Shepherd's Quest: The Broken Key #1 (41 page)

“Here,” Bart said to the others as he held out his rope to them. “I suggest we tie ourselves together in the event we trigger another such pitfall.” Bart of course took the lead with Chad in the middle. Riyan anchored them at the rear. He knew that if what happened to Kevik happened to Bart, it would be up to him to prevent them all from falling.

Before he set out again, Bart turned to them and said, “Single file from here on out.

There could be other traps such as what Kevik ran afoul of.” When Riyan and Chad nodded understanding, he began to move away from the pit. Riyan cast a last glance at the opening in the floor before the rope pulled him forward.

Bart stayed on the left side of the passage as he quickly led them forward. All the time the possibility that he could meet the same fate as Kevik was foremost on his mind.

He turned the corner to the left, proceeded forward another short distance then followed the passage as it turned left once more. From there it ran forward down a longer stretch until it ended at a room.

When the lantern’s light began to illuminate the room, a monstrous apparition appeared before them. The shock of seeing it startled Bart so badly that he actually backpedaled into Chad.

Chad stopped him with a hand against his back and asked, “What’s wrong?” He hadn’t seen what had scared Bart so badly.

Bart didn’t reply, only stared at the darkness within the room. When his nerves settled down, and nothing materialized from out of the darkness, he started forward again. The monstrous apparition turned out to be a statue, one of two that sat prominently in the room.

Both were nearly identical. The statues were of life size demonic creatures. The fact that they were standing upon two foot high pedestals gave them the appearance of looming over Bart and the others. Their faces were bestial with small horns sprouting from their foreheads. A long scaly tail extended outward behind them.

“Look familiar?” asked Riyan as he turned his gaze to the other two.

“Yeah,” replied Chad. “From The Crypt.”

“Exactly,” said Riyan. “Remember the mural we found there? The knights were fighting creatures like these.”

“Then perhaps they weren’t just an artist’s rendition to magnify the glory of the dead,” supposed Bart. “They may have actually existed at one time.”

“Do you think they still do?” asked Riyan.

Bart shook his head. “No. If they did I’m sure we would have heard about it by now.” He gave the two statues a cursory examination, especially the base. It looked as if the bases were solid and didn’t hold a hidden compartment, there were no seams.

Another exit led from the room ten feet further down along the same wall they had entered through. “Shall we go?” asked Bart.

Riyan and Chad were transfixed by the creatures. A shudder went through Riyan as he gazed into the eyes of one. They seemed so real. Then the spell was broken as Bart laid a hand on his shoulder. He turned to Bart just as he said, “We shouldn’t dawdle here.

Kevik could need our help.”

Riyan nodded. “Right.” Then he and Chad followed Bart from the room.

Once into the passage leaving the room, they followed it in single file just as before.

It went straight for a bit, then turned left and continued on for the same distance before turning left again. They continued to follow the passage until it turned back to the right.

The passage then continued forward ten feet before opening up onto a large circular room. Emanating from the room ahead of them was a subtle, yet noxious odor. The light from the lantern revealed the floor was smooth as glass, though its light didn’t illuminate far enough to show the other side of the room.

Bart came to a halt at the opening. The sight of the floor sent warning signals running through him.

When Riyan came to stand beside him and saw the floor, he too was leery. “What is it?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” replied Bart. “You have any more of those copper coins?”

“A couple,” Riyan told him.

“Hand me one will you?”

“Sure,” Riyan said and removed one from his belt pouch. “Here.” He handed one of his few remaining coppers to Bart. There weren’t that many left, most were still sitting on the floors of converging passages as arrows.

Bart took the coin and tossed it into the room.

Plunk!

When the coin hit the floor, the surface splashed. It was a liquid of some kind. “Give me another,” Bart told Riyan. When he had the coin in hand, he knelt down by the edge of the room’s floor and very carefully dipped the coin into the liquid.

