Page 14

Once we’d made our fire and ate our supper, we sat around for a short time talking, but soon I began yawning, and Tarrak smiled indulgently and urged me to lie down. I wrapped up in my furs and fell quickly asleep. And I dreamed.

In my dream, Tarrak was exploring the passage down the old steps in the ancient chamber. He looked wary and ready for anything, his sword drawn and held at the ready. A torch was burning in a sconce beside him on the wall and in the flame, I could see a menacing face. I wanted to warn him, but I could only watch as he slowly went down the steps and into the nether regions of the cave.

He passed another indentation in the wall that looked like it led to a chamber. It had words carved into the rock overhead, but though he glanced at it, Tarrak passed it by and moved on. It was much darker now, and the torches on the walls barely made any difference to the stygian blackness. Tarrak passed two more chambers and again, he glanced up at the words carved into the rocks above them, but he didn’t so much as hesitate as he passed them by. He took another few steps and held the torch aloft. Smoke swirled in the breathless air around him. He turned and looked straight at me.

“This is Ludimarien’s tomb. It’s time for the spell to be cast, demon child. You need to wake up. Now .”

I sat bolt upright, my heart racing. I knew instinctively that I had only been asleep a short time, maybe only an hour or so. The fire was still burning brightly, and the air around us was still fairly warm. I was so relieved to see Tarrak dozing beside me that I threw myself on top of him, and he awoke with a start. He blinked at me a moment and then pushed me off him to the ground and sprang to a crouch, reaching for his sword which was lying next to him on the makeshift bed.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” he said in an urgent, alarmed voice.

The sight of his naked, muscular body, his satiny white skin gleaming in the firelight, nearly undid me for a moment, so I struggled to form words for a reply. “N-no, nothing’s the matter. I-I’m sorry I startled you. I had a dream.”

He lowered his sword and glanced over at me in disbelief. “You had a dream?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry, but it was so real. It was about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You were in the passageway that we saw when we came in, and you were all alone. You were exploring and passed by three chambers and then you looked at me. You called me ‘demon child,’ and said it was time for me to cast a spell.”

“What? What are you talking about? I thought you said I was alone. How was I then talking to you?”

“You were, though. You seemed to know I was dreaming about you. You turned, looked straight at me, and told me to wake up.” He narrowed his eyes like he thought I was crazy, so I rushed on.

“Don’t you see? It’s the riddle! I dreamed about the riddle, so it has to be a sign. ‘Past the royal passage three.’ In my dream, you went past three tombs. That must be King Gratin’s tomb and two others, which could be Gratin’s children or his queens. They’d make up the royal three. Then the riddle goes, ‘In the cave of Ludimarien... there the trail will soon begin. When the spell is cast, the demon’s child will come at last.’ Demon’s child—that’s what you called me in the dream.”

“And what do you think all that means, Sergey? I think you’re just overly excited, and it was only a dream.”

“No, it was too real. King Gratin must have sent it to me. We have to go now and see. It may be time for the paths to appear.”

“The paths?”

“Two of them. ‘One will lead you to heaven and the other to hell.’ Remember? We have to go now. Someone or something sent me that dream. I just know it.”

I was already up, pulling on my clothes, as he knelt there staring at me like I’d lost my mind.

“Well, come on. Don’t just sit there and look at me. I know this must be it, Tarrak!”

“Sergey, be reasonable. If there are royal passages down there, they’ll wait until morning. No one sent you any dreams or anything else. It can wait. Lie back down.”

“You can stay and sleep if you like. I’m too excited. I know this is it, and it has to be now.”

He sighed heavily and stood up. “You’re not going anywhere in these caves without me,” he grumbled, reaching for his clothes. “Give me a minute to get dressed and take your dagger.”

I grinned at him, then grabbed him and kissed him. “Thank you. But why do you think I’ll need my dagger? We’re the only living beings in this cave.”

“I’m not taking any chances on that. We’re not the only ones looking for the Sword. Glorfindel knows about this, after all.”

“Yes,” I answered. “Like I told you. Do you think he’ll bring the Dark Elves here?”

“He might. I think it more likely that they figure you’re dead, and they’ll be in no hurry. You rode out with no coat. No blankets or even a saddle. Elves and Fairies, for that matter, don’t have a high opinion of the resourcefulness of humans, in general. That was before they met you and your brother, of course.” He smiled at me, and I stepped closer to him and hugged him again. Maybe the exploring could wait a little while longer at that.

