The Golden Key (Book 3)
Read The Golden Key (Book 3) Online
Authors: Robert P. Hansen
The Golden Key
Book 3 of Angus the Mage Series
By Robert P. Hansen
Copyright 2015 by Robert P. Hansen
All Rights Reserved.
Kindle Edition
Special thanks to Ronda Swolley, of Mystic Memories
Copy Editing, for the copy edit, and Linda Foegen of American Book Design for
the cover art and Voltari’s Map.
For reviews of
The Tiger’s Eye
and
The
Viper’s Fangs
, updates on my writing, excerpts from my novels, samples of
my poetry, and links to my work online, visit my blog at:
http://www.rphansenauthorpoet.wordpress.com/
.
Although I seldom use it, you can also follow me on
twitter (
http://twitter.com/frummery
).
Visit my Amazon author page at:
www.amazon.com/author/rphansen
1
Iscara was a healer by default. Her mother was a healer. Her
grandmother had been a healer. Her sisters were healers. Even her cousin Niddy
was a healer, and she was an idiot. She couldn’t even tie the laces of her bodice,
but she had a knack for tweaking the magic within people back into alignment
when it was needed. Iscara’s father hadn’t been a healer, though; he had
married into the family. Before that, he had been a soldier, and she had
listened with avid, glowing admiration while he told his blood-soaked stories about
the Fishmen Incursions. She loved those stories and longed to be a soldier
hacking and slashing the fishmen to pieces. But she wasn’t; she was a healer,
and she was good at it—her mother and grandmother had seen to that. But she
didn’t
like
being a healer.
She sighed and walked down the corridor at a brisk pace. It
was a gloomy hallway, lit only by the dim glow of small, half-consumed candles
spaced too far apart. The air was full of their warm, smoky stench, which had
nowhere else to go. Her footfalls echoed softly off the corridor walls, and at
the end of it was Argyle’s door. She smiled as she hurried up to it, and her
heart tingled with excitement as she approached the quaint little knocker he
used. It was the forked tongue of a protruding snake’s head, and she had to
slip her hand into its gaping maw to reach it. It was a beautifully crafted
mechanism carved from gray granite that melted into the stone of the door to
give the impression that it was a snake slithering out of its lair to strike at
an unsuspecting prey. There were simpler ways to administer the poison she had
sold to him, but Argyle was much too elegant for those. He had
style
.
She tickled the forked tongue to life until the snake’s
mouth snuggled down around her arm. A moment later, a resonant clang
reverberated through the corridor like a shield carelessly dropped on a stone
floor and allowed to settle on its own. Her smile broadened until her teeth peeked
out between her lips, and then Argyle’s sonorous monotone filled the corridor
like the ragged remnants of a used cocoon. She mouthed the words as they
descended upon her, her lips fitting into each one with mock precision, “Who
calls upon me?”
She waited until the snake’s cold, hard fangs tightened
against her skin and threatened to draw blood before she responded. The poison
the fangs carried didn’t worry her—she had the antidote in her bag—and any
injury the fangs did to her arm could easily be repaired. Not for the first
time, she wondered what it would be like to be one of the visitors Argyle
didn’t want to see, but she didn’t have time to find out now. His summons had
been urgent.
“Iscara,” she purred, her voice husky, the sounds dripping
from her tongue like sweat pooling together to form the name. A moment
later—far more quickly than usual, and without the menacing red glow in its
eyes—the snake released its grip on her arm and the door slid aside. Her smile
slipped from her lips as they flattened and pressed together, and she almost
frowned as she hurried past the door as soon as the opening was wide enough for
her to squeeze through. Argyle wouldn’t set aside his dramatic flair unless it
was
very
urgent, and when that urgency concerned Iscara, it meant
someone important to him was in dire need of a healer, and not—
She almost fell as she ran into one of Argyle’s lackeys, but
he held on to her just long enough for her to maintain her balance. He had been
waiting inside the archway that led into Argyle’s meeting room, and once she
was steady on her feet again, he said, his tone impatient, “This way. Quickly!”
It was the lackey with the crooked knife that looked like a crescent moon had
been captured and given a handle, and she thought of him as Crooked Knife
because of it. It was simpler than remembering his name, but she never called
him that to his face. She never called him by name, either; she couldn’t
remember it. Crooked Knife took hold of her elbow and half-tugged, half-guided
her along the inner wall and into a shadowy corner.
Where’s Argyle?
she thought as the frown finally
settled into place.
Is he injured?
The thought troubled her greatly;
with all the precautions Argyle had implemented to preserve his life, it would
take a
very
elaborate plan to get close enough—
Crooked Knife pressed against a stone block set in the wall,
and it eased back and clicked into place. A moment later, a door-sized portion
of the wall sprang outward a few inches. He pulled on its edge to open it and then
hurriedly pushed her into the narrow corridor beyond. It was barely wide enough
for both of them to scurry through it side by side, and the only light was coming
from a torch at the far end of the corridor where it intersected another narrow
corridor that ran perpendicular to the first.
Iscara knew about Argyle’s secret passages, but this one was
different from the others she had seen. It wasn’t a huge gaping hole like the
ones Argyle used, and it was longer. Most of the other corridors went only a
short distance before ending in a sealed room where the torture would take
place. She thought of them as her playrooms, and she had thought that was why
he had sent for her. As they hurried up to the corner, her shoulders sagged a
bit more; she had so hoped Argyle hadn’t wanted her to heal someone…
Crooked Knife paused to lift the torch from its sconce,
turned to her, and said, “Step where I do. Don’t deviate more than a few inches
from the path I take.”