As soon as the coin hit the surface, he noticed a very faint acrid odor coming from the point of contact. He dipped the coin halfway into the liquid and then pulled it back out.

The surface of the coin that had been within the liquid was pitted and scarred.

“Acid,” he said.

“Acid?” asked Chad incredulously. “Why would they fill the bottom of a room with acid?”

“That would seem pretty obvious,” replied Bart.

“To keep us from continuing?” guessed Riyan.

“Exactly.” Standing up, he pitched the ruined coin into the room and they watched as it disappeared beneath the surface. “At least we know we’re finally on the right track.” Turning back to the other two, he pointed to the pool of acid and added, “They wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of creating that, unless there was something of incredible value on the other side.”

“Such as the key?” asked Riyan.

Bart nodded. “Exactly.”

“And a possible way of reaching Kevik,” said Riyan.

“First thing we have to do though, is to get past this pool of acid,” Bart told them.

“Any ideas?” Chad asked.

“I think it would be a safe assumption that this would be part of the escape route the lord took when he fled the battle,” began Bart. “If so, then there has to be an easy and quick way to get through here in an emergency.”

“That would make sense,” agreed Riyan.

“But how?” mused Bart.

“A secret way around it?” suggested Chad.

Nodding, Bart said, “Could be. There has to be a secret trigger somewhere that will do something to enable us to continue.” He pointed to the edge of the acid pool. “Let’s begin here and work our way back.”

So they began to check the floors and walls starting at the edge of the room and began working their way back down the passage. It was a slow and painstaking process, but they were left with little choice.

Riyan had the idea that they could wait for the lord to show up and find out where he pressed. But then Bart reminded him that Kevik was still down the shaft and might not have that much time. It would be half a day yet, or longer, before the ghost battle manifested.

They finally worked their way back to the turn in the passage and continued to search for some sort of triggering mechanism as they went. It was when they were about halfway past the turn when Chad triggered the trap.

He had been working on one side of the passage while Riyan and Bart had been doing the other. Somehow his foot must have hit a pressure plate for the floor opened up on him just as it had for Kevik. If it wasn’t for the rope that still bound him to the others, he would have been a goner.

When he fell, both Riyan and Bart were caught off guard. Riyan was pulled into the opening and barely stopped himself in time by grabbing onto the edge. Bart had hit the floor and came to a stop at the edge of the pit.

They held their positions for a moment, none daring to breathe for fear of disrupting the delicate balance they held. Bart spoke first when his heart stopped racing so fast. “Is everyone alright?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” replied Riyan. He had both arms braced above the pit while the rest of him hung within the pit. Chad’s weight was a heavy burden and it was all he could do to keep himself from being dragged down with him.

“Chad!” hollered Bart when he didn’t answer. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” he replied. “I would really appreciate it if you could get me out of here!” Riyan couldn’t help but give a halfhearted chuckle at that.

“Riyan, you hold still while I pull him out,” Bart told him.

“Not a problem,” he assured him.

Bart very gingerly began to maneuver himself into a better position for pulling Chad up. Once he was braced, he hollered down to Chad, “I’m going to pull you up. Don’t move!”

“What? Did you think I was going to start swinging down here?” came the reply.

Bart just shook his head as he began pulling in the rope. Foot by foot, he brought Chad closer to the opening. Riyan was keeping an eye on his progress and gave Bart updates from time to time. After a couple minutes of pulling, Riyan said, “He’s almost there.”

“Just stay where you are,” grunted Bart. “Don’t do anything until he’s up and out.” Riyan nodded and then said to Chad as he came abreast of him, “Have a nice fall?”

“You could say that,” Chad replied, though from the expression on his face, it had been anything but pleasant. When Bart finally had him near the opening, he reached up and helped by gripping the edge and pulling himself the rest of the way. Once he was up he gave Bart a hand with Riyan.

“Whew,” said Riyan. “Glad we had the rope tied about us.”

“Should have had us do it after that very first pit trap we encountered,” admitted Bart.

