Liar's Island: A Novel (30 page)

“Why else would it have such a fearsome reputation?” the garuda said. “It
must
be a weapon, and one of great power.”

Rodrick wondered. If it was a weapon so powerful, why did the Arclords hide it when the Vudrani came to reclaim the island, instead of using it to fight the newcomers off? But he'd already observed that Dhyana thought in straight lines. Weapon or not, the scepter was
valuable
, and probably instrumental to getting him off the island in one piece, and rich besides. “I'm sure you're right,” he said, “but we won't know until we get it. Shall we search?”

*   *   *

This underground temple certainly hadn't been looted
recently
, being full of drifted dirt, spiders, and snakes, a nest of which slithered away when Dhyana strode down a side corridor with the torch. “Those are poisonous,” Lais said, and Rodrick gestured with Hrym and froze the serpents before they could demonstrate their toxicity.

“Another temple full of vermin,” Rodrick said. “At least these don't wear masks and robes.”

“Do you think there will be gold in here?” Hrym said. “If there's a secret vault where the scepter is hidden, there might also be gold. What's the point of a vault if there's no gold? That's why vaults even
exist
.”

After exploring a few passages that led only to dusty old sleeping chambers for long-dead priests, they followed a corridor that ended in a large room, the ceiling disappearing in shadow, perhaps built into a natural cavern. Rows of mostly broken benches filled the room, and something that might have been an altar stood beneath a twenty-foot-high statue of some unfamiliar Vudrani deity, its face broken, with holes where its eyes should have been. There were a few torches on the walls, old but still serviceable, and Dhyana lit a couple of them.

“She probably had jewels for eyes,” Dhyana said. “Looters
have
been through here, it seems. The scepter might be long gone, in that case. It would be unfortunate if the scepter is hidden in some dead treasure hunter's attic. Someone is following us.” She said the last in the same low, conversational tone as the rest, and at first Rodrick thought he'd misunderstood her, but Lais picked it up immediately.

“That would be a shame. How many?”

“Just one, I think. Trying to be stealthy, but I have good hearing.” Dhyana drifted toward the left side of the room, torch held aloft. “I'll look for this sign of the eye you mentioned over here,” she said. “Lais, perhaps you could check the other side of the room?”

“I'll look by the statue,” Rodrick said, taking one of the new torches. The two women seemed to have a plan to deal with whoever was following them—some creature that had made this hole in the ground its lair, hidden away in some dusty side corridor they'd failed to check thoroughly enough? Rodrick would happily stay out of the way and let them deal with the trouble.

He took the torch, then walked around the statue to its backside, not really looking for anything—but then he saw, scratched into the stone at the base of the statue, a little curved line scored into the rock. He crouched, running his finger over the old grooves, and, yes, it was the shape of an eye like the one on the obelisk, the whole thing no larger than the palm of his hand.

There was the sound of a scuffle, and Rodrick came around the statue to find Lais leading Grimschaw, the latter's arm twisted up uncomfortably behind her. Lais didn't appear to be working hard to hold the woman, but Rodrick suspected that if she applied the least bit of pressure, Grimschaw's arm would be broken or dislocated. Dhyana followed behind, holding Grimschaw's spear.

“Hello, Grim,” Rodrick said lightly. “Funny we should both end up here. How'd you get past the ice wall?”

“The ice is strong, but the stones were old. I made another opening.”

“Wizards,” he said. “They get in everywhere.”

“Should we kill her?” Dhyana said. “She did attack us, but she also fought the Knife in the Dark, or at least, her people did.” Clearly the garuda was having trouble sorting Grimschaw into her usual black-and-white worldview.

Grimschaw stood as straight and haughtily as she could manage, considering the grip Lais had on her arm. “A good trick, putting that jewel in my pocket so they could track me,” she said. “I lost five good men when the hunters first found me.”

“They couldn't have been all that good, then,” Rodrick said. “I suppose you followed us from the temple? Abandoned your people?”

