The Golden Key (Book 3) (2 page)

2

A chill, damp darkness enveloped him. A dull, musty odor
swarmed around in the dust like spider legs dancing on his skin. Giorge lifted
his left hand, and it banged against a wall. He tried the right arm, but it was
squeezed up against the wall and the sling made it difficult to move in the
confined space. He leaned backward, then forward, but no matter how he shifted
his position, the walls remained but an inch or two away, as if they had been drawn
in from the darkness and solidified into a harsh, unrepentant cocoon.

Where am I?

He blinked, and his eyelids brushed lightly across the
surface of his eyes.
Eyes?
He frowned; these were
his
eyes, not
the cold stone of the Viper’s Eyes, but he still couldn’t see. Was he blind
again?
More
blind? Without the Viper’s Eyes, he couldn’t even see the
magic around him anymore.

He tilted his leg to press his knee against the wall in
front of him. It was hard, smooth, and curved slightly outward. As it rose from
the floor, it tapered
around
his leg as if it had been molded to fit
his
leg perfectly, with barely enough room for him to wiggle around a little bit.
He tried the other leg and found the same thing. It even had nodule-like
indentations for his kneecaps.

He exhaled as much air from his lungs as he could and
wondered how long he could survive on what little air there was in the small,
enclosed space. Minutes? Perhaps a half hour? Longer? He would need to escape from
it quickly. He squeezed his left arm in front of his abdomen and brought it
upward until it pressed painfully between his ribcage and the sling. Then he
gritted his teeth and shifted his right arm upward until it nestled uncomfortably
beneath his chin, almost crushing his windpipe. He had expected a jolt of pain,
but there was nothing. His right arm didn’t hurt
at all
.

It was a tight fit, but he had both arms pressed against the
wall in front of him. He pushed outward as hard as he could, using the weight
of his body to provide leverage against the wall behind him. It gave a little,
as if the seal was not quite true, as if it were a door whose bolt had a little
play in it. Was it a door? One conforming to his body’s shape? He had seen
doors like that before, but only in mausoleums when he chanced to visit them
looking for bits of buried treasure. On those, the image of the dead was raised
outward to give the impression of life suspended instead of life done and gone.
What if he were
inside
one of those things? Would there be a reverse impression
on the lid? He frowned; all the ones he had seen had been smooth on the inside
when he had opened them. Maybe it was something like a suit of armor? But that
didn’t make sense; armor had arms and legs that moved, and this thing didn’t.
It was just a hollowed-out shape that followed the rough contours of his body. Besides,
why would he be wearing armor? It was far too cumbersome for his purposes. Whatever
it was, it gave a little bit when he pressed on it, and if he pressed harder,
it might give even more.

He slowly repositioned himself and used the back wall to
brace his elbows. Then he leaned back as far as he could and lurched forward
with all the weight and power he could muster. There was a sharp little twang,
as if a spring had snapped apart, and then the wall in front of him swiveled
away. He heard a tiny metallic clink at his feet as he staggered forward,
sagged to his knees, and reached out with his hands to stop from tumbling
forward. The floor was damp, and he slid forward until he lay sprawled atop its
matted, slimy surface. When he rose to his hands and knees, fetid, spongy
strands clung to him in droopy little clumps. It was like the pond scum he used
to conceal himself from the monks who had chased him out of that little village
with the quirky temple.
They
were a determined bunch, those monks, and
he had had to stay under that scum a long time, his nose jutting up into it
just far enough to snatch a breath or two. That scum had smelled bad enough,
but this stuff reeked much worse: it had the stench of decay clinging to it.

He rose to his knees and shook his arms several times before
the last of the muck sloughed away from him. Then he peeled it away from the
hilts of his sword and throwing knives. Then he realized he could see the dingy
gray crud spreading out across the floor around him.
I’m not blind
, he
thought, relieved despite his confusion. The Viper’s Eyes had replaced his own,
but now? He reached up to touch one of them—and jerked his head back, cursing
and blinking rapidly. The slime on his finger
burned
, and when he tried
to rub it out of his eye it only made things worse. It was only after he had
scraped away the crud and used the underside of his tunic to wipe at his eyes
and face that the burning eased.

