a rotted, black fabric robe, and the mold that coated him—or her, she couldn’t tell—had turned it brown. Oddly, the room smelled only faintly of a sweet spice flavor.
“You should have been more careful,” she said.
“It is not a place for traps, my sister. Or hazards. It is a sort of museum.”
“But it’s a tomb.”
“One where secrets were to be shared, not hoarded. I think this is Reklaniss, but he does not hold the tear.”
“What’s in there?” Tradan called.
Damn the man. Did he have to be so loud?
She slipped out to remind her brother-in-law to quiet down.
By the time she returned, Jekka had stepped past the body and studied the shelves lining the far wall, each stuffed with sculptures. A few had small human figures in poses eerily similar to those in the hall outside, but many were models of the moon in its various phases.
“It seems like he was looking into the heavens in his last years.” She turned to regard the body again, still a little astonished this temple wasn’t guarded. She half expected that decayed corpse to lurch up and reach for them.
“This room is a little less disturbing, yes?” Jekka asked.
“Except for the body in the chair. It must have a preservative on it, or something would have done a better job eating through it by now.”
“He,” Jekka corrected. He bent down to a lower shelf, beside a row of black lizardfolk book cones. Mirian stepped away to investigate the distinctive glitter of jewelry along a low shelf.
Two large, flat onyx gems lay winking in the light of her glow lamp. They were cut with impossible precision, matching perfectly to one another. Yet they looked strangely familiar, and after a moment of reflection she realized why. They were reminiscent of the gems she’d seen set in the prow of the lizardfolk ship.
“Mirian,” Jekka said, “these book cones may have what we need.”
“What does it say?”
“It talks about Kutnaar,” Jekka answered slowly. “The island he sealed from the humans. He used the power of the … the tear of the goddess, and protected it with a gate the humans could not open. He thought at first he could turn back the humans, and that his people were weaklings to despair, but as he aged, he wondered if there would be anyone left to look upon his marvels.”
“Does it say anything about how to get there?”
Jekka’s tongue slipped out. “One must have ‘a ship that sees,’” he said. “I do not know what that means.”
Mirian understood immediately. “The eyes in the prow. These gems here, Jekka. If we put them on the Daughter, we can find a way!”
“And the directions are here!” Jekka’s frill rose against the back of his robe. “We can get through the gate!”
From outside came a strangled cry of alarm. “Boggards!” Venthan cried. “There’s boggards in the tunnel!”
13
DEATH IN THE HALL OF CORPSES
MIRIAN
A trained warrior would have told her numbers, armaments. Something useful. Tradan was a twit. Mirian slipped off her haversack. “Take what we need,” she ordered Jekka, then dashed from the room.
In the corridor outside, Tradan and Venthan were backing away, swords drawn. She heard the slapping of boggard feet on flagstones to her right. Three of the vile creatures had crept from the crumbled rim of the hole, squat and toadlike, and two more were just behind them, their mouths open to reveal needle-sharp teeth. Their gray, corpse-like skin glistened in the white light of the glow stones.
Neither Tradan nor Venthan looked liked they were inclined to actually use their swords, so she slipped past them, brushed a spear thrust of the lead boggard aside with her off hand, and drove her sword through the creature’s flabby neck.
She kicked it to pull her blade free, stopped the thrust of a second spear by slashing off its end. Tradan called for her to retreat. Useless ass. “Shine your lights in their eyes!”
Boggards were cowardly without overwhelming numbers, and her spirited defense sent those in the lead scrambling back toward the hall as those behind gibbered at her, squinting and shielding their bulbous eyes as Tradan obeyed her command.
A croaking voice from behind and below exhorted the boggards to attack.
“Retreat, Mirian, for goodness’ sake!” Tradan apparently felt honor-bound to remain, but not quite brave enough to stand shoulder to shoulder.
A spear hurtled out of the darkness and she sidestepped. Four boggards crept forward, emboldened by their numbers, and she heard the scrabble of claws on stone as others clambered out of the pit.
“Jekka?” There were too many now. She blocked a spear thrust. “We’re out of time!”
Three of the boggards gibbered and bounded forward.
One moment, she stood alone. The next, Jekka was beside her. With a swift slice he downed one boggard. As it fell, its bulbous eye split, he drove his spearpoint straight out the back of another’s throat.
More boggards were already pressing from behind.
“Let’s move!” Mirian said.
Tradan led the retreat down the hall and around the corner. Jekka dashed after, one pack over each shoulder. Mirian heard the boggards bounding in pursuit.
She and Jekka rounded the corner at full speed. “You get what you need?” she asked him.
“All the books. And the ship eyes, and the sculptures that seemed—” he paused as a spear clattered against the floor behind them “—interesting.”
