The Frostwoven Crown (Book 4) (32 page)

Garrett remembered Uncle Tinjin’s warning not to swear any oaths of secrecy, but Banden had already spoken for him, and he had no wish to contradict his friend. He kept his silence and let Banden’s oath cover his guilty conscience.

“I saw what they do with the dead,” Frae whispered.

“What dead?” Banden asked.

“The dead men that they bring back from the war,” Frae shuddered, “I saw how they make them walk again!”

“Skeletons?” Garrett asked.

Frae nodded sharply, not looking at him.

“You saw how they make skeleton warriors out of dead bodies?” Garrett asked, his heart beating quicker to have suddenly found himself so close to discovering the secret he had been sent to learn.

“I saw them do it last night,” Frae said, “Oh, Banden, it was awful!” She buried her face in Banden’s shoulder and he wrapped his arms around her to comfort her.

“So, um, how did… I mean, what happened?” Garrett asked, trying to conceal his excitement.

“There is a place where they bring the bodies,” Frae said, “They lay them out in rows, and then…”

“Then what?” Garrett asked.

Frae shook her head. “I can’t… I can’t describe it,” she said, “You’d have to see it yourself to understand.”

“But men aren’t allowed in the Inner Sanctum,” Banden said.

“No, you’re right,” Frae said, “You can’t go there at all, can you?”

Garrett chewed back his frustration, trying to think of another tact.

“Unless…” Frae whispered.

“What?” Garrett said.

“Well, the High Priestess has called all the Matrons to council tonight,” Frae said, “I haven’t been here that long, but I don’t think that’s normal.”

“What’s going on?” Banden asked.

“I don’t know. They didn’t tell us anything,” she said, “but it does mean that there won’t be any priestesses in the Sanctum tonight.”

“What are you saying?” Banden asked.

Frae looked at Garrett. “I could show you the way in,” she whispered, “but it would have to be tonight.”

Garrett swallowed back the little flutter of fear in his throat and nodded. “I’ll go with you,” he said.

Banden shook his head. “No,” he said, “This is a bad idea. I don’t want either one of you getting in trouble over this!”

Frae pulled away from him, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, if you don’t want to see…” she said.

“No, I want to go… if you’ll take me,” Garrett insisted.

“Garrett,” Banden said, looking very uncomfortable with the whole idea.

“It’ll be all right,” Garrett said, “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“It’s fine, Banden,” Frae said, “It will be easier with just the two of us anyway.”

“No, I’ll go with you,” Banden sighed, “If something goes wrong, I want to be there to help.”

“Really, it will be all right,” Frae said, a pleading note in her voice, “I can take your friend in, and be right out again. Just wait for us outside. You can watch the door for us.”

“We stick together on this,” Banden said, “I’m going with you.”

Frae looked troubled but then nodded in agreement. “Meet me at the chantry just after Curfew,” she said.

“We’ll be there,” Garrett said.

Frae gave Banden a furtive peck on the cheek and then disappeared into the hedge maze. Banden looked a bit sick.

“It’ll be fun,” Garrett laughed, trying as hard to encourage himself as Banden, “Besides, I promised Lady Ymowyn I would do something stupid this week.”

“This definitely qualifies for that,” Banden grumbled.

Garrett left Caleb to try on the stack of gloves that he had brought home from the market while he got dressed. He felt a little guilty about not having taken the zombie to fit a pair in person, but Caleb seemed content to fumble through the pile of leather, and, if he didn’t find a pair that fit right, they could always go tomorrow.

Garrett pulled on his favorite pair of tomb-robbing pants, finding them uncomfortably tight. He had to settle for a slightly baggier pair of sturdy leggings and a coarse-threaded shirt that had proven quite resistant to abrasions in the past. His newest pair of necromancer boots would do just fine, and he cinched his knife belt around his waist, feeling the comforting weight of a curved jungle knife that Cenick had left with him as a replacement for the last two blades that Garrett had lost. He concealed the weapon beneath his Templar tabard and admired himself in the mirror.

His heart beat with mingled fear and excitement, and he was already working on a way to keep Banden’s oath by proxy and still serve his duty to his fellow necromancers.

Banden had promised that they wouldn’t tell anyone what Frae had told them, but, if Garrett just happened to learn the secret of making skeletons tonight, he would not be honor-bound to refrain from using that knowledge to make skeletons of his own. If the other necromancers then happened to observe that process and learned the secret themselves… well, it didn’t feel exactly honest, but he could work out the details later.

“Wish me luck, Caleb,” Garrett said, “I’m off to steal a secret!”

Caleb grunted, still trying to pull on a thin leather glove and missing his aim on most of the fingers.

Garrett grinned at him and shook his head. He finished pulling on his cloak and satchel and then helped Caleb slip the gloves on properly.

“How’s that feel?” Garrett asked.

Caleb flexed his leather-clad fingers and moaned appreciatively.

