Sorcerer's Vendetta (The Secret of Zanalon) (4 page)

But then the present reality returned and all he could think was: he would have to duck down and stick his head in that darkness, blind. The image of a man leaning across an executioner's block butted into his mind. Though the air was pleasantly cool, his ebon ponytail suddenly clung at his neck as if he were in a humid tropical jungle. He reached back to flip it from his nape and shook his head to clear the vision, but the queasiness – the insistent pull in his middle – continued. Even now, he realized, he was drawn toward that emptiness even as terror urged him to run.

What nightmare could be waiting inside? What would he see? Or would he even have a chance to see anything before –

Rollin barked a short laugh of near panic. The Lady Morgan glanced at him, again questioning, holding out the flashlight. How long had she had it extended to him? He took it with a brief nod of thanks, barely meeting her eyes.

There was nothing inside but a statue, he reminded himself. This could actually be the find of his career. He should be grinning ear-to-ear and strolling with confidence toward the object that would open up his future like never before, instead of standing here shaking and sweating in terror. He was not claustrophobic, he had never before experienced anything like this; he could not attribute this paralyzing fear to that.

He found himself thinking about Rachel Floyd, back in the States, waiting to hear from him about this find. She would be thrilled to hear about this. And then he was composing the letter in his head that he would send, something that would make her laugh. If this statue were genuine, he imagined that she would gladly do a three-year stint as a circus clown for the chance to stand before this treasure.

Thinking of her gave him the focus he needed to smile at the Lady and start toward it, still praying he would not stumble on his suddenly weakened legs and make a total ass of himself. The image of himself floundering around in the leaves had an unexpected effect: it bucked up his courage. Professor Rollin Ambrose – flopped on his butt.
Let's put that on the internet and watch it go viral.
He was being ridiculous. Again he gave a short laugh, hoping the Lady would not take him for mad. She was obviously convinced she had something precious here, so perhaps she would take his strange behavior as excitement.

Before he knew it, it was there before him.

His doom. Yawning darkness. All he had to do was duck down and look. Duck down and look. That was all.

He took a breath. Snapped on the flashlight and brought it up carefully, hoping the Lady was not close enough to see his shaking hand.

Duck down and look. Nothing to it ...

The darkness approached his face as he leaned forward. Rollin caught a scent from within...
death, death, it had to be…
No. It was musty and surprisingly dry, yet it was the bosom and breath of a living creature. The sounds of the forest drowned in his blood, his pulse pounding in his ears like a raging storm tide, his own breath the howl of wind, wild.

He brought the light up, leaned further... So vulnerable, his head tingled, his neck hummed with sensitivity, awaiting the fatal slice. He leaned further...

And looked.

There was a horrid wrenching, a glimpse of a face twisted in hatred. 
The Devil, they say ... a sword ... the sword ...

Darkness.

There were no lights set up in the clearing on Lady Morgan's property; the early summer days were long enough to accommodate any after-hours work. Rachel made her way through brush that snagged on her baggy jeans and caught in her already travel-wild dark hair, from the camp the University crew had set up. She followed the flashlight beam under a full moon.

When she saw it, she froze.

If there was ever a Tree of Life, this was the Tree of Death.

Suddenly, she could think of nothing but Rollin's disappearance. It seemed strange; she had not spoken to the lady who owned the property in person yet, but her story just didn't fit. Lady Morgan had said he had been acting strangely; he was hesitant about getting involved in the study and she suspected he had personal problems of some kind. Though Rachel knew he had expressed some healthy skepticism, considering the possibility of fraud, she didn't believe he would not follow through. He had promised to check this find out and let her know whether it was worth investing time in, and that was the last she'd heard from him. It just didn't seem like him. True, she didn't know him personally, but she had been a fan of his work for years. Just the quality of his books was evidence to her that he wouldn't just blow her off, along with their entire project. She had been so excited about meeting him and working with him.

Lady Morgan said she had directed him to the site and he simply never returned. She assumed he'd had second thoughts, so she had simply contacted the University where Rachel had her residency. Dismayed and curious, Rachel had contacted Cambridge University, but Rollin had not returned there, either.

She looked at the tree, looming in shadowy menace before her. Maybe she should wait until morning after all ...

Rachel licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. She had to see what Rollin had seen.  Something could be in there that would tell her more about what had happened to him. She did not believe that he had simply dropped everything and disappeared. Before, she had just been excited about the possibilities should this be a genuine find. It would be the highlight of their work together, the springboard that would have taken the book they had planned to a wider audience.  Now ...

She felt a sudden mixture of emotions: a sense of loss at the missed banter, the possibilities she had found herself considering. She had actually lost the twenty-five pounds that she had been carrying around, waiting to hear from him again. It was foolish, she knew, but she had felt a bond with him based on their shared interests. Once she pinned down the fact that she was getting slightly infatuated with a man she had never met, then she had responded to his sudden silence by waiting perhaps too long to contact the University and ask after him. Once she processed that, another emotion reared its ugly head. Fear ...
What could have happened to him?

She looked at the mouth, open in a sideways scream, in the base of the huge tree.

Will it happen to me?

Flipping her hair back, she marched toward it.
Don't be silly!

Before she could think about it, she swung the flashlight ahead of her and thrust her head into the hole.

Oh, my God –
She backed out in a rush, stifling a yelp. Then she kicked herself mentally, patting her chest to keep her heart from leaping out, realizing what she had let scare her so. It was only the statue, so lifelike it was threatening.

