The King's Blood (70 page)

The girl turned first to the witch who was oblivious of her piercing gaze of "what the hell happened?" Kynton was poking some of the more interesting specimens with his borrowed humorous and muttering anatomical breaks under his breath. Only Taban seemed as disturbed as her by the scene of vulture cleaned carnage lying before them.

The normally stout assassin was muttering under his breath in the loopy Dunner tongue and trying to step around the bones like a child playing the game of trying to crack your mother's back. "This is not right," he said sharply to Ciara, as his dancing pulled himself near her, "they were each a life once."

"You end lives for a living," she said, uncertain if she'd ever understand the killer in their midst.

"I do not play with the dead, it is a disgrace. The Maker will have a puzzle on her hands trying to reconstruct them all," his boots slid into a set of femurs, oddly fused together as if in an eternal cross and Taban shuddered again, before placing his hands to his heart, then his mouth.

"You play the murderer in the light but the penitent priest in the cemetery?"

"I am no priest," Taban muttered, nodding his head toward Kynton who placed a skull on his shoulder and started talking to it, "nor am I a murderer."

"Semantics, a game people with a guilty conscience play," Ciara muttered, glancing towards Aldrin as he tried to skirt around the bones with his back pressed against the wall.

"Would you label your own flesh a murderer?" Taban asked her, his own eyes dismissing the child prince.

Ciara snapped at him, her finger rising as if it could do something against the man who honed his body to kill, "That's...!" But Taban only folded his arms, getting his footing beneath him as he rose to stare into her accusing eyes. "None of your business," she finished lamely, looking away.
 

The assassin continued to watch Aldrin, who kept trying to bat the sweaty hair of out his face and accidentally poked himself in the eye, "Your boy king, he will have to kill, to murder, if not to claim his crown then to keep it. Or face the sword himself."

Ciara followed his line to the boy king, the prince, who finally felt the stares upon him and rose higher, waving his lantern in a friendly greeting. This caused him to vanish in the dancing shadows. "You know that all for certain? Kill or be killed?"

Taban laughed cruelly, "That is all politics is, Nightingale. You simply pray to whichever god you wish that each death is worth it."

"Are they?" she asked him seriously, wondering how much anyone could take upon their soul to offset the gains.

The assassin folded his hands up as if he were about to pray and said, "I do not know. I doubt I will until I stand naked before the Black Gates."

"Ah!" Aldrin's voice rang out across the stones, echoing into the far chamber that Kynton leaned upon, accidentally releasing the entire contents of the catacombs in one boney cacophony. "I believe I have found the slot."

It took more than a bit of double backing to get everyone over to Aldrin's wall, a small side piece further into the cave to the left from the gift shop. The prince was poking about at the icy black stones, smooth as glass. There was almost nothing to the wall except a narrow slot and some writing above it in a few languages.
 

Aldrin pointed to the sharp edge where the wall jutted out from the rest of its brethren, "I rammed my shin on the corner there," he needlessly explained as the others flocked around him, "and then poked about a bit until I spotted the writing and this," he emphasized the slot by sliding his hand in.

"Well ol' stabby?" Kynton asked Taban, "what's it say?"

The assassin grinned wickedly, "'Anyone who places their hand inside shall have it sliced off,'" and then chuckled as Aldrin yanked his questing appendage back as if it were bit, "and then some random numbers mentioning the dates at which returns will count for another day. It makes little sense."

"Only one way to see if the key fits," Kynton said, nudging Aldrin in the back with his friend the skull.

The prince fidgeted with his lantern before setting it down on the ground; the light burst through the top and twisted his face into something ghoulish. He nipped into his pack and pulled out their trusty cookbook, a piece the three of them very nearly lost their lives for. And got saddled with Kynton. Aldrin looked at Ciara, who stood behind the assassin, still peering over his shoulder. She nodded softly.

Aldrin swallowed hard and, carefully lining up the book, said a small prayer to any god that was listening before giving the spine a good shove. Gravity took over quickly, and yanked the book down a sliding chute where it landed with a hard thud on the other side.

Eyes searched about the room watching, waiting, hoping, then growing angry. After a few more beats of absolutely nothing happening, Aldrin kicked at the wall. "Come on you stupid thing, do...something!" he cried.

Kynton, unimpressed by the power of whoever thought a book would make a good key, wandered off, chattering to his skull friend. The disappointed glare of the witch followed the priest, disturbed she was going to be stuck with the jabbering idiot for even longer. The others would probably look unkindly upon her if she killed him now. Taban shook his head, and trailed after the priest, afraid the moron was about to unleash another torrential rain of bones upon them.

Aldrin punched his fist against the unforgiving wall, which answered back by crushing his fingers. "Damn it!" he cried, sliding down to his knees. "Scepticar, Bathar, Nital, and all the rest of them damn you to wherever walls are damned!" His shoulders shook in anger and disgust at failing everyone and everything. No tears would come in his rage at himself, only the crushing realization of defeat.
 

A calming hand fell atop his head, ruffling about his hair. Like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum about a broken toy, he looked up at the woman who should be scolding him. Instead Ciara's face softened in concern, "We'll get through it."

He looked away in disgust at himself. By all rights she shouldn't even be involved; this was the prince's problem and, apparently, the witch's and the assassins. Aldrin cared what happened to the priest about as much as the priest seemed to. But Ciara was a flower caught in his eddy. Gods he really did need to stop reading Mitrione's poetry, it was rotting his soul.

She sat down beside him, leaning her back against the unforgiving wall, "We've faced down assassins, witches, soldiers, priests, undead," she smiled before adding, "more undead, and we've pulled through each time. A little tomb isn't going to stop us."

"Why? After everything, all the misery I've brought to you, why are you still with me?" Aldrin tried to hide a small quibble in his voice that masked his fear that at any moment she could vanish.

Ciara folded her hands up and placed them against her lips, she bounced them back and forth a moment before answering honestly, "It beats serving tea to mercenaries deathly afraid of soap."

The prince smiled at that, not really surprised at her non-answer. But then, maybe she didn't even know herself. Was anyone ever truly certain of their actions until hindsight could set in? He looked down at his useless hands and said, "I'm glad I'm better than tea."

"Hey, Mister Stabby?" the voice resounded through the black crypt

Taban sighed, already exhausted with the priest's nickname for him, "Yes, what is it Kitten?"

"What's the elvish word for 'Tomb?'"

"Feddrod," Taban said, wishing he'd never let on he could speak the cursed language.
 

"So," Kitten continued from deep in the black depths, "in theory we're looking for a door marked 'Cas's Feddrod?'"

"Your brilliance astounds me," Taban muttered, "Why do you inquire?"

"Because I found a door marked 'Cas's Feddrod.'"

The sign that Kynton proudly pointed out a few more times in case they somehow missed his brilliant find encircled above a stone opening blacker than the Raven Lady's underthings.
 

"There is a foul wind," Isa said, shivering against the foreign magic. Her little rock refused to cast its blue glow against the tomb's entrance.

"It wasn't me," the priest grumbled, placing his hands over his backside.
 

"What more mephitic beasts await us in this slide down the underlord's throat?" Taban muttered, as the tendrils of the intangible dug into his skin and found all the terror nerves.

"Did I miss a meeting or have you all decided to speak as if we're in an epic poem separately?" Kynton asked, pulling the skull off his shoulder and placing it gently upon an end table that graced the tomb