Percepliquis Page 35

  “Degan?” Arista called. “Degan?”

  Gaunt looked up from his new necklace with an annoyed expression.

  “When you get across,” Arista told him, “look for the horn in the tomb. I don’t know where it will be. I don’t even know what it will look like, but it is there.”

  “If you can’t find it,” Hadrian said, “look for a sword with writing on the blade. You can kill the Gilarabrywn with it. You just have to stab it. It doesn’t matter where. Just drive the word written on the blade into its body.”

  “If something goes wrong, run back and I will try to protect you,” Arista said.

  Hadrian handed Gaunt the lantern. “Good luck.”

  Gaunt stood before them, clutching his new medallion and the light. His long cloak was discarded in tatters on the floor, his hat disheveled, his face sick. Hadrian and Royce slid the latches and drew back the bolts. The metal made a disturbing squeal; then the door came free. Hadrian raised his foot and kicked the door open. It swung back with a groan, a large hollow sound that suggested the vast volume of the chamber beyond.

  Gaunt took a step, raised the lantern, and peered in. “I can’t see anything.”

  “It’s there,” Royce whispered to him. The thief stood behind Gaunt. “Right in the middle of the room. It looks like it’s sleeping.”

  “Go on, Degan,” Arista said. “Maybe you can sneak by.”

  “Yeah—sneak,” he said, and stepped forward, leaving Arista and Royce standing side by side in the doorway with Hadrian looking over their shoulders.

  “Stop breathing so hard,” Royce snapped. “Breathe through your mouth, at least.”

  “Right,” he said, and took another step. “Is it moving?”

  “No,” Royce told him.

  Gaunt took three more steps. The lantern in his hand began to jingle a bit as his arm shook.

  “Why doesn’t he just scream, ‘Come eat me!’?” Royce hissed in frustration.

  Arista watched as the lantern bobbed. The light revealed nothing of the walls or ceiling and illuminated only one side of Gaunt as he appeared to walk into a void of nothingness.

  “How big is this room?” she asked.

  “Huge,” Royce told her.

  She tried to remember the dream. She vaguely recalled the emperor on the floor of a large chamber with painted walls and a series of statues—statues that represented all the past emperors—a memorial hall.

  “He seems to be doing pretty good,” Hadrian observed.

  “He’s halfway to it,” Royce reported. “Walking real slow.”

  “I think I can see it,” Arista said. Something ahead of Gaunt was finally illuminated by his light. It was big. “Is that it? Is that—Oh my god, that’s just its foot?”

  “I said it was big,” Royce told her.

  As Gaunt approached, his lantern revealed a mammoth creature. A clawed foot lay no more than ten feet away, yet its tail stretched too far into the darkness to see. Its two great leathery wings were folded at its sides as towering tents of skin stretched out on talon-endowed poles. Its huge head, with a long snout, raised ears, and fanged teeth, lay between its forefeet, making it seem as innocent as a sleeping dog—only it was not sleeping. Two eyes, each one larger than a wagon wheel, watched him, unblinking.

  The moment it raised its head, Degan stopped moving. Even across the distance, they heard his labored, rapid breath.

  “Don’t run,” Arista called, stepping forward into the room. “Tell it who you are. Tell it you are the heir. Order it to let you pass.”

  The Gilarabrywn rose to its feet. As it did, its massive wings expanded. They sounded like distant thunder rolling and Arista felt a gust of air.

  “Gaunt, tell it!”

  “I—I—I am—I am Degan Ga—Gaunt, the Heir of Novron, and I—”

  “Damn it!” Royce rushed forward.

  Arista saw it too—the beast lifted its head and opened its mouth. Closing her eyes, she pushed out with her senses. There it was—the beast. In her mind’s eye, she could see its massive size, its overwhelming power, and it was pure magic. She could see it as such, hear its music, feel its vibration, and everything she sensed told her it was about to kill Degan.

  “Run!” Hadrian shouted.

  In that same instant, panic gripped her. The creature was not a force she could act upon; it was like smoke. She could not grasp, push, burn, or harm it. It was magic and acting upon it with magic would have no more effect than blowing at the wind or spitting in a lake.

