by Mel Odom
Past the four prison cells, the torture room offered a glimpse into past horrors. Two iron baskets held skeletons. Other skeletons hung from chains set into the wall.
“I take it Thango wasn’t the forgiving type,” Wick commented.
“No,” Alysta said. “By all accounts, he was a vindictive man even before his frustration with Seaspray.”
“What do you know about the sword?” Quarrel asked.
“More than you do.”
Quarrel grimaced, but thought better of saying anything. He turned and followed the lantern again. He stopped against a wall on the other side of the torture chamber.
“I found a secret passage here.” Quarrel hung the lantern on a nearby hook, then put his hands on the wall and pushed on two separate stones. “The thieves had found it before me. They’d found more than a few of them, but they left some of them untripped and set to catch anyone who happened upon the way and wasn’t wary.”
Wick surveyed the map and saw that a passage did go on past the area on the drawing that he now knew to be the torture chamber. At that same moment, a section of the wall turned to a ninety-degree angle, swinging on concealed hinges. Grinding filled the room and echoed down the hallway ahead.
“It leads to the room with the secret passageway to the sea.” Moving cautiously, Quarrel entered the passageway. He kept his sword at hand and moved with cautious speed.
Only a short distance ahead, a skeleton in tattered clothing stood pinned against a wall, pierced by a long metal shaft. A callous later visitor had used one of the skeleton’s eye sockets as a candle sconce. Melted wax filled the empty space and wept waxy tears down the cheekbone into the soundless scream of the mouth.
“Evidently Thango wasn’t simply protecting his wine cellar,” Alysta said.
The next trap was a yawning pit with sharpened metal stakes at the bottom. It was ten feet across, built so that an unwary man couldn’t just stretch out and save himself as he fell. It also held a dead man at the bottom amid the other bones of past victims. The dead man had evidently been in that condition for months.
“Did you know him?” Wick asked.
“No. As I said, there have been a lot of luckless that came this way in the past.”
“Oh.” Wick tore his eyes away from the sight with effort.
Quarrel looped the lantern to his hip with a piece of rope, then made his way across by way of the pegs sticking out from the wall. He made the crossing look effortless.
Wick tucked the ship’s log into his cloak and reached down for the cat. Alysta flattened her ears, raised a paw in warning, and hissed.
“Do you think you can navigate that climb unassisted?” Wick asked reasonably.
Grudgingly, the cat hissed again and lowered her paw. Instead of letting Wick lift her, though, she ran up his arm and spread herself across his shoulders.
“All right,” she said.
14
Hiding Place
Wick stepped onto the first peg at his feet and reached for the ones well above his head. He was barely able to reach, and felt certain if the climb had been a long one he wouldn’t have had the strength or endurance to manage it. The cat’s weight across his shoulders further increased the difficulty.
Quarrel waited on the other side of the chasm, holding the lantern to better light the way.
Making the journey without incident, Wick stepped down onto the next ledge. Without a word, Quarrel turned and they went on.
Ahead, bones lay in scattered disarray beneath four axe blades that had swung out from both walls, the floor, and the ceiling. All of them had been set off by a weight-activated stone. Now the axe blades were heavily rusted and falling to pieces.
“Some of the traps sprung themselves over the years,” Quarrel said, indicating a crumbled section of wall. He directed the light inside to reveal the rusty shards that had once been steel spikes. “The traps that relied on venomous snakes hold only dead things now, but there are some venomous spiders that have propagated down here and done well.”
Suddenly aware of the cobwebs that lay against the back of his neck, Wick flailed at the webs and shivered.
“Also, the traps armed with acid and poison might have diluted over the centuries, but they can still poison you or make you sick.” Quarrel went on.
Down and down they went, sometimes on inclined hallways and sometimes by way of corkscrew stairs. Evidently the dungeon had a few levels.
“I’m taking us to that room,” Quarrel explained. “The one on the map. By the safest route possible. It’s not necessarily the shortest.”
