She dove forward but her brother rushed away, washing toward the light at a speed she could not match. She watched as he grew smaller and smaller until he was lost in the brilliance of the light.
“No! No!” she cried, staring forward, blinded by the whiteness.
“Arista.” She heard a voice call—not Alric’s, but familiar. “Arista. Your brother is here with us now. It’s okay.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes, dear, it’s me. I’m sorry I have no hairbrush to give you at this meeting, but there is so much more, so much more than a hairbrush waiting. Come join us.”
“I—I shouldn’t,” she told him, although she was not certain why.
The light did not hurt to look at, but it made it impossible to see more than vague shapes, all blurred and hazy, as if they moved on the far side of a frosted glass.
“It’s all right, honey,” her father said. “And it’s not just us waiting. You have other friends here, others who love you.”
“My burns are gone,” Hilfred told her. “Come see.”
She saw their wispy outlines before her; they were growing clearer and more defined. The current was no longer fighting against her and she was starting to pick up speed. She needed to stop, she needed to go back, there was something that—
“Arista my love.” This was a voice she had not heard for a long, long time and her heart leapt at the sound.
“Mother?”
“Come to me, honey, come home. I’m waiting for you.”
There was music playing, soft and gentle. The light was growing all around her such that the dark of the void was fading. She let herself go, let herself drift on the current that carried her forward faster and faster.
“Arista,” another voice called. This one was faint and distant, coming from somewhere behind her.
She could almost make out the faces in the light. There were so many and they were smiling with outstretched arms.
“Arista, come back.” The voice was not in the light; it was calling to her from the darkness. “Arista, don’t leave!”
It came as a cry, a desperate plea, and she knew the voice.
“Arista, please, please don’t leave. Please come back. Let him go and come back!”
It was Hadrian.
“Arista,” her mother called, “come home.”
“Home,” Arista said, and as she said it, she stopped. “Home,” she repeated, and felt a pulling in her stomach as the light diminished.
“I’ll be waiting for you always.” She heard her mother’s voice as it drifted away.
“Good luck,” Alric called, his voice almost too faint to hear.
She felt herself flying backward, then—
Her eyes snapped open.
Arista lay on the stone, gasping and struggling to breathe. She inhaled long and hard but still could not manage to get enough air. The world was whirling above her, dark except for a faint purple glow. In this dim haze, she saw Hadrian crouched over her and felt him squeezing her hands. His own were shaking. Suddenly his strained look was replaced with a burst of joy.
“She’s okay! See! She’s looking around!” Mauvin shouted.
“Can you hear me?” Hadrian asked.
She tried but could not speak. All she could manage was a slight nod and her eye caught sight of Alric.
“He’s gone,” Hadrian told her sadly.
Again she managed a shallow nod.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Hadrian asked.
“Very… tired,” she whispered as her eyes closed, and she fell asleep.
As both Arista and Gaunt slept, Hadrian worked on Mauvin. The count’s side was drenched in blood. A stab wound cut through the meat of his arm behind the upper bone. He had been holding it shut with his hand without complaint such that Hadrian had not noticed until Mauvin staggered.
Together, Hadrian and Magnus, with Myron holding the lantern, sewed Mauvin’s wound. Hadrian was forced to push muscle back in as he stitched, yet Mauvin made no cry and soon passed out. When they finished, Hadrian wrapped his arm. It was a good, clean job and they had stopped the bleeding. Mauvin would be fine even if his left arm would never be as strong as it once had been. Hadrian checked Gaunt’s leg and changed that bandage as well. Then, in the utter silence of the tombs, in the dim light of the lantern, they all slept.
When he woke, Hadrian felt every bruise, cut, scratch, and strained muscle. A lantern burned beside him, and with its light, he found his water skin. They all lay together in the narrow corridor, flopped haphazardly in dirt and blood like a pile of dead after a battle. He took a small sip to clear his mouth and noticed Royce was not with them.
He lifted the lantern and glanced at the pile of rubble where the stairs had once been. The way was blocked by several tons of stone.
“Well, I’m guessing you didn’t go that way,” he whispered to himself.
Turning, he noticed the corridor bent sharply to the left. Along the walls, he discerned faint, ghostly images etched in the polished stone like burnished details on glass. The images told a story. At the start of the hall was a strange scene: a group of men traveling to a great gathering in a forest where a ruler sat upon a throne that appeared to be part of a tree, yet none of the men had heads. In each instance, they were scraped away. In the next scene, the king of the tree throne fought one of the men in single combat—again no heads.
Hadrian raised the lantern and wiped the dust with his hands, looking closer at the images of the men fighting. He let his fingertips trace the weapons in their hands, strange twisted poles with multiple blades. He had never seen their like before and yet he knew them. He could imagine their weight, how his hands would grasp, and how to scoop the lower blade in order to make the upper two slice the air. His father had taught him to use this weapon, the polearm for which he had no name.
In the next scene, the king was victorious and all bowed to him save one. He stood aside with the rest of the men who had traveled together in the first scene, and in his arms, he held the body of the fallen combatant. Still no heads—each one carefully scratched out. On the ground lay bits of chipped stone and white dust.
