Angst (Book 4)

by Robert P. Hansen

  He stopped and half turned. “If you can, yes,” he said. “Where we’re going, there’s a big hole in the floor that you’ll probably have to fly through. It’s going to take us a little while to get there, though, and we’ll have to watch out for Darby. The pit didn’t catch him and he’s bound to be watching for us by now.”

  Embril nodded and designated a part of her attention to maintaining her grasp on the strand of air magic she was using for her Flying spell. Then she followed Giorge through the tunnels, carefully memorizing each turn they made.

  24

  Why did I lie? Giorge wondered as he led Embril through the corridors of the Angst temple. It wasn’t that he felt guilty about lying; it was that he didn’t understand why he had done it. Maybe it was because of The Tiger’s Eye? Embril had mentioned it before they left, hadn’t she? Something about it being a part of the nexus—whatever that was. He knew where the nexus was, too, at least in general terms, and that meant he also knew where The Tiger’s Eye was. If the legends about it were only partly true, it would put Symptata’s cursed gems to shame, and that kind of wealth…

  No. It wasn’t about how much The Tiger’s Eye was worth, even though it would be spectacular. It was about the prestige of having found it! Everyone would look upon him in wonder! There he goes, they would say, the man who found The Tiger’s Eye. Was that why he hadn’t told Embril about seeing Darby’s body pinioned to the spike? He frowned as he neared another intersection. What if she noticed there weren’t any new tracks? He paused and held up his hand for Embril to stop, and then pretended to peek around the corner to see if Darby was waiting for them. How many more times could he do that before she realized how pointless it was? The Lamplight’s glow would have warned Darby of their presence long before he reached the intersection, and she was as far from being stupid as the sun was from being dark. If she had more experience and less trust, his deception would never work. He motioned her forward and started around the corner.

  I’ll have to lead her to the room, he thought. I can’t keep pretending like I’ve forgotten where it is. But what would he do when he got there? What would she do? That was the problem wasn’t it? He didn’t know how Angus had made the floor drop down, but Embril might figure it out. Yes, that was what it was, wasn’t it? He needed Embril if he were to find The Tiger’s Eye. But why did he want it? Why was he deceiving her so he could get it? And what would he do with it when he had it? What would he do to her if she tried to stop him? She would try, too; he was certain of it. Angus had been terrified of the nexus, and she—

  He looked around another corner and saw the gaping hole at the end. Angus did that, he reminded himself. He had to use a wand, but that hole is his. What will Embril do to me when she realizes what I’m up to? He leaned back and waited for Embril to join him. She won’t need a wand for it, either.

  “We’re almost there,” he whispered. “The room at the end of the corridor is where Angus said he saw the nexus. I’m not sure what you will have to do to find it, though. I was mostly blind the last time I was here.”

  “All right,” Embril said as she squared her shoulders. Her long, flowing red hair shone in the Lamplight’s glare, and her powder blue robe glistened. She was a pretty thing for a witch, but he didn’t let it distract him. Those strange eyes—one blue and one brown—were too keen; they would notice something was awry. Perhaps they already had? Did she already know he had lied about Darby? Was she aware of his duplicity and biding her time to see how far he would take it?

  What if she was? He hadn’t done anything yet. Except for lying about Darby, and he could recover from that. She had startled him, and he had almost joined Darby because of it. He could say that he hadn’t had time to see him before she grabbed him and knocked him off balance.

  “There’s a trap in the room,” he said. “If Darby didn’t know about it…”

  Embril shook her head. “He knows about it,” she said. “I told him.” She sucked in her lower lip and added, “I didn’t know I was doing it at the time.”

  Like I don’t know why I’m going to take The Tiger’s Eye? he wondered, realizing that he was about to do just that. “If he’s not there,” he continued. “I don’t know where else he could be.” Another lie.

  Giorge hurried down the corridor and stopped at the gaping hole Angus’s wand had made. He looked inside the room and feigned relief. “He’s not in there,” he told Embril, keeping his voice low to prevent it from carrying. “We must have gotten here before him.”