Rachel poked her head in again, started to raise the harsh beam of the flashlight, then paused. Moonlight arced in from a wide split high in the side of the tree trunk, a soft, shimmering spotlight bathing the swordsman. Instead, she turned off the flashlight and approached the statue, moving as if she walked in a cathedral. The swordsman waited in ambush in the moonlight, poised with deadly sword raised. He stood dead center in the cleared dirt floor, which the crew planned to cover with meticulous brushing, anticipating the presence of artifacts around him. Her assistant had informed her that the floor around the statue had been clear and dry to begin with, although around the inner edges of the trunk there was a covering of leaves. There was faint evidence of a quaint dwelling, but the only thing substantial that had been found, so far, were pieces of a clock not of the period.

This is it. This is really it.
Making mental notes, she examined him.

Corrosion: minimal. Intricate detail: engraved cloak clasp, boot lacing. Unusual pose.

Roman sculptors of that era were normally restricted to immortalizing their wealthy subjects in nothing more than stone portraiture. No one but the Celts would ever have dreamed of such an active pose, and yet, it did not have the abstract flair of Celtic artwork. This swordsman was strange, also, for his lack of armor. Perhaps a Tuscan artist, but then –

She started to reach up to touch the chiseled face.
My God, are those
eyelashes?
No way!

Rachel stopped, eyes caught by the twisted snarl.

Whoever you were, I doubt you were very nice. But maybe you were just bitter. Most meanness I've seen in my life simply comes from loneliness. Shame, a good-looking man like that. Maybe the sculptor exaggerated. Not that good looks are any guarantee against loneliness. 

Retreating from that hate-filled face, Rachel knelt, brushed a palm across the pedestal. She turned on the flashlight, aimed it at the writing there. It was totally unfamiliar, a shock to her. Archaic languages were her specialty.

She sighed, leaned on the stone. Her hand brushed the statue's boot.

" ...WIIIIIIIITCH!!!"

Rachel went rigid. Every nerve in her body fired to run, overloaded; she froze and shook like an idiot. It saved her life.

Sssssswwwwiiiiissssshhhhhhh
!

Air sliced just above her head. Her legs stiffened instinctively. She launched straight backward, skid-thudded hard on her behind. The flashlight spun from her hand crazily, then blacked out as it struck.

She gawked up at the statue, its swing complete.
Decapitation – not what I had in mind for today.

The statue now stepped down from the pedestal. It, he, was looking around as if for lost prey.

He said something, and at first it sounded like gibberish, but suddenly it clicked that he was speaking the scrambled precursor to English of the early middle ages.  Rachel's mind, scrambling in survival mode, translated quickly.

"What is this? A night cloak spell?” he was saying. “Very good, old woman, but it will not save thee." He was panting, adrenaline loaded, as he approached her with sword sweeping slowly, a deadly blind man's cane.

She scrambled back, crab-like.

"Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod." Rough bark rammed into her back. Trapped by the inner wall of the tree.

He oriented on her movement, lunged. Cold moonlight glinted in her eyes – the sword, thrust straight into her face.

I'm skewered!

Rachel flung herself to the side, heard the
thock!
as the sword struck home. Her glasses, already haywired, slung free as she scrambled for the flashlight, fast-motion crawling.

I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die!

In her leaf-pawing, one hand fell on a familiar shape. Not the flashlight. Why she thought the flashlight could save her, she didn't know.
Blind him? Throw it at him? Hit him with it?
She whimpered, expecting death as she crammed her glasses, now decorated by a speared leaf, on her face.

The swordsman yanked the razor-sharp blade from the wood as she fumbled, finally snatching up the flashlight and snapping it on.  He reoriented as the flashlight flicker threw staccato shadows to dance a skeletal jig against the wild, living walls.

But it was enough.

The swordsman paused, peered at her. Then he looked down at himself.

"I am not ..." he started. He raised his head, narrowed eyes at her and drew the blade up. "Thou'rt not the old woman," he decided.

Rachel finally got the flashlight under control and brought it up to shine in his face, holding it as he had held the sword, except for one thing – she shook like a jackhammer.

The beam revealed the statue, now fully fleshed, a man with long, black hair, wild in his rage. He raised a hand to shield bright blue eyes, squinting.

"Put away that magick torch, boy," he said. "I see thou'rt not who I seek."

Rachel held it still aimed at his face. Her head shook, spastically, vehement denial that she could possibly be that one.

The swordsman gave a soft snort of derision, but his lips twisted in a slight smile. Humoring her terrified defiance, he sheathed his sword, then waited, a brow up.

Rachel lowered the flashlight, but her mind had kicked into high gear. Could he have something to do with Rollin's disappearance? Did he come alive before? But she had looked around the pedestal and the area around the … him. If he had killed Rollin with that same sword strike, there would have been an awful lot of blood. Did he just reset to a statue? That was crazy. This was all crazy though.

She shook her head, overwhelmed by her wild suppositions, knowing she just did not know enough to make any conclusions. Finally she managed to stammer, "H … how did you do that?"

He turned away as she spoke, looked back to the pedestal whence he came.

"It occurred to me to ask that o' thee." He approached the pedestal, knelt, traced fingers lightly across the face of the engraved stone, and frowned.

"Was it not thine intent to revive me?"

"I?  No.  Revive you? I couldn't." She gave a nervous laugh. "I'm not a ... a witch. And I'm not a boy."

He broke from his study of the stone to peer at her, doubt obvious on his face. She realized he now mistook her for a child at that prickly age at the edge of manhood. Then Rachel saw his eyes drop to the level of her chest. He paused, then one brow flicked up slightly, along with a corner of his mouth.  Then he shook his head once, snorted, and turned back to the stone.