  She opened her eyes. “I can’t stop it!”

  The beast arched its back to strike.

  In one tremendous burst, Arista’s robe exploded with the brilliance of a star. Light filled the room, flooding every corner of the great vault. Gold and silver reflected the light, creating dazzling effects that blinded and bewildered. Even Arista could not see, but she heard the beast groan and sensed it recoil. The light went out as quickly as it had appeared, but still she could not see.

  She heard footfalls running toward her. They brushed by and she was pulled through the doorway. Still blinking, her eyes still adjusting, she could barely make out Hadrian throwing back the bolts, sealing it out and them in. From the other side they heard a roar that shook the walls, then silence.

  Royce and Gaunt lay on the floor panting. Hadrian collapsed near the door, and Arista found herself sliding down a wall to her knees. Tears filled her eyes.

  It was over. Thranic had been right. No one was going to cross that room… ever.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE SACRIFICE

  Hadrian raised the lantern and looked up at the collapse. Shattered rock and broken stone crushed into a solid wall blocked the corridor and obliterated the stair. He looked at Magnus at his side. “Well?”

  The dwarf shook his head with a scowl. “If I had a month, perhaps two, I could tunnel it.”

  “We have six, maybe seven, days’ worth of food and perhaps three days of water,” Hadrian told him. “And who knows how much air? I’m also guessing Wyatt and Elden won’t wait much beyond five days before setting sail home.”

  “And don’t forget the Ghazel,” Magnus reminded him. “By now, how many do you think there might be? Five hundred? A thousand? Two thousand? How many more oberdaza have they brought up to deal with the princess? They will be watching the other end of this for some time, I think.”

  Hadrian sighed. “It’s not looking good, is it?”

  “No,” Magnus replied sadly. “I’m sorry.”

  When they returned to the room, Arista was still sitting in the corner by herself. Since the attempt to cross the Vault of Days, she slept a lot and he wondered if she was looking for answers in her dreams. Mauvin lay on the floor, not bothering to use a blanket to cover the stone. He stared up at the ceiling blankly. Gaunt lay curled in the opposite corner from Arista, holding the amulet with both hands, his eyes closed.

  By contrast, Royce and Myron sat chatting next to the last remaining lantern. To Hadrian the two appeared surreal. Myron spoke excitedly, sitting cross-legged on the floor, sifting through the piles of parchments he gathered around him. Each one had been carefully wiped clean of oil. Royce leaned comfortably against the wall, his feet up on Gaunt’s pack, his boots off as he flexed his toes. They could have been in the Dark Room at The Rose and Thorn or any cozy pub.

  “The Ghazel conquered Calis,” Myron was saying. “They came out of the east on ships and attacked. Neither the men nor dwarves had ever seen them before. The men called them the spawn of Uberlin, but it was the dwarves that named them the Ba Ran Ghazel—sea goblins. They overran Calis and drove the clans of men west into Avryn while the dwarves returned underground. The elves warned men not to cross the Bernum River and when they did, the elves declared war.”

  Myron stopped speaking as Hadrian and Magnus approached, both of them looking up expectantly. “No luck, then?” Royce asked, reading his face, which Hadrian was certain was no great feat.

  “No,” he replied with a sigh.
He was aware his shoulders were slumped, his head hanging. He felt beaten, defeated by stone, dust, and dirt. Exhausted, he lay down and, like Mauvin, stared at the ceiling. “There’s no way out of here.”

  Magnus nodded. “The stone they used is solid and the princess did an excellent job as well. The collapse is hundreds of feet deep. I think she took out the entire stair and a good deal of the corridor beyond. Perhaps with a crew of twenty dwarves and a month to work with, I could clear the wreckage, build supports and reinforcements, and form a new stair, but as it is, we’ll be dead before I could tunnel a foot-wide hole.”

  The dwarf sat down amidst the scrolls and, picking one up, glanced at it.

  “Can you read Old Speech?” Myron asked.

  “Not likely,” Magnus replied. “Dwarves aren’t even scholars in our own language. Are you finishing that story? The one about how the dwarves saved mankind?”