  “Good,” Embril said as she tried to pass him.

  Giorge held out his arm to block her path. “The floor is trapped,” he said. “When you step on it, it sets the trigger. Don’t touch the bowl on the podium, it will make the floor tilt. There are spikes down there, too—and poison on the column’s base.”

  Embril nodded. “I know,” she said. “Angus detailed it in his scroll.” She pushed his hand away and stepped into the room.

  Giorge started after her, but reflexively stopped when a muffled click reached his ears. The trap is set, he thought, then shrugged and followed her. She went around the hole in the floor and up to the little pillar with the bowl on top of it. She walked slowly around the pillar and stopped when she was on the other side. She bent down and pressed her palm against it, and the floor started its slow descent.

  Angus did that, too, Giorge thought. The floor will drop below the— “Wait!” he cried, hurrying up to her. “The Lamplight—” his shoulder already felt like it was on fire, and he was sure it would be if she didn’t do something about the spell. He turned and said, “Get it off me! Quickly! The last time I was here, Angus’s Lamplight exploded.” There was a brief flurry of motion, and then the Lamplight was flying across the room. It had nearly reached the door when it burst with such brilliance that it temporarily blinded him. Darkness filled the room, and Giorge cursed his stupidity for not keeping the candle lit. Nevertheless—

  Darkness, he thought, trying to remember the layout of the room. It was simple. All he needed to do was move to the back wall. The slit leading to the chamber with the nexus was in the middle of it. He reached the wall and slid his pack from his shoulders. He didn’t need to see with his eyes to find The Tiger’s Eye; he could use magic to see. He smiled as he reached into his pack and brought out Symptata’s box. He didn’t even pause as he slid the little lever over and opened the lid, and his hand moved unerringly up to the eye socket. He felt his fingers wrap around the Viper’s Eye and it came free with little provocation. Then it was up to his eye—and he saw nothing. He switched to the other eye and was nearly blinded by the brilliance of the swaths of flame magic emanating from a point inside the wall about three feet to his left.

  “Giorge?” Embril hissed. “The candle, Giorge,” she said. Somehow, her voice seemed to be directed straight at him, but he ignored it; he was focusing on where the magic originated. If what Embril had said about the nexus was true, that would be where he would find The Tiger’s Eye.

  Giorge slid his hand along the wall until he found the slit. It was just wide enough for him to pass through without scraping his shoulders. He stepped through the gap—and very nearly fell into the chasm on the other side. If it weren’t for his training, his reflexes, his deeply ingrained awareness of the soles of his feet, he would have fallen, but he recovered almost immediately and backed out of the tunnel.

  “Giorge?” Embril demanded.

  “I’m looking for it,” Giorge claimed as he silently returned to his pack. He had removed the candle when he took Symptata’s box out, and he hesitated to light it long enough to return the Viper’s Eye to its socket, close the lid, and put Symptata’s box back in his pack. The first spark was almost a flame in its own right, and he nearly dropped the flint and steel. On the third spark, the candlewick ignited, and Giorge leaned back away from it. The candle’s flame was much higher than it should have been, and he carefully handed it to Embril. The floor stopped dropping, and he waited to see what Embril would do.r />
  Embril considered him for a few uncomfortable seconds, and then stepped into the gap. “It’s still here!” she chortled, her voice echoing through the small chamber. “Darby hasn’t found it yet!”

  “Good,” Giorge said. Nor will he, he thought to himself. But you don’t know that, do you? Maybe…

  Almost a minute went by before Embril returned and said, “We must watch for him. He has to be down here somewhere.”

  Giorge nodded. “There are a couple of antechambers near the stairwell that we can use. They are just inside that panel you opened.”

  Embril frowned. “We should stay closer,” she said. “He’s probably already past those antechambers.”

  “I don’t think so,” Giorge slowly replied as a new scheme began to form in his mind. “I haven’t seen any sign of him in here.” He paused, and then added, “Of course, he could be concealing his presence from us with that spell you used on us and the horses.”

