The Dreaming Hunt (63 page)

Raina's hands were already glowing brightly, and she nodded back to indicate she was ready. They moved toward the pair of mushroom men, standing motionless in their niches on each side of the passageway. As soon as Rynn and Sha'Li crossed the plane between the two niches, the creatures lurched an awkward step forward, sending a pair of gases outward.

Sha'Li and Rynn both gasped and staggered, and Raina threw two fast healing spells at them, followed by spells to purify blood of poisons. That did the trick. Sha'Li took a swipe at her mushroom man and sliced off a big, spongy chunk of it. Rynn threw a vicious kick into his, knocking an arm-like appendage off the creature.

The creatures spewed several poisons in fast succession. Will ducked and held a defensive position in front of Raina. Knowing him, he was prepared to leap in front of any gases that came her way. As long as she could throw purification magics as fast as the two mushroom men were throwing poisons, the group would be all right. Eben moved up beside Rynn and commenced slicing and dicing the creature that Rynn was pummeling.

Sha'Li dropped to the ground once before Raina could get cleansing and healing into her, but the lizardman popped right back to her feet as soon as Rosana peppered her with healing magic. Raina followed up with a blood purification spell and then spun to throw more of the same into Rynn and Eben.

It was fast and furious, with poisons and magic flying and weapons swinging fast and hard, gradually whittling the creatures down.

“Burn them!” Sha'Li called out as she took yet another poison burst in the face.

While Raina healed her, Rosana darted forward to plunge her torch into the right-hand pile of mushroom pieces, and Will did the same to the left-hand creature's remains. An acrid stench rose as the fungus flared up, burning down in a matter of seconds into almost nothing. Just a pale dusting of ash was left behind.

“Well, that was fun,” Raina said a little breathlessly. “Everyone healed up, or did I miss someone?”

No one spoke up.

“Can anyone tell me if those were living creatures or constructs like the mud creature outside?” she asked.

Rynn answered, “Once destroyed, they reverted to their natural state of being shapeless, insensate, unthinking fungus. I'm going to go with calling those constructs.”

Sha'Li added, “No children have they. Nor villages, nor speech, nor organized behavior. I say they live not.”

“That's good enough for me,” Raina declared. If only it was going to be so easy when they got to the gobrats.

The party moved on. The tunnel turned a corner just ahead, and Rynn approached it first. She watched with interest as the paxan eased a small mirror on an extendable handle around the corner. Clever. If they ever got back to civilization, she would have to look into getting one of those for herself.

“Clear,” Rynn announced.

They moved around the corner cautiously. Nothing exploded or jumped out at them or threw anything at them.

“It's a dead end,” Sha'Li said in disappointment.

“What's that?” Eben raised his torch high to illuminate a spot on the wall where the tunnel ended. “It's made of stone.”

He should know.

It looked like someone had scraped away a thick layer of dirt and debris to reveal an arched doorway. It was blocked by a stone carved to fit the opening. On the floor, an arcing line was freshly scraped to indicate that the door had opened very recently.

“A handle I do not see,” Sha'Li announced.

Rynn stepped forward to trace the intricate carvings covering the stone lightly with his fingers. “Runes.”

“Which are what?” Rosana asked.

“Drawings or carvings made to store magic and release it when properly activated. Everyone bring your torches in close so I can see these better.” The group did so, and he continued, “My guess is we have to touch a few of these runes in the right order to unlock the door. Touch the wrong runes and something bad might happen.”

“Maybe we should have the girls back up just in case,” Will commented.

“Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I can't take the same risks as you, Will Cobb,” Rosana retorted heatedly.

“I meant no insult—”

Raina interrupted the budding spat, saying, “I will back up in case I'm needed to heal the rest of you.”

Rynn said, “A few of these have been scratched recently, almost as if they've been marked. My guess is we should activate those runes in particular.”

“Be my guest,” Will replied.

Raina did indeed back up to the bend in the tunnel. The paxan tried the combination of five runes a dozen times, and eventually a distinctive click was audible. The entire stone door popped a few inches out of the frame, enough for Sha'Li to wedge her claws into the gap and tug the heavy stone door open. Raina held her breath, waiting for some threat to attack them. But nothing happened.