“Enough of this,” he said, gently pushing me away. “Get your dagger and we’ll go. It’s the middle of the night, and he doesn’t have the persuasive powers over King Stefan like you do over me.”

“You really think Glorfindel has told King Stefan? The Dark Elf king?”

“Yes.” He shrugged. “Of course. He’ll need to enlist his aid against you, after all. I think Glorfindel is frightened of your powers.”

I snorted. “Glorfindel? Frightened of me ?”

“I saw his face when he told me he thought you had made yourself invisible to sneak into Adan’s castle. Yes, Sergey. He’s frightened of what you can do. It’s probably why he brought you inside the Dokkalfar’s city before he tried to have you arrested.”

I shivered at the memory, and he grunted something and kept getting dressed. I decided it wouldn’t be prudent to tell him to hurry, even though I was dying to go down that passageway. In another few moments, he was ready anyway, and he reached down to find a hefty stick to act as a torch to light our way.

“Stay close to me. If anything happens, follow my lead.”

“I will,” I said solemnly and slipped my hand into his. He squeezed it and then pulled me to him and gave me a brief but fierce kiss that made my head spin a little.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go find these paths of yours.”

He let go of me then and turned to go back to the main passage. I followed behind him, trying to convince myself not to be frightened and my heart to stop banging its way out of my chest.

****

The air was icy cold inside the cave, and the darkness inside was somehow even more eerie knowing it was the middle of the night outside too. I thought it must be close to midnight. I still felt strongly that something had called me to come to these dark passages. I soon began to see the same things I saw in my dream—a chamber that had words carved on the rocks above it. There was a long bit in some language I didn’t understand, but clearly, I thought, the name on it was Gratin. This must be the old king’s final resting place. The next chamber bore a female’s name, I thought—Eloysia. Tarrak agreed with me it was probably feminine. A bit farther down, we passed the next chamber. This one had a name on it too—Yolish. We had no idea if that was male or female, but we thought it might have been a child, as the chamber wasn’t as large nor the carving as grand and detailed.

We walked only a few steps farther on then and saw a huge rock blocking the entrance to what was probably another chamber in this tomb. The name carved on the rock was Ludimarien.

“This is it, Tarrak. Ludimarien’s tomb.”

“Yes, and as you see, this is as far as we can go. This boulder blocking the entrance weighs far too much for us to shift it.”

“I don’t think I need to do that. In my dream, you told me to wake up and get down here to cast the spell. So that’s what I need to do.”

“No. Absolutely not. No more Infernal Magic.”

“Tarrak, what do you mean? That’s the whole point in being here.”

“You can’t keep casting these crazy spells, Sergey. They almost always go wrong, and we’re too isolated and too far from any help if this one does.”

“No, Tarrak, please. You have to trust me. I told you they went wrong in the past because I was using Infernal Magic to power spells that were different. Conjuration and evocation in regular magic require a whole different type of magic that I don’t have.”

“Infernal Magic is what you have. Isn’t that what you told me? It’s dangerous to use it because it can corrupt you. Isn’t that what you said too?”

“No, you misunderstood. I said Pavel didn’t think I was a corrupt vessel for the magic; therefore, I couldn’t be corrupted.”

“That’s only a theory. What if he’s wrong?”

“What if he’s not? I have the power to do this. I feel it. And I need you to trust me.” I stepped up closer to him and put a hand on his chest. “Please, Tarrak. Let me try.”

Tarrak huffed out a long breath but finally gave one sharp nod of his head. “Go ahead then. But be sure, Sergey.”

“I’ll do my best. Now hold your torch over here. I need the smoke.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea, but the riddle says, ‘As the smoke clears, the shades will appear.’ The shades are the guards to the treasure.”

“How do you know that?” He held up a hand. “Wait a minute, don’t tell me. You just feel it.”

I laughed and leaned over to kiss him. “I do.”

He brought the torch closer, and I stood beside it, rolled up my sleeve, and cut my arm to get the blood for the sacrifice. After I flicked the blood into the flames, I turned to Tarrak. “Can I have a few drops of your blood too? It might mean more coming from another king.”