He sighed and blinked back the tears to clear away the
haziness. The room was almost completely black but for a strange, dull, orange glow
emanating from a corner far ahead of him. It wasn’t much light, but he had long
ago learned to navigate in this kind of near darkness, and it gave a strange
cast to everything. The room was expansive, at least forty feet square with an
eight-foot high ceiling. To his immediate left, some twenty feet away, the room
was in shadow that gradually lessened as it approached the well-lit corner. The
lighting continued along the far wall in front of him, and then dwindled to the
right until it was lost in a darkness his eyes couldn’t penetrate. If there was
a wall to his right, it was too deep in the darkness to be seen. Four large
columns, evenly spaced, held up the ceiling, blocking his view of parts of the
room, and he would have to move to see around them. But the floor was too slick
to risk it at the moment.

He couldn’t see what was causing the strange orange glow,
but it was much too diffuse and dim to be a torch or candle. It was steady and
soft like Angus’s Lamplight spell, but it wasn’t shaped like a ball. It wasn’t
shaped like anything, really; it looked as if someone had painted it onto the
wall and had done a horrid job of it. It was thick and wide and brightest in
the far corner but tapered to a narrow slit halfway down the wall to his left. It
was a long wall, and there were several sarcophagi evenly spaced along its
length. He couldn’t see the details of the sarcophagi; the light smothering
them was too dim to note any details at this distance. They lined the wall to
the left, curled around the well-lit corner, and continued all along the far
wall until they disappeared into the darkness.

Giorge gulped and twisted around on his knees, turning right
until he was facing the direction from which he had emerged. There were more
sarcophagi along that wall, emerging from the darkness concealing the wall to
his right, but they were open and empty, as if they were patiently waiting for
occupants. The last empty one was directly behind him, about eight feet away,
with its lid dangling from a broken hinge.
Why was I in that?
Giorge wondered
as he tried to stand up and his foot slid out from under him. He moved to catch
himself, but the floor was too slick and he barely managed to keep from banging
his head as he fell flat again. He stayed there for a long moment, and then
gradually worked his way to his feet. He looked down at the floor and tested
his footing as he took each step in the goo, and even with those precautions,
he had to adjust his center of gravity several times to keep from falling. It
was like walking on ice covered in a thick layer of lamp oil.

When he was close to the sarcophagus, he took hold of the
lid and swung it closed. He shuddered as he stared at the image on the lid: it
was
his
image. Even in the shadows, it was like looking in a tarnished
mirror, so amazing were the details of the workmanship. He ran his fingers over
the face of the image, wondering how the craftsman had managed to mimic so
perfectly the shape of his eyebrows, the curve of his nose, the glint in his
eyes…. The wood carving was ancient and looked as if it had been chiseled in an
age that had long since passed. How had that long-dead craftsman known
his
image so well that he could duplicate it?

Symptata’s son
, Giorge thought.
The line
….

Giorge frowned. He was not surprised that he looked
like
Symptata’s son—it was part of the curse—but this image was
identical
to
his own.
Only the heir can break the curse
, he thought. What were the
lines of the poem? He reached into the sling for the scroll tube, but it wasn’t
there. Had he dropped it? He looked around in the muck but couldn’t see it.
There were clumps that
might
be large enough to conceal it, but he didn’t
need the scroll to remember the poem. It was the last stanza, wasn’t it? “He
cursed her line of thieving whores,” he muttered, “and lies in death, awaiting
yours.”

Giorge glanced at the sarcophagi waiting to be filled.
“There’s a lot of death here,” he whispered, “but I’m not dead.” He frowned and
looked down at the sling. The dull ache in his arm wasn’t plaguing him any
longer. He flexed his fingers and rotated his wrist, but it didn’t hurt like it
had been since he had injured it in the fall from his horse. He lifted it
easily in the sling, and finally pulled it out of the sling altogether.
Ortis
said it was sprained and needed weeks to heal
, he thought as he checked his
full range of motion without any hint of pain or injury. He rolled up the
sleeve of his tunic and his eyes widened: the fletching scars were gone! And
what about when he fell—

“The frost elemental,” he almost shouted, the sound falling
as silent as the dead around him. “It killed me, didn’t it?” he muttered,
remembering the blistering cold that had smothered him, pulled him from the
lift, harassed him as he fell. Yes, he had died, he
must have
died—and
yet, he felt as healthy as he ever had.

He took off the sling and let it fall to the floor. He put
his hand to his chest and felt around for the familiar lump of the Viper’s
Breath—
but it was gone!
He gulped and asked the chill air around him,
“Am I dead?” He paused for an answer, but when none came, he asked, his voice
sharp and much too loud, “By Onus’s Blood, what is going on here?”

