Oathen (51 page)

Unfortunately, that left Sanych and Ahm bereft
of their magic until they passed through the zone and into the
Heart of the Dragon. On the positive side, any Dzur i’Oth pursuers
would be stripped of their magic as well.

Along the wall, between the rows of
sarcophagi, numerous alcoves held dusty, expensive treasures, each
a thief’s dream. Geret stepped closer to get a better look at one
of them, his nose wrinkling from the odor of dry, dusty crypt air.
Meena had already told them to step only on the large pavestones
that were marked with the Seal of Shanal—the dragon symbol of the
royal house. Any that were not so marked might hold a pit trap
below. But as he edged closer to an enamel vase swirling with red
and green dragons, his foot edged over onto an unmarked pavestone.
It clicked under his boot, snapping in half along its short axis
and dropping away, revealing a small collection of oily-tipped
metal spikes waiting to puncture his flesh.

Pinwheeling, Geret managed to avoid falling
into the trap long enough for Salvor to reach over and drag him
back to safe footing.

“Fool,” the nobleman chided. “Were you not
listening when Meena said ‘don’t touch
anything’
?”

A rush of irritation and fear for his safety
from Sanych made Geret feel doubly bad. “I didn’t touch it,” he
said, bristling. “Paver must have a hair trigger.”

“More likely you have sticky fingers and the
ash of a thousand scrolls for brains,” Salvor grunted. “You really
want to test that Oath of yours this way?”

Embarrassed, Geret brushed past him and hopped
across the Seal-stamped pavers until he reached the others. Meena
stood before a vast mural of historical scenes, carved in
bas-relief and painted in thick, vibrant hues.

“Nearly done,” she said. Her hands pushed a
hidden button disguised as a basket of maize.

“You still have eleven images to choose from,”
Sanych said, counting an image of one king kneeling to another, a
ship battle with trained sea monsters, and more still scattered
down the length of the wall carving.

“Eight of them are fakes. They never
happened,” Meena replied, as she pressed on the keel of the large
red-hulled ship in the sea battle scene.

“I’ve lived in Shanal all my life, and I don’t
recognize half of these events,” Ahm said, frowning up at a large,
braid-bearded king. The Scion cell leader clasped the
Dire
Tome
in his arms, its silvery wrapping catching golden strands
of torchlight.

“That’s the point. These are events from the
sealed royal archives,” Meena said, hopping down the scattered row
of seal-stamped stones until she got within reach of a painted
pearl the size of her palm. Pushing it, she added, “Only royals and
certain trusted Queen’s agents, as I was, are supposed to know
these events, their order, and that pushing them opens the way to
any more than you see here. Though if you kill enough people with
trial and error, you’ll eventually figure it out.” She hopped down
to the very end of the mural and pushed on a sword blade in the
hands of a teenage girl.

With a grinding sound, a section of the wall
next to the mural folded away, revealing a long passage.

Sanych handed the torch to Meena. The
Shanallar led the way into the secret passage. Geret, last in line,
took one final look behind them as Meena pushed on a section of the
interior wall, closing the secret door.

His eyes widened. Due to the Crypt’s high
ceiling, the Deep Gateway spiral had three ramp levels that lay
exposed to view from below; at the topmost of them, his eyes made
out the light of a distant torch.

“Your pet spellcaster is dead, thief,” Oolat’s
voice rang out, echoing off the Crypt’s stone walls. A dark blossom
from his hand sent a small roundish object high into the air. It
fell in a whirl of short white cords and tumbled across the
pavestones, setting off a number of various traps before one
clapped up on both sides of it, pinning it in place with metal
spikes.

It was Curzon’s head. His braids were lopped
off where his neck ended, their ends fraying to
fuzziness.

Geret lurched as if he’d been punched in the
gut. Sanych gasped and tried to peer past him as the stone wall
slid further closed, but he clapped a hand over her
eyes.

“Oh, Wisdom,” she sobbed, pulling the
information from Geret’s emotions.