  Embril’s frown darkened, but she eventually nodded. “All right,” she said. “Even if he manages to get by us, we’ll be able to catch him as he leaves.”

  “Yes,” Giorge readily agreed. The scheme was coming into focus, now, and he fought the urge to look longingly at the nexus. He needed Embril to trust him, and if he acted like he wanted The Tiger’s Eye, she would know it. “Is there anything else you need to do here before we go back?” he asked.

  Embril stared at the little gap in the wall for several seconds, and then shook her head. “No,” she said, her tone sharply decisive. She pivoted and went back to the podium. Giorge watched very closely as she put her palm against it and pushed.

  The floor began to rise…

  25

  Taro didn’t wake up, exactly, since he hadn’t been sleeping. If he had been sleeping, he would have felt much better than he did. Then he saw the weird violet-colored eyes looking down at him from a v-shaped little face that was much too clear for his liking. It had a dimple on the chin, and if it smiled, he would have been able to count its teeth. He tried to pull away from it, but Abner’s arms held him still.

  The violet eyes retreated into the blurry background and said, “He is aware of us.”

  “I thought you were dying, Master Taro,” Abner almost whimpered as he helped Taro to sit up. “You screeched like one of Dad’s pigs when he butchers them, and then you stiffened up like mom’s laundry in midwinter.”

  “Fey,” Taro muttered, glaring at those around him. There were too many of them. Abner was supposed to be there, but not the little thing with the violet eyes. At least the pale ones were far enough away to look like melons with warts for eyes, but where had they come from? Their bows weren’t poised with arrows, so they probably weren’t bandits. Then he saw the profile of the metal giant from his vision, and everything suddenly came into focus—except his eyesight, which was even more of a blurry mess than normal. “Hobart,” he said.

  The behemoth nodded and asked, “Have we met before, Master Taro? I do not think I would forget such a one as you.”

  “Yes,” Taro nodded vigorously. He glanced around and recognized the crossroads. “We met here in a vision a month ago.” Before Hobart could respond, Taro shook his head. “No, no, no. That isn’t right. We didn’t meet until today, did we? But I saw that meeting in a vision a month ago. You rode up to me at this crossroads and said, ‘Well met, Old Man.’ Mind you, I didn’t realize you were talking to me, at first, but then I heard myself reply in my own voice with ‘Well met, Hobart.’ That’s how I knew your name when I saw you today because we met a month ago in my vision and I knew it then. In the vision, that is.” He frowned. How could he have known Hobart’s name today to say it in his vision if he hadn’t had the vision to tell him Hobart’s name?

  Hobart leaned over in his saddle until his forehead glistened as it reflected back the sunlight. “You speak strangely, Old Man.”

  Taro waved his hand dismissively and gruffed, “I just have visions. Don’t ask me to explain them.” That’s what I should tell the villagers! he thought with excitement. Let them figure out the riddles for themselves!

  “Visions?” Hobart scoffed. “You are a diviner, then?”

  “No!” Taro growled. “I am no charlatan wizard claiming to find the future in the dregs of a mug of ale! I have visions. I see the future. I need no wizard’s tricks to do it, either. I—” he frowned. He had almost told them about the incense but realized it would seem like a wizard’s trick to them. That didn’t bother him overmuch—he knew the difference—but he wasn’t at all sure he needed the incense. He hadn’t had any incense when his first vision had come to him so many years ago, and he had just had another vision without it. And a strange vision it was, too! He puffed himself up in a vain attempt to recapture his absent youth and faced Hobart as if he were about to challenge him to a duel. “I just saw one, didn’t I?” he asserted in his most defensive tone.

  Hobart’s armor clanked as he shrugged.

  Taro scowled and was quite close to ranting as he continued in clipped tones, “I was on the shore of a vast ocean, and I saw the waves part and an island rise up from the depths. On its back was a graveyard, and in that graveyard was something so dreadful that I could not bear to look upon it.” It wasn’t true, of course—he had looked upon it—but it sounded true. “I had to turn away.”

