CHOSEN (32 page)

“I wanted to get out of the Palace for a few hours. I’m fine. I’m just out in the rink.”

“He’s riding. I don’t know why,” Dain said to their father. “You’ve had him cooped up in here for months is why. Where are you?”

“I already said—”

“You’re not in the rink. He’ll know that in a matter of minutes. Where-are-you? Dynan, he’s losing it. This isn’t funny.”

“I’m going to find something, Dain.”

“Find something? Find what?”

“I don’t know, but I have to, so I’m not telling you where I am.”

“I know he’s not in the rink,” Dain said. Dynan could almost hear their father raving at him. “He won’t tell me. It’s not like I’m a comterm.”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” Dynan said.

“You better not push me out. I’m not kidding.”

“Bye.”

It took more energy than Dynan thought he had to keep Dain from getting back in his head. After the first two tries though, Dain quit. Dynan could always count on him for diversion. Dain would stall their father and take the grief for it, leaving Dynan to take the punishment that was sure to come later.

It worked long enough. Dynan reached the meadow that lay between two tall cliffs, past the ruins and the still gaping hole. He remembered falling, but not much else. He paused at that, thinking about the days before falling. He remembered the pod crash clearly enough.

He wondered what had happened down in that hole, but knew he wouldn’t try to find out. Tomorrow maybe. Not today. He nudged the horse and kept going.

 A series of caves dotted the left face of the cliffs. Some were at ground level, beyond a scraggly line of bent trees. He and Dain used to come up here in the spring and summer to hunt or ride. Originally, their father had shown them the way when they were barely ten.

Dynan led Galarin into the largest of the caves. There he found feed supplies and water from a spring that bubbled up near the back. He found a lamp on a shelf near the entrance where it could charge in the light.

After the horse was settled, he headed back out, trudging through waist-deep snow, looking for some sign that would tell him what this was about. There was nothing. Further into the gorge a fall of rock cut across his path. It looked as though someone had taken a handful of the cliff, crumpled it and thrown it down in a fit of anger. It had always been there for as long as he’d been coming to this meadow.

The boulders from the slide were strewn into the meadow and over time had turned into mounds covered in grass in the spring, or shrouded as they were now by the snow. The stones were rounded for the most part, but there were a few with sharp edges and corners. Cut, the thought came.

In a flash of thought Dynan saw a great, carved entrance delving deep into the mountain and when he looked down from the place it would have been, he saw an opening in the jumble of rock.

An entrance was formed against the cliff face tall enough for him to go in without stooping. He was about to enter when he heard a horse nickering, letting him know he wasn’t alone.

Standing behind the massive pile up of boulders kept him from seeing who was coming, but he heard them, knew their voices and realized the instant before she rounded the corner what had happened.

“You are going to be in so much trouble,” Shalis said as she tumbled through the snow over the rocks, looking like a little ball of fur she was so wrapped up in cloaks and coats. Liselle Tremault came right behind her, looking exquisite.

Dynan remembered her. He’d woken to find her in his room a couple of times in the middle of the night, watching over him, she said, at the request of his little sister. He found he didn’t mind that at all.

“What are you doing here?” Dynan said. Shalis must have seen him in the woods and as usual, persuaded her keeper to come along. Or maybe it was the other way around. Liselle seemed just as worried, though she wasn’t ranting at him like a little lunatic.

“What am I doing here?” Shalis said. “What are you doing here? You don’t even have a guard. You’re going to get yourself killed for certain.”

Dynan saw that she was really upset with him, afraid for him, but Liselle answered before he could. “Shalis, no such thing is going to happen. We’re still on Palace grounds even up here in the mountains and the place is patrolled. There isn’t any danger here, except maybe from the cold.”

“I told Poppe where we are,” Shalis said, folding her arms. “He’s already on his way.”

“Dynan, is Shalis with you?” Dain asked him then, getting in without trying hard. Concentrating to keep him out required too much effort and energy Dynan didn’t have.

“Yes.”

