Heir Of Novron: The Riyria Revelations (57 page)

“What do you make of this?” Royce asked, still on his knees and pointing to something on the ground beside his lantern.

Hadrian bent down. It was a leather string with a series of stone beads, feathers, and what looked like chicken bones threaded through it.

“It’s a Trajan ankle bracelet,” he told them. “Worn for luck by warriors of the Ankor tribe of the Ghazel.”

“The ends aren’t torn,” Royce said. “But look how they are bent and twisted. I think it just came untied. And it is partially buried under the dirt, so I am thinking it’s been here awhile. Regardless, we are in their neighborhood, so we’d better start moving a bit more cautiously. See if you can keep the chatter down to a minimum.”

Hadrian looked at the bracelet and caught Royce by the arm as he was about to move forward again.

“Here,” he said, keeping his body positioned to block the view of the rest of the party. He placed Alverstone into Royce’s hand.

“I was wondering where that went.”

“Time to re-claw the cat, I think,” Hadrian said. “Just be a good boy, okay?”

“Look who’s talking.”

The party moved forward again. Hadrian did not return to the rear. He thought it was more likely they would encounter Ghazel from the front, and he also did not relish the idea of returning to Gaunt.

The corridor widened until they could walk three abreast. Then abruptly the passageway ended. It stopped in a small room where the far side narrowed to no more than a crack. In the center was nothing more than a sizable pile of rocks.

Gaunt shook his head in disgust. “I told you he was incompetent,” he said, pointing at Alric. “He was so sure this was the right passage, and here we are days later standing at a dead end.”

“You said
I
was incompetent?” the king asked, then looked to Hadrian. “No wonder you hit him. Thanks.”

“What about us?” Gaunt asked. “How many days of food do we have? How much time have we wasted? We’ve been down here—what? Three days now? And it took us two days from Aquesta. That’s five days. Add five days to get back and even if we were to leave right now, we will have been gone ten days! How long do you think we have until the elves reach Aquesta? Two weeks? We’ll blow most of that time just retracing our steps.”

“I did not hear you suggesting a different choice,” Arista said. “Alric picked as best he could and I don’t think anyone here could have chosen any better.”

“How surprising—
his sister
is defending him.”

Mauvin stepped toward Gaunt and drew his blade. The sword picked up the light from the lanterns on its mirrored surface and flashed as Mauvin raised the point to Gaunt’s neck. “I warned you before. Do not speak of my king without respect in my presence.”

“Mauvin, stop!” Arista ordered.

“I’m not going to kill him,” he assured her. “I’ll just carve my initials in his face.”

“Alric.” She turned to her brother. “Tell him to stop.”

“I’m not certain I should.”

“See! This is the oppression I spoke of!” Gaunt shouted. “The evils of a hereditary authority.”

“Somebody shut him up,” Royce snapped.

“Mauvin,” Hadrian said.

“What?” Mauvin looked at him, confused. “You punched him!”

“Yeah, well—that was then.”

“Lower your blade, Mauvin,” Alric said, relenting. “My honor can wait until we are through with this.”

Mauvin sheathed his weapon and Gaunt pushed himself
away from the wall, breathing heavily. “Threatening me doesn’t change the situation. We are still at a dead end and it is—”

“It’s not a dead end,” Magnus stated. He stomped his boot twice, got to his knees, and placed his ear to the ground. Then he looked up and glared at the pile of rocks. He got back to his feet and began throwing the rocks aside. Beneath were several pieces of wooden planking and, below them, a hole.

“That was hidden on purpose,” Wyatt said.

“This doesn’t mean we are in the right passage,” Gaunt argued. “I don’t remember the monk ever saying anything about going in a hole. There’s no way to tell this is the right way.”

“It is,” Myron replied.

Gaunt turned on the little monk. “Oh, so you’re keeping information from us, is that it? Or are you merely incompetent and just forgot to tell us about this part of the journal?”

