The King's Blood (71 page)

Chests stacked higher than Taban, overflowed with the glint of the same coins left in the cups. Weapons of all kinds littered the floor; bows turned from ancient and extinct trees, shields embedded with jewels from lands that fell into the sea, maces with diamonds worked into the edges, pikes that hadn't been twirled a day in their life. A pair of rubies the size of chipmunks glinted out of a hand carved statue of a dragon's head roaring from above their heads.
 

And laying beneath it on an ivory altar was a skeleton dressed in an armor finer than any a king could know. The breastplate was inlaid with gold circling about the steady arm of a warrior's form as it raised its sword high to meet the ebony body of a Dragon, rubies spilling out in response. A tale of defeating a band of marauding Elves circled down the greaves in a leaf pattern. By the time they got to the shoes, the smiths were running out of ideas and had their warrior pissing against a tree.
 

"Scepti's left nut!" Kynton muttered, before pinching himself for cursing, "Look at all this!"

Ciara's fingers trailed a few centimeters above the bones of the greatest hero their history bards ever knew, trying to place what bothered her. It was all here; the mounds of treasure, the altar, the bones. And most importantly the sword.
 

Aldrin stood beside her, setting his lantern down on the floor as his eyes wandered to a behemoth of a blade. It could cut down ten men with a single swing and glinted an icy silver in the orange firelight. More of the diamonds and rubies were embedded in the handle as another dragon scene played out across the sword that ended in the curled word of "Liam."

He held his hand above the pommel, glancing over at Ciara. Instinctively, she inched back, her eyes flitting about the room. The others held their breaths, waiting for a giant boulder, or jets of flame, or really big rats with blades for hands to come out and gnaw their ankles. A trap worthy of such a tomb.

Swallowing every survival instinct screaming at him, Aldrin cupped his hand around the monstrous blade's handle and, like ripping off a bandage, yanked her from the body of its owner. He paused, counting his breath, waiting.

Slowly one eye opened, then the other. "What, nothing?" He tried to swing the blade a bit to see if that would get the trap started, maybe it needed a little push. But all it did was wave the fetid air into Kynton's nose which sneezed and sent a chest of gold crashing in on itself, causing everyone to jump.

"May your brain be eaten by slugs," Isa cursed at the priest while slowly lowering her arms. She was twitchy from the magic buildup and could have blown the place sky high if she weren't careful.
 

Aldrin tried to wave the sword around a bit more, but the immense weight turned his wrist and the blade fell to the ground, sticking in the cobbles. Ciara put her hand against their warrior's breastplate, tracing along the design and trying to piece together the nagging feeling in her head.

"Something's not right."

"Yes, your king has gotten his sword caught in his trousers," Taban said as Aldrin tried to unhook a rather friendly diamond that snagged.

"No, this isn't right." She listened to Medwin's tales not of Casamir but of Cas, the woman inside the man. A woman who placed practicality above all the other virtues of the gods. A woman who wouldn't be caught dead under the trappings of useless and overweighted austerity. A woman...

Her fingers followed along the straight lines of the warrior on the breastplate, a plate that was in actuality never designed to hold breasts. "This isn't Cas's tomb," she said to herself and turned to tell the others.

And an arrow answered back, slicing over the top of Isa's head and straight into the dragon's mouth. Ciara ducked back, her fingers fumbling for her dagger and she fell back against the wall. Aldrin struggled against the oversized sword, managing to raise it, only to have it fall back down.
 

"What the fuck was that?" Kynton cursed, grabbing up Aldrin's lantern and trying to shine it into the blackness behind them. A second arrow glanced off the dwarven marvel and sent it skittering across the floor.

Taban yanked the priest down, "We're lit up like a Soulday tree, you moron," and tried to slide to the side of the narrow tomb shielded from the darkness that got itself some archery lessons.

Isa's hands rose, a mass of that off flavor magic sparking in her hand. Aldrin tried to crawl across the floor to Ciara, cut off from the rest hiding along the eastern edge, but another arrow stopped him.

"We come in the name of the Empire!" a thick voice garbled out of the darkness. "Lay down your arms and no one need be harmed!"

"Sod that," Isa said, aiming her crystal as the magic reached peak boiling point. Just as she was about to fry whomever was advancing, the magic kicked back against the conduit shattering her stone. She dropped to her knees like someone whacked her in the back and the blue spirals drained away as her eyes slipped shut. Her head thudded against the floor. The witch was out.

Taban lifted one of the bows laying upon the floor and fired the Empire's arrow back at them, but it skidded against a wall. "I can't see a thing, and all they can see is us." He aimed again but another arrow zipped dangerously close to his hand and he ducked beside the priest.

"I repeat again, lay down your arms and none shall be harmed. If you do not, no one will leave this tomb alive," the soldier threatened.

"Do they plan to kill themselves as well?" Kynton asked, using the worst opportunity to point out an enemy's logical fallacy.
 

Aldrin looked over at the crumpled witch, the cowed assassin, the always useless priest, and then to the girl crouching in the corner. He stood slowly and, with a very evident and highlighted form, laid down the sword of Cas. The soldiers burst into the narrow tomb like ants, their black armor barely shining in the firelight. A pair snatched up Isa, dragging the witch back to their den. One poked Kynton in the ribs and he giggled out of terror before the poke turned to a jab and he rose, his hands being bound behind his back.

Taban bared his teeth at the men, only ten in all, but in this narrow of constraints without the darkness and having to watch over the child, he did not stand a chance. He dropped his sword to the ground and raised his hands up. The lead soldier turned to what must be his commander and muttered something in Avarian. All Taban caught was "filthy sand worm," which made his lips rise to a deadly grin. But the soldier wrapped his armored fist around the assassin's wrist and tried to turn his hand back. Taban fought against it, offering only resistance before the commander kneed him in stomach. The assassin groaned and his hand snapped back, bound to the other.

