Amulet of Doom
Authors: Bruce Coville
Amulet of Doom
Bruce Coville
For Diane and Paul
Contents
14. Gupt the Betrayer Betrayer
Introduction
STEP INTO MY CHAMBER
At the end of the street stands a strange old house. You check the address on the piece of yellowed paper you hold in your trembling hand. Yes, this is it. You've come to the right place. The chamber of horrors is straight ahead, waiting for you, waiting for you to enter.
You climb the rickety steps. The door creaks as you open it. A cobweb brushes your forehead, and from the corner of your eye you notice something with more legs than seems natural scuttle into the darkness.
In the shadows ahead lurks your host. He utters a low, mysterious, bone-chilling laugh.
And suddenly you wonder if this is really where you want to be.
You'd better turn back now, while you still can, because your journey into the heart of fear is about to begin.
What's this? You're going to stay?
Well, thenâwelcome to my nightmares. I've been studying fear all my life. First my own fears, the creeping terrors that came at night and left me staring into the dark, wondering what lurked in the closet, under the bed, waiting to grab me, take me, carry me away. Then the fear I found in movies, and books, and (sometimes most delicious of all) around campfires. I experienced the thrill of the chill, and at the same time yearned to learn to do the same thing to othersâto you, dear reader: to make your blood run cold with fear.
Let me explain my theory of fear, my preferences when it comes to terror.
First, I think you need a good laugh once in a while. It makes the terror that much worse.
Second, I think horror and adventure are a perfect mix.
Third, I'm not crazy about buckets of blood. It's easy to fling them around, but it doesn't take much skill, and what you get is as much disgust as true fear. If you're looking for loads of gore, you've come to the wrong place.
I'd rather take you into a long dark hall where you know something horrible is waiting; lead you down that hall, lure you along, so that with every step you want to turn and run, yet find that you can't because you have to go on, to see what happens.
At the end of the hall is a door. And behind that door is a mystery that fills you with dread; something you long for, but fear.
You want to turn. You want to run.
But your hand, almost of its own will, reaches out to open the door.â¦
The lights go out. The door swings open.
And now it's too late to leave. You've entered the first room of the Chamber of Horrors.
The door slams shut.
Welcome to my nightmare.
PROLOGUE
The castle stood high on a mountain. Its tall windowsâarched at the top and so wide an eagle could fly through them without brushing its wingtipsâlooked out on billowing clouds and valleys that ran deeper than thought.
Inside, Guptas the demon groveled at the feet of the king. Terror twisted the demon's already hideous face into a mask of despair.
“Don't do this to me,” he pleaded in a voice that sounded like rough rocks being rubbed together. “I'm not like the others! You know that!”
The king stared at the scaly creature cowering at his feet. “That much is true,” he said at last. Contempt and sorrow mingled in his voice. “You are not like the others.” He looked away from Guptas. Anger deepened his lonely eyes, and he bent his head in sorrow.
The king was silent for a moment, as if remembering something. A darkness crept across his face, and his features became like stone. “No, Guptas, you are not like the others.” He turned back to the demon, and the weariness in his voice seemed as heavy as the mountains surrounding them. “You are far, far worse.”
Guptas howled and grasped the king's sandaled foot, cradling it in his scaly claws. Tears hissed from his eyes. Rolling off the king's flesh without effect, they burned into the polished alabaster floor, leaving black pits where they landed.
“It wasn't my fault!
They
made me do it!” The demon's anguished words echoed off the walls of the great chamber. He began to howl, a cry of fear and despair that would have broken the heart of a lesser man.
The king, unmoved, made a noise of contempt in his throat. “You allowed them to âmake' you do it, Guptas. You were weak, and in your weakness you betrayed me. So now you must be punished.”
“Don't do this to me!” cried the creature. “Please! I will never betray you again, I swear it!”
“What good is your word?” asked the king wearily. “You are forsworn already. If I had not been alert, I would be dead.”
Guptas rolled over and spread his arms and legs, leaving his vulnerable, scaleless belly open to attack. “Kill me!” he screeched. “Kill me now. But don't do this other thing. I beseech you. Have mercy on Guptas who loves you!”