  “Ah—well, yes, I suppose.”

  “Well, go on. I liked that one.”

  “Um, I was just saying that when the goblins arrived, it drove men west. They had little choice, and those who crossed the river were mostly women and children, refugees of the goblin push. According to what I read, the elves knew this and some argued to allow the humans to stay, but there was more to consider.

  “Elves had already entered into agreements with men that had proved disastrous. The problem was that humans only live for a few decades. A treaty made with one chieftain would be forgotten in just a few hundred years. More than this, though, was the rate of reproduction. Elves had only one child over the course of their long lives, spanning hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. But humans reproduced like rabbits and the king, a chieftain of the Miralyith at that time, thought that men would choke the world with their number and be more plentiful than ants. It was decided to wipe mankind out to the last woman and child before they grew too numerous to be stopped. At that time the Ghazel were attacking the eastern coast of Avryn and the southern coast of Erivan, taking control of what we know as the Goblin Sea.”

  “Were did you get all this?” Hadrian asked.

  Myron pulled out a red leather-bound book. “It’s called Migration of Peoples by Princess Farilane, daughter, incidentally, to Emperor Nyrian, who reigned from 1912 to 1989 of imperial reckoning. It has wonderful charts and maps showing how the various clans of man shifted out of Calis and into Avryn. There were originally three main clans. Bulard theorized that these distinct groups, both in tradition and linguistic foundations—temporarily homogenized by the empire—created the ethnic divisions and the basis for the three kingdoms after the fall of the empire.”

  “Nothing in those books about the horn, then?”

  Myron shook his head. “But I’m still reading.”

  “Speaking of linguistics…” Royce began. “The names you found in the Teshlor guildhall, Techylor and, ah—What was it?”

  “Cenzlyor?”

  “Yeah, him. I knew a man once—a very smart man—who told me words like that and others, like Avryn, and Galewyr, were elven in origin.”

  “Oh absolutely,” Myron replied. “Techylor is actually swift of hand in elvish, and Cenzlyor is swift of mind.”

  “Is it possible that Techylor and Cenzlyor were actually elves?” Royce asked.

  “Hmm.” The monk thought for a bit. “I don’t know. Until we got here, I never even knew they were people.” Myron looked at Magnus. “Is there really no way of digging out? I would so much like to get back to that library again. If Mr. Bulard found these, there may be other books that survived the fire.”

  “That’s why you want to get out?” Gaunt exclaimed, sitting up and casting his blanket back. “We’re dying here! You know that, right? Your little bookish brain isn’t so dense as to not realize that, is it? We will be dead bodies lying on this stone floor soon, and all you can think of are books? You’re crazy!”

  “This is going to sound really strange,” Mauvin began, “but I have to agree with His Heir-ness on this one. How can you just sit there yapping about ancient history at a time like this?”

  “Like what?” Myron asked.

  Even Arista was taken aback. “Myron, we are going to die here—you understand that, don’t you?”

  The monk considered it a moment, then shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “You don’t find that disturbing?”

  Myron looked around. “Why? Should I?”

  “Why?” Gaunt laughed. “He is nuts!”

  “I just mean—well, how is this different from any other day?” They all looked at him incredulously. Myron sighed. “The morning before the Imperialists arrived and burned the abbey was a lovely fall day. The sky was blue and the weather surprisingly warm. On the other hand, it was a horribly cold and wet night when I met the King of Melengar, Royce, and Hadrian, who opened my eyes to untold wonders. When I traveled south through the snow with the awful news about Miss DeLancy, I had no idea that journey would save my life from the elven invasion. So you see, it is impossible to tell what Maribor has in store for us. A beautiful day might bring disaster, while a day that begins trapped inside an ancient tomb might be the best one of your life. If you don’t abandon hope on pleasant days, why do so on those that begin poorly?”

  “The odds of death are a bit better than usual, Myron,” Magnus pointed out.

  The monk nodded. “We may indeed die here, that’s true. But we will all die anyway—is there any denying that? When you think of all the possible ways you might go, this is as fine a place as any, isn’t it? I mean, to end one’s life surrounded by friends, in a comfortable, dry room with plenty to read… that doesn’t sound too awful, does it?