  “Perhaps that is why you collapsed,” Abner offered.

  “What?” Taro snapped, turning to the young man sitting too close beside him. “I collapsed?” He had, hadn’t he? That must have been before the little violet-eyed vixen startled him. “Yes, I suppose that was why I collapsed.” But it wasn’t, was it? It was what happened next. A great serpent had risen with that island, and it had slithered out onto the land. It was like the smoke-snakes that gave him his visions, but instead of being gray-black with fiery red eyes, this snake was like a green fog spreading out across the land and it had glimmering jewel-like eyes. That part was okay, but when it looked at him and opened its mouth….

  Taro blinked and shuddered.

  Violet eyes were too close to him again. They were insistent, demanding, as they ordered him to tell her what he had seen. They didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to be a Seer to know what that look meant. He told them about the snake trying to swallow him—trying to swallow the whole world.

  Just before the violet eyes turned away, he saw a wave of fear pass over them. Strange, that. He hadn’t expected his words to convey the feeling he had felt when he had seen the puffy green snake about to swallow him. Maybe it was the way he had described it? Maybe he should try to talk that way about his visions more often. Then villagers might listen to him. Maybe—

  “Your young friend told us,” Hobart said from atop his big white horse, “that you have had a vision of a wizard. I would hear of it.”

  “Which one?” Taro grumbled. “I’ve seen him in visions lots of times. There’s the one where he is surrounded by fire but doesn’t burn. There’s the one where he’s standing on the platform of a Wizards’ School—that’s why I’m going to Hellsbreath. I think it’s that one. There’s the one where he’s angry because a man I can’t see won’t let him go someplace. There’s the one—”

  “Why don’t you tell me about all of them,” Hobart said. “But first, what is this wizard’s name?”

  “Oh, that,” Taro said, waving his hand as if it didn’t matter to him. “The man I can’t see called him Angus. They were in some kind of room, and Angus was angry about not being allowed to leave. The man behind me—I was facing Angus no matter which way I turned in my vision—said the king wouldn’t let him go. He was part of a Banner, whatever that is, and had to obey the king. Of course, I don’t know when my vision will happen, so he might have left there by now. He probably has, since I had the vision weeks ago, and it’s taken me a long time to get this far. Then again, it might be years from now before it happens. That’s what my first vision was like. Parts of it came true quickly, but the last thing didn’t happen for over thirty y
ears.” He shrugged. “Visions come true at their own pace, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.”

  Taro studied Hobart’s frown for a long moment and then grumbled, “It’s like the vision of you. I didn’t know when it was going to happen, but I knew it would. When we arrived here three days ago, I thought it would be soon, and here you are. I don’t know why I had a vision of you, though, since all my other visions are about the wizard.” He frowned. Was that true? His vision about the giant snake cloud thing didn’t relate to Angus, did it? Or was the wizard responsible for it, too? The snake could be a spell, couldn’t it?

  Hobart turned toward Hellsbreath and said, his voice low, determined, “Perhaps it is because Angus is my friend.”

  Aha! Taro smiled in triumph. I knew they had to be connected!

  Hobart turned back to him and demanded, “Now, tell me of these visions.”

  Taro nodded, happy to finally have found someone who wanted to hear about his visions. “It all started when I was a boy….”

  26

  “He can’t get by here without us seeing him,” Giorge said as he put the half-burned candle down at the end of the corridor where the panel led out to the stairwell. Then he returned to one of the antechambers and put his pack on the floor. He sat down beside it and asked, “How long do you plan to wait for him?”

  Embril frowned as she sat down in the antechamber on the opposite side of the corridor. She hadn’t thought about that, and she didn’t have an answer for him. “As long as necessary,” she hedged, positioning herself in the entryway so that she could see the candle. If Darby wasn’t already in the tunnel complex behind them, there was no way he could open that panel without them seeing and hearing it.

  “In that case,” Giorge suggested, “you may want to take what’s left of the candle and fly up to get our provisions.”