The Eighth Warden Bk. 03 Ch. 27-28

Chapter 27

Treya held the glass bottle up to her nose and sniffed, but whatever liquid it once held had long since evaporated. The gray powder left over at the bottom didn't have a scent. She set the bottle back near the pile of broken glass and metal where she'd found it. Judging by the mess, a shelf or table had collapsed, spilling its contents to the floor. Only a few of the bottles had survived the fall. They were coated with a layer of grime, but the glass was otherwise still in good condition.

"That room was empty too," Corec said, poking his head in through the door. "What did you find?"

The two of them were exploring the sections of the eastern tunnel they'd skipped during their first trip. The area they were in now was south of the barracks but west of the armory, closer to the chamber with the statues.

"Some glass bottles and another of those metal tables," Treya said. The table was over six feet long but only three feet wide, like the others they'd found in the area.

"Let me mark it down," he said, and scribbled some notes with one of the stormborn writing sticks. "Have you been through that other door yet?"

"I was waiting for you."

"Let's take a look."

They found themselves in a short corridor which led to yet another room. Corec sent a mage light in, then stepped through the open archway.

Treya followed, stopping in surprise once she'd entered. All four walls were lined with metallic tubes taller than a person, standing upright in rows around the edge of the room. The upper half of each tube had a glass panel in front.

Treya approached the nearest of the tubes and peered through the glass. The tube was hollow, and seemed to be empty. Her skin prickled, as if her mind had expected to see something inside that wasn't there.

Corec summoned two more mage lights to brighten the far edges of the room, then set his lantern to the side. "What do you suppose they are?" he asked her quietly.

"They remind me of caskets."

"Could the Ancients have buried their people in rooms like this? Standing upright, for some reason?"

"I don't see anything in this one. At least not in the top half." There was a seam running along the edges, and what appeared to be a handle on the right side. Treya pulled on it. At first it was stuck, but she gave it a sharp tug and the front half of the tube swung open with a creak.

"It's empty," she said.

Corec peered inside. "It's a strange way to bury someone. Maybe it was used for storage instead?"

"I don't know. I've never heard of caskets with windows, but it still feels like a mausoleum in here."

She went one direction and Corec went the other, each of them peeking through the glass panels as they walked around the room.

"Bloody hell!" Corec suddenly exclaimed.

"What's wrong?"

"They are caskets. This one's got a dead body in it."

Treya joined him and they peered through the window at the skeletal remains, still covered by mummified flesh. The figure was wearing a suit of gleaming armor that reflected the light shining in.

"What should we do?" Treya asked.

"I don't want to rob the dead," he said. "That armor looks expensive, but Marco doesn't need to know about it. Let's check the rest of them, though."

They continued down the row, finding eight more bodies and two empty caskets. When Treya glanced inside the last casket on that side of the room, she jerked back in shock.

"What's wrong?" Corec asked.

"Look!" she said, pointing. The body of a young woman stood inside, appearing as if she was peacefully sleeping while standing up. She had short brown hair and was wearing the same armor as the dead bodies. Like the zombies they'd encountered above, her ears were somewhat pointed, in between a human's and an elf's—similar to Sarette's.

Corec stared through the glass for a long moment. "Is this one sealed better than the others?"

"I don't think that would help. She doesn't look dead at all."

"Maybe there was some sort of magic to preserve the body."

Treya peered into the casket, wondering how the woman had died. She couldn't have been too much older than Treya herself. Without really meaning to, Treya reached out with her healing senses, then gasped in surprise.

"I think she's alive," she said.

"What do you mean?" Corec asked. "How could she be?"

"I don't know. It's very faint, like she's not there at all, just an echo of where she once was. But the echo is alive."

"Maybe that's just the magic that kept her looking like this. There's no way she could be alive after all this time."

"But what if she is?" Treya protested. "We can't just leave her here."

"If we open the casket, we might break the enchantment that's kept her like this. It would be like desecrating a body."

"But if she's alive ..."

Corec took a deep breath and exhaled. "If she's alive, you're right. We can't leave her here. And if she's dead, I don't suppose she cares too much what she looks like. All right, let's do it."