“Well, good luck with whatever it is you’re doing,” Garrett said. He patted the zombie on the shoulder before leaving.

Wind caught at Garrett’s cloak as he stepped out onto the street, and thunder rumbled from the gray clouds above. Cold rain pattered against the cobblestones, growing stronger with every passing minute. By the time he reached the temple, his boots were leaving a wake through the flooded streets of the Upper City.

Garrett greeted the Templars at the temple gate, ready with an excuse, but the men recognized his face and tabard and did not bother to ask his reason for arriving at so late an hour.

He found Banden waiting just outside the barracks as the Curfew bells chimed. The boy was wearing a rain cloak over his own tabard, and Garrett recognized the bulge of a sparring staff tucked into his belt beneath the cloak.

“There’s not supposed to be anybody there, Banden,” Garrett said, “What’s the staff for?”

“I dunno,” Banden whispered, “I just feel better with it than without it.”

Garrett shrugged. “You ready?”

“No,” Banden grumbled, blinking the rain out of his eyes, “but I’m not letting you and Frae go in there without me.”

“Thanks for coming,” Garrett said, and together they made their way through the shadow of the outer wall toward the main temple.

Garrett’s mind swam with excuses to give in case they were caught, each one growing more and more improbable the further they moved into the temple proper. He glanced back at the watery footprints the two of them were leaving on the polished wood of the chantry floor, and his stomach twisted inside him.

“Over here!” Frae’s voice hissed from the shadows, and Garrett looked to see the green glow of a small witchfire lamp, and the young priestess dimly illuminated by it.

Banden rushed to meet her, and the two shared a brief embrace before Frae pulled away, not meeting the boy’s gaze.

“This way,” she said.

Garrett and Banden followed her into a narrow passage, barely noticeable, between the columns that flanked two small shrines, each dedicated to one of the first High Priestesses. The three of them ascended a twisting flight of stairs between ancient rough-hewn stone walls that stank of mildew. Banden’s shoes slipped once or twice on the damp steps, but Garrett was there to steady him, grateful for the sure grip of the tar-painted soles of his new boots.

“Through here,” Frae called back as she stepped through a narrow door that swung open on massive hinges of green bronze. The door itself seemed half as thick as it was wide with five heavy bolt locks along the open edge of its frame. Had it been barred against them, and given the curve of the stairwell outside, they would have had no hope of breaking through, even if they had brought a dozen strong men and a battering ram.

“How did you get this door open?” Garrett asked, but Frae only shushed him as she led them on through a serpentine corridor with a high ceiling that came together above them in a corbelled arch.

“This place is really old,” Garrett whispered, but Banden hissed him to silence this time.

They emerged through another ancient door into a gloomy space between a curved wall and a thick tapestry with a faint greenish light spilling in beneath it from the room beyond. Frae gave the boys a hard glance and pressed her fingers to her lips. She motioned for them to wait behind while she went on ahead.

Garrett and Banden shared a concerned look as the girl disappeared around the curve of wall and tapestry to their right.

It was then that Garrett caught the familiar whiff of death in the still air of the hidden place. His skin prickled at the sound of a great, muffled groan that seemed to come from below, and the stones beneath his feet vibrated ever so slightly with the sound.

Banden’s eyes went wide, and he snatched the sparring rod from his belt and clutched it protectively to his chest. Garrett’s hand went to the flask of essence in the bottom of his satchel.

The groaning sound subsided and stillness returned to the sickly air. Frae returned as well, motioning for them to follow her again, and they did as she instructed.

She guided them through the gap between two enormous tapestries that hung along the outer walls of a vast dome, probably part of the city’s original elvish structures, but it was the center of the room that drew their eyes.

Verdant light shone from a great circular pit, nearly forty feet deep, that ringed a central disk. A titanic statue of translucent jade stood in the center of the disk. It was carved in the shape of a great coiling worm with a cluster of facial tentacles that stretched heavenward to its full height, nearly eighty feet above the main floor. A dim phosphorescence played through the statue’s crystal, giving it a weird appearance of life, and its tentacles seemed to writhe with a trick of the light.

Banden fell to his knees and made a gesture of obeisance to the icon of Mauravant. Garrett looked at him and then at Frae, catching what might have been a look of pain in her eyes. She glanced away quickly when she saw him looking at her.

“There’s no one here,” she said, “but we must hurry.”

Garrett pulled Banden to his feet, and they followed the girl toward an opening in the floor of the outer ring and a set of steps leading down. Garrett glanced around the room again, noticing the image woven into the tapestry they had been hiding behind. It depicted the battle between Mauravant and Malleatus. The two gods were locked in deathly embrace, with Malleatus depicted as a gigantic man in red plate armor, tearing strips of living flesh from the Worm Mother’s sides with his taloned gauntlets. For her part, the enormous, tentacled worm was coiled around the blood god’s waist and legs, crushing him in her grip. Garrett gave the tapestry a grimace of disgust and was about to look away when he noticed the background of the scene and paused to take a better look.

