The High King's Tomb (58 page)

“Death is honor!”
the others echoed, imitating the fist gesture.

Good heavens,
Karigan thought. She hoped the motto did not apply to her. She was, after all, only an honorary Weapon.

She followed the Weapons as they filed out of the hall, feeling awkward and unfamiliar even to herself in black when she should be in green. It was almost like she had not yet caught up with herself and just had to keep running or lose herself entirely.

Like I’m shadowing myself,
she thought.

She kept reminding herself she was a merchant’s daughter as she strove to keep up with the Weapons and wiped perspiration from her face with the back of her hand.
I’m also a Green Rider. And now I’m apparently some sort of a Weapon, but not.
Maybe her entire existence had become a theatrical, or maybe a masquerade where she portrayed someone different every day. Did she really know who she was anymore?

She shook her head. No use trying to think about it. She could only keep moving forward.

T
he journey through castle corridors swirled by in a hazy dream. Karigan was more concerned with keeping up with the Weapons than taking in her surroundings. Fastion led them at an amazing pace on his crutches. Before she knew it, they’d entered the Rider wing. The corridor was dimly lit at this hour, whatever hour it was, and most doors were shut.

She passed her own door—it was ajar and she longed to slip into her room and go to bed. Maybe Fastion wouldn’t notice? Wishful thinking.

A white cat bolted from her doorway and streaked past the Weapons down the corridor. This roused the Weapons to surprised murmurs.

“A tomb cat?” Brienne mused aloud.

There was general agreement among the Weapons. What in the name of the heavens, Karigan thought, was a tomb cat doing in her room? Then it occurred to her she’d seen it there before.
This can’t be a good omen…

They swept past the common room. Garth stood in the doorway in surprise as they passed by, his teacup held forgotten in his hand.

“Karigan?”
he said with incredulity in his voice.

But she could not stop as much as she wanted to, and so only gave him a feeble smile and a wave.

Some of the Weapons grabbed lamps from along the Rider wing, for beyond lay the abandoned section of the castle that remained in a perpetual state of night. The lamps created a temporary dusk, but night fell in behind them as they hastened on.

If Karigan hadn’t the Weapons to guide the way, she’d be completely lost. The abandoned corridors branched and intersected in so many places and seemed to stretch for miles that she began to think of it as an unlit labyrinth, with secrets hidden beyond every corner. But they did not pause to unravel secrets. Fastion and his Weapons had a destination in mind and headed toward it without faltering. Rodents with gleaming eyes scattered before them.

Left, then right. Right, then left. Down sets of stone stairs into deeper, darker levels of the castle. Karigan did not even try to remember the way, and simply incorporated it into her streaming consciousness. Keeping to her feet and keeping up was her priority.

They stopped.

Karigan plowed into Lennir, who gave her a stern look.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. Some honorary Weapon
she
made.

At some point they’d entered a wider corridor and when Karigan saw lamplight glance off the polished stone surface of a coffin rest, she understood why. The corridor had to be wide enough to permit a funeral procession to pass through, and before them was a set of double doors equally wide. They had reached the entrance to the tombs Fastion sought.

The white cat leaped onto the coffin rest, watching the movement of lamps and pouncing on reflected light, its tail swishing in concentration.

Fastion and Brienne consulted before the doors. The light revealed ancient script and carvings of the gods above them. Most prominent, of course, were Aeryc holding the crescent moon and Westrion with his wings spread, riding his black steed.

Fastion uttered some command and swords whispered from sheaths. Karigan put her hand to the unfamiliar hilt at her side but did not draw the sword, feeling too clumsy. Just the sound she’d make would disrupt the silence the real Weapons exuded.

Instead of a sword, Fastion drew out a key and turned it in the locks, then carefully tugged on the door rings. The doors did not shift. He tugged harder, but to no avail. Another Weapon helped, but even their combined efforts failed to open the doors.

Fastion pivoted on his good leg, the lamps casting grim lines across his forehead. “Our way is blocked. We must consider the Heroes Portal.”