Wick’s legs ached from the effort of walking. With all the floor changes, he was reminded of the Vault of All Known Knowledge. A much gloomier version of the Great Library, to be sure, but just as serpentine.
Along the way, they passed several other victims of the traps left scattered throughout the dungeon levels. Many of them were scattered literally instead of merely figuratively.
Thango’s trap designers were very thorough, Wick noted grimly.
Only a little while later, they reached the room that was supposed to have held Thango’s greatest secret.
“Stay here,” Quarrel said. “This room, more than all the others, continues to be dangerous.” He held up the lantern. “Each time a person leaves this room, the traps reset themselves. More than that, they move around, shifting where they are and what they do.”
“Wizardry?” Wick asked. In the romances in Hralbomm’s Wing there had been any number of stories about moveable traps. All of them had been fueled by magic.
“I don’t know. It has to be.” Quarrel walked into the room slowly and began lighting other lanterns hanging on the wall. When he touched one of them, a section of the opposite wall popped open and a crossbow fell into position. It fired automatically and the bolt leaped across the space.
Quarrel dodged out of the way. The sharp blade, not blemished at all by rust, smacked into the wall right where the young man had been standing.
“Forgot about that one,” Quarrel admitted. He went through the room and turned off five other traps. “That’s not all of them, but it will allow you to enter and look at the passageway down to the sea.”
With the lanterns lit, the room stood revealed. Instead of a simple stone floor, this one held a patchwork of blue and black tiles measuring two feet square. It looked like a giant chessboard. When Wick counted the tiles, he found they were arranged eight by eight, exactly like a chessboard. A bloodred border ran around the room.
Friezes decorated the walls, depicting human heroes in battles on the land on snow-covered mountains as well as in rich woodlands, and on the sea. Ships under full sail were frozen in battle against others while sea monsters roared up from the depths.
Cautiously, and curiously, Wick peered into the room. “Maybe I could just stay out here,” he suggested. “Like you said, if there was something here to find, you would have already found it.”
“Then why did we come down here?” Quarrel sounded angry. “I’ve already been down here. I could be looking in other places.”
“No,” Alysta said, easing into the room. “What we seek is here. Somewhere.”
“The sword?” Quarrel walked toward the cat.
Despite his trepidation, Wick’s curiosity about the friezes drew him into the large room. He stayed to the outside walls as well, circling the chessboard floor. “Is the floor booby-trapped?”
“Yes,” Quarrel answered. His attention remained on the cat. “What makes you certain the sword is still here?”
The cat padded silently to the wall with the image of the sea battles. “I can feel it.”
“You can’t do that.” Quarrel approached the frieze as well.
Alysta stretched up and touched the frieze. “I can.”
Wick studied the frieze. There was something familiar about it. In seconds, his fear was forgotten. The frieze wasn’t merely carved into the stone wall. Shaped colored stones were set into the hollows, bringing mor
e immediate color to the images.
Looking around the room, Wick saw that none of the other friezes were like that. He wondered why this one was different. He took one of the lanterns from the wall and walked closer, studying the images.
Then it came to him.
“This is the Battle of the Dancing Waves,” Wick whispered.
“What?” Quarrel demanded.
“The Battle of the Dancing Waves.” Wick touched the frieze. “Of course, it wasn’t called that at the time. It was just a skirmish between Captain Dulaun’s ship, Tolamae, and a pirate ship called Death’s Grin.” He pointed at the flag on the second vessel, almost lost in gray fog.
“I’ve never heard of the battle or those ships,” Quarrel said.
“I have,” Alysta said. “It’s an old story. Handed down to me by my father, and his father before him. This was the battle where Dulaun harnessed the power of the waves with Seaspray for the first time.”
