The Golden Key (Book 3) (33 page)

6

Iscara frowned at Agnes and studied the magic in him as best
she could from a distance. He was still in need of rest and recuperation, but
it wasn’t something she could do anything about. Healers could mend bones and
cure diseases, but they had never been able to find an adequate alternative for
the restorative qualities of a good night’s sleep. They could forestall the
need for sleep, but they couldn’t hold it off forever, and Aggles was in need
of a substantial amount of it. But she didn’t care. She wanted to know how he
knew her.

“How do you know me?” she demanded as soon as the Lieutenant
was gone.

Angles stared at her for too long before he answered, “I
don’t know you. But I have heard of your reputation.”

She frowned. What reputation was it? The one she had as a
healer of adequate skills? Or the other? If it was her healing skills, why had
he come to her with such severe injuries? He had needed a master healer like
her mother, not an adequate one. But he had come to her, and there had to be a
reason for it, one that didn’t stop with the healing he needed.

“Who told you about me?” she asked.

Argus took his time in answering again, and what he said was
not very helpful. “A mutual acquaintance,” he said. He flexed his arm and
smiled. “I am glad of it, too.” He flexed his arm some more as he added, his
tone gravely serious. “Thank you for healing me. I hear it was a most
challenging task.”

Challenging?
Iscara thought.
It was almost
impossible. I would never have bothered with it if it weren’t for Sardach. Was
he the mutual acquaintance?
Iscara shook her head.
It couldn’t have been
him.
“It will cost you dearly, I assure you,” she said. “You can begin by
telling me the name of this mutual acquaintance.”

Uggles shifted his position on the cot and wiggled the toes
of his left foot. “Does it matter?” he asked. “It can’t be that important now,
can it?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “I want to know who the fool was who
sent you to me. They should have sent you to a more skilled healer.”

Agros looked up and frowned at her. “You seem to have done
well enough,” he said, rubbing his right shoulder.

“It wasn’t me,” Iscara said. “I had help.”

Aggles stared at her with his pretty blue eyes, and she
wondered how much was going on behind them as he considered his response. Would
he tell her who it was? Or would he continue with the evasions? At length he
finally said, “We didn’t speak about the extent of your healing abilities; I knew
only that you have them. Since I knew of no other healers in Tyrag, I had the
guardsmen bring me here.”

That was stupid,
she thought, but all she said was,
“You still haven’t told me who it was.”

Instead of answering her, he scanned the room and asked, “Do
you have my backpack?”

She smiled at him and said, “Yes. I intend to keep it until
you have answered my question.”

Aggus looked at the tapestry for a long moment, and when he
spoke, his voice was little louder than a whisper. “Let’s just say it was a
pale blue ghost. I knew him quite well for a time, and we only recently parted
company.”

Aha!
Iscara thought.
I knew it was Typhus! He said
they were his breeches.
She looked around the room and then asked, “Why is
Sardach with you?”

A frozen mask descended onto Angus’s face as he stared at
her. Then, his voice low and steady, he told her, “That is no concern of
yours.”

She frowned. There was something about his tone that held
her tongue as she tried to press him into answering. Or was it her fear of Sardach?
If the creature was listening, he might intervene…. She looked around the room
again, but she couldn’t see any sign of Sardach. That meant nothing; he could
hide in the shadows and cracks without any difficulty. He probably was there,
and there was no telling what he would do if she demanded to know more.

“Very well,” she said, suddenly growing tired of the game.
“Your payment, then. I want but one thing. It is a small golden key. I
believe—”

Sardach suddenly fizzled up from the corner to hover between
them.
You cannot have the key,
he thought at her. It was a fierce
thought, a rich warning for her not to press the issue.

Iscara jumped and thought,
Why not? I can take it back to
Argyle and it will be ended.

Sardach’s torch-like eyes appeared as he condensed in upon
himself and thought,
No! I will not let you.

Iscara stared at Sardach for what seemed like a very long
time, and in the silence Aggers half-smiled and said, “As you can see, that
will not be possible.”

Iscara gnawed on the inside of her lip like she always did
when she was nervous or angry or afraid or aroused or hungry or for no reason
at all. She liked the way it felt, the way the blood tasted on her tongue, and
she liked even more that she could always heal it if she bit too hard. If he
wasn’t going to give her the key—if
Sardach
wasn’t going to let her have
the key—then she would need something else for payment, and she knew what it
would be. “All right then, tell me why you didn’t die.”

Algas frowned and shrugged. “You healed me,” he said.

Iscara shook her head. “That’s not what I meant,” she said.
“I want to know why you weren’t consumed by fever. When you arrived, death was
swarming through your blood, but you didn’t have any fever at all until I took
off that robe of yours. Then it almost burned you alive. I want to know why it
hadn’t done that before.”

“It is not easy to explain,” he replied, scrunching up his
brow as if it were the pleats of a dress. “Much of my magic pertains to fire,
and I made this robe to protect me from it. It regulates my body temperature
when it is properly used. It took me months to weave the magic involved. Each
strand had to be aligned to the magic within me and linked to the magic
contained in the robe. The pattern of knots involved is incredibly intricate,
and I doubt you or anyone else could duplicate it. The spells involved are of
my own making.”