He motioned Treya to the side, then carefully grasped the handle and pulled. Unlike the other casket they'd opened, this one moved smoothly and easily, without any sound. In addition to the shiny armor, the girl had a sword sheathed at her side. She was taller than Treya—only a few inches shorter than Corec. There was a helmet resting between her feet.

There was a moment of silence and then her eyes opened. She looked at them, then around the room, her expression frantic. She said something in a language Treya couldn't understand, speaking so quickly the individual words couldn't be distinguished.

Treya was too shocked to respond, and from his expression, so was Corec. When no one said anything, a look of panic and fear crossed the girl's face. Suddenly she disappeared from the casket and reappeared behind them, stumbling around the room and peering through the glass panels, all the while shouting in that unknown language.

Corec gathered himself enough to speak. "Hello! We don't mean you any harm!"

The girl ignored him, not appearing to understand his words any better than they understood hers. She returned to the side of the room with the bodies. Seeing one of the skeletal figures, she shrieked, then shouted, "Nak! Nak!"

She turned to face them and drew her sword. Like her armor, the blade shimmered in the light.

"Oh, hell," Corec said, drawing his own sword and stepping in front of Treya.

The girl, seeing a target, ran at him. Just as he raised his sword to block her blow, she blinked out of sight and appeared at his side, striking at his back. His shield barrier spell flared out. The girl disappeared again, reappearing on the far side of the room.

Corec stood facing her, but didn't make any aggressive moves except when she attacked. When she came at him straight on, he could overpower her blows easily, but half the time, she disappeared just as he swung, only to strike him from the side unexpectedly.

"I can't stop her without killing her!" Corec exclaimed the next time the girl retreated to the other side of the room. "As soon as my armor spell fades, that sword of hers is going to get through." He was wearing the cheap brigandine armor he'd purchased in Aencyr.

"She's getting tired," Treya said. She'd been watching the girl fight. Disappearing and reappearing had to be magic, something like Leena's Traveling, and it was obviously starting to wear her down. "Just keep it going a little longer." While the girl's attention was focused on Corec, Treya took the opportunity to slip off to the side.

The girl charged at him again, and Treya slowly circled around until she was out of sight. When the time was right, she charged, reaching the melee just as the girl disappeared again. When she reappeared, Treya was in position. Her hand blazed with white light as she slammed her palm against the armor plating covering the girl's stomach. The armor held, but the impact shoved the girl back against the nearest row of caskets. She hit her head and fell to the ground.

Treya rushed to her, healing the head injury even as she forced the girl into a healing sleep. She'd learned about the sleep trick from Priest Telkin when she'd spoken to him about divine magic, but she'd only had the opportunity to use it once before, to help Ellerie sleep when she was panicking about Leena's disappearance.

With the threat over, Treya turned to Corec. He was stooped down, holding his hand tight against his calf. Blood was seeping through his fingers.

"She got you?" she asked, touching her fingers to his shoulder so she could heal him.

"On that last exchange, yes. Is she all right?"

"She should be, but she'll be out for a while."

Corec let go of his healed leg and stared down at the girl. "How is she still alive? Is she really one of the Ancients?"

"I think they were all supposed to live. She panicked when she saw the bodies. We can't leave her here—she has no idea what's going on."

"No, we'll have to take her back to the palace with us. I'm not sure I can carry her in that armor by myself, though, and I don't see a way to remove it. If I hold her under her arms, can you get her feet?"

"I think so."

"Wait here for a minute and watch her." Corec quickly circled the room, checking all of the caskets—or whatever they were. "Only the ones along the east wall have bodies inside, and she's the only one still alive. I'll come back for her sword and helmet later. Or maybe I'll hide the sword until we can convince her to stop attacking us."

#

"... and so we brought her here," Corec said.

The others had gathered around the spot where he and Treya had carefully laid the strange girl out on the floor of the throne room.

"She can't be one of the Chosar, or the Ancients, can she?" Ellerie asked. "It's been thousands of years. There's no magic that would keep someone alive for that long."

"I'm not sure she was alive," Treya said. "Until we opened the ... the casket, it was like she wasn't there at all. I could barely sense her."

Corec said, "What if she's a warden? Or bonded to one? Hildra told me the First is over four thousand years old."