“We’re on our way down to a transfer, so we’ll be there pretty soon. I don’t know what you’re doing, but you better do it quick.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“Know what this is about yet?”

“No, but I’m about to find out. Tell him there’s a passage up here and I think it’s going to lead to a Temple.”

“He’s going to yell at me again,” Dain said. “Yep. He says you better not go in it, and if you don’t listen to him, you’re never going to see sunlight again. He’s just going on. They’re all coming with us you know. And the new guards too. These guys are not happy with you at all.”

“It’s all right. I’m going anyway.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Dynan ignored him and Shalis, who was still yelling at him and saw what he intended just before he ducked into the opening. He encountered a series of open pockets of space left by boulders jammed on top of one another. He held up his light and saw cut stone behind the pile up. He hesitated for a second since the boulders weren’t really supported by anything other than chance. There was a possibility they could fall.

Shalis and Liselle followed him, clambering over the rocks, some of them double height and too much for Shalis to manage without help. Dynan saw she wasn’t going to be deterred, and gave her a hand. She kept up a steady stream of complaints about his lack of intelligence, sounding word for word like Dain.

“Keep your voice down,” Dynan said to her. “It’s been a long time since anyone has come in here, little girl. I need to be able to hear in case one of these rocks decides to come loose.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Shhhh.”

The pile up of stones ended after one last narrow arch they all had to squeeze through. The room they came into was so large the small light Dynan carried hardly cut the darkness. They were tiny specks in a great cavern.

“Who made this?” Liselle asked, standing close enough to him to stay in the light and kept Shalis with her.

“I don’t know.”

“You knew to find it though.”

“I’ve been here before,” he said and pain started behind his eyes the way it always did when memory tried to come in. He knew it was there somewhere, but he also knew trying to bring it back would land him on the floor.

The wall on the right disappeared into another vast opening and Dynan knew they’d reached the stairs. Again the light did nothing to cut through the inky darkness. Five stairs showed in the weak beam and then another step and another for each they went down.

“What do you suppose is down there?” Shalis asked, hugging his arm. She had a grip on his hand that was almost painful.

“It’s a tomb, Shalis,” he said. It was the first thing that came into his head, but before they could ask, he shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“It’s so cold,” Liselle said, her breath rising above her head until it was lost in the dark.

“Do you have a light?” Dynan asked Liselle, but guessed she would have had it out already. “Here, take this one. I have a laser cutter. Better than nothing. I think you both should stay here. It’s a lot of stairs.”

“No,” Shalis said before he was finished. “No,” she said again when he thought to argue with her. “I’m not staying here without you. I’m not afraid of a tomb. How do you know what it is anyway? You’ve never been here before. I know you haven’t.”

“I think I died, Shalis,” he said and his voice echoed in the hollow spaces. “I think I came here. I’m certain of it. I’ve seen it before.”

“Why do you want to go back?”

“There’s something I have to find.”

Liselle looked back over her shoulder. “Well the sooner we start down, the sooner we’ll find it.”

“Is that the transfer?” Shalis asked, letting Dynan go. She started down the steps one after the other until she was at the edge of the light. “Come on already or Poppe will come and stop you.”

“It hasn’t been long enough. Be careful, Shalis. If you get hurt, Pop will kill me. How do you keep up with her?” he asked Liselle, and started down with her. She replaced Shalis with the handholding. Dynan realized she was shaking a little.

“I just follow her around,” she said.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not staying here by myself.”

Liselle held up the light, and nodded him on. Dynan took out the laser cutter and turned it on, pressing the controls to maximum. The glowing kem-long blade gave them a little more light to see with, but barely. He had to be careful with it too, since it would cut through anything it touched.

Shalis stayed a few steps ahead all the way down. It was less than it seemed, but far enough. Dynan was winded by the time they reached the bottom and found the great doors closed.

As the lights they carried lowered to floor level and filled the broad space, they saw a man sitting in the far corner, wrapped in a heavy cloak with a hood pulled over his head. Liselle gasped when Dynan killed the laser-blade-light, drew his sword, and reached down to snatch Shalis back a step.