He didn’t wait for an answer; instead, he decided to take
action. The floor was slick, but he had leverage; he could use the sarcophagi
to propel him around the edge of the room, and with luck, he’d find a dry spot
to stand on. At the very least, he needed to know more about where he was, and
that meant exploring the room. He looked at the empty sarcophagi and tried to
peer through the shadows to the wall at the end. But it was too dark. He
should
go there first, if only because he
couldn’t
see what was there, and he
already knew there were sarcophagi along all the other walls.
Full
sarcophagi?
But he wasn’t ready to search that gloomy bit of the room; he wanted to find
out more about what he could see first. He wanted to know what was causing the
wall to glow; if it could be moved, it would make it a lot easier to search the
darkness to his right. And what about the sarcophagi? One seemed to have been
made for him, but what about the others? Were the empty ones for
his
children and grandchildren? If so, the others—

He turned sharply toward the sarcophagus next to his, the
first one whose lid was closed. The image on the lid, though half-hidden in
shadow, was of a young woman with long, wavy black hair draped over her
shoulders; sweet brown eyes filled with love and kindness; a narrow, sharp
smile that was quick with a laugh or a harsh word when needed; a rounded little
nose; and soft, smooth, caramel-colored skin. The image on the lid had none of
these colors—it was just the drab gray-brown of aged wood—but what he
saw
in the image was so lifelike, so realistic, that he sagged to his knees. “Mother,”
he gasped as he clung tightly to the lid of his sarcophagus with his left hand.
His right hand, quivering, stretched out for his mother’s sarcophagus. He slid
closer to it, and his fingertips brushed across the cold wood of his mother’s
hand. A moment later, he lunged forward, grappling the wooden sarcophagus as if
he were a small boy clinging to his mother’s legs to prevent her from leaving.
“Momma,” he whimpered as the tears cascaded down his cheeks and the sobs burbled
in his chest.

3

Angus half-opened his eyes and looked around without moving.
He saw nothing except the peculiar bluish glow of sunlight passing through a
thick layer of ice. It was an attractive color, one that reminded him of the
watery depths of Embril’s eye. Only her eye was a bit darker, a bit deeper, and
far less deadly than the blueness pressing down upon him.

There was something in his left hand. It was thin and round
and cold, and he grasped it as tightly as he would his last breath. It was the
right size for a quill, but it wasn’t like any quill he had ever used. Quills
were nearly smooth, and the imperfections on their surfaces were infrequent and
random. This thin, cylindrical object’s surface was etched with complex
patterns, and some of them felt familiar to him. They were similar to the knots
he used to cast the flying spell.

Magic!
He thought suddenly, fiercely, and his eyes
snapped fully open.
I lost my magic! That’s why I fell—I couldn’t fly!
Sardach
dropped me and I couldn’t see the magic!

A sharp pain riddled through his chest as he gasped, and he
forced himself to calm down, to take slow, shallow breaths.
Broken ribs?
Yes, they were broken. His chest felt like it had been crushed by the
unrelenting coils of a giant snake. He lifted his left hand—it moved easily,
painlessly—and a sharp pain radiated out from his lower back as he shifted
against something hard and jagged beneath him. It had the shape and texture of
a burl and bit painfully into his lower back. There was something else beneath
him, and it felt like a thick, leafless branch. He tried to shift his weight
from the knothole onto the branch, but an intense pain erupted in his right
shoulder as soon as he began to move. He winced and settled back down on the
knothole; it was an inconvenient pain, not a mind-wrenching, debilitating one
like his shoulder.

He closed his eyes and focused on the pain, trying to force
it away. It wasn’t a branch he was lying on; it was his right arm. It was
pinned beneath him, twisted into an unnatural position. He couldn’t feel it,
but his right shoulder felt like the arm had been pulled from its socket, and
bones had grated against each other when he had shifted position. He lay still
until the pain eased, and then tried to wiggle his toes. His right thigh
answered with a dull throbbing sensation, but he couldn’t feel his left foot.
Was it gone? Or was it numb, like his right arm? It didn’t matter; he was
alive. He should be dead.

Angus held what was in his hand up in front of his eyes and
tried to focus on it. It was an ivory wand, the one that—

Yes, that was what had happened. He had fallen a long way
and used the wand to deflect himself away from the mountainside. It was a
desperate gamble, but what choice had he had? He couldn’t fly, and hitting the
mountainside at that speed would have killed him. Even so, it shouldn’t have
worked—but it must have done enough for him to survive. He frowned. How had he
gotten buried in the ice?

