Songreaver (34 page)

At the moment he spoke, a loud clap sounded
through the small antechamber, and the door fell inward, away from
his hand. Garrett gasped, reaching out to try to catch it, but
there was nothing to grasp, and he watched it topple over like a
great white domino and strike the floor of the inner chamber with a
tremendous
boom
that shook the whole tomb. He stared down at
the broken door that lay with a long, vertical crack that parted it
into two halves, separating the carven images of Brahnek and Queen
Elaraenu.

Garrett looked at the Girl in Brown. "What
happened?" he whispered.

She shrugged. "You must have said the magic
word," she said.

Dust swirled in the green light of Garrett's
torch, obscuring the dark chamber beyond the broken door. Slowly,
he was able to make out the dark shape of a long, obsidian
sarcophagus, lying perpendicular to the doorway, and the body of an
enormous man, kneeling beside it with his arms across the lid.

"Huh?" Garrett said, "Why is he outside of
his coffin?"

"That's not his coffin," the Girl in Brown
said.

Garrett started to ask more when the body of
the man suddenly creaked to life, lifting its head. A shining
coronet glimmered atop the man's long, cobweb hair, and two cold
blue lights shone from his eyes, sunk deep in his gray, withered
face.

"Who dares disturb the sleep of my
Beloved?
" hissed the man in the tomb.

Garrett staggered back a few steps in horror
as the man lurched to his feet with bits of rusty mail armor
crumbling away as he stood up.

"Brahnek!" the Girl in Brown hissed,
"Garrett, it's him!"

Garrett froze, unable to speak or even
move.

Brahnek Spellbreaker ripped the black-bladed
sword from his belt, it's scabbard disintegrating into dust and
shreds of dry leather as he did. The dead man advanced on Garrett,
raising the sword to strike.

Garrett fell to his knees before the creature
and gasped, "Please! Please, King Brahnek, I need your help!"

The man hesitated, cold eyes narrowing. He
held the sword, wavering above his crowned head, still poised to
cut Garrett down. "Who are you?" he hissed.

The Girl in Brown hastily knelt beside
Garrett, giving him a desperate glance.

"Sir... I need to know how to break a spell,"
Garrett said, his voice trembling with fear.

The sword wavered as the dead man swayed in
his moldy boots. "What?" he rasped.

"My friend is bound with magic, and I need to
set her free, Mister Brahnek," Garrett said, "If I don't, she'll
die."

Brahnek lowered his sword. "You're only a
boy," he said, "How did you break through the Wards?"

"I didn't see any Wards, sir," Garrett
said.

Brahnek looked down at his feet where he
stood atop the cracked white door. He moaned as he pulled the
crumbling toe of his boot away from the carven marble face of the
elven woman. His joints creaked as he turned to look back at the
black coffin. "How long has it been?" he whispered.

"Centuries, High King," the Girl in Brown
said, "Everyone thought you long dead."

Brahnek raised his left hand to look at it.
His leather glove flaked to pieces as he closed his fist, leaving
the pale gray flesh of his withered fingers exposed. "Dead I am,"
he sighed, "I died the day my heart took her leave of this cold
world... I only wish I had been able to follow her thence."

"Why is it that you cannot, High King?" the
Girl in Brown asked.

His eyes burned with cold fire as he bared
his dry teeth. "I see through your guise, Wyrmkin," he said, "The
Word is not yours to take! I guard it too well to surrender it to a
false face. You could not bear its weight!"

The Girl in Brown fell silent, lowering her
head.

"And you," he said to Garrett, "I would see
the face of a boy so bold as to forfeit his life in search of the
Spellbreaker!
"

Garrett straightened his back, still on his
knees before the dead king. He reached up and pulled back his hood
to uncover his head.

The cold fire in Brahnek's eyes flared in
surprise.

"Dragonfire!" he hissed, "Are you a Slayer,
boy?"

Garrett shook his head. "No, sir," he said,
"I haven't slain any of them... yet."

Brahnek let out a dry, hissing laugh. "I
admire your spirit, boy," he said, "Sorry I am to end such a life
so soon after its start." he lifted the black sword again.

"Wait!" Garrett cried, "Why do you want to
kill me? I didn't mean to break your door. I just want to help my
friend."