“Who is that?” she asked, her voice echoing up the steps.

The man didn’t move. Another step toward him and a second later, Dynan realized he wouldn’t ever. He was dead.

He put his sword down on the stair, not especially wanting to tell his sister she was looking at a corpse. Explaining it to her wasn’t much fun since she didn’t believe him.

“He’s dead, Shalis,” Dynan repeated. “He can’t hurt me. Listen, I want you to stay here.”

“Shouldn’t he be a skeleton,” Liselle said, bending sideways to peer under the man’s hood. She was right too, which meant he was only recently dead. His hands, the only part they could see of him, seemed only old; the wrinkled skin of an elder. Dynan didn’t expect any of the bodies to have skin at all. He thought too much time would have gone by.

He had to sit down. The cold was deeper than before. He couldn’t feel his hands anymore and his face was frozen. Shalis was shivering.

“Well, how are we going to get in?”

“
We
aren’t. I’m going to get in and you’re going to stay here,” Dynan said. “Please, Shalis?”

“I don’t want to sit out here with him,” she said and then wrinkled her nose. “I thought they were supposed to smell.”

“What?”

“Dead people. Everyone says they smell bad. He doesn’t smell at all. Why is he here anyway?”

“I don’t know, but you’re waiting out here,” Dynan said and glanced at Liselle to let her know she’d be waiting too.

He looked at the old man hunched in the corner and a thought occurred to him. Bremen Telaerin had disappeared without a trace too. It made sense he would come here to be with his family at the end of his life. It didn’t seem possible a man nearly a thousand years dead could have skin, but then Dynan thought of the preserving effect of perpetual cold. And it was unnaturally cold.

“Don’t touch him,” Dynan said to his sister.

“Why would I want to do that? You are so gross.”

He pushed to his feet, seeing clearly a woman activating the mechanism that would open the doors. He moved to the stone where he thought the trigger was, and pushed on one corner the same way she had. The stone slid back out of the way. Inside was a lever, but he didn’t pull it right away, taking a moment to look up from the height of the doors to the stone above.

“Go back up the stairs a little and get under the archway,” he said. “Just in case the ceiling decides to come down.”

“And what are you going to do?” Shalis said.

“Run.”

She made a derogatory sound. “You can barely walk,” she muttered, but she climbed the stairs, looking up into the dark as she went. “I think I hear them.”

Dynan nodded. He could tell Dain was getting closer. Dynan reached into the niche in the stone and pulled the lever. A distant hum reached them and the big doors started to grind open. The next instant though, the hum faded and the doors stopped moving. They stood open hardly enough for anyone to fit through.

There were light brackets on the wall and Dynan took one of them down. He took a couple extra power cells from Liselle’s lamp. They worked in the ancient one, which told him how little the technology had changed in all that time, and gave them extra light.

The door was barely open, but it was enough. Dynan told Shalis to stay one more time, and slipped inside.

 The light was just strong enough to show him what he already knew. Dynan saw her, slumped against the wall near the door, holding her children to her, the two boys and the girl, trying to protect them to the last, Fadril Telaerin, the First Queen of Cobalt.

Like her son sitting on the other side of the door, their bodies were preserved in the bitter cold with hardly any sign of the tremendous age they’d remained here. She looked just as she did standing at the foot of a rocky hill, waiting for Dynan to come down, and just as she did kneeling in a green glade, gathering her children into her arms.

Dynan knelt down beside her, careful not to disturb anything, looking at a face completely familiar to him. He saw her talking to him, leading him through a terrible land to a terrible place, but that went away almost as he thought it, melting to a land of peace. He saw his mother with her, closing another gap in his memory.

He saw it and beyond the pounding headache that threatened to bring tears to his eyes, he remembered. The body nearest Fadril was the man Dynan had just finished writing about, the leather sack he carried giving him away, along with the sword in his hand. Polen Forb lay on his back, his arms out to either side. His eyes were closed and his face at peace, looking only as if he were asleep. Dynan knew him.