Ellerie rubbed her temples. "I don't know what to think. This doesn't make any sense."

"She has the same point to her ears that the zombies had," Treya said.

"So do the stormborn and the seaborn. She could be seaborn—their hair is brown if they haven't been underwater in a while."

"She's tall for a seaborn," Corec said, "and what would a seaborn be doing locked in a casket below a mountain, hundreds of miles away from the ocean?"

"What would anyone be doing locked in a casket below a mountain? You said there are more of them?"

"Just the dead ones. Nine of them, all wearing the same armor as her. The other caskets are empty." Corec had hoped to avoid mentioning the armor in front of Marco, but if it came down to it, he was sure he could convince his friends to vote against stealing from the dead.

"We need to talk to her," Ellerie said. "When will she wake up?"

"It'll be hours still," Treya said. "We tried to talk to her, but we couldn't understand anything she was saying."

"Bobo, what do you think?"

Bobo had been quiet so far, crouched down so he could peer at the girl. The almost mirror-like effect of her armor reflected all the different mage lights in the room, making it hard to stare directly at her.

"What?" he asked, looking up. "Oh, talking to her? I'm not sure. Languages change over time, and we're just guessing at how the first peoples' language was pronounced. I can try."

"I meant if she was seaborn," Ellerie said.

"I don't speak the seaborn language."

Ellerie drew in a deep breath but didn't say anything. Corec had gotten to know her well enough to tell when the stress of unexpected events was getting to her. Usually Boktar could calm her down, but he was back at the camp.

Then Leena laid a hand on Ellerie's arm. "We'll just have to see what happens when she wakes up. There's nothing that can be done until then."

The elven woman nodded and relaxed. "I'd like to see the others. The room with the caskets."

"What about the door?" Marco said.

"Door?" Corec asked.

Ellerie said, "We found another of those warded doors. Could you try opening it?"

"Sure. Where is it?"

"I'll show you. I guess the caskets can wait."

Corec met Treya's eyes and tilted his head toward the girl on the floor.

"I'll watch over her," Treya said.

"I'll stay with you," Razai said. "Just in case." She brushed the dust from the seat of the large throne in the center of the dais, then sat down on it. "This thing's not very comfortable."

"It probably had a cushion," Bobo said.

Corec followed Ellerie through a maze of rooms and corridors to the northeast corner of the palace. Shavala, Leena, Bobo, and Marco came with them. The door they'd found proved to be another of the circular ones, like the one in the armory.

"Did you try the metal plate?" he asked.

"We all did, but it didn't work for any of us," Ellerie said. "I'm hoping they allowed the wardens to open any of them."

There were gouges and scratches in the stone surrounding the door. Corec ran his fingers over the abrasions.

"We saw that," Bobo said. "It looks like someone tried to break through."

"A warding like this protects more than just the door," Ellerie said. "It would have kept anyone from getting through the walls."

"Was it recent?" Corec asked.

"We don't know. We haven't seen any other sign of people being down here since it was first abandoned."

Corec nodded and touched his palm to the plate, then grabbed the door's handle and rolled it to the right. It didn't stick as badly as the one in the armory, and he was able to move it on his own.

On the other side of the door was a hexagonal chamber. The three walls on the far side of the room each had an archway that opened into a short tunnel.

The tunnel on the left led to a circular room lined with rows of metal shelves, but every shelf was empty. The other two tunnels ended in metal doors. The one in the middle tunnel was streaked with rust while the one on the right was pristine.

Ellerie muttered the words to a spell and a white film descended over her eyes. "Neither of the doors are warded," she said after peering down each tunnel.

"Let's try them," Corec said.

The rusted door was stuck, and he had to pull on it sharply. It came free with a burst of musty air and a scattering of glowing purple moths—the first living creatures they'd seen under the mountain. There was a buildup of soil wedged tightly around the lower edges of the doorframe, and the entire room was covered with mosses, lichens, and strange mushrooms that gave off a green light which faded away any time the light from a lantern passed over them. The mushrooms were thickest in the center of the room, where they were growing from a mound of soil that had been piled up two feet higher than the rest of the floor. A crooked rod or a tree branch was sticking up from the center of the mound.