Holding a torch high, Sha'Li slipped into whatever lay beyond. “Clear it is,” she called.

One by one, they slipped through the narrow opening into a small, stuffy chamber that looked carved out of a single, great boulder. No moisture seeped into this place. Will rolled a small boulder sitting just inside the door into the entrance to block the passage open, for which she was grateful. She did not relish the idea of being trapped in a tiny, dark cave underground to die of suffocation.

“A chest I have found,” Sha'Li announced.

They gathered around a nearly waist-high chest carved right into the wall of the chamber, covered with a metal-banded wooden lid. Metal and wood alike were blackened with age.

“Have a care for traps,” Rynn warned as the lizardman reached for the lip of the lid.

“Heal me Raina will,” Sha'Li retorted, rolling her eyes. Which was, of course, true.

The lizardman lifted the lid a fraction of an inch and then peered long and hard into the gap. “Trapped this was. But no more.” And with that announcement, she threw the lid fully open.

Raina braced for disaster, but none was forthcoming. “Is there anything inside?”

“Aye.”

Sha'Li bent over the edge, her entire upper body disappearing into the chest. She stood upright, and in her arms was something long, wrapped in crumbling leather. Eben took it, laying it on the ground. Carefully, he pulled away the rotted skins to reveal a mace. It had nine intricately carved flanges made of some metal that all the colors of the rainbow swirled across as the torchlight danced on it. What looked like some sort of strange, unintelligible writing spiraled around the wooden shaft of the weapon, all the way down to the handgrip.

“Can anybody read that?” Eben asked.

Raina and Rynn both bent down close to study it, and both stood back up shaking their heads. Eben picked it up and turned it over in his hands. “Huh. Leather on the handgrip is in perfect condition.”

Which was a surprise given that the wrapping was completely rotted.

Eben hefted the weapon experimentally. “Lighter than it looks. Nice balance. You want to give it a try, Will?”

“I've got no training with maces. Rynn, do you want to have a go with it?”

“Thank you, but I prefer to fight without weapons altogether and rely only upon my andreline crystal gauntlets and greaves.”

“Looks like it's yours, Eben,” Will declared.

Sha'Li had bent back down into the chest and this time emerged with a box holding a supply of potions. They were duly passed to Rosana to identify. She declared them healing potions and curse-based potions. They divvied out the healing potions among the non-spirit casters, and Rosana kept the rest.

A scroll book came out and was duly passed to Will, who said he would study the scrolls later where the light was better.

Another trip into the chest revealed an epistle of some kind with a Tribe of the Moon marking etched upon it. There was no question but that Sha'Li would keep the small book.

Sha'Li stuck her torch into the chest again, running it around the edges of the large space. “Almost missed that, I did,” she muttered as she leaned down into the chest one last time. This time, she nearly fell into the thing as she reached far into a back corner. She emerged with a tiny wooden box that fit easily in the palm of her hand. It looked old, and the lid was cracked.

Sha'Li opened it and tilted her head to look down at the contents. “A ring of some kind, it is.” The lizardman pried at it with her fingernail, but whatever was inside would not come out. The box was passed to Rosana, who also could not get the ring inside loose. The boys all had a go at it, and finally, the box was passed to Raina.

Raina examined the object inside closely. It did, indeed look like a ring nestled in some sort of dark-colored fabric. The band was made of a milky white substance intricately carved all over its surface. The carvings reminded her of …

“No. It cannot be,” she breathed.

“What?” Rosana asked. “Do you recognize it?”

“The carvings look a lot like the designs on the Sleeping King's crown.”

Sha'Li leaned in close to stare at the band. “Right you are. Seen those shapes before, have I.”

She recalled that Sha'Li had been the one to fetch the crown from its hiding place. Curious, Raina ran her fingertip across the ring. It was warm to the touch. Vibrant. Enthralled, she lifted it, and it came out of the box as if it had been waiting for her. Without stopping to think about what she was doing, she slipped it onto the middle finger of her right hand. It was large, even on that finger, but then, all of a sudden, it shrank until it clasped her finger perfectly.
A magic ring
.