“No,” he said meekly. “There’s nothing in the journal about this.”

“Then surely you are more pious than I thought, for Maribor himself must be giving you information he keeps from the rest of us.”

“Maybe,” Myron replied. “All I know is that’s Edmund Hall’s mark.” He pointed. “See there, carved into the stone.”

Royce was first to it and, holding his light above the floor, revealed the etched inscription:

EH

“E.H.,” Gaunt read. “How do we know that stands for Edmund Hall?”

“You think there’s a parade of people coming through here with those initials, do you?” Royce asked.

“That’s the exact way he wrote his initials in the journal,” Myron explained.

“What about these, Myron?” Royce asked as he pushed more rocks away to reveal more etchings. These were much brighter—fresher than the
EH
.

Myron glanced at them for only a moment before saying, “I don’t know anything about those.”

Hadrian stepped up, blew the dirt away. Then he turned to Arista and Alric. “Didn’t the Patriarch say he sent other teams?”

“Yes, he did,” Alric agreed. “Three of them, I think.”

“According to the empress, they all failed,” Arista added.

Hadrian glanced at Royce. “I think we know about the third group he sent, but they didn’t come this way. Still, I’m guessing these are the initials of either the first or the second team.” He looked at Royce again. “If you were going to handpick a group to come down here, and you could choose anyone, who would you pick to lead such a group?”

“Breckton, maybe,” Royce replied. “Or possibly Gravin Dent of Delgos.”

“Well, we know they didn’t pick Breckton, and look at the first initials, GD. Now when was the last time anyone saw Gravin? He wasn’t at the Wintertide games this year.”

“Not last year either,” Alric said.

“He was at Dahlgren,” Mauvin said.

“Yes, he was!” Arista confirmed. “I remember Fanen pointing him out and saying what a great adventurer he was and how he worked mainly for the Church of Nyphron. He called him something… a—a—”

“Quester?” Mauvin asked.

“Yes, that’s it!”

“Now let’s think about that,” Hadrian said. “They would need a scholar, a historian. Dent was at Dahlgren. Wasn’t
there someone else too? That funny guy with the catapult, what was his name?”

“Tobis Rentinual?” Mauvin asked. “He was a real nut.”

“Yeah, but do you remember him saying something about how he named the catapult after Novron’s wife, because of all the research he did into ancient imperial history?”

“Yes. He said something about having to learn a language or something, didn’t he? He was all boastful about it, remember?”

“That’s right.” Hadrian was nodding. “Look at that second set of initials, TR.”

“Tobis Rentinual,” Mauvin said. “It even looks like how he would draw his letters.”

“What about the others?” Alric asked.

Hadrian shrugged. “I’m really only guessing at the first two. I have no idea about the others.”

“I do,” Magnus said. “Well, one of them, at least. HM, that’s Herclor Math.”

“Who?” Hadrian asked, and looked around, but everyone shrugged.

“Of course none of you would know him. He’s a mason—a
dwarf
mason—and a good one. I would recognize his inscription anywhere. The Maths are an old family. A Math even worked on the design team of Drumindor. His clan goes back a long way.”

“Why did they initial the stone?” Wyatt asked.

“Maybe to let anyone who might follow know they got this far,” Magnus replied.

“Why didn’t they mark the bloody three-choice passage?” Mauvin asked.

“Maybe they planned to,” Arista said. “Maybe—like us—they didn’t know if they picked the right one, but planned to mark it on the way out, only—only they never came out.”

“Maybe we should carve our initials too,” Mauvin suggested. “So others will know we were here.”

“No,” Arista said. “If we don’t come back out, there will be no others to follow us.”

Each of them looked toward the hole with apprehension.

“At any rate,” Royce said, “this looks like the place. Who’s carrying the rope?”

They tied three lengths of rope together, and with Hadrian on the line, Royce climbed in. They fed out two-thirds of it before Hadrian felt the line stop and Royce’s weight come off.

He waited.