“Share?” Salvor asked, his face stern in the
light of his flickering blade.

“Curzon’s dead,” Geret said, turning away from
the sight.

“But that’s impossible,” Sanych protested. The
wall pressed shut behind them.

“He’s only mortal,” Meena said.

“No, I mean—wait—”

“Not now, Sanych; they’re coming. Run!” Meena
loped away into the enclosed darkness of the low tunnel, torch in
hand.

Geret and the others hurried to keep up with
her and the light as she led the way through the twisting corridor;
he nearly ran into her as she halted suddenly, holding out her arm
to prevent anyone passing her.

Before her, a wide pit crossed the entirety of
the tunnel floor. There was no way across, it seemed, except for a
narrow wooden plank. It looked to be a good fifteen paces to the
far side, and the plank was rickety.

“This is new,” Meena said, squinting at the
long wooden plank.

“Looks simple enough,” Salvor commented, his
voice impatient.

“Exactly,” Meena countered. She prodded the
wood with a foot. It didn’t shift at all. Fishing a few copper
coins from her pouch, she tossed them at the pit.

“Didn’t expect that,” Ahm said, raising his
eyebrows at the result.

A few of the coins on the far right side of
the pit rested in midair, hovering at a level even with the tunnel
floor. Others bounced off an invisible wall across the center of
the pit; anyone bolting across the plank would run headlong into it
and lose their balance. The rest of the coins fell straight down,
vanishing from sight.

“Wisdom’s eyes,” Sanych murmured. “An
illusion. How did they do that without magic?”

“Study it later, Archivist,” Meena said. She
took a leap out to the hovering coins, avoiding the plank entirely.
The others followed once they saw her standing with firm
footing.

As he passed the halfway point, Geret saw the
“invisible” wall was attached only to the ceiling, and was cleverly
toned to match the color and viewpoint of the corridor beyond. Last
in line, he stopped to pick up the coins, pocketing
them.

“My fee for being first in Oolat’s sights,” he
said. “I’d suggest we lurk in wait for him, but he’s probably
brought more hordes of his people.”

“What we’re up against is the
Tome
,”
Meena replied. “Anything else is incidental.”

A sunset-hued light reached Geret’s eyes,
shining from around a final bend in the tunnel. He turned the
corner behind Sanych and the others, then stopped before a small,
worn-looking metal portcullis with a central handle. Beyond it lay
a natural cavern large enough to swallow an entire village. Its
roof was supported by dozens of elaborately carved pillars of
enormous girth, stretching hundreds of feet up to the
fungus-covered ceiling.

“Like Salience,” Salvor commented.

On the far side of the cavern lay a gathering
of elaborate stone mausoleums carved out of the living rock,
stacking up behind one another as they climbed higher up the angled
cavern wall.

“Whoa,” Geret breathed, taking in the sight of
the fungus-lit city of the dead hidden within the bowels of the
ancient volcano.

“The portcullis handle’s a trap; no one touch
anything. Belts, please,” Meena said, holding out her hands. She
collected everyone’s leather belts and knotted them in a line, then
hooked one over the portcullis’ central handle, which immediately
spiked out a crown of prongs that punctured the belt clean through.
“Stand behind me,” she ordered, and leaned into her
pull.

The apex of the portcullis leaned toward her,
hinting at unseen hinges at its bottom. As the heavy grating
squeaked toward her, every single crossbar sprouted a series of
razor-sharp spikes which dug into the floor or bristled in the
air.

Holding the belt-rope taut, Meena said,
“Geret, Sanych, go across into the cavern and turn around. You’ll
see two carved Queen’s Men to the sides of this tunnel. Their wrist
guards have small hidden buttons; push them in at the same
moment.”

Geret took Sanych’s hand and helped her cross
the horizontal portcullis, careful to step between the long,
razor-sharp spikes. Just past the gate-trap, they turned and found
the old carved soldiers. The detail on the stonework was
impressive; had the carvings been colored, they might have been
mistaken for real men resting against the wall.