“They knew their sacrifice was not in vain,” she said. “Their mission was to help me find … the treasure. I was going to wait and see if you emerged with it, then take it from you, but when you tried to shut me out with ice…” She shrugged. “I wanted to keep an eye on you.”

“‘The treasure.' So coy. You mean the Scepter of the Arclords. They know about it. Out of curiosity, what does the scepter
do
, anyway?”

Grimschaw sniffed. “That's something only the Arclords need to know.”

“Oh,” Hrym said. “She doesn't know, either. That's disappointing.”

“You work for the Arclords?” Dhyana said. “You're not just a treasure hunter?” She didn't quite point the spear at Rodrick, but it twitched that way. “And
you
? Do you, too, work for the enemies of Jalmeray?”

If Rodrick's hands hadn't been full of sword and torch, he would have raised them in a placating manner. “I didn't know she was a servant of the Arclords when we met.” He'd suspected, but he hadn't
known
. “I am absolutely not aligned with those wizards. I'm not fond of Grimschaw at all, either. I'm not saying we have to kill her, but we can freeze her in place. You might want to gag her, too. I find not being able to talk or move the arms has a calming effect on wizards, and keeps them from causing so much trouble.”

The garuda drew a knife and cut off strips from Grimschaw's clothes and armor, ignoring her squawks, then shoved a thick wad of leather into her mouth to silence her. Hrym provided shackles of ice for Grimschaw's hands and wrists, and they sat her on the remains of a broken bench.

“We should continue our search,” Dhyana said. “We must not let the scepter fall into the hands of the Arclords
or
the Knife in the Dark.”

“Oh, I think I found it,” Rodrick said. He led Lais and Dhyana around the statue and pointed out the eye. The garuda looked doubtful, but when Rodrick put his shoulder to the statue and started trying to push it, she lent her strength. They shouldn't have been able to shift so much stone easily, but it slid forward four feet as if it were no heavier than a sea chest, cunningly counterweighted in some way, moving on almost invisible tracks. There was an opening underneath, with stairs leading down. “Aha,” Rodrick said. “This could be—”

Shadows moved at the bottom of the steps, and then creatures swarmed out, more than a dozen things the size of cats. Some were roughly human in form, the color of blood-flecked ash or clay, and others had tiny wings and horns. Still others had leathery flesh, and what seemed like masks grafted to their tiny faces, but those masks were snapping jaws made of metal and bone. They leapt, hissing and spitting, the ones with monstrous jaws opening and dripping acid that smoked when droplets struck stone.

23

The Scepter of the Arclords

Lais leapt back and clambered up the statue as easily as if climbing a tree, and Dhyana beat her wings and rose into the air. Nice for
them
. Rodrick swung Hrym to try to freeze the creatures as they emerged, but only caught a handful in bonds of ice. The rest were scattering throughout the room, the more humanoid among them shouting in eerie, piping voices, “For Nex! For the Arclords!”

Of course. The Arclords were famed for their construction of golems and other constructs, like these homunculi—Tapasi had told him that. It made sense that the Arclords had left a nest of the vile creatures to guard their treasure. At least this meant the scepter probably hadn't been looted already. A few of the creatures darted at him, and he swung Hrym, flinging ice at them, and one of Dhyana's arrows caught another—though it simply pulled out the shaft with its tiny hands and continued coming.

Grimschaw grunted loudly around her gag, and Rodrick looked over to see two of the horned creatures climbing her body, hissing as they went. Dhyana howled above, and Rodrick saw a swarm of the winged homunculi harrying her. Lais was clinging to the statue's face, shaking one leg wildly and trying to dislodge a homunculus that stabbed at her ankle with a knife the size of a toothpick.

He couldn't help Dhyana or Lais, and he didn't
want
to help Grimschaw, but he'd have to deal with the creatures climbing on her eventually. He darted toward her, swooping the sword around in an ice-spraying arc to suppress further ambushes. Once he was within reach of Grimschaw he dropped his torch and pulled one of the homunculi off her chest, where it tried to cling, leechlike. The texture of its flesh was grotesque, slick and yielding, and when it hissed at him he tossed it onto the torch, where it burst immediately into flame. He tore off the other creature and hurled it at the ground, where it splattered, though that didn't stop its tiny hands from clutching and waving a miniature knife.