Brahnek sneered. "This girl is no true
friend, boy!" he said, jabbing his finger at the Girl in Brown,
"Deceived you have been! I will free you from her spell with the
gift of steel."

"No!" Garrett said, "She's not the one who
needs help!"

Brahnek's eyes narrowed to icy slits.

"It's for my friend Lampwicke," Garrett said,
"She's a fairy, and she's locked inside a magic cage... Please,
sir, she just wants to go home, but I don't know how to set her
free. If you could just tell me the word, I could set her free! If
I don't, I'm afraid that she's going to die!"

Brahnek tilted his head. "You did all this
for a fairy?" he said.

"Yes, sir," Garrett said, "She's my
responsibility... and my friend. I don't want her to die."

Brahnek laughed again. "All things die,
boy...
most
things die. Do not flee from death, child... it
is not... easy... to live beyond your time."

"But please, let me set her free, so that she
can see her home again before she dies," Garrett begged.

Brahnek lowered his head. "Make peace with
your gods, boy," he said, stepping forward and tightening both
hands around the grip of his sword, "The secret of the Word shall
not leave this tomb."

"Wait! Wait, sir!" Garrett cried. He reached
out and clutched at the Girl in Brown's sleeve. "If you tell
her
the secret, she won't be able to tell anybody else! She
has some sort of... curse... People can't remember her after they
talk to her. If you told her the secret, it would be safe with her.
Even if she told someone else the secret, they wouldn't remember
it."

The Girl in Brown looked at him and then to
Brahnek.

"I cannot allow either of you to leave here
alive," Brahnek said.

"It's my fault that she's here. Please let
her go," Garrett pleaded, "I told you that she can't tell anyone
about you or the secret. I'm telling the truth!"

"I know you are," Brahnek said.

"Then please just tell her the secret and let
her go so she can save Lampwicke," Garrett sobbed, "Kill me if you
have to, but don't kill them for something I did, please!"

"Tell her the secret?" Brahnek chuckled, "You
do not understand what you ask."

"No, I don't understand," Garrett said, "I
just want to help my friend."

Brahnek turned and looked back at his wife's
sarcophagus. He was silent for a long moment. "A fairy..." he said.
Then he began to laugh.

Garrett looked at the Girl in Brown.

She leaned close and whispered to him, "When
he swings his sword, roll to the right. I'll hit him at the knees,
and then we make for the door."

Garrett swallowed his fear and tensed his
body for action, his eyes on the black sword, still poised above
the Spellbreaker's shoulder.

Brahnek faced Garrett once again and let the
sword drop to his side and then fall from his fingers. It clanged
against the broken marble of the white door. Brahnek's thin lips
stretched back in what might have been a smile.

"For a fairy, you ask this?" he said.

Garrett trembled in silence for a moment and
then nodded. "Yes, sir."

Brahnek threw back his head and filled the
tomb with cold laughter. The laughter died away into a dry chuckle.
"It laughed at me then too, you know?" Brahnek said, his hand going
to his shoulder as though remembering an old wound.

Garrett said nothing.

"The... beast," Brahnek said, his cold eyes
looking off into some ancient memory, "When all my men lay dead,
and I lay dying, beneath its claws... it laughed when I told it why
I had come. I did not understand then why it laughed..."

Brahnek doubled over, as though wracked with
some unbearable pain, and the blue fire blazed in his eyes and
shone through his clenched teeth. He fell to his knees before
Garrett. Garrett gasped and tried to pull away, but Brahnek seized
his shoulders and pulled him close.

"In the long years ahead, boy," Brahnek
whispered, his burning blue eyes only an inch from Garrett's face,
"remember one thing.
This is the price I demand of you!
Remember her name until the stars fall from the sky! Remember my
beloved...
Elaraenu!
"

Brahnek's jaws creaked open, and a bright
blue light burned in his throat.

Garrett struggled, opening his mouth to
scream, but no sound could force its way past the sudden torrent of
azure fire that poured from Brahnek's mouth into Garrett's
throat.

A burning ice filled Garrett's chest,
wracking his body with pain. Spikes of agony drove through his
temples and the back of his head.

