The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (32 page)

“I’ve got no choice! If I don’t get that wand back, we’re dead.” Jake shoved the Gryphon away from the hole. “Move aside, boy! You’re too big, you can’t fit.”

Red let out a sound of frustration, straining to jam himself through the hole, but he
was lion-sized with huge wings and the hole was narrow like a fox’s den.

“Don’t worry
, Red. He’s just a little one. I can handle him. Maybe I can’t turn him to stone without the wand, but I can certainly keep him at arm’s length with my telekinesis. Besides, I’ve got Risker to defend myself if it comes down to a fight. I’ll be right back. Hope you don’t mind, I’m taking the torch.” With that, Jake thrust the torch through the hole first, and then climbed through, tumbling into the hollow space.

Blimey.
He stared all around him, wide-eyed. “It isn’t a cave, it’s some sort of room!” he called back to Red in astonishment.

Climbing
to his feet, Jake dusted off his trousers with one hand, then drew Risker from its scabbard and gripped it tightly. In his other hand, he lifted the torch, while butterflies of fear danced in his belly.

H
e ventured another few steps into the stone chamber, marveling at great, pointy-tipped beams of colored quartz that grew right out of the living rock.

Then he stopped with a low gasp.
The moment he saw the robed, jeweled skeleton sitting at the ancient, cobwebbed desk, he had a feeling he knew who that was. A certain black fog of his acquaintance—a dark spirit with no body.

Well,
he thought with a gulp,
there’s the body.
Garnock the Sorcerer in the flesh. Actually, no flesh, just the bones. But first things first.

He needed that wand back
now
.

Red fussed outside the chamber, peering in as best he could. “Caw!”

“All right, all right, I’m hurrying. But I think we can conclude that this is definitely where the gargoyles came from. That hole I climbed through has got to be where they got out. Oh, crikey!” He stopped cold at the sight of a miner’s boot sitting by itself in the middle of the floor right in front of him.

It had a moldering, ripped-off part of a dead foot still in it.

He winced and stepped around it, scanning the whole place for the devilish little monkey thing that had run off with his wand.

“Those four miners must have broken through the rock into this chamber by accident.
One of them tried to tell me they had found a room… I had no idea what he meant. Poor beggars, probably never knew what hit them. The rest of Garnock is in here,” he informed the Gryphon as he searched the chamber for the imp. “What’s left of him, anyway.”

Jake
noted the desk with the skeleton’s hollow eyes staring over an ancient grimoire. The shelves built into the walls were laden with magical accoutrements, while the stone floor was carved with an intricate spread of strange symbols.

“This place looks like it must hav
e been his workshop centuries ago. But it seems the Lightriders made it his tomb. Must have sealed him in down here somehow. Whatever spell they used, it must’ve been broken when the miners blew that hole in the wall.” Even as he spoke those words, Jake remembered a worrisome detail about mining procedures from their goldmine tour with Emrys.

When
ever the miners (dwarves or men) used explosives to break open a vein of gold or coal in the earth, they quickly had to put a support beam into the hole they had created. Otherwise, it could cave in under the weight of the rock layers above it.

But t
here had been no timber beam jammed into the opening of Garnock’s tomb. The coalminers mustn’t have had the chance to complete that step of the job before they had been attacked and eaten by the gargoyles, Jake mused.
Better be careful.
Without the proper supports in place, this whole chamber was probably unstable.

Then there were the huge quartz crystals all around him, complicating matters.

Before the séance, wandering around Madam Sylvia’s shop, he had read something about how quartz crystals could amplify psychic energy. No doubt that was the very reason Garnock had chosen this place for his lair.

Jake
realized that if he used his powers in here, with all these massive quartz crystals pumping up magical energies, there was no telling how strong his telekinesis might come out. He did not want to bring the whole cave down around his ears.

Best to recov
er the wand and get out of here, he thought, scanning the darkness for that wicked little imp.

“Here, little evil
monkey-squirrel-demon,” he called softly, searching the chamber for the annoying creature. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. You know, you shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to you. Believe me, I would know. Now, give it back and maybe I won’t hurt you.”

He heard a mocking cackle from above, looked up
, and saw the little maniac scampering up the angle of one of the tall quartz beams. The imp was hugging Jake’s wand tightly in both of his wee gray monkey-paws.

“Come back here!” Jake sheathed Risker and brought up his hand to freeze the little menace by telekinesis.

But the pint-sized gargoyle must have been observing him long enough back in the tunnels to see more or less how the wand worked.

It let out a wild screech and waved the wand at him; Jake dove for cover with
a startled yelp.

“Don’t you point that thing at me!” He lifted his head up from behind the ancient desk, only to duck down again with a cry of alarm as the gargoyle sho
t another bolt of magic at him.