He looked up through the vertical shaft. It was ovular, and
had smooth, irregular walls as if something warm had gradually melted through
the ice and left behind the meandering shaft. Could he have done it? It was the
right dimensions if his body had toppled over itself on the way down, and his
robe did keep his body temperature constant. If he had been pressed against the
ice for long enough… It was a long tunnel, and he would have dropped even further
if he hadn’t landed on something that hadn’t melted. A rock shelf? A ledge? The
thing pressing into his lower back was rough like a rock, but it could be the
sharp end of a broken bone.

He set the wand down beside him and began the slow process
of checking his wounds. He started by tentatively probing his chest, fully
expecting to find tiny barbs of bone sticking out at odd angles. But there were
none. He frowned; it
felt
like he had broken ribs, but his fingers were
telling him differently. He ran them over his chest, pressing down more firmly
on his ribcage, but there were no breaks, no cracks, no pain. He took a deep,
welcome breath, one that felt normal, healthy, except for the throbbing in his
back and the resurgent, sharp pain in his right shoulder as he shifted slightly
on the rock shelf.

Why did his chest feel like it had been crushed when it
hadn’t been? It didn’t matter; it wasn’t crushed, and he needed to focus on the
injuries that were real. He reached across his chest and gently touched his
right shoulder. Pain shot down his arm and up his neck. He winced and beads of
sweat formed on his forehead. At the very least, his shoulder was dislocated,
but what about the arm? After a moment, he gritted his teeth and continued his
gentle exploration. It didn’t last long; his arm was bent backward and lay at
an odd angle beneath him.

Still the mind
, he thought, wondering if he would
ever be able to use his arm again.
Still the body.
If he couldn’t, how
would he cast spells? Almost all of them required two hands to manipulate the
magic into their knotted patterns.
Still the mind
.
Still the body.
He focused on the mantra for over a minute before he was able to continue his
diagnosis.

His right arm was a mess, but he didn’t know any more than
that. His ribcage felt like it was in tatters, but it wasn’t. He reached inward
with his mind, looking for the magic that he had lost and found a faint wisp of
a response. It wasn’t the magic he was familiar with; rather, it was like the
afterimage of a candle’s flame plastered on the eyelid after turning away from it.
It was as if he were seeing the magic from a great distance, and it had an unfamiliar
quality to it. He tried to bring it into focus, but it stayed at the fringe of
his awareness like a hazy, smoky memory that he couldn’t quite dispel or bring
to the forefront of his mind.

He shifted his legs slowly, one at a time, beginning with
his right leg. The throbbing in his thigh was mild compared to the wretched
pain that gouged into his lower back as his weight shifted. He would have to
move soon, before the sharp edges of the rock bit more deeply into his flesh.

He still couldn’t feel his left foot, but there was no pain
in it when he straightened his leg as best he could. What could be wrong with
it? It felt like it had fallen asleep. Could it be as simple as that? Would it
tingle to life when he started moving? Or was it something worse, much worse?
He flexed his left leg for several seconds as he tried to will sensation back
into his foot, but it did no good.

The rock bit a little deeper into his back. He would have to
move, but there was little room to maneuver. The tunnel above him was scarcely
large enough for him to squeeze through, and the little spot that had melted
around him was as closed in as a coffin. Still, he was in a more comfortable
position than he had been, and if he could roll over on his belly, it might
free up his right arm for a close examination of the damage. But which way to
roll?

He turned his head slightly to the left. There was a 20
degree upslope, perhaps more—and then to the right. His weight shifted as he
turned his head, and the rock digging into his back suddenly gave way. He slid
sideways, tilted, and most of his weight pressed down on his right shoulder as
he tipped over into a shallow pool of water. His right arm dropped limply down
beside him as if it were no longer attached to his body, and a horrid wave of
pain drove through the shield he was building with the mantra. The agony in his
shoulder drenched his mind just as the ice-cold water drenched his face. He
gasped and sputtered as he tried to lever himself back up onto the shelf, but all
he managed to do was get his left arm beneath his head. It was barely enough to
keep his nose above the shallow waterline.

He tried to reassert control over his body with the mantra, tried
to push aside the pain, but it took a long time for it to have any effect. A
part of him was clinically pleased by the pain; it meant the arm was still
there, could still feel pain, and
that
meant he would be able to cast
spells again after it healed.
If
it healed.
If
he got out of the
ice before he starved to death.