He rolled his eyes but held out his wrist and I made a tiny cut. I gathered some of his blood on my fingertips and threw that onto the flame as well. This time I said some of the words to the spells I’d used in the past. “I call to the Lords of Darkness, you Demon Lords. I offer you this blood sacrifice. Hear me now and come to my aid.”

The smoke roiled out of the torch, but not much else happened. I took a deep breath and held my hands outstretched toward it.

“I seek the Sword of Light and the Battle-Axe of Lebor. Show me the path to reach them.”

I intoned the words loudly, and they echoed back to me. Yet still nothing happened. Shrugging at Tarrak, I took a breath and said the magic words, the ones Tarrak once thought I used to call a demon, and the ones that had never yet failed me.

“Tili boom!”

Thick, black smoke that smelled of brimstone began to pour from the flame on the torch, and I took a step backward, coughing and waving my hands. Tarrak thrust it as far away from himself as he could and turned his head. Almost as soon as it had begun, though, the smoke began to dissipate from the passage, and there in front of us lay two wide paths that hadn’t been there before. One led past the right of the huge boulder and the other led past the left. Before each of them stood a soldier.

We took a look at each other in surprise and Tarrak stepped in front of me. The men were tall and cadaver thin, which seemed appropriate, as they were definitely not living beings. Their skin was as gray as dust. They wore woolen cloaks with trousers and boots, and on their heads, they wore soft hats of wool, too. They had long hair and even longer m oustaches with neatly trimmed beards. I could easily see right through both of them.

I heard Tarrak gasp softly beside me, and he stepped up next to me with his drawn sword, pushing me behind him, but neither of the guards made any move toward us or seemed to take any notice of us at all.

Tarrak called out to them. “I wish to go down the path where the sword and battle-axe are hidden. Show me the way.”

They replied to him in unison, a dull monotone, and both of them said the same words.

“The path behind me is the one you should choose.”

Looking exasperated, Tarrak raised his sword and snarled at them, but I pulled down his arm. “They’re only shades. Long dead already. They have no fear of your sword. Let me try to speak to them.”

He sighed and stepped back a pace but still kept a hand on my arm. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”

I went closer to the shade on the right and gestured toward the one on the left. “Which path will the other guard say is the one that will take us to the sword and battle-axe?”

The shade lifted his thin hand and pointed a long, bony finger at the path directly behind him, the one on the right. “This one.”

I stepped over to the other soldier. “What do you say? Which is the path that the other guard will say is the one that will lead to the treasure?”

He lifted his hand and pointed his bony finger at the same path as the first one had—the one on the right.

“Thank you,” I said and stepped back beside Tarrak. “The correct path to take is the one on the left.”

“But they both indicated the right path.”

“I believe old Ludimarien designed a trick. Remember, the riddle. It says one path will lead us to heaven and the other to hell. I think that means that one of the guards is lying and the other is telling the truth. The trick is to figure out which is which. If the guard I asked first was the one who was lying—the guard from hell—then he would lead us astray if he can by telling us the wrong path. The other guard, the one from heaven, will tell the truth so he will point to the wrong path as well because I asked him what the other one would say . That means we have to walk down the opposite path than they both just told us.”

“Wait ... what ?”

“Just trust me. I’m almost one hundred percent sure I’m right.”

“It’s that ‘almost’ part that worries me.”

“You can stay here, Your Majesty,” I said in a frosty tone. “But I’m going down the left path.”

He pulled me around to face him and snarled in my face. “You’re going nowhere without me. It appears that I may be following you into hell, because I’m not letting you go alone. Go ahead, Sergey, and I’ll follow. The left path it is.”

I turned and walked toward the left, with Tarrak behind me, and the guard stepped out of our way. As I passed him, there was the strong smell of the grave about him that was most unpleasant, and I didn’t look into his eyes. He made no move to stop us though, and we soon were enveloped by darkness as we turned a corner about three and a half meters down. I stopped so abruptly that Tarrak ran into me.

“I can’t see anything. We need more torches.”

He held up the torch he was carrying and snapped his fingers at it. It began to burn even more brightly than ever. I turned and gave him an admiring look. “You have to tell me how you do that.”

He smiled and kissed the tip of my nose. “You know too many of my secrets already.” He stepped in front of me to lead the way, holding the torch high.

We traveled only a couple of more meters down the dark passageway before we came upon the site of an ancient, box-like sarcophagus. The post holes revealed that there was once a roof over the stone vault, which was covered by a flat slab of rock. The evidence of a roof, however, was a sign that the grave had been prepared for a prominent person, though there were few traces of gifts for the afterlife, as would be usual in the human realm, and only a few small fragments of gold and silver coins.

