Lusam: The Dragon Mage Wars Book One (9 page)

Neala made her way back to the main chamber again, before taking the next corridor along. She worked her way along the new corridor, just as she had the first. She noticed that the stone floors in both corridors were well-worn down the centres. They must have seen centuries of foot traffic to show so much wear and tear, she thought to herself. After another thirty minutes, Neala finally reached the end of the second corridor, but with little more to show for her efforts, than she had found in the first set of cells.

When she reached the very end of the corridor, instead of a door like there had been in the first corridor, she was faced with a solid stone wall instead. Carved into the stone wall, was a huge five pointed star, but nothing much
else.
She stood there looking at the strange wall and her immediate surroundings for several more minutes, before deciding that it must be time to return to the book room to help Lusam. She could always restart her exploration tomorrow, she told herself as she headed back towards the main chamber.

Back in the book room, Lusam had only just finished cataloguing the last batch of books, and had just started fetching books from the main pile again, when Neala entered the room carrying her lantern.

“How did it go? Find anything interesting on your travels?” Lusam asked, putting a pile of books down and sorting through them.

“Well, I'm not sure really. There's a wall at the end of that second corridor with a star carved into it, but there's something strange about it, and I can’t quite put my finger on it,” she replied, with a thoughtful look on her face.

“A wall doesn’t sound very interesting to me,” Lusam laughed. “And here I was, hoping you were going to tell me you'd found a great treasure room, full of gold and gems, and we could stop moving books around and go live like kings and queens instead.”

“If only! Unless four copper coins and a stale sandwich counts as treasure I'm afraid we're still stuck with moving books, Your Highness,” she said, bowing deeply to him. Standing up from behind his writing desk he laughed at
her dramatic bow, then suggested they sort out more books from the main pile before they took a break to eat.
“Okay,” Neala replied, still deep in thought.

Several minutes passed, and Lusam noticed how quiet Neala had been since returning to the book room. He was about to ask her what was on her mind, when she suddenly dropped the pile of books she'd been carrying onto the floor, and blurted out, “Wait here, I'll be right back!”

She then grabbed a lit lantern and ran from the room without saying another word. Lusam was more than a little curious as to why Neala had just run away like that, and was just about to pick up a lantern himself and try to follow her, when she came running back into the room again, slightly out of breath.

“Come with me! I have something important to show you,” she said between breaths, and jogged back out of the room again, with Lusam following close behind her. Neala took him to the end of the second corridor where the stone wall stood, pointed and said, “Look, do you see it?”

“See what? All I see is a stone wall with a star carved into it, like you said.”

“That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but something didn’t seem quite right to me. In the corridor where we sleep, there is a room at the end of the hallway, not a wall.”

“Maybe they just didn’t want to build a room at the
end of this corridor,” he suggested, looking at Neala as if she had gone a little crazy.
“Yes, that was my first thought too, but in the book room while I was puzzling over what I had seen here, I realised something. Look at the floor. It's been well-worn all the way to the wall. If this wasn’t some kind of door that people had walked through a lot in the past, there wouldn’t be any signs of wear so close to the wall itself.”

Lusam looked at the floor, and had to admit, it did look like it had been worn down like the rest of the corridor behind them, but he couldn't see how the stone wall could possibly be opened.

“When I first came here, I noticed these round marks on the wall. Maybe pressing them opens the door?” Neala said, pointing to two small round indentations carved into the walls, one each side of the corridor, but too far apart for one person to press both at the same time.

“Maybe we should try it. You press the left one, I'll press the right and let’s see what happens,” suggested Lusam. They both pressed their thumbs to the mark, but nothing happened.

“So much for that theory,” said Lusam. “Wait! Isn't that another mark on the floor back there?” he said, pointing back down the corridor several paces.

Walking back to take a look, Neala agreed, “Yes, it looks the same to me, but how will it be possible to press all
three at the same time?”
“I'm not sure, let me think about this a minute. Assuming it's actually a door at all, and those indentations are in fact the way to open it …” His statement trailed off into nothing, as he thought about the possibility of this actually being a door. Looking around he couldn’t see any other obvious way to open the wall, so he decided to try a long shot, and use his mage-sight, just in case it was operated via magic. He was stunned to see not three indentations, but five. They had missed seeing the other two high up on the ceiling, which now glowed a bright green in the darkness, the same as the other three;  five indentations, for the five pointed star.

Gasping in disbelief, he said, “You're right, it is a door! I can see it glowing when I use my mage-sight, and there are also another two indentations up there on the ceiling. That makes five in total, one for each point of that star.”

Chapter Four

Shiva sat behind his luxuriously carved desk at the back of his small smoky office, half-hidden by the low amount of light the single small desk lamp gave off. He was looking over the reports of a recent robbery they had carried out on a local nobleman’s house two nights previously in Stelgad. What he read didn’t please him at all.

He had obtained reliable information that there would be several very expensive and rare jewels in the house when the robbery took place. No one but himself and his closest lieutenants had known about the jewels. He had always kept information like that secret, and only a trusted select few within his organization were ever privy to such information.  He had always found it to be the best way of avoiding any information being leaked accidentally by a member of his guild. It's a well known fact, that too much drink can make a man's tongue wag too much, and in the wrong company, that could cost him a lot of money, or far worse.

He checked the report again, carefully going through the list of items obtained, but there was no mention of the jewels. That could only mean either the information he had paid a good price to obtain was incorrect, or at least one of the three men he sent to do the job had stolen the jewels for themselves.