More were coming out of the vault. How many of these things
were
there? Had they bred over the centuries? Could constructs do that?

Grimschaw's muffled voice sounded like she had something to say, so he reluctantly pulled out her gag. He assumed she was going to demand he set her free so she could fight, and was trying to decide if he'd comply, when she shouted some ear-twisting word that made his head hurt. Suddenly lengths of whitish-gray rope appeared throughout the room at knee level, immense spider webs stretching from benches to pillars to the base of the statue, covering the chamber's floor in a complex web. Rodrick leapt onto the bench to keep from being caught in the strands, and heard howls of outrage as the homunculi were bound up in sticky strands.

“The torch,” Grimschaw said. “Burn the webs.”

Rodrick reached down for the torch, careful to avoid the nearest wrist-thick strand of webbing, then touched the flame to the web. It flared so brightly it made him blink, and flames raced along the strand, met at the first intersection of webs, then burned along in both directions, until within moments the entire complex net of webbing was alight. The trapped homunculi burned and howled as the strands turned to ash, some running a few steps before falling over. A few of the flying creatures weren't caught in the spell, but Dhyana took them with her arrows, making them fall into the flames, where they perished.

“Be glad they weren't golems,” Grimschaw said. “Those seldom burn as easily as homunculi, and my magic would be largely useless against them.” She shook her head. “Homunculi aren't meant to do battle—even the snapjaw homunculi, the ones who spat acid, are fairly weak. For the most part such creatures are used as familiars and messengers.”

“These were sufficiently warlike,” Rodrick said.

Grimschaw grimaced. “When homunculi get too far from their masters, or their masters die, they go mad, attacking anyone who invades their territory. This was a desperate sort of trap to make, I think—a great many Arclords and their servants must have sealed their homunculi away beneath that statue, knowing they would become ferocious in time and provide
some
protection. Or perhaps their masters simply expected to return, before they were driven from the island.” She shook her head. “You clearly need my help. You should—”

Rodrick stuck the gag back in her mouth. “Sorry. You only saved us because it was the way to save yourself. I couldn't trust you any less if you were a member of the cult, Grimschaw.”

“Shall we go down?” Lais said, standing near the edge of the opening. “No more of those creatures have come out. Maybe it's safe.”

Dhyana nodded, lifting her bow. “Rodrick should go first, with Hrym. If there are other surprises, ice will do better in those quarters than your fists or my bow.”

Leading from the rear was more Rodrick's style, but he nodded assent and went down the stairs, holding a torch ahead of him. What he could see of the chamber below was rough-hewn, perhaps cut hastily with magic, and the walls seemed more like those of a cave than the worked stone of the temple above. A secret room the Arclords made in an abandoned temple to hide something precious. There were unlit torches on the walls by the door, and Rodrick touched them with his flame, flooding the small chamber with light.

There were only two things of note in the room. One was a human-sized statue of a Vudrani god, one he didn't recognize, sitting cross-legged, with four arms, one holding a stone knife, one a stone hatchet, one a short sword, and one a small round shield. The god's face was serene and human, apart from his boar tusks.

The other item interested him more. A stone pedestal stood beside the statue, against the room's back wall, and on it rested a staff four feet long. The Scepter of the Arclords was not the confection of jewels and mystic runes Rodrick had expected, but was made of gleaming silver metal, one end tipped with a spike flanked by curving, sharp ornaments shaped almost like wings, the other end capped by a pair of smaller sharp curves, coming together to nearly form a point like a spear's. There were three eyelike blue gems arranged at the top, and a single smaller gem at the bottom. Rodrick took a step forward—and the blue eye-gems rolled toward him and blinked in unison.

He took a step back.

Lais and Dhyana joined him, and he said, “I think … I think the scepter
looked
at me.”

“What's wrong with that?” Hrym said. “I look at you. Are you saying objects shouldn't look at people? What, we aren't good enough? You there, scepter—do you talk? I could do with some non-human conversation.”