The Girl in Brown screamed.

Garrett felt as though his whole body would
shatter into icy shards at any moment, and then the pain pushed him
beyond the capacity for thought. He simply was the ice.

Strong hands pulled him backward and he fell
away, awareness returning as the tide of icy torment withdrew. He
lay on his back on the stone floor and looked up into the flawless
brown eyes of the Girl. She was speaking to him, but he could not
hear her words. Motes of light seemed to swirl around her body. He
heard in his mind the words of a strange song, sung in a voice of
thunder and fire, and he knew that it was
her song
. Then he
blinked, and she was only the Girl in Brown.

"Garrett! Wake up!" she cried, shaking his
shoulders.

"What?" he gasped.

Her eyes widened, and she pulled him into a
fierce hug. "I thought he killed you!" she sobbed.

"Huh?" Garrett said. He sat up and looked
around.

The bones of Brahnek Spellbreaker lay in a
pile of dust and rusty mail armor at Garrett's feet. Atop the pile
lay the King's coronet, and beside it, his black sword.

"What happened?" Garrett said.

"The fire went out of him," the Girl in Brown
said, "It went...
into
you."

Garrett felt the fading chill inside his
chest. The pain was gone. He got to his feet. "Let's get out of
here," he said.

"What about the word?" she asked.

"I know it now," Garrett said.

"What do you mean?" she said.

Garrett gave her a bemused smile. "I can't
explain... just, somehow I know."

He picked up his torch and looked back, one
last time at the powdered remains of Brahnek Spellbreaker. "Thank
you," he said, "I promise I'll remember her name."

Garrett strode to the black outer doors of
the tomb and pulled them open with both hands.

There on the threshold stood the Guardian.
One of its twisted little forelimbs stretched out and touched
Garrett in the center of his chest. A white-hot fire shot through
his body, and he crumpled dead on the floor at the white goat's
hooves.

Garrett looked down at his body, lying across
the threshold of Brahnek's tomb. Looking at his own face, his first
thought was,
I look surprised
.

A sudden rush of horror and fear doubled him
over, and he knelt beside his body, reaching out to touch it, with
the thought of trying to shake himself awake. His hand would not
quite reach, as if the space between his ghostly fingers and his
lifeless corpse stretched away from him into a dizzying gulf.

A wave of nausea swept over Garrett and he
staggered to his feet again, away from his body. The Girl in Brown
was there beside his body now, weeping and dragging him away from
the thing in the door. Garrett looked at the Guardian. The creature
burned like a shining white blot against the wavering gray
atmosphere of the tomb. Even the walls seemed to ripple like smoke
all around him.

He looked down at the Girl in Brown, and he
remembered everything. He remembered an afternoon spent with her at
a little bakery on Willow Street. He had given her flowers, and she
had smiled.

He wanted to touch her hair as she knelt
beside his body, crying, but he was afraid she might stretch away
from him too, and he could not bear that.

A feeling of utter hopelessness sank into
Garrett's soul.
I'm dead,
he thought.

"Wow, killed by a goat," a voice came from
behind him, "That's... that's pretty weird,"

It was a voice that Garrett thought he would
never hear again.

Garrett turned and stared, speechless, at his
brother Grahm.

Grahm wore plain brown leggings and a saffron
yellow tunic. A breeze that Garrett could not feel tousled Grahm's
dark curly hair. Grahm gave Garrett that same old crooked grin, and
then they rushed together in a long delayed hug.

"Where's Mom and Dad?" Garrett asked.

"Not dead," Grahm laughed.

"Really?" Garrett gasped. He wouldn't stop
hugging his brother.

"Yeah, they made it out of Brenhaven all
right and headed south," Grahm said.

Garrett finally let Grahm go and stepped back
to look at him. "You're all right!" he said.

"Yeah," Grahm said, "turns out bein' dead
ain't all that bad."

"But, you're older now," Garrett said, "I
thought you died at Brenhaven."

Grahm shrugged. "You look how you wanna
look," he said.

Garrett laughed. "You really need to teach
that trick to my friend Annalien."

"Who's Annalien?" Grahm asked.

"She's a ghost," Garrett said.

Grahm shook his head. "You think I'm a
ghost?"