Hadrian found Royce at the end of the hall before a closed and formidable-looking stone door.
“Locked?” Hadrian asked.
Royce nodded as his hands played over the door’s surface.
“How long you been here?”
The thief shrugged. “A few hours.”
“No keyhole?”
“Locked from the inside.”
“Inside? That’s creepy. Since when do dead men lock themselves into their own graves?”
“Something is alive in there,” Royce said. “I can hear it.”
Hadrian felt a chill run down his back as his mind ran through all the possibilities of what might lie beyond the door. Who knew what the ancients could have placed in their tombs to protect their kings: ghosts, wraiths, zombie guards, stone golems?
“And you can’t open the door?”
“Haven’t found a way yet.”
“Tried knocking?”
Royce looked over his shoulder incredulously.
“What would it hurt?”
Royce’s expression eased. He thought a moment and shrugged. He stepped back and waved toward the door. “Be my guest.”
Hadrian drew his short sword and, using the butt, tapped three times on the stone. They waited. Nothing happened. He tapped three more times.
“It was worth a—”
Stone scraped as a bolt moved. Silence. A snap, then another bolt was drawn. The stone slab shuddered and shook.
Royce and Hadrian glanced nervously at each other. Hadrian handed the lantern to Royce and drew his bastard sword. Royce pushed on the door and it swung inward.
Inside, it was dark and Hadrian held up the lantern with his left hand, probing forward with his sword. The light revealed a small square room with a vaulted ceiling. At the center was a great headless statue. The walls were filled with holes filled with
piles of rolled scrolls, several of which lay ripped to pieces, their remains scattered across the floor. On the far side was another stone door, closed tight. Hadrian could see large bolts holding it fast. The ground also contained clay pots, clothes, blankets, and the melted remains of burned candles. Not far away the room’s only occupant was in the process of sitting back down on his blanket. When the man turned, Hadrian recognized him immediately.
“Thranic?” Hadrian said, stunned.
Sentinel Dovin Thranic moved slowly, painfully. He was very thin. His normally pale face was drawn and ghostly white. His dark hair, which had always been so neatly combed back, hung loose in his face. His once-narrow mustache and short goatee were now a full ragged beard. He still wore his black and red silks, which were now mere shades of their former glory, torn and filthy.
The sentinel managed a strained smile as he recognized them through squinting eyes. “How loathsome that it is you that finds me.” He focused on Royce. “Come for your revenge at last, elf?”
Royce stepped forward. He looked down at Thranic and then around the room. “How could I possibly top this? Sealed alive in a tomb of rock. My only regret is that I had nothing to do with it.”
“What happened?” Hadrian asked.
Thranic coughed; it was a bad sound, as if the sentinel’s chest was ripping apart from the inside. He reclined, trying to breathe, for a moment. “Bulard went lame—the old man was a nuisance and we left him at the library. Levy—Levy was killed. Bernie ran out on me—deserted.” Thranic shifted uneasily; as he did, Hadrian noticed a bloodstained cloth wrapped his left thigh.
“How long have you been here?”
“Months,” he replied. He glanced across the room at a pile of small humanoid bones and grimaced. “I did what I must to survive.”
“Until the wound,” Hadrian added.
The sentinel nodded. “I couldn’t sneak up on them well enough anymore.”
Royce continued to stare.
“Go ahead,” Thranic told Royce. “Kill me. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over and you’ll fare no better. No one can get the horn. It’s what you came for, isn’t it? The Horn of Novron? The Horn of Gylindora? It lies through there.” He pointed at the far door. “On the other side is a large hall, the Vault of Days, which leads to the tomb of Novron itself, but you will never reach it. No one has… and no one will. Look there.” He pointed to the wall across from him, where words lay scratched. “See the EH? This is as far as Edmund Hall ever got. He turned back and escaped this vile pit, because he was smart. I stayed, thinking I could somehow solve the riddle, somehow find a way to cross the Vault of Days, but it can’t be done. We tried. Levy was the slowest—not even his body remains. Bernie wouldn’t go back in after that.”
“You stabbed him,” Royce stated.
“He refused orders. He refused to make another attempt. You found him?”
“Dead.”
Thranic showed no sign of pleasure or remorse; he merely nodded.
“What is it about this Vault of Days?” Hadrian asked. “Why can’t you cross it?”
“Look for yourself.”
Hadrian started across the room and Thranic stopped him. “Let the elf do it. What can you hope to see in there with your human eyes?”
Royce stared at the sentinel. “So what kind of trick is this?”
“I don’t like it,” Hadrian said.
Royce stepped to the door and studied it. “Looks okay.”
“It is. What’s on the other side, however, is not.”
Royce touched the door and closely inspected the sides.
“So distrusting,” Thranic said. “It won’t bite if you open the door, only if you enter the room.”
Slowly he drew the bolts away.
“Careful, Royce,” Hadrian said.
Very slowly Royce pushed the door inward, peering through the gap. He looked left and right, then closed it once more and replaced the bolts.
“What is it?” Hadrian asked.
“He’s right,” Royce said dismally. “No one is getting through.”