Something electric and familiar zinged through her, and her eyes widened in shock. “Gawaine,” she whispered.

“What of him?” Will asked quickly.

“This was his.”

They all stared at the ring that seemed to glow in the dim torchlight. So beautiful were the carvings upon it that they seemed to flow around the band. She tugged at it to put it back in the box, but the ring was having no part of coming off her finger.

“Leave it,” Will said. “It's safer there than in some box.”

“Particularly if it does not wish to come off,” Rynn added wryly.

“Is there anything else in the chest?” Will asked.

Sha'Li shook her head. “Sorry I am, Rynn; no treasure is there for you.”

The paxan smiled. “Trust me. I have everything I need or want already.”

Raina frowned. It was odd, indeed, that there had been something in this chest for every single member of their party except the newcomer. Coincidence? Or not?

“We have tarried long enough here,” Rynn said. “With each passing minute, our quarry draws farther away from us.”

Raina winced. The moment of truth was coming soon when she would have to intervene to stop her friends from fulfilling their fondest wish to slaughter a band of murderous gobrats.

 

CHAPTER

31

Eben hefted the mace yet again, still accustoming himself to the strangeness of it. Exquisitely balanced, it looked like metal but was far too light to be made of such a substance. He experimented, striking at a downed log harder and harder, and the delicate-looking flanges didn't bend or nick in the least.

As they moved away from the cache, Raina and Rynn discussed in low tones who might have opened up that cave for them, removed most of the protections upon it, and then left items for each of them like that. Always a conspiracy theorist Raina was, seeing intrigues within intrigues. He took the world at face value. Much simpler that way. He'd found a good mace, and he was pleased. It would come in handy when they caught up with those murdering rodents.

And they were getting close now. Sha'Li estimated that the tracks they followed were no more than an hour old. Given that it was drizzling and the tracks would be erased quickly by the rain, he trusted her estimate.

The terrain changed with less open water and more islets of dry ground separated by rivulets and muddy puddles. They found another cave, recently stayed in based on the warm fire ashes and bones from a recent meal thrown in a corner. Sha'Li was agitated by the tracks she found there.

“Kendrick and Tarryn here were. And Kerryl. The twins, as well. And a sixth set,” she announced, following whatever she saw in the wet ground a little way from the cave. “A human. Moccasins he wears instead of boots. Lightly he treads, rolling from outside to inside of foot.”

“A scout, then,” Rynn commented.

Sha'Li shrugged. “Leading the way, he is.” The party trailed along behind her as she led the way deeper into the darkest portion of the swamp lying south and east of them. “Odd,” she eventually muttered.

“What?” Eben asked.

“Tarryn no longer the trail marks. Someone else the trail marks. Trained is this tracker, but not her. And—”

“And what?” he prompted when she stopped.

She pitched her voice low. “Animal tracks I see. Alligator sign. And our gobrats also follow Kerryl and company.”

“Do they stalk Kerryl, or is this all some sort of elaborate trap to draw us in?” Eben asked.

She shrugged, but the whites of her eyes showed, and that was never a good sign.

A few minutes later, she murmured over her shoulder to him, “Close we draw. Prepare for battle we should.”

Eben passed the word back to Will, who was behind him at that moment, while he grasped the marvelous mace more securely. Fixing an image of those murdered children firmly in his mind, he eased forward, staying close to Sha'Li, who moved stealthily now, claws extended. She paused, crouching a little. Eben followed suit, staring over her shoulder at what lay ahead.

A small fire burned, barely visible through the trees and brush. Four grayish creatures with only vaguely humanoid features sat around the fire, laughing and talking. Gobrats.

Dead. They were all dead
.

Sha'Li slid right, and he slid left. Rynn moved off to the right, and Will came left with him, along with Rosana. Raina stood stock-still without choosing a direction, horror written on her face. This night, she would not get her save-the-bunnies way. These murderers would pay for what they had done. Justice would be served.