They all waited. Some sat down on whatever flat spots they could find. Elden remained standing. He had an unpleasant look on his face as he eyed the hole. Despite Arista’s comments, the dwarf busied himself carving each of their initials into the stone.

“You want to call down to him?” Alric asked. “He’s been in there a while.”

“It’s better to be patient,” he replied. “Royce will either call up or yank on the line when he wants us to come down.”

“What if he fell?” Mauvin asked.

“He didn’t. On the other hand, what is more likely is that there’s a patrol of Ghazel and he’s waiting for them to pass. If you get nervous and start yelling down, you’ll get him killed, or angry. Either way it’s not a good idea.”

Mauvin and Alric both nodded gravely. Hadrian had learned his lesson the hard way on that first trip the two made to Ervanon. Learning to trust Royce when it was dark, you were alone, and the world was so quiet you could hear your own breathing was not something you did overnight.

Hadrian remembered the wind whipping them as they climbed the Crown Tower.
That
was a
big
tower. He must have climbed a hundred of them with Royce since, but aside
from Drumindor, that was the tallest—and the first. He had marveled at how the little thief could scale the sheer wall like a fly with nothing but those hand-claws. He gave Hadrian a pair and sat smirking as he tried to use them.

“Hopeless,” was all he said, taking the claws back. “Can you at least climb a rope?”

Hadrian had just returned from his days in the arenas of Calis, where he had been respected and cheered by roaring crowds as the Tiger of Mandalin. He was less than pleased with this little twig of a man treating him as if he were the village idiot. So infuriated had he been by Royce’s smug tone that Hadrian had wanted to beat him unconscious, only Arcadius had warned him to be patient. “He’s like the pup of a renowned hunting dog who’s been beaten badly by every master he’s had,” the old wizard had told him. “He’s a gem worthy of a little work, but he’ll test you—he’ll test you a lot. Royce doesn’t make friends easily and he doesn’t make it easy to be his friend. Don’t get angry. That’s what he’s looking for. That’s what he expects. He’ll try to drive you away, but you’ll fool him. Listen to him. Trust him. That’s what he won’t expect. It won’t be easy. You’ll have to be very patient. But if you do, you’ll make a friend for life, the kind that will walk unarmed into the jaws of a dragon if you ask him to.”

Hadrian felt a light tug on the rope.

“Everything okay, pal?” he called down softly.

“Found it,” Royce replied. “Come on down.”

It was like a mine shaft, tight and deep. Hadrian had descended only a short distance when his eyes detected a faint light below. The pale blue-green light appeared to leak into the base of the shaft, which, he could now estimate, was no more than a hundred feet deep. As he reached the bottom, he felt a strong breeze and heard a sound. A very out-of-place sound—the crash of waves.

He stood in an enormous cavern so vast he could not see the far wall. At his feet were shells and black sand, and before him lay a great body of water with waves that rolled in white and frothy. Along the beach, he spotted clumps of seaweed and algae that glowed bright green and the ocean gave off an emerald light, which the ceiling reflected in such a way as to make it seem like they were not underground at all. He felt like he was standing on the beach at night under a cloudy, albeit green, sky. His nose filled with the pungent scent of salt, fish, and seaweed. To the right lay nothing but endless water, but straight out, just visible at the horizon, were structures—the outlines of buildings, pillars, towers, and walls.

Across the sea lay the city of Percepliquis.

Royce stood on the shore, staring across the water, and glanced over his shoulder when Hadrian touched down. “Not something you see every day, is it?”

“Wow,” he replied.

It did not take long before all of them stood on the black sand, gazing out at the sea and the city beyond. Myron looked as if he were in shock. Hadrian realized the monk had never seen an ocean, much less one that glowed bright green.

“Edmund Hall mentioned an underground sea,” Myron said at length. “But Mr. Hall is not terribly good at descriptions. This—
this
is truly amazing. I’ve never thought of myself as big in any sense, but standing here, I feel as small as a pebble.”