Iscara frowned. This was not going at all as she had
expected. First he didn’t tell her about Typhus, and then Sardach wouldn’t let
her have the key. Now Aggas wasn’t going to tell her how the robe worked
because it was too complicated. He was probably right; she had never been that
good at weaving complex knots. If she had been, she wouldn’t have needed her
mother’s help. Or Ninny’s. But she had hoped…. “The robe works only for you,
then?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “Others can wear it,
but it won’t work properly for them. It is attuned to the magic within me, and
the magic within others is different. It won’t align up with the magic in the
robe the way it should. The robe will compensate to a degree but it won’t be
enough. I also added a safeguard; the robe itches terribly when someone else
wears it.”

Iscara’s frown deepened. She had hoped to have the robe as
payment if she couldn’t get the information she wanted. But she couldn’t do
that, either. Of course, she had salves for itching, but they tended to work
only when the rashes were localized. They weren’t really for the whole body,
and the way he was talking the itching would be everywhere. “I suppose you
won’t give it to me for payment, then?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I need it for when I use
fire-based magic.”

Iscara sighed. “What do you have, then?” she asked.

“Bring me my backpack,” he said. “I have some gems that
should be a fair price for your services.”

A fair price?
she scoffed as she turned and stepped
out of the room to get his backpack.
There would have to be a lot of gems
for that.
She paused in front of the little alcove and took out the key for
it. She sighed as she slid it into the slot and opened the door. As she lifted
the backpack from the shelf, she thought,
At least I’ll have the breeches
for Typhus. They must be worth something or he wouldn’t have wanted them back.
But what would Typhus pay her for them?

7

Angus was dead.

Embril barely made it into the cavern. She sat down on her
wooden chest and closed her eyes.
Still the mind
. Sardach had killed
him.
Still the body.
Or had he?
Still the mind.
Was there any way
she could find out for sure?
Still the body.
There were divination
spells, weren’t there?
Still the mind.
Sardach had ripped him apart!
Still
the body.
Where did the elemental come from?
Still the mind.
Why
hadn’t she brought any divination spells with her?
Still the body.
Why
hadn’t she cast one before she left Hellsbreath?
Still the mind.
She
should have….

She tenaciously focused on the mantra until her hands quit
trembling and her emotions were cordoned off from the rest of her mind. It was
dangerous to keep them under such tight control for long, but she needed to do
it. There would be time to deal with them later, after she returned to
Hellsbreath. Then she would track down Angus no matter where he was!

Even if it killed her.

She was still reciting the mantra when Darby joined her,
turned to the others in the cavern, and said, “Leave us.”

The mantra held her body still as the sounds of rocks
scraping against each other entered her sharply focused mind and were dismissed.
When the echoes from the tunnel fell silent, Darby asked, his voice soft, “Why
are you on this mission?”

Embril tried to thrust aside the intrusive question, tried
to let the softly-modulated syllables wash over her the same way that the
sounds of the scraping rocks had but a few moments earlier. But she couldn’t.
The question slid past the effects of the mantra, and she found herself
answering, “Angus asked me to come with you.” Her tone was flat, emotionless,
but her chest tightened as she heard herself speak his name.

“Why did Angus want you on this mission?” Darby asked.

“He trusts me,” Embril said, amazed at how quickly, how
easily she was responding to him. Was the mantra working properly? It seemed to
be; she
seemed
to be in control of her mind and her body like she always
was with the mantra, so why was she answering him? He had no business asking
her these questions, and she should have been able to completely ignore them.
No, she
was
ignoring them—the mantra was letting the sounds pass over her
like they always did—but she was answering them
despite
the mantra’s
effects. This puzzled her, and she turned her attention to her mind, to her
body, trying to discover what it was that was happening.

“What has he trusted you with?” Darby asked, his tone
patient, as if he was accustomed to clarifying his questions.

Embril studied herself as she found her body reacting to the
question, forcing an answer from her lips. “Knowledge,” she said. “Dangerous
knowledge.”

There was a pause, and then Darby leaned closer and asked,
“What is this dangerous knowledge?”

Embril struggled to control her body, to keep it from
answering, and for a long moment, it seemed to be working.

“You know you want to tell me,” Darby purred into her ear as
she struggled to keep silent.

“Yes,” Embril said.
It would be a relief to tell someone,
Embril thought, feeling the mantra slipping.

“Tell me,” Darby ordered, his voice a sharp, clipped
whisper.

A part of Embril fought against the urge to answer, but most
of her watched in curiosity as she did. “He found a nexus that has been
forgotten,” she said. A part of her felt an intense amount of relief in finally
sharing this burden with someone, but the mantra cast that relief aside and
left her with the cold certainty that she should have said nothing. Another
part of her wondered,
What is happening to me?

“Where?” Darby asked.