The informant Shiva had bought the information from, he'd used several times before, and he had proved to be very reliable in the past with his information. Since he had crushed his main rivals the Crows' guild two months earlier, many of the informants who used to work for them had approached his guild with information they wished to sell. If the Crows' guild had still been around, he might have thought that they'd got to the jewels before he'd managed to obtain them. But there wasn’t any competition left in Stelgad. Not since he had wiped out the Crows' guild, as well as another three smaller guilds.

He would make sure the informant hadn’t indeed sold him false information, by the usual painful methods, of course, but he simply could not allow any member of his own guild to steal from him. He would have to make an example out of whoever was responsible, so nobody would ever want to steal from him again.

Two of his best men stood guard inside the doorway; one each side of the heavy oak door. Shiva wasn’t concerned about any threat to his life from the outside
world, here, so deep in his headquarters.
The main threat to a leader in his position always came from within. Usually some young thief with a little too much ambition, and not enough skill or brains to be much of a threat. But occasionally, within a guild there would be a genuine attempt for the leadership role, and that posed much more of a threat.

Shiva had been in charge of the Hawks' guild for just over ten years now. His fast and brutal rise to power had become legendary amongst the thieves of Stelgad, and even further afield. Many had tried to remove him from his position over the last decade, both from inside his own guild, and also rival guilds, but all had failed. He ruled with a steel fist, and any who crossed him usually paid with their lives, or worse.

As he sat there, contemplating exactly which method of killing the traitorous thief would be the most painful, and the most extravagant for any witnesses, he heard a quiet knock at his door. He looked at one of his guards, who turned towards the door and slid a small spyhole open, enabling him to safely see who was on the other side.

“It's Skelly sir,” the big guard informed his boss.

Shiva nodded his head once to indicate the guard could let him enter, and sat back in his chair to await his lieutenant.

Skelly was a very average looking man in every way, average height, build and looks. Every way except his cold steely blue eyes, which could scare anyone half-to-death with  a single look. He was one of Shiva's best lieutenants, and exceptionally deadly with a dagger. Skelly entered Shiva's smoky office, casually nodding his head in greeting. He then stood at the opposite side of his desk waiting for the door to be closed behind him, making sure no one outside the room would overhear their conversation. When the door was finally closed he spoke to Shiva.

“Do you remember the horse that was stolen from us about two months back?” Skelly asked.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, it turned up this morning. A local horse-trader that we buy from spotted it for sale over in Helveel a few days ago. He recognized the brand on it as ours, and thought we might be interested in the information. I told him that he would be compensated well, if his information checked out.”

Shiva had almost forgotten about the horse, but being reminded of it now only served to enrage him even more. Just how did people expect to steal from him, and still live to tell the tale? Shiva's hand came crashing down on his desk in anger.

“I want you to choose one of our men and go with him to Helveel. Find this fool who thinks they can steal from
me and get away with it.
Question the horse-trader where our horse was seen, and find out what he knows. Find out who is responsible, and bring them here to me—alive!” he almost shouted, banging his fist down on his desk again.

“No problem,” Skelly replied calmly.

“Remember, I want them alive when you deliver them to me. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I won’t cut off anything too important,” he replied with a slight grin. Skelly was the only person in the whole guild who could possibly get away with a comment like that, and he knew it. Although, he wondered if even he had gone too far with the dark mood Shiva was in at the moment. Nothing else was said between them, so Skelly just nodded and turned towards the door, before departing Shiva's office. Skelly quickly recruited another well known assassin within the guild, and they made plans to leave for Helveel, to bring back the
fool
who had stolen Shiva’s property. He certainly wouldn’t want to be in their shoes when Shiva got a hold of them.

Chapter Five

Lusam and Neala quietly stood looking at the huge star carved into the stone wall, wondering just what great treasures might have been hidden behind it centuries before.

“Well, are we going to try and open it or what?” asked Neala impatiently.

“What happens if it's booby-trapped?” Lusam asked. “They obviously went to a lot of trouble to hide this place when it was in use, whenever that was. Surely it has some kind of defensive measures in place, in case anyone tries to steal whatever is in there.”

“Maybe,” agreed Neala, “but there again, with those two indentations right up there on the ceiling, who would know how to get inside in the first place?”

“Hmm. Just how
are
we going to press those two up there anyway? Or for that matter, how are we going to press all five at the same time?” Lusam asked, gesturing to the very well spaced out indentations.

“I'm not sure. I was hoping you had a plan for that,”
Neala replied.
“Well I suppose I could try pressing them magically. I was taught by my grandmother how to move things with magic, and although I've never tried manipulating five things at the same time, I could give it a go.”

“Sure, that sounds like a good idea. But, can you do that from a distance? If you can, maybe we should move further back down the corridor, in case you're right, and it is booby-trapped.”

“Good idea,” agreed Lusam, as they retreated to what they judged would be a safe distance, before he tried to activate the opening mechanism. Lusam concentrated on the five points and applied pressure magically to them all at the same time, but nothing happened. He tried to press harder, but still nothing moved.

“It's not working. I'm pressing them all but nothing is happening. Maybe it's a combination lock, or maybe I have to press them in a certain order?” he said out loud, but mainly to himself. He worked out the number of possible combinations in his head, then with a groan said, “If it is actually a combination of the five indentations, there would be one hundred and twenty permutations. That's going to take some time and planning, to make sure we don’t miss any combination.”