The king turned his face again so that the creature could not see the tear that had formed at the corner of his eye.
Guptas, lost in his own grief, rolled on the floor and jabbered in terror. Suddenly he rose to his knees and flung his arms around the king's legs.
“Remember your son!” he howled, his gravelly voice desperate. “Remember your son!”
The king sighed, and in his voice was the sorrow of a thousand years of loss and pain. “I had
two
sons.”
He looked down at Guptas and allowed the mask of his anger to slip for just a moment. “Yes, Guptas. I remember my son. And I remember how you saved his life, though in the long run it did no good. Are you calling on that debt now?”
“Yes!” cried the creature. “Remember how I risked my own life that day! Remember, and be merciful.”
“I remember
everything,”
said the king. He turned and walked to his throne. Guptas followed at his heels, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling. His claws scrabbled on the polished stone.
“My judgment is unchanged,” said the king.
Guptas raked his claws against his forehead, howling in terror.
“My judgment stands. But this much I will add. When the time is right, I will come for you. I will come, and I will search your heart. And if I feel that I can trust youâ”
Guptas threw himself at the king's feet. “You will see!” he cried joyfully. “I can beâ”
His words were cut off by a blinding flash of lightning.
Guptas was gone. A jagged scorch mark scarred the floor where he had stood. A cloud of acrid smoke hung in the air above it.
And the king, the last king in a long line of great kings, and the last man of his race, sat alone in a hall that was large enough to hold a forest and wept.
Day passed into night. At last the king rose from his throne and wandered out of the great hall, into corridors that wound for miles through the empty palace of his fathers.
In his hand he clutched an amulet.
In the center of the amulet was a scarlet stone, still blazing with a fierce heat.
1
ZENOBIA
“Well, I want to tell you, I never smelled anything so awful in my life. The scent of death was just
clinging
to the thing.”
Marilyn Sparks paused, a forkful of broccoli halfway to her mouth, and stared at her aunt Zenobia in a combination of awe and astonishment. It was hard to believe any one person could have had so many adventuresâand even harder to believe she would dare to tell them at this table.
Marilyn glanced at her father. He was scowling at Zenobiaâthe same disapproving scowl he used on his English students when they got out of line.
Zenobia ignored him. A fiercely independent woman who had somehow cropped up in a family full of people pleasers, she was long used to scandalizing her relatives. It was almost a tradition, one that had begun way back when she refused to get married and settle down, at a time when living as a single woman was far from fashionable.
That had seemed funny to Marilyn when she first heard it; Zenobia seemed too young to have had such a problem. But then, Marilyn had a hard time remembering that Zenobia Calkins was really her great-aunt and had already seen her seventieth birthday. Marilyn didn't think about age when she thought about Zenobia. She just adored her.
“Anyway,” continued Zenobia, “Baron de Courvis drew out his machete and started to hack away at the dead flesh. Of course, in that climate the thing had become a breeding ground for maggots, andâ”
Marilyn's mother cut Zenobia off with a sound that was just short of a shriek. “Really, Aunt Zenobia! Couldn't you tell this some other time?”
Marilyn sighed. She should have known she could count on her mother to stop Zenobia right at the most interesting moment. A story about recovering a giant diamond from the intestines of a five-day-dead rogue elephant, no matter how fascinating, simply did not fall within Helen Sparks's definition of table talk. Not even if it came from her father's sister.
Zenobia looked at Mrs. Sparks with something that seemed like pity. “Of course, my dear,” she said sweetly. “I don't know what came over me.”
Marilyn put the limp broccoli in her mouth and chewed it morosely. Her family was so stodgy!
“You will finish the story later, won't you, Ms. Calkins?” Kyle Patterson, gangly but good-looking, a year older than Marilyn and unfortunately her brother's best friend, had hardly taken a bite since they had sat down to supper. He was much too excited about being at the same table with a great author to eat. It was the first time Marilyn had ever seen Kyle ignore foodâand she had known him since he was three.
“I don't know,” said Zenobia, with a touch of petulance. “One has to be in the mood for these things to do them properly.”
Kyle looked stricken.
“Of course she'll tell us,” said Geoff jovially. “Aunt Zenobia never let a good story go untold, did you?”