“That’s right.” Wick scanned Tolamae and saw Dulaun standing on her foredeck with his sword pointing straight into the air. The ship’s captain was spare and lean, a man long hardened by the sun and the sea. His brown hair had streaks in it. He wore rolled-top black boots, tight black breeches, and a blue and red striped shirt. “That’s Captain Dulaun.”
Quarrel peered at the man’s image made up of specially selected stones. “He’s not as tall as I’d thought he would be.”
“No,” Wick said, remembering the pictures he’d seen of the human. “Dulaun wasn’t heroic in stature, but in his heart. He never once gave up.”
“Dulaun was killed in the Battle of Fell’s Keep,” Quarrel said. “When the dwarven blacksmith Oskarr betrayed the Unity defenders who stayed to protect the evacuation of the southern Teldane’s Bounty.”
“Master Oskarr didn’t betray them,” Wick said.
“That’s the way I’ve always heard it told,” Quarrel said.
“So have I,” Alysta said.
“I only recently learned that story was false,” Wick said, remembering the time he’d spent in Master Oskarr’s forge. Neither of his listeners appeared interested in his opinion.
“This could be the ship the map referred to,” Alysta said.
“I’d already thought of that,” Quarrel said. “But what would that have to do with the sword?”
“It was during this battle that Captain Dulaun harnessed the power of the sea for the first time,” Wick repeated. “The Old Ones gave the power of the water to humans, and those powers were invested in a few weapons made by humans. Seaspray was one of those enchanted creations. While locked in this battle, coming to the aid of a stricken merchant, Tolamae and her crew were vastly outnumbered by pirates from the Cage Islands. For a time, it looked like the end.”
“But Dulaun used the sword, right?” Quarrel asked.
“They say Dulaun had always been blessed by the Old Ones,” Wick said. “That from the day of his birth he was destined to be a hero. He’d studied the ways of the sea, and when he forged the sword himself, he asked the Old Ones to infuse it with power. The way most scholars interpret it, Dulaun asked only that the sword not break during a battle. Instead, given the way he led his life and tried to champion those not able to stand up for themselves, he was given much more.”
“He commanded the seas that day,” Alysta said. “When he thought all was lost, he stood upon that deck and hoped that the sea would rise up and swallow his enemies. It did.”
As he listened to the cat speaking, Wick felt a curious warmth dawn in the frieze. The chamber itself was near freezing and only his traveling cloak managed to keep him warm. He ran his fingers over the stones.
There’s a puzzle here, he realized.
“What?” Alysta asked.
“Steganography.”
“What’s that?” Interested, Quarrel stepped forward.
“It’s a craft, very deceitful and very sly,” Wick said, “of hiding a message within a picture.”
“What message?” Quarrel demanded.
“That,” Wick replied, “remains to be seen.” Picking at one of the stones with a fingertip, he was surprised to find that it easily popped out. He quickly searched out others. When his hands filled, he laid the stones down on the floor.
“Why did you pick those?” Quarrel asked.
“They’re of fish.” Wick scanned the images of fish jumping in the water. Not all of the pieces were the same shape, which was what he had expected. The message wasn’t in the fish; they were only the link.
“There are plenty more of fish,” Quarrel said.
“Yes, but not all of the others are depicted cresting the ocean with their tails tilted to the left.” Wick worked to fit the pieces together.
“The fish shouldn’t be in the picture,” Alysta said.
“Very good,” Wick said, smiling at the cat. “Why not?”
“Because whenever a large predator is in the water, all the small fish leave the area.”
“Right,” Wick said. “A sea creature’s first instinct is survival, as are many others’. In the sea, if you’re small, you’re prey. Food for someone else. By the same token, small fish often avoid dead things in open water because they attract larger predators.”
“But the fish are in the frieze,” Alysta said.
“Yes.” Wick reached for another piece, testing it. As he’d quickly discovered, not all the frieze pieces were loose. Most were mortared into place. Gazing at the pieces, Wick saw that they created a pattern. He wasn’t tall enough to get all the pieces he thought he needed. Quarrel had to get a few of the higher ones for him.