There was something wrong with her body. It was being
affected by something, and whatever it was, it was also affecting her mind. The
mantra was strong, intact, but there was a part of her mind that had been
separated from the stillness it was maintaining. How was Darby doing it? What
had he done to create this imbalance? Could she overcome it? Was there a way?
She focused more fiercely on the mantra, trying to adapt it to correct the flaw
in her body so she could still the rest of her mind. “He didn’t say,” she
answered.
Purge the body.

“Then how will you find it?” Darby demanded.

Embril frowned. He still had control, and when he exercised
it, she saw a pattern in her body shift. She tried to force it back into place,
but the effect was too powerful and she was inexperienced in dealing with it.
She fought to keep from answering, but she
had to
tell him the truth.
He’s
a Truthseer!
she suddenly realized as she heard herself say, “His map.”
He’s
tampering with the magic within me!

In the brief silence that followed, Embril turned her
attention to the magic within her, studying the familiar patterns and looking
for those that were out of place. If she could reorient them into their normal
position—but they
were
in their normal position! Darby
wasn’t
manipulating them. What was he doing, then? How was he making her answer?

“I’ve seen his map,” Darby muttered. “There is no indication
of a nexus on it.”

Embril opened her eyes and looked through the rubble pile at
the magic outlined beneath it. Darby was sitting across from her, and he
reached out with his hand. He flicked his fingers and a light powder sprayed
out from them and settled on her face.

“What map?” he asked.

Still the body,
she thought, trying not to breathe in
the powder. Was that what he was using to make her answer? “This one,” she
found herself saying as her hand reached into her sleeve and brought out the colorful
scarf Angus had woven for her. She held it out to him.

He accepted it, shook it out, and studied it for several
seconds before he asked, “How is this a map?”

She held her breath and kept her lips pressed tightly
together. She
wanted
to answer, but now that she knew what was
happening, the mantra gave her a small measure of control. She pushed the
desire aside as best she could and continued to hold her breath. He glanced up
at her and tossed another pinch of powder her way. She tried to turn her
head—but couldn’t! Something was holding her in his spell, and she couldn’t
break free!

“How is this scarf a map?” he clarified.

“Angus said to follow the red thread when we reach the
temple,” she said. “It will lead me to the nexus.”

“Why do you want to go there?” he asked.

This time, she had no difficulty answering. “I don’t,” she
said.

Darby considered her answers for some time and then held the
scarf out to her. “We will talk more of this later,” he said. “In the meantime,
I want you to forget about this conversation. Is that understood?”

Embril stared at him as a part of her mind thrust the
conversation aside, putting it with the anxiety she felt over Angus’s death—
if
Angus was dead. She secluded it there and blinked at Darby. Why was he sitting
there? “Did you need something?” she asked him.

After a moment, he nodded and said, “Giorge described a
mushroom that he believes causes the Tween Effect. I noticed that you have
Heatherly’s
Taxonomy
with you, and I would like to look at it. There may be information
about it.”

“Of course,” Embril said as she stood up. She moved to behind
the chest and knelt down to open it. Why was she so eager to help Darby? She
wanted nothing more than to get him away from her, and she didn’t know why.
Still
the mind,
she thought as she unlocked the chest.
Still the body
, she
added as she opened it and started taking out the books. When she had
Heatherly’s volume on mountain flora, she held it out to him and said, “Hold
this for a moment.” The rock pile accepted it, and she put the other books back
in the chest. She closed the lid and took the book back from him.

“What did it look like?” she asked as she rifled through
pages filled with numerous drawings of plants until she reached the section on
mushrooms and slowed down.

“Dull yellow-gray, long stem, inverted bowl-shaped crown.”

 Embril flipped through a few pages and asked, “This one?”

The rock pile bent forward and shook back and forth, the
stones grating on each other. “No. He said it grew like strawberries.”

“Rhizomatic?” Embril muttered as she turned a couple of
pages. “Ah!” she said. “I believe this would be it. It’s hallucinogenic.
Heatherly warns against eating it.”

The rocks shifted as they reached out for the book and said,
“I’ll show it to him.”

Embril nodded and opened her chest again. “Take this with
you, too,” she said, rummaging around for the other volume of
Heatherly’s
Taxonomy
, the one pertaining to fauna. She opened it to a page she had
marked and said, “Ask him if these are the creatures he saw with the fishmen.”

Darby accepted the book and the rocks ground together as he
moved quickly to the tunnel leading to the cave entrance.

Embril watched him leave, wondering why she suddenly felt so
nervous, so uncomfortable around him. She hadn’t felt that way toward him
before, so why did she now? Was it the Tween Effect? It was supposed to make
people paranoid, but she hadn’t felt anything like that at all. Or had she? She
had felt an intense, irrational fear when Lieutenant Jarhad had arrived at the
cave and seemed about to attack her. Was that what they meant by the Tween Effect?
Or was it something else? She frowned. No, this was different from what had
happened with Lieutenant Jarhad; she had been terrified then. This felt
more…sinister. Why?