Corec sneezed and stepped back, waving the moths away from his face. "What's that light coming from?" he asked.

"Some funguses glow in the dark," Shavala replied, peering around him into the room.

"Why are there funguses?" Bobo said. "And moths? We haven't seen anything else alive down here."

"Perhaps there's water," she said.

"Is there anything else in there?" Ellerie asked. Her eyes were still whitened from her arcane sight spell. If it was like Corec's, she would have a hard time seeing anything other than spells and enchantments.

"I don't see anything," he said. He moved aside to give her a look.

"There aren't any magical auras," she said before releasing the spell. Her eyes returned to normal. "It's just those plants."

Corec summoned a mage light and sent it inside to give everyone a better view. The green glow from the mushrooms and the purple glow from the moths disappeared, but the moths followed the mage light and swirled around it.

"There could be something underneath all that," Marco said.

The dirt in the room was at least half a foot thick, and Corec didn't want to dig it all up. "Shavala, you can tell when things are buried, right?" he asked. "You found those potatoes in South Valley."

"Sometimes I know, if I look. I don't see anything here. Just soil, and then the stone of the floor."

"Why were they growing mushrooms here?" Ellerie asked.

"Medicinal, perhaps?" Bobo suggested. "Or maybe the mushrooms grew on their own."

Marco said, "What's the point of locking the door if there's nothing here? I'm going to check the other tunnel."

They followed him to the last door.

"Wait," Bobo said. "That word above the door—is that repository? Archive?" It was the only one of the three chambers that had been labeled.

"An archive?" Ellerie asked. "For books?"

"It doesn't say."

Marco grunted. "Books. Wonderful." He pulled the door open and shined his lantern inside, then shouted a startled oath and scrambled back. "There's someone in there!"

Corec pushed him out of the way and summoned a mage light, sending it into the room as he reached for his sword.

Then he stopped and laughed. "It's a statue." Unlike the other statues they'd found, this one was in the shape of a man, but the stone was roughly carved and nearly featureless. It had an almost rectangular head with no hair, ears, or mouth, and just the barest hint of a nose. Its eyes were glass orbs set into the stone.

"What are those things?" Ellerie asked. The statue was in the center of the room, but around the edges were four glass cases containing small items. She whispered another spell, and once again her eyes turned white. "Don't touch anything! Especially that statue. It's all enchanted."

Corec cast his arcane sight spell. His regular vision grew dark, and he was almost blinded by the magical aura emanating from the statue. It made it difficult to see anything else. He stepped closer to the nearest of the glass cases, turning away from the statue so he could get a better look. The case held several pieces of jewelry, all displayed on small stands.

On the next case over, a brass lamp stood on the top shelf. Below it were four gemstones cut into spherical shapes, and a pair of spectacles with yellow lenses. The third case was nearly empty, holding just a stiletto, which rested among the remains of its sheath.

"What are these?" Leena asked, standing before the last case. "They look like children's toys, but they're so realistic." The shelves held a number of tiny figurines—wagons and siege weapons, and even two small wooden bridges. Despite the toy-like appearance, they too were glowing.

"Don't touch them," Ellerie warned again. "I think the statue is the only one that's warded, but I want to look at everything more carefully."

Corec let his vision return to normal, blinking away the strain of the arcane sight spell.

"These are magical like the weapons?" Marco asked, staring at the jewelry.

"They're enchanted," Ellerie said. "I don't know what they do, so they might be dangerous."

Bobo said, "What could possibly have happened that would allow most of the city to be evacuated, while leaving behind the enchanted weapons we found, and everything in this room? They valued them enough to lock them up. Why not take them?"

"Maybe that's why," Corec said. "The doors were locked and warded."

Bobo frowned. "Then what happened to the people who could open them?"

Nobody answered.

#

When the others started discussing how to handle the enchanted items, Shavala returned to the room with the moths and the mushrooms. Something about it appealed to her. They hadn't seen the plants or the moths anywhere else under the mountain, only here. It was an entire self-contained ecosystem in a single room. How had it happened? The moths must have been feeding on the plants, but where had the plants come from? Had the Ancients placed them there on purpose? How did they sustain themselves?