The creature laughed in delight as the jagged stream of blue light from the wand hit the
wizard’s astrolabe and sent it shooting off the desk.

“
Right.
That’s quite enough, you little runt,” he muttered. Setting the torch down, he left it burning where it lay on the stone floor in order to have both hands free.

Then he listened carefully, lost patience, and peeked over the skeleton’s desk.
Now!

He shot to his
feet and ran out from behind the desk, tearing after the little imp before the wand-thief could take another shot at him.

His goal
was to float the gargoyle into midair by telekinesis and refuse to let him down until he dropped the wand.

But the imp moved too fast. The thing was scampering all over the tomb, laughing as Jake tried to catch him and mimicking human speech as if he was saying the words to
various magic spells.

Miniature explosions of poorly
aimed magical power were going off all over the tomb as a result.

“Stop that!
You’re going to kill us both! Oh, when I get hold of you, I’m going to wring your neck,” Jake vowed under his breath.

If he could just get close enough to work with some finesse, he could use his telekinesis to yank the wand out of the imp’s hand and pull it through the air
, drawing it back to himself.

Several times he had to dive out of the way to avoid getting hit by crazy gargoyle magic,
but he finally saw his chance.

Using the utmost balan
ce, Jake ran through the gloom right up onto one of the wide crystal beams near the shelves filled with some of Garnock’s magical equipment.

But just when he nearly had the imp in reach, something growled behind him.

Jake froze.

A sickening premonition dropped like a stone in the pit of his stomach. A tingle of pure fear traveled up his spine. Terrified that he already knew what he would find, he looked back slowly over his shoulder.

Sure enough, three large gargoyles with fangs, horns, and gleaming eyes surrounded him below. Cutting off his exit, they were already licking their chops over the anticipated meal.

Jake
blanched, but managed not to scream. For now, only his elevation, standing on the quartz crystal beam, put him slightly out of their reach. Unfortunately, he had seen how high these beasts could jump during their battle back at the cavern.

Pressing his back against the stone wall behind him, he forgot all about the imp and the wand, caught up in morbid fascination with his more immediate problem: this ugly trio
, who clearly wanted to eat him.

They inched closer, giving him a
fine view of their astonishing ugliness, not to mention their deadly claws.

The first had stunted black bat
wings; the second had a spiked tail that it thrashed back and forth; the third sported a row of pointy little knobs down its spine.

But they all had weirdly glowing eyes and squat, sinewy bodies, muscle-packed, like guard dogs made of stone. Aye, they were pets fit for a devil, Jake thought.

When the little imp snickered at him from above, Jake glanced up and suddenly wondered if this had been a trap all along.

Were the gargoyles
clever enough to have planned this?

The way the little one
preened, looking so proud of himself, Jake thought he must be the brains, while these massive dog-lion types were the brawn.

With a bead of sweat running down his f
ace, Jake shook his head, but had to give them credit. By stealing his wand, they had not only left him defenseless, but separated him from his protector Red, luring him in here alone, apparently so they could kill him.

Not good.

He pulled his dagger out of its sheath. Meanwhile, Red was roaring in wild, useless fury outside the chamber.

Jake ignored him. The
Gryphon simply couldn’t fit through the hole to help him. He was on his own in this.

When the gargoyles snarled again, Jake brandished his knife to ward them off, even as he began inching higher up the sm
ooth quartz beam.

Not that he was optimistic in the least about escaping them. Earlier tonight, he had seen how the fiends could practically run across the ceiling.

“Get back!” he yelled when the knobby one reared up suddenly onto its hind legs and slashed at him.

Jake struck back with Risker and warded off the beast, bu
t the tip of the gargoyle’s talon nicked his cheek.

The creature retreated to its prior position between its companions, still snarling at him; Jake lifted his hand to his cheek where
the beast’s razor-like claw had slashed him.

He glanced at his fingers and found them smeared with crimson, then he looked at th
e gargoyles again, taken aback.

Out of all his previous adventures, this was the first time any foe had actually drawn blood.

Likewise, the gargoyle who had cut him licked the drop of Jake’s blood off his claw, then hissed at the taste of it.
“Lightrider!”
it rasped in a barely intelligible voice.

I
ts two companions reacted with wild hatred.

They all started hissing, bristling, slashing at the
air with their claws as the glow in their eyes intensified.

If I don’t get my hands on a wand, I’m dead.

Jake suddenly realized that the shelves at his back were covered with the tools of the sorcerer’s trade.

Not taking his eyes off the gargoyles, he reached for the nearest wand resting upright in a gold
en goblet on the shelf, where it had lain untouched for ages.

Garnock’s wand,
he thought with a shudder. But he was past caring.