“But I just didn’t think about it.”

“You know, I heard what sounded like a river flowing down there,” said Chad.

“A river?” asked Riyan.

“Sounded like it,” he said.

Riyan moved to the opening and looked down. “Wonder how far it is?”

“Further than we can get to,” Bart said as he returned to his feet. “We still need to find that trigger.” Chad and Riyan got to their feet and they resumed their search. From that point on while they were searching, they stepped most cautiously. Fortunately, no further pitfalls opened up.

It took them some time, but they finally ended up back at the room with the two demonic statues. “Somehow I figured we’d end up back here,” said Riyan.

“So did I,” agreed Bart. He undid himself from the rope. “You two check the walls.

I’ll go over the statues.”

“You already went over them once,” Chad told him.

Bart shrugged. “I wasn’t looking all that hard and could have missed something. This time, I will take more care and be a bit more thorough.” He began at the head of the first statue and very carefully pushed, twisted, and pulled anything that could possibly be used as a trigger. It wasn’t until he was checking the area of the statue where the tail left the main body that he came across something interesting.

Just underneath the tail, where the creature’s butt would’ve been had it been alive, he found a small opening. It was barely large enough for a single finger. He inserted his finger into it to the second knuckle before his fingertip encountered resistance. The resistance shifted slightly under pressure but otherwise didn’t move.

Excited by the find, he removed his finger then went to the other statue to see if a similar opening was present there as well. Sure enough, when he checked under the tail, he found an exact duplicate of the previous opening. Sticking in his finger, he tried pushing the resistance. But just like the other one, it only shifted a little bit.

“Riyan,” he said. “I need your help.”

Turning away from the section of wall he had been checking, Riyan asked, “You find something?”

“I think so,” replied Bart. “Come here and give me a hand.” When Riyan came to his side, he showed him where the opening was. “There’s another just like it on the other statue. I think we may need to press them simultaneously.” While Bart moved to the other statue, Riyan commented, “If this is the trigger, it would have thwarted a lone thief.” Indeed, the statues were sitting too far apart to allow a single individual to reach both openings at the same time.

Bart reached the other statue and placed his finger in the opening under the tail. Then just as he was about to tell Riyan to press it, Chad started laughing. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

Chad was shaking his head as the laughter rolled forth. “You guys have no idea what you’re doing looks like.” He stood there staring at them and the laughter bubbled up again. Riyan and Bart were both standing next to the statues with their fingers, ‘up the butt’ as it were, of the demonic creatures.

Bart ignored him and turned his attention to Riyan. He saw Riyan had a big grin on his face too as he came to realize what he must look like. “Riyan!” Bart said loudly and got his attention. “When I count to three, press it.” Riyan nodded.

“One…two…three…” When Bart said three, he and Riyan simultaneously pushed against the resistance. This time, Bart felt it slide back an inch. When nothing in the room changed, he quickly led them back through the passages to the acid room.

That was definitely the trigger they had been searching for. A line of stepping stones had risen out of the pool and led across the center of the room. Just within the room before them, there were two stones sitting side by side. Then another set of two stones past the first set before the line became single stones.

“Not yet,” Bart said as he stopped Riyan from stepping on the stones.

“Why?” asked Riyan.

He pointed to the two pairs of stones before them. “Step on the wrong one and something bad could happen,” he explained.

“Then which one should we step on?” Chad asked.

The first pair was a foot and a half from the edge of the passage. The next pair was the same distance away from the first. Bart thought about it for a second then said, “You two hold onto my arm while I lean out and put my weight on each of the stones.” Riyan nodded as he and Chad both gripped his arm. Bart placed his left foot two inches from the edge of the acid pool. Then leaning outward, he brought his right foot down on the left stone. He no sooner had begun to put weight on it than the stone receded back into the pool.

Riyan and Chad pulled him back as soon as they saw the stone begin to sink. Then they tried it again with the other one and found it to be secure. Once Bart had his full weight upon the stone, they let go.