Iscara nodded. It wasn’t the first time one of Argyle’s
lackeys had told her something like that, and she knew better than to ignore the
advice. She had seen the wounds of those who hadn’t listened to it—or hadn’t
received it.
Crooked Knife stepped along the wall for several feet, and
then crossed at an angle to the opposite wall. He only took a few steps along
that wall before moving to the center of the corridor and running to the end.
The tunnel split again, and he turned left and ran down the center until he was
nearly to the end before nestling up against the left wall. The corridor ended
at a door, but he ignored it. Instead, he put the torch in a sconce on the wall
and turned the sconce to the right until the torch was pointed at the end of
the corridor. A moment later, a panel slid open beside the sconce, and he
ushered her into the small room beyond.
It was a cozy little room with a brazier of coals set on the
floor next to a table. There were two chairs beside it, and another lackey—the
one with pointed toes who always sneered lasciviously at her—sat in one of
them, his thin little knife nudging around half-eaten food on a copper platter.
She would have smiled at him but Crooked Knife—perhaps she should try to
remember his name sometime, but it seemed so
unimportant
— firmly gripped
her arm and led her through a small, open doorway that led to a brightly lit
bedroom.
She squinted against the sudden brilliance of a dozen
candles, but Crooked Knife gave her no time to adjust to them as he urged her
toward a large bed nestled in the far corner. Someone lay cuddled in among the
vibrant green coverlets as if they were wearing a shroud, and she half-expected
it to be Argyle, but the man on the bed was much too small to be him. Who could
it be, then?
They came to a stop at the edge of the bed, and Crooked
Knife finally let go of her arm. He had squeezed it too tightly, but she
refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her react to the pain he had
caused. Instead, she turned to the man drenched in the contours of the coverlet.
His shape seemed familiar to her.
“Heal him,” Crooked Knife demanded, pointing at the man. “Quickly!”
Iscara leaned forward and gently pulled away the coverlet. Her
eyes widened, and she gasped. “Typhus?” she muttered. But it couldn’t be
Typhus; Fanzool had said he was dead. But it looked—
She shook her head. It didn’t matter if it was Typhus or
not; Argyle wanted him healed—and quickly. After that….
She scowled and put her hand on the man’s forehead and
brusquely nudged the dark brown hair away from the eyes. They were closed, but
she knew if she opened them, they would be two pale gray icebergs whose depths
were filled with such coldness that they would never thaw—not even for her. Her
fingertips slid down his cheek to the long scar that traced a path from his ear
to his collarbone and idly wondered why Typhus had never let her heal that
scar.
What would Argyle do to me if I refused to heal him?
she wondered. She shook her head and thrust the thought away. She knew what
Argyle was capable of—what
she
had done for him—and it would not be wise
to find out. Perhaps after Argyle was done with him, he would give Typhus to
her as payment? She
almost
smiled at the thought, but then she remembered
what Argyle would do if she failed in her healing.
She lifted the coverlet from the rest of Typhus’s body and
set her bag on the bed beside his head. It looked like a small bag, not much
larger than a coin purse, but it was wrought from magic and its interior was a
conduit to the storage room containing her healing supplies. Herbs, bandages,
needle and thread, splints, and anything else she might need was within easy reach
when she put her hand into it. But what would she need?
She concentrated on the magic within her patient, and her
eyes were drawn to his chest. A nearly solid patch of dark red, almost black energy
throbbed around his heart. Her brow furrowed as she studied it. It didn’t
belong there, and it wasn’t connected to the rest of the magic in Typhus. It
was as if something else was inside him, keeping the heart beating a slow,
steady rhythm. But what—
Sardach?
she thought suddenly.
Yes. Sardach is
with him. Argyle had sent Sardach with Fanzool to find him.
She frowned and
turned her attention away from the thing encasing Typhus’s heart. If Sardach
were inside him, his injuries had to be severe. Sardach would never enter
someone without it being a life-threatening situation, and then only if Argyle had
commanded it. She had only seen it once before, and that—
She shook her head to clear it, and then took a deep,
calming breath. She needed to focus, and she needed to do it now. Sardach had
already been inside Typhus for too long, and the foul creature couldn’t sustain
Typhus forever. It was time for her to get to work. She concentrated on the
magic within her and held her hand out over his chest. She frowned; there was
something wrong with the magic in Typhus, something
besides
the presence
of Sardach, something
besides
the injuries he had sustained. She
couldn’t tell what that thing was, and that confused her. She was a healer, and
healers had a knack for recognizing the discord in the magic of others and then
identifying the cause of that discord. It was how healers knew what treatment
was needed. But here, the magic of Typhus was in a state of torment she had
never experienced before, and she couldn’t find the cause.
“What is this?” she muttered, absorbed in the confusing
array of threads and wondering what it meant. She shook her head again and
thought,
I can’t treat what I don’t understand. There’s no point dwelling on
it when there are other injuries I
can
treat.
She turned to those
injuries and made a quick assessment of them. The ribs were crushed and one of
them had punctured through the wall of the heart. The lungs…
She pursed her lips and shook her head. If it weren’t for Sardach,
Typhus would be dead.
It would be a delicate, difficult healing, even without the
confusion in Typhus’s magic, and with it?
“Get out,” Iscara said without turning.
Crooked Knife didn’t move. “Argyle—”
Iscara turned and glared at him. “Get out,” she repeated, her
voice resolute, “and stay out. Stand guard to make sure there are no
disruptions. None. Not even Argyle.” Without waiting for a response, Iscara
turned back to her patient and opened her bag.