As they rounded another corner, they ran straight into the sphere of Ivrian’s glow stone. The younger man waited tensely, wand at the ready.
“I thought I told you to stand guard at the front!”
“I heard sounds of fighting back here and—”
Did she have to think for all of them? “Get back there! Venthan, Jekka, with him! Tradan, stay!”
Her brave friend hurried off with Jekka and her cowardly brother-in-law remained, nervously fingering his glow stone.
“Lights off,” she snapped. “Silence.”
Tradan actually obeyed without protest.
There was no missing the sound of the boggard advance, the croaks and the slapping of broad feet.
With a word, Mirian shined her light directly into the eyes of their enemies. Only
a second later, Tradan followed suit and the boggards threw up webbed gray hands to ward themselves.
Mirian and Tradan sprinted around the corner, on past a display case of fabrics. Behind came a frustrated gabbling noise. On they ran, corner after corner, and before long Mirian saw their friends standing in a pool of dim light, in the tomb’s opening.
Mirian motioned them out. A low mist had risen in the greenery outside, concealing everything below her calves. She frowned. “Jekka, on point.”
He hurried forward, staying low.
From up ahead came the sound of shouts, and a human scream.
“Now what’s that about?” Tradan asked.
“Forward.” Mirian ushered them ahead. Whatever was happening up there, they had to get away from the opening. The sun wouldn’t keep the boggards back for long.
Jekka bounded into sight, waved them forward. “Stay low,” he said softly. “And hurry. Boggards and pirates.”
“Pirates?” Tradan whispered too loudly. “Why would there be pirates?”
Mirian ordered Ivrian to cover the rear, sent Jekka forward, and told the others to stay close. They hurried into the thick tree cover just as a loud crack of thunder sounded somewhere close at hand, followed almost immediately by gibbering cries of pain.
“That sounded like spellwork,” Mirian said. “Someone has a sorcerer with them.”
“Wizard, I think,” Jekka said. “It’s the woman from the ruins.”
“From the ruins?” Mirian blinked for a moment. “What ruins?”
“The one who fought us in the ruins in the hills. She fell down a pit then. She was with the pirates.”
Mirian’s lips curled back into a dangerous scowl. “You mean Rajana?”
“I think so.”
“Who’s that?” Tradan asked.
“You don’t want to meet her,” Jeneta said quickly. “She’s—”
Ivrian had been watching their rear, as ordered. He called a warning. “Boggards! Coming out of the tomb!”
Mirian spun and saw about two dozen of the things streaming from the tomb. Four in the front were blinking in the light, but the others fanned out as a large, hunched mottled-brown boggard pointed them forward.
They weren’t alone.
More boggards erupted from the forest on their right, croaking war cries as they spotted Mirian’s little group. Suddenly she was face to face with two of them, trading blows. The moment one went down another was there to take its place.
The next one dropped with its brain-pan half melted by a lance of green acid from Ivrian’s wand, but those behind showed no sign of stopping. In moments, Mirian and Jekka were in the thick of it, broad forms on every side thrusting at them with wicked barbed spears, all the while gnashing pointed teeth.
She sent another down in a welter of blood, heard a male cry of pain.
“Help!” Venthan called. “Lord Tradan’s been hit!”
There was no time to worry about that. Mirian knocked a spear aside with her free arm and slashed another foe across the leg. It dropped, warbling.
There were too damned many of them. She heard Ivrian’s wand blasting, and Jeneta’s battle cry, but couldn’t see past the boggards lurching forward on three sides.
Suddenly the one on her left went down in a welter of blood, its skull split by a savage overhand slice.
Mirian blinked in astonishment—Ensara was there, flashing a grin at her before he had to dodge away as a pair of boggards closed on him. A column of pirates had advanced into the boggards, and the monsters turned to confront the new threat.
It was the only opening they were likely to get. She pivoted, motioned Venthan and Jeneta forward. They were supporting Tradan between them. No time now to see how serious his injuries were, though it was reassuring to see him able to walk.
“Ivrian, Jekka, on point! Get us clear!”
She motioned the others after them, then hurried into the trees, catching a last glimpse of Ensara next to the hulking pirate named Sarken as they traded blows with the boggards and dodged between trees.
Jekka guided them forward at a steady pace and soon they left the sounds of combat behind them. Belatedly, she wondered if she should have stayed to help Ensara. Surely he hadn’t been there to help her, had he? Not if Rajana was there with him—and how was it those two knew each other?
She felt a strange lift knowing she hadn’t killed him, then wondered if by abandoning him just now she’d finished the job. Yet how could she possibly have remained if Jekka were right and Rajana was with them?
There was no time to worry about that, not right now, and she forced her mind ahead as she caught up to her friends moving through the undergrowth. She wasn’t able to get a good look at Tradan, but he seemed conscious. There was an awful lot of blood on the back of his shirt.