He focused on the mantra and on his breathing, and as the
pain gradually ebbed to a tolerable level, he thought about his situation.
Despite his injuries, he would have to find a way out of the ice if he hoped to
survive. His right arm was useless. His left arm was fine. His left foot was
numb and his right leg was sore. His chest
was not
crushed, even though
it still felt like it was. He had no food. He had no magic—yet. That brief
glimpse of the magic in the distance had been promising, and if he could bring
it closer, he might have a chance. But his backpack was strapped to Gretchen,
and the spells he had primed for were missing. Or were they? Would he find the
priming intact if—
when
—he regained his sense of magic? Or would he have
to prime for them all over again—if he could still prime them at all?

No sense dwelling on what he didn’t have; he needed to focus
on what he
did
have. The wand. It only had four or five spells left in
it, but he could use them to make a tunnel through the ice if he needed to. He
had dropped it on the shelf when he fell off of it, and he would have to remember
to retrieve it before he climbed out of the ice.
If
he could climb out
of the ice. What good was his left foot? It was completely numb, and without
sensation, he wouldn’t be able to feel for gaps in the ice. And his hands would
warm the ice to a slick sheet in moments.

First things first
, he thought as he opened his eyes
and looked at the murky pool of water beneath him. He needed water to survive.
He bent forward and drank deeply from the fresh, ice-cold water. At least he
had that much. But what to do about his right arm? He couldn’t have it flopping
around uselessly; it would get in the way and bump into things. Even when he
shifted it only slightly, the sudden jolt of pain was almost unbearable, and
the mantra was struggling to compensate for that pain.

He rested for a long time, but when the water began to
trickle into his nostril, he lifted his head and opened his eyes again. The
pool was deeper than it had been. Before, it had not covered his arm, and his
head was at least an inch and a half above its surface. Now, his arm was
completely covered, and water was seeping into his nose and ear. He shifted his
left arm and found a neat little indentation had formed beneath it. The water
hadn’t risen that much; the ice beneath him had melted while he had lain there—and
it was still melting. How long had he rested? A few minutes? An hour? There was
no way for him to tell, but he did know one thing: he couldn’t stay there much
longer.

He turned to his right. The rock shelf was only about six
inches above him, but in his present condition, it was more than a minor
obstacle. His right hand was still on the shelf, twisted around the wrong way,
and there was no way he could use it to help him get up to the shelf. But his
legs worked, and he slowly brought his knees up under him. He winced as his
back muscles stretched painfully across the wound the jagged rock had left
behind. It started to bleed, and the warm liquid trickled down his tilted spine
to the base of his neck. He gritted his teeth and used his left arm to lift his
head and chest until they were almost even with the rock shelf. It was
difficult to maintain his position on the slick, wet ice as he nudged himself
to the right, toward the shelf.

Crushing pain erupted from his shoulder as his limp arm
pressed against it, and he sagged against the shelf’s edge. He needed to
stabilize his arm if he hoped to make it back onto the shelf, and there was
only one way he could do it. He had to tuck it inside his robe and use his belt
to hold it in place. To do that, he needed to be on his back. He lifted himself
with his left arm until his chin was on the edge of the shelf, and then used
his chin to brace himself as he brought his left arm and leg under him. When
they were in place, he pushed away from the shelf with his left hand and rolled
onto his back, his right arm dragging along behind as it flopped lifelessly across
his chest.

The pain was too much for the mantra to deflect, and he
passed out. When he woke again, he found himself a few more inches below the
rock shelf. But he was on his back, and his right arm was draped across his chest.
His left arm was free, and he used it as carefully as he could to loosen the
belt holding his robe in place and gingerly shift the position of his right arm
until he could tuck his hand and wrist into his belt. Once it was in place, he
tightened the belt as much as he dared and reached up for the shelf. It was
nearly at arm’s length, now, but it was much easier to
pull
himself up
into an awkward sitting position than it had been to
push
himself up
onto the shelf. His right arm bent awkwardly, but the strain on his shoulder
was not as fierce at it had been before—or he was becoming more accustomed to
it. His lower back protested and began to bleed again, but there was nothing he
could do about that yet. At least there wasn’t much blood, so the wound
couldn’t be severe.

His head and left arm were above the shelf, and he looked
over at it. The wand was still lying there, and he reached over for it. He
secured it in its holders in the sleeve of his robe and then reached for the
rock that had jabbed into his back. It was much smaller than he had expected,
barely as large as a small nut, but its edges were sharp, like a rough-hewn
stone axe. Had it managed to cut through the cloth of his robe? If it had, he
would have to repair the damage, and that would take a lot of time. For now,
though; he needed to get onto the shelf before the ice beneath him melted any
more.