The other Weapons did not speak out in dismay, but Karigan could tell from their heavy countenances they were displeased. It meant gathering horses, riding all the way down through the city, out of the city itself, and losing valuable time.

The white cat jumped down from the coffin rest and landed beside Karigan’s feet. It rubbed against her leg, purring loudly. Then, with a stretch, it padded off in the direction they had come.

“Or, we could,” Fastion mused, “follow the cat.”

Maybe this was a dream after all, Karigan thought. Who ever heard of Weapons following cats? But follow the cat they did.

They found it sitting on its haunches and licking its paw at an intersection of corridors, as if waiting for them. When they approached, it darted off down the corridor to the right. They followed, the cat ghosting in and out of the lamplight, treading a trail it was familiar with. Either that or they were all on a mouse hunt. Karigan almost giggled at the image of Fastion with feline whiskers.

She wiped her brow with her sleeve. The fever inspired ridiculous notions.

Eventually the corridor dead-ended at what looked more like a natural rock face than castle wall. Fastion scratched his head.

“I don’t remember
this.
”

“Nor I,” said Brienne, “but most of my time is spent
in
the tombs.”

The others agreed it was new to them.

Primitive drawings were etched into the rock face—stick figures carrying…sticks? Were they spears? Creatures like birds and mammals were also etched into the rock.

“I’ve seen pictures like these before, though,” Brienne said. “Elsewhere in the tombs.”

“Yes,” Fastion replied. “I remember them.”

“Who did these?” Karigan asked. “They look like a child drew them.”

“No child,” Brienne said. “At least, not that we know of. These were made by the oldest of the old who once settled these lands. They dwelled here long before the Sacor Clans, but what they called themselves no one, except perhaps the Eletians, knows. We call them Delvers. The tombs were not entirely built by the D’Yers—portions were formed from natural niches and caves in the bedrock. But before the tombs, during the time of the great ice, we think the Delvers lived in them. The caves must have provided shelter from the cold and predators.”

One of the drawings was of a large catamount-like creature with long curving fangs.

Their own little cat gazed at them thumping its tail impatiently on the dusty floor. When it saw it had their attention, it walked to where the stone face met the corridor wall and vanished.

How’d it do that?
Karigan wondered. She’d once thought of the cat as a ghost kitty, but it had felt so real rubbing her leg…

Fastion crutched over to the wall. “There is a fissure here. Your position and the angle of light only makes it look solid. Come see.”

Karigan and the remaining Weapons clustered around what was not more than, to Karigan’s mind, a narrow crack in the wall. Fine for a cat, but a human being?

“It will be a squeeze,” Brienne said. “I shall test it first.”

Except for Karigan, Brienne was the slimmest of the group. The others, all men except for Cera, had broad shoulders and chests. Brienne removed her sword, felt her way into the fissure, and squeezed in. She did not even take a lamp with her. Karigan admired the sergeant’s grit and was glad it wasn’t she who had to chance getting jammed in some dark fissure.

It was not long before Brienne reemerged unscathed. “It is tight in the beginning, but widens. It comes out behind Queen Lyra’s bed.”

There was murmured consternation among the Weapons. “Do the caretakers know about it?” Lennir asked.

The Weapons prided themselves on knowing every crack and corner of the castle, but were now learning they had not discovered everything just yet. Karigan wondered if the castle played tricks on people; changed its configuration now and then; revealed and concealed its extent at whim.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Fastion replied.

“A tapestry conceals the outlet,” Brienne said.

Karigan was still working out the idea of Queen Lyra’s
bed.
Surely this was a quaint way of referring to a funerary slab.
Surely.

But now the Weapons started to file into the fissure, and Fastion placed a hand on Karigan’s shoulder and guided her toward it.

“Brienne will be in charge on the other side,” he said.

“What? Aren’t you coming?”

“Yes, of course, but in the tombs she outranks me. Above is my domain.”