“Jeneta says I’ll pull through just fine,” he said over his shoulder, as though trying to reassure her.
That was a point in his favor. Mirian didn’t expect her sister would like her to bring him back dead.
“He’ll live.” Jeneta tried to sound reassuring. “It was a nasty wound, but Iomedae gave me strength to heal the worst of it. I’ll tend him again when we stop.”
“And I pray we can stop soon,” Venthan said, panting.
“Not happening.” Mirian shook her head. “We can’t slow down until we’re safe.”
“I was praying you wouldn’t tell me that.”
“As long as you’re praying, pray that nothing’s eaten our mounts and killed our guards, or we’ll be carrying him even farther.”
14
WOOD FOR THE BURNING
ENSARA
“Very interesting.” Rajana circled round the husk of the lizard man.
She might have appreciated the room and its peculiar contents, but Ensara had given up concealing his distaste. The tomb and its grisly treasures needed burning. It wasn’t so much that corpses disturbed him, for he’d looked on many a dead man in his day. It was just that these folks needed to be put to rest. Even the lizard man. It wasn’t … seemly having their bodies lying about like that. Especially the way they were all propped. Like they were going to start up with living again the moment he turned his back, except with their bodies all rotted out. It made the hairs on the back of his neck rise just thinking about it.
Ensara wiped sweat from his brow. “I’m not sure you should take very long here,” he said. “Those boggards we killed might have friends.”
“Then we’ll deal with them if they do, Captain. Although I appreciate the concern you show for my welfare.”
“I’m certain you can manage things for yourself, m’lady.” Ensara sketched a bow despite the fact the noblewoman wasn’t looking at him. “I’m thinking about my men.” Two had died, and three remained wounded, for Rajana maintained only a few healing spells.
“What sort of pirate are you?”
This came from deep-voiced Narsian, Rajana’s bodyguard. Ensara had heard the man address his mistress on several occasions, but the fellow hadn’t yet spoken to him. He didn’t much care for the man’s arch tone.
“We’re surrounded by treasures,” Narsian went on, his full lips widening in a mocking smile. “Surely you want to paw through them. Whatever the lady doesn’t want is yours.”
“He’s a different sort of pirate, Narsian.” Rajana peered at a strange tile mural upon the back of the throne that supported the lizard man’s moldering corpse. “He values his men first and money second. You should appreciate a hireling who cares for his tools, don’t you think?”
“Yes, m’lady,” Narsian’s voice registered complete agreement but his eyes showed disdain.
Somehow Rajana noticed. “Do you mock me, Narsian?”
“No, m’lady,” he said quickly.
“I tolerate a certain amount of independence in those who work for me,” she said, those cold dark eyes turning slowly to consider her bodyguard. “Their social and personal habits, no matter how … unorthodox, are none of my business so lo
ng as they don’t interfere with my goals.”
“Of course, m’lady,” Narsian stammered with another bow.
Rajana stared at him, and he bowed more deeply. She then regarded Ensara and brushed a lock of dark hair away from her cheek. Not for the first time, he sensed she preened a little when in front of him, which he didn’t understand. He knew he was handsome, but he’d done nothing to encourage her attentions. Who could tell about women, though. Maybe the lack of flirtation on his part was seen as a challenge.
“Feel free to express your concerns about security with me, Captain. I assure you I regard them with full consideration. I realize our position is not easily defensible and I will not loiter unnecessarily. However, there may be details here that Mirian Raas and her people missed. I require more time.”
Ensara nodded.
“If you’ve no interest in the items here, perhaps you would feel more comfortable seeing to the perimeter.”
“Yes, m’lady. If you’re sure that you’re safe.”
“How very sweet. Do you hear that, Narsian? I remember when you were more solicitous.”
“But m’lady, I remain your humble servant.”
“Servant, yes. Humble, no.”
“I shall endeavor to be more humble. I didn’t mean to offend.”
“See that you succeed. That is all, Captain.” Rajana turned back to her studies.
Ensara stepped gratefully into the hall. By the light of a flickering torch held by a pirate, three more were busy heaving boggard bodies back into the pit the creatures had apparently emerged from, cheerfully hacking them into smaller pieces so they’d fit better.
Knowing boggards, they’d find this a tasty treat, but they’d also understand the message about what awaited them if they tried to venture out of it again.
Ensara stepped around them, then moved through the spiraling square of halls and passed where the dead men hung in semblances of life. He was nearing the exit when he saw Sarken walking toward him, bearing a lantern.
“What is it, Sarken?”
The first mate’s mouth twitched. He looked over Ensara’s shoulder, then at him. “I want to talk to you. Alone.”
Pathfinder Tales--Through the Gate in the Sea Page 14