There, above the bloody battlefield of armies, clad in red and green, murdering one another on the ground, a number of winged shapes filled the storm-swept sky. Creatures with fiery eyes and bat wings struggled against what looked like feathered serpents, and there, sweeping in beneath a great column of smoke and flame erupting from the peak of a great mountain, a flight of dragons came, breathing flame. Astride their backs, Garrett could make out the tiny figures of men in horned helms.

“Let’s go!” Frae hissed, and Garrett jumped, abandoning his examination of the old tapestry.

Garrett followed the others down the narrow stairs to a sub floor beneath the outer ring and a tunnel that led toward the central pit.

“We’re almost there,” Frae said, and Garrett could hear the tension in her voice. A part of him regretted bringing her into this. He hated putting others at risk, but he had waited a long time to learn this secret, and this might be his only chance.

Frae slid back the bolts of another bronze door and swung it open, bathing the dark corridor with the green light of the ring pit beyond. She turned and looked back at them, silhouetted in the eerie glow of the pit.

“It’s through here,” she said, as though the words caused her pain to speak them.

Banden hesitated, but Garrett slipped past him, anxious to follow the young priestess and discover the temple’s secret.

The great groaning sound came again, and the stones of the floor and wall trembled at the sound.

“I think we should go back,” Banden said, his voice hardly more than a rasping whisper.

Garrett saw the look of relief in the girl’s eyes as he reached the doorway beside her. “Banden,” she said, “you go back and find the door behind the tapestry again. We may have to leave in a hurry.”

“I’m not leaving you!” Banden said.

“It’ll be all right, Banden,” she said, a note of desperation in her voice, “We’ll be right back… just go back to the tunnel,
please!
”

“No,” Banden said, “I’m not afraid!”

“We’ll be all right, Banden,” Garrett assured him.

Banden pushed past the two of them without a word, stepping out onto the floor of the central ring pit.

Garrett looked at Frae, but she said nothing, her eyes downcast and her jaw set in an expression of resignation.

Garrett wasted no further time but followed his friend out into the pit.

Frae sighed and gestured for them to follow her around the curve of the ring.

Garrett looked around as they walked. The glow seemed to come from the stone of the walls and floor itself. The walls of the pit were smooth as glass, broken only by the occasional green bronze door along the outer circumference. The floor however, was riddled with countless small round holes about the diameter of a hen’s egg. The stone around the edges of the holes had been worn smooth, making it rather difficult to walk across as Garrett’s boots kept turning beneath him as his heels slipped into the divots.

As they rounded the bend, he saw the source of the smell. The bodies of dead men, most of them still clad in tattered Chadirian uniforms, were laid out in neat rows along the curve of the inner wall. Garrett hurried over to inspect them, kneeling to prod at one of the corpses with his finger.

“What is it?” Banden asked.

“Just a dead guy,” Garrett answered, “I don’t see anything special about him.” He turned to look toward the young priestess as he spoke again, “How do they turn them into…”

Frae had crept back away from the boys as Garrett knelt beside the corpse, and she was already almost around the bend when Garrett saw her turn to run.

“Hey!” Garrett cried, springing up to chase her.

“Frae! What’s wrong?” Banden cried.

The two of them rounded the bend just in time to hear Frae scream as someone slammed the bronze door in her face from outside the ring. The girl pounded her fists against the metal door and cried out, “Please, Matron, let me out!”

“Shelbie!” Garrett hissed, his eyes burning with rage as he yanked the canister from his satchel.

“Frae, what’s happening?” Banden demanded, rushing to her side.

She ignored him, continuing to pound at the door with her hands, screaming, “Please, don’t leave me in here!”

“Frae, talk to me!” Banden cried grabbing the girl by the shoulders and spinning her to face him. Her face was blank with terror.

“No!” Garrett shouted, cold rage bubbling up inside him, mostly at his own stupidity.

“Garrett?” Banden said, his eyes wide.

“It was a trap, Banden,” Garrett said, “She led us down here because Matron Shelbie wants to get rid of me.”

“What?” Banden gasped.

Frae was starting to sob uncontrollably, and Banden pulled her close to comfort her.

Garrett gave the girl a look of disgust. “Is there any other way out of here?” he demanded.

Frae whimpered, shaking her head.

Somewhere nearby, the deep mournful sound of a gong rang out.

“What was that?” Banden asked as Frae began sobbing like a little girl in his arms.

“It sounded like a dinner bell,” Garrett sighed.

“For what?” Banden asked.

Garrett pushed them out of the way and felt around the edges of the bronze door with his fingers. He leaned his shoulder against the door and gave it an experimental push. His mind frantically searched for a solution. For a moment, he found himself wishing for a jug of water, but he could not work out exactly what good that would do.