“Whose grave do you think this is?” I asked, whispering because it seemed to be the right thing to do in this solemn place. Tarrak held his torch higher aloft to look it over.

“No inscription but probably Ludimarien’s.”

“But the big boulder was over that other passageway. What was that about then?”

“A diversion for grave robbers, I’d guess.”

I noticed a gleam of metal by the vault, so we began digging around it with our hands and suddenly a big clump of earth fell to one side, and we could see the object clearly. My pulse raced when I realized it was the hilt of a sword. I gasped and fell to my knees. Tarrak jammed the base of the torch in the ground so he could dig with both hands. I got on my knees to help and before long we had unearthed both the sword and a huge and ancient battle-axe.

Although the weapons first appeared to be covered in dirt and perhaps rust, there were faint hints of a gleam underneath the dirt covering the blade. Tarrak rubbed the blade of the sword with his sleeve, and we glanced at each other in amazement. A soft buttery color shone though the dirt covering the sword in the places Tarrak had rubbed. Gold? A sword blade made of pure gold was both unheard of and highly impractical. Gold was far too soft a metal to make a weapon from—the metal was so soft that you could leave teeth marks in it if you bit it. It was also far too heavy.

But gilding was a different story. It was not at all unheard of for a sword belonging to an emperor or a king to be gilded. It would be an ornamental sword, of course, not meant for battle. Nothing at all like the purpose the sword of light had been intended for.

This sword was about ninety-five centimeters long, and the more Tarrak rubbed the blade, the more it gleamed. The handle was well preserved and wrapped with silver thread. The hilt and pommel at the top were covered in silver with details in gold, and it was edged with copper. When we examined the sword more closely, we also found remnants of wood and leather on the blade, possibly the remains of a sheath for the sword. The blade, or at least the part we had uncovered, was decorated with spirals and various combinations of letters and ornaments. The letters were probably Midgardian, but what the letter combinations meant was a mystery to both of us.

The battle-axe was much the same, except it had no gold decorations. The hilt was covered in the strange writing, though, and wrapped in brass that must have flashed like gold in the sunlight. Silver and copper threads swirled through it too.

It was a magnificent treasure, particularly the golden sword. The way swords were often referred to in the old sagas suggested that the sword was an important bearer of the identity of the warrior. A sword revealed the warrior’s social status, his position of power, and his strength. The sagas also told that gold had a special symbolic value in Midgard, representing power and potency. When I leaned over Tarrak to touch this one, it almost leaped under my hand, and I felt surrounded by its magical aura. It simply exuded power.

Tarrak glanced over at me in the dim light of the torch, his face looking amazed. I think until that very moment he had doubted we’d find anything of any value here at all in these caves.

“It’s your treasure, Sergey.”

I threw my arms around him and squeezed him tight. “We have to take them to rescue Pavel and Lord Juul.”

He looked at me oddly. “I admit they’re beautiful weapons. But enchanted ones? Invincible? Really, Sergey.”

“There’s only one way to find out. Let’s get started back right away.”

“It will wait until morning. It’s much too dangerous to try to get off this mountain at night. Not to mention it’s freezing outside. We’ll leave soon after first light.”

I nodded my agreement, knowing he was making better sense than I was, and together we carried our treasure back down the passage. The shades of the old soldiers were long gone, faded back into obscurity, and the tombs had a waiting, watching quality about them that frightened me. I kept close behind Tarrak all the way out and looked behind myself frequently to make sure nothing was following us.

It was comforting to get back to our fire at last and wrap up in the furs again. Tarrak laid the sacred weapons beside us and then he wrapped me up in his arms and kissed the side of my face.

“Go to sleep if you can. We’ll ride hard tomorrow to get back to our own territory and back to Adan’s castle. I’ve been gone far too long already.”

There was an implied rebuke in those words that hurt my feelings a little, but at the same time thrilled me that he had chosen to come after me instead of staying with the siege when he could hardly be spared. I could have maybe done this part alone, but I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to, and he had saved my life after my escape from the Dokkalfar city and Glorfindel. I was very glad he’d decided to come after me. I snuggled closer to him and closed my eyes, trying to get a few hours’ sleep before morning.