  “What is the advantage of fear, or the benefit of regret, or the bonus of granting misery a foothold even if death is embracing you? My old abbot used to say, ‘Life is only precious if you wish it to be.’ I look at it like the last bite of a wonderful meal—do you enjoy it, or does the knowledge that there is no more to follow make it so bitter that you would ruin the experience?” The monk looked around, but no one answered him. “If Maribor wishes for me to die, who am I to argue? After all, it is he who gave me life to begin with. Until he decides I am done, each day is a gift granted me, and it would be wasted if spent poorly. Besides, for me, I’ve learned that the last bite is often the sweetest.”

  “That’s very beautiful,” Arista said. “I’ve never had much use for religion, but perhaps if I had you as a teacher rather than Saldur—”

  “I should never have come,” Gaunt complained. “How did I ever get involved in this? I can’t believe this is happening. Is anyone else finding it hard to breathe?” He lay back down, pulled his blanket over his head, and moaned.

  In the silence that followed, Myron got up and looked around for more unopened scrolls still resting in the many holes.

  “Who was he?” Magnus asked Royce. “The one who taught you elvish?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A bit ago you mentioned a man taught you about elvish words. Who was he?”

  “Oh,” Royce said, wriggling his toes again. “I met him in prison. He was perhaps the first real friend I ever had.”

  This caught Hadrian’s attention. Royce had never spoken of his time in Manzant before, and because he knew everyone Royce had ever called a friend, except one, he took a guess. “He was the one who gave you Alverstone.”

  “Yes,” Royce said.

  “Who was he?” the dwarf asked. “How did he come by it? Was he a guard?”

  “No, an inmate like me.”

  “How did he smuggle a dagger in?”

  “I asked him the same thing,” Royce said. “He told me he didn’t.”

  “What? He found it? Digging in the salt mine? He uncovered that treasure down there?”

  “Maybe, but that’s not what he told me, and he wasn’t the type to lie. He said he made it himself—made it for me. He told me I would need it.” Royce looked off thoughtfully. “When I was locked away, I swore to myself never to trust anyon
e again. Then I met him. I would have died in my first month if I hadn’t. He kept me alive. He had absolutely no reason—no reason at all—but he did. He taught me things: how to survive in the mine, where to dig and where not to, when to sleep and when to pretend to. He taught me some mathematics, reading, history, and even a bit of elvish. He never once asked for anything in return.

  “One day I was hauled out before Ambrose Moor, to meet an old man named Arcadius who called himself a wizard. He offered to buy my freedom if I did a special job for him—the Crown Tower robbery, as it turned out.” Royce looked at Hadrian. “I said I would do it if he also paid for the release of my friend. Arcadius refused. So I pretended to go along just to get out. I told my friend that when I got clear of the prison, I would slit the old man’s throat, steal his money, and return to buy his freedom.”

  “What changed your mind?” Hadrian asked.

  “He did. He made me promise not to kill Arcadius or Ambrose Moor—it was the only thing he ever asked of me. It was then that he gave me Alverstone and said goodbye.”

  “You never went back?”

  “I did. A year later I had plenty of coin and planned to buy him, but Ambrose told me he died. They threw his body in the sea like all the others.” Royce flexed his hands. “I never had the chance to thank him.”

  Hours went by. Like the others, Hadrian lay on the floor drifting into and out of sleep. He dreamed he fought beside his father against shadowy creatures who were trying to kill the emperor—who looked vaguely like Alric. In another dream, he sat in the burned-out shell of The Rose and Thorn with Gwen and Albert, waiting for Royce, but Royce was late—very late. Gwen was frightened something awful had happened, and he assured her Royce could take care of himself. “Nothing,” he told her, “absolutely nothing, can keep Royce from your side, not even death.”

  He woke up groggy and tired, as if he had not slept at all. The cold floor punished his muscles, leaving him stiff and sore. The air grew thin, or at least Hadrian thought so. It was not hard to breathe, but it did feel as if he were sleeping with his head under a blanket.