Thranic smiled and nodded until he was beset by another series of coughs that bent him over in pain.
“What is it?” Hadrian repeated.
“You’re not going to believe it.”
“What?”
“There’s a—a thingy.”
“A what?”
“You know, a thingy thing.”
Hadrian looked at him, puzzled.
“A Gilarabrywn,” Thranic said.
CHAPTER 19
SEALING OF THE GATE
Renwick stood on the fourth floor of the imperial palace. In front of him the registrar shuffled and rolled parchments, occasionally muttering to himself and scratching his neck with long slender fingers dyed black at the tips. A little rabbit-faced man with precise eyes and a large gap between his front teeth, he sat behind his formidable desk, scribbling. The sound of his quill on parchment reminded Renwick of a mouse gnawing at wood.
Members of the palace staff hurried by, entering the many doors around him. Some faces turned his way, but only briefly. At least the administration wing of the fourth floor was free of refugees. Every other inch of the castle seemed to be full of them. People lined the hallways, sitting with knees up to allow people passage, or sleeping on their sides with bundles under their heads, their arms wrapped tight around their bodies. Renwick guessed the bundles contained what little was left of their lives. Dirty, frightened faces looked up whenever anyone entered the corridors. Families mostly—farmers with sets of children who all looked alike—had come from the countryside, where homes lay abandoned.
He tapped his toes together, noticing that the numbness was finally leaving. The sound caused the scribe to look up in irritation. Renwick smiled, but the scribe scowled and returned to his work. The squire’s face still felt hot, burned from the cold wind. He had ridden nonstop from Amberton Lee to Aquesta and delivered his message directly to Captain Everton, commander of the southern gate. Afterward, starved and cold, he went to the kitchen, where Ibis was kind enough to let him have some leftover soup. Returning to the dormitories, he found a family of three from Fallon Mire sleeping in his bed—a mother and two boys, whose father had drowned in the Galewyr a year earlier trying to cross the Wicend Ford during the spring runoff.
Renwick had just curled up in a vacant corner of the hallway to sleep when Bennington, one of the main hall guards, grabbed him. All he said was that Renwick was to report to the chancellor’s office immediately, and he berated the boy about how half the castle had been looking for him for hours. Bennington gave him the impression that he was in trouble, and when Renwick realized that he had left Amberton Lee without orders, his heart sank. Of course the empress and the imperial staff already knew about the elven advance. An army of scouts watched every road and passage. It had been arrogant and shortsighted.
They would punish him. At the very least, Renwick was certain to remain no more than a page, forced back to mucking out the stable and splitting the firewood. Dreams of being a real squire vanished. At the age of seventeen, he had already peaked with his one week of serving Hadrian—the false squire and the false knight. His sad and miserable life was over, and he could hope for no better fortune to befall him now.
No doubt he would also get a whipping, but that would be the worst of it. If Saldur and Ethelred were still in charge, the punishment would be more severe. Chancellor Nimbus and the imperial secretary were good, kind people, which only made his failure that much harder to bear. His palms began to sweat as he imagined—
The door to the chancellor’s office opened. Lord Nimbus poked his head out. “Has no one found—” His eyes landed on Renwick. “Oh dash it all, man! Why didn’t you let us know he was out here?”
The scribe blinked innocently. “I—I—”
“Never mind. Come in here, Renwick.”
Inside the office, Renwick was shocked to see Empress Modina herself. She sat on the window ledge, he
r knees bent, her body curled up so that her gown sprayed out. Her hair was down, lying on her shoulders, and she appeared so oddly human—so strangely girlish. Captain Everton stood to one side, straight as an elm, his helm under one arm, water droplets from melted snow still visible on the steel of his armor. Another man in lighter, rougher dress stood in the opposite corner. He was tall, slender, and unkempt. This man wore leather, wool, and a thick ratty beard.
Lord Nimbus took a seat at the desk and motioned to Renwick. “You are a hard man to find,” he said. “Please, tell us exactly what happened?”
“Well, like I told Captain Everton here, Mince—that’s one of the boys with me—he saw a troop of elves crossing the Bernum.”
“Yes, Captain Everton told us that, but—”
“Tell us everything,” the empress said. Her voice was beautiful and Renwick was astounded that she had actually spoken to him. He felt flustered, his tongue stiff. He could not think, much less talk. He opened his mouth and words fell out. “I—ah—every—um…”
“Start at the beginning, from the moment you left here,” she said. “Tell us everything that has happened.”
“We must know the progress of the mission,” Nimbus clarified.
“Oh—ah—okay, well, we rode south to Ratibor,” he began, trying to think of as much detail as he could, but it was difficult to concentrate under her gaze. Somehow, he managed to recount the trip to Amberton Lee, the descent of the party into the shaft, and the days he and the boys had spent in the snow. He told them of Mince and the sighting, and of his long, hard trip north, racing to stay ahead of the elven vanguard. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay at my post. I have no excuse for abandoning it and willingly accept whatever punishment you see fit to deliver.”
“Punishment?” the empress said with a tone of humor in her voice as she climbed down from her perch. “You will be rewarded. The news your daring ride has brought is the hope I’ve looked for.”
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