It was all really too much for Karigan to digest in her current state. The Weapons were beyond her, and she left it at that.

Fastion practically shoved her into the fissure and she found she had to shuffle sideways to fit. She held the sword vertically against her hip and moved cautiously so as not to jar her already battered body. Still, her cheek grazed a jagged rock and she probably added a new bruise to her shoulder before the passage widened. Light glowed ahead and she surged toward it like a swimmer seeking the water’s surface. She emerged into a large chamber, Brienne holding aside the tapestry. Fastion hopped out of the passage next, dragging his crutches behind him.

Brienne dropped the tapestry back into place. Whether or not the caretakers knew of the passage, the Delvers had, for Karigan glimpsed stick figure people and beasts incised into the stone around the opening before the tapestry swept back over them.

“I sent Lennir and Beston to Heroes Avenue to investigate what’s happened at the main entrance,” Brienne told Fastion in a hushed voice. “Offrid and Sorin I’ve sent to the village, and I’ve ordered the rest to scout for intruders.”

Fastion nodded.

“Village?” Karigan asked.

“Shhh,” Fastion said. “We don’t know how near the intruders are. The village is where the caretakers live.”

“You two are with me,” Brienne said. “We’ll visit the kings and queens and perhaps intercept the intruders and the book.”

Visit the kings and queens,
Karigan thought sourly.
Visit dead people.

Only now did she take in her surroundings which were lit by lamps at low glow, leaving much in shadow and to the imagination. When Brienne said the passage ended at Queen Lyra’s “bed,” she hadn’t been using a quaint figure of speech. She’d been precise. A canopy bed, to be even more precise.

Beautiful blue velvet curtains draped down from the canopy and were tied to each bedpost with gold cords. Beneath the matching covers a figure reclined against silk pillows, jewels on boney fingers and a tiara on its head sparkling in the light. A perfectly braided rope of silver hair flowed down the figure’s shoulder. The flesh was shrunken to skull and bones like parchment, and Queen Lyra gazed out from her bed with a perpetual, skeletal grin.

Karigan did not know if it was some secret method of embalming that preserved the dead in these tombs so well over hundreds of years, or the cool, dry environment, or some alchemy of the two. She didn’t care. All she knew was that she hated the tombs. She really did.

The white cat reappeared from beneath the bed and jumped up onto it.

“Shoo!” Brienne said, whisking the cat off. “Agemon would be most displeased to find clumps of white hair on the queen’s bed.”

Karigan groaned inwardly when she heard the chief caretaker’s name, and she hoped they would not encounter him this time.

The rest of the chamber was fitted out like a bedroom, complete with dressing table, armoire, and washstand. There was even a chamber pot stashed under the bed. Though tables and furniture were cluttered with personal items, such as combs and jewelry, no trailing cobwebs hung from the canopy bed; no dirt or grime clung to any surface. There was even a book on a chair next to the bed with a marker in it. Apparently Queen Lyra liked to read.

When Fastion observed Karigan absorbing everything, he said, “Many wish to take with them the comforts of home after death. The dying find it easier to accept their journey to the heavens knowing they’ll be surrounded by things they loved in life. The queen’s husband, King Cedric, preferred to spend the afterlife with his favorite horses.”

He pointed to a slab of granite just to the side of a fine Durnesian carpet inscribed with the king’s name and that of fifteen horses.

“They’re all under the floor?” Karigan asked.

Fastion nodded. “According to the chronicles the caretakers keep, it was quite a trial to entomb the king and his horses.”

Karigan did not ask if the horses were already dead or brought down alive. She did not want to know.

Brienne peered out of the chamber, looking for trouble. “The way is clear,” she said in a low voice. “I see no living souls.”

Brienne, Karigan knew, was not being facetious.

She followed Brienne out of Queen Lyra’s chamber, with Fastion taking up the rear. She dreaded what other burial displays lay ahead. Her only hope was that they’d find the intruders quickly and get this journey into the tombs over with.