“They were put there to draw attention,” Quarrel said.
“I believe so.” Wick’s fear of his situation had all but vanished, its bones taken away as his curiosity filled him.
“To what purpose?” Alysta asked.
“‘Throughout the course of his life, a man’s hand often slips from the tiller,’” Wick said softly.
“What’s that?” Quarrel asked.
“A quote,” Alysta said. “That’s one of Captain Dulaun’s most prized sayings.”
“Dulaun was referring to the fact that most men tend to wander through life without purpose or aim,” Wick said. “They go wherever the sea dictates.” He surveyed the fish tiles in front of him. There were seventeen of them. “I’m certain that these pieces were put in that picture to provide direction for those who came looking for the sword.”
“You believe Thango left clues?” Alysta asked.
“This frieze,” Wick said with grim certainty, “is far older than Thango’s time.” He continued moving the fish pieces around, fitting them together so they were almost seamless. The design was flawless.
The cat crept in closer, sitting nearby and curling her tail around her paws. “I’ve never heard of this frieze.”
“Neither have I,” Wick said absently. “But I’ve heard of the artist.”
“What artist?”
Wick pointed at the signature in the lower right corner. It was an icon of a gleaming star. “Lazzarot Piknees,” the little Librarian answered. “He was one of the finest artists the Silver Sea Trade Empire ever saw.” He turned his attention back to the tiles. “He was a contemporary of Captain Dulaun.”
“They knew each other?” Quarrel asked.
“I didn’t say that. It’s possible, of course. And Piknees did make this mural.”
“A signature at the bottom doesn’t necessarily mean that Piknees made this mural,” Alysta challenged.
“I,” Wick said forcefully, “am familiar with Piknees’s work.”
The cat blinked at him, obviously ready to fight further, but she chose not to.
“What are you doing?” Quarrel asked, kneeling beside Wick. He eased his bow from his shoulder and laid it close to hand.
“These pieces form a puzzle,” Wick said. “I’m trying to figure out what their secret is.” As he worked, another piece slid to a neat fit.
“This one,” Quarrel said,
“goes here.” Using his forefinger, he pushed one of the pieces against two others. When the sides touched, all three fused with an audible clank and triggered a brief spark of blue light that rivaled the lanterns’ glow.
Wick leaned back, thinking that the pieces were going to catch fire. When nothing happened, he asked, “What did you do?”
“I just fit the stones together. I didn’t cause that.” Quarrel had his sword in one hand and a long knife in the other.
Wick had never seen the young man draw either weapon. The little Librarian tried to slide the piece Quarrel had touched from the others.
It wouldn’t move. Somehow, the pieces had fused.
Returning his attention to one of the pieces he’d placed, Wick found he could easily slide it away. He lifted his hand from it and pointed at it. “Do this one.”
Hesitant, Quarrel laid his blades aside and nudged the new piece into contact with another. The clank sounded again just before the blue light flashed.
“You’re causing this,” Wick whispered.
“It’s not me,” Quarrel said.
Wick thought again of the leather-maker’s symbol on the bag that Quarrel carried. He tested the two new pieces and found they were fused as well.
“This is magic,” Quarrel said. “I don’t know magic.”
“Apparently,” Wick said, “the magic knows you.”
“But how?”
“This makes no sense,” the cat spat.
“Perhaps you’d care to piece the puzzle together,” Wick offered.
Haughtily, the cat stepped forward and pushed pieces together with her paw. The pieces fit but there was no other reaction.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Alysta said. “Maybe it’s just because he’s been down in this room before. Whatever magic is here could have an affinity for him.”
“Perhaps,” Wick said noncommittally. At his direction, Quarrel continued fitting the pieces together. Each time the pieces touched, they fused with a clank and the bright explosion of blue light.
The cat sniffed at each one, but her efforts grew less certain.
In a short time, the seventeen pieces had become a rough oval with flukes on one end.