Finally, the lead soldier walked over to Aldrin, his eyes searching over the boy, but he didn't seem to find what he wanted in the Ostero face. Instead, he followed to the sword hanging limply across his feet. With a single hand, he raised Liam up and ran a finger down the still sharp blade. Aldrin gulped hard, his mind playing out the gory scene of the commander raising his seasoned arm back and lobbing the boy prince's head right off his shoulders.

Instead, he passed the sword back to his comrades and gathered up Aldrin's scruff in his hand, shoving the boy after his protectors. The man gazed up at the dragon and mumbled something before following after his fellows. Two soldiers remained behind, laying down kindling doused in oil, brought for a specific purpose. As they scattered behind their leader into the darkness, the man pulled a match against his thumb and tossed it into the tomb. It flared up like the caravans, the flames finally casting light into the blackened walkway.

Aldrin was shoved forward by his captor, his eyes trailing over the lolling head of the witch, the babbling face of the priest, and the disturbingly serene assassin.
Oh gods, where's Ciara?!
he thought before the leaders pushed him away from the inferno of their beloved hero.

CHAPTER THIRTY

O
nly the shuffling pierced the darkness. It sounded like a child shaking his present early, his present of a box of rats with some bags thrown in for bedding. Ciara put her hand to her head trying to piece together the last few minutes of her life. Something wet clung to her palm. Blood? But she didn't feel any pain, only a disconcerting numbing around her face and her nose wouldn't stop itching.

A match struck, an insignificant flame in the room, but a pinpoint of light to pull her eyes. And also a very large "you're not alone."

"What do you want?" she called to the gloved hand holding onto the glowing match. It danced a bit before landing upon a candle, which illuminated a desk beneath it.
 

Ciara remembered the tomb, the body laid out upon the altar and then an arrow. She'd ducked to the side, dropping down into a crouch. The witch did something with her hands and then the world melted away.

No, before there was a set of hands, small ones that hooked around her face and held a rag against it. "It was you!" she accused the keeper of the flame. "You kidnapped me."

The flame jiggled as the sound of juggling gravel broke from her newest assailant, "Kid nap? You are no goat, nor are you napping."

"It's a figure of speech," she said waving her hand about as a wave of nausea pulled at her stomach.
 

The figure lit another match and shuffled to his side, giving life to a second candle balanced on a pile of books nearly as tall as it was. But he still kept his face in the shadows. He didn't seem to need the light to see where he was going.

"I did not nap your child," the voice was like forgotten parchment paper, torn from the back of a book. Dust clung to each word, "I rescued you."

"From..." she started to interrogate before the swell of nausea rounded upon her tongue.
 

"You will feel the unpleasant urge to regurgitate, it will pass," the voice said before sharply turning to his shoulder and speaking in an exasperated tone. "Yes, it was the preferred course of action. Knocking heads does not solve all problems."

Ciara looked towards where the darker shadow did, but saw nothing more than another desk or table, this one much larger than the others. Switching to her "talking to someone who shoves spoons up his nose" voice she asked, "Who are you?"

The figure sighed, a very human reaction. And then she wondered why she thought that, of course he was human. It lit a final match and turned its back to Ciara, rummaging with a lantern. He was dressed in some strange robe that wrapped all around the body like a sheet with frills on the edges. A belt made out of a leather that shimmered green in the dancing light graced his underdeveloped midsection.

Slowly the man stood to his full not even four-foot height. Wisps of hair so white they appeared nearly transparent dangled limply off a disturbingly oversized oblong head. In the orange light of the matches, his balding head looked almost green grey, that mossy color graves took on after you could no longer read the epitaph. A gloved hand raised the lantern up and slowly he turned to face her.

Ciara's dagger slipped into her hand before she realized it, and she waved it at the monster rising before her. For the most part the monster took it in stride, blinking his giant black eyes slowly and tapping his far too long fingers against the lantern.
How could he find gloves that fit?

His mouth was small and lipless, pulled back enough to show lines of razor teeth, but what set him apart the most were the almost foot long ears steepled off his head. They were pointier than his teeth and had tufts of that white hair pouring out like a forest. The monster walked closer to her, his feet sliding along the rocky floor as if it were made of ice.
 

"I am the caretaker," he said, touching his bulbous head with his giant fingers. "And who might you be?"

"The woman you kidnapped," she said, her dagger still out between them. The monster made no movements to close the gap, only holding the lantern as high as he could. It swung in a small breeze that wafted through the cave.

He searched over her face, as if it were the first time he'd really looked and was having troubles placing one human from another, "Duneclaw blood, yes. And something else. Dangerous business that, Elves are not to be trifled. And they leave such a mess in the closet."

She tried to answer but couldn't find a question in his babble. "Maybe?"

But the caretaker ignored her, setting his lantern beside her as he struck another match and toddled off to the final dark corner, "Almost forgot, time slips so quickly when you don't watch it," he muttered to himself loudly, unused to having company. "Yes, yes," his voice shifted again, as if he were talking to someone else in the room, someone bothering him, "I will take care of it, and I won't scuff your boots this time."

The caretaker placed his match against a set of three candles dripping out of a candelabra then moved to a fat one guttering next to a skull. Ciara jumped at that, her elbow knocking into the lantern beside her, earning a glare from her child napper. Stretched out across a plain wooden table was a full skeleton, resting as if it fell asleep after a hearty breakfast and never awoke. Without looking back at her, the caretaker removed an oil pot and took to working some into the tiny scraps of what could have once been leather clinging to the skeleton's frame.