Together, they found the diamond-shaped
buttons in the carvings, and with a shared look, they pressed them
inward.

The spikes retracted into the portcullis’
crossbars. Meena and the others joined Geret and Sanych at the
entrance to the enormous cavern. Meena waited until the trap reset,
then snaked a hand through a hole in the grating and retrieved
everyone’s hole-punched belts.

“Which mausoleum do we want?” Sanych asked as
she put hers back on. Her fingers flinched away from its inch-wide
puncture marks.

Meena stalked through the forest of enormous
pillars toward the small, ornate buildings, and her companions
followed her. The pillar bases were carved with Shanallese
soldiers—every one a Queen’s Man—who looked real enough to step out
from the basalt pillars and engage them in battle. “It’s on the
right, a row above Arisson,” Meena replied.

“A-Arisson?” Sanych stuttered.

“He’s here?” Ahm asked, shocked.

Meena looked over her shoulder. A ghost of old
pain haunted the lines of her face. “I had to get the key out of
Shanal before Dzur i’Oth found me again. I couldn’t abandon Arisson
in the Heart of the Dragon, though. The tombs of royalty were a
necessary compromise.” She turned and led the way at a trot toward
a set of narrow stairs that ascended among the tombs.

“Many of the structures up there are decoys,”
she continued. “They look like they hold copies of the royal
histories, priceless artwork and the like, but they’re just covers
for rooms carved below them or back into the cavern wall, where the
royals would hide out. They’re also more littered with traps than
Salvor’s stories are with lies,” she added.

Salvor gave her a lazy smile as he jogged by
her side. “One woman’s lie is another man’s subtle
misdirection.”

Sanych looked down. A flash of embarrassment
and anger hummed into Geret’s mind, and he ground his teeth in
memory of her treatment at Salvor’s hands. He scooped her hand into
his and held it, reassuring her that he couldn’t possibly lie to
her; she’d know it through the Oath. She smiled at his distracting
humor and squeezed his hand.

They reached the base of the mausoleum city,
where a single staircase wiggled its way up to the first row of
buildings—though ‘row’ was a generous term. The structures followed
no set layout whatsoever. Their organization had an organic sense
about it; the buildings grew from the stone wherever there was
space along the angled cliff. With a wary glance up and ahead,
Geret followed the others up the winding stairs.

“So, are these being constructed or torn
apart?” Ahm asked in a strained voice as he nodded to a group of
incomplete mausoleums.

Meena gave him a sharp look, then stepped down
beside him. She handed the torch to Geret and took the
Dire
Tome
from Ahm, setting it on a roughly carved plinth on the
outer wall of a mausoleum. Ahm exhaled in relief under her healing
touch.

“I didn’t realize it was getting to me
already,” he confessed, eyeing the wrapped book; it gleamed orange
in the fungal sunset.

“It’s all right. Curzon said the anti-magic
wouldn’t last for long against its chaotic powers. I’ll carry the
Tome
, but we must hurry now. As for your question, I’d guess
that Dzur i’Oth has taken them apart, looking for the passageway
out of the dead zone, to where the
Tome
used to be
hidden.”

As the Shanallar scooped up the book, Geret
eyed the open doorways of the dozens of structures around and above
him. He was even with the lowest row of them now; the path that led
to them was riddled with half-staircases and narrow bridges over
gullies that reached to the cavern floor. The carved balustrades
and lintels and winged dragon architecture spoke of wealth and
power within, yet those doorways watched him hollowly, even
hungrily. Seeing some of the buildings torn apart by the cult
didn’t help; they seemed victimized and vengeful now.

Sanych squeezed his hand, startling him out of
his reverie. “Meena’s heading up; you think we should tag
along?”

Geret looked up the spastic arrangement of
stairs and saw that Meena was already a dozen paces ahead, moving
at a fast lope.

“Time to go save the world,” he said. Still
holding her hand, he ran up the stairs after Meena and the others.
To keep up without falling, Sanych had to leap three steps at a
time. He sent her his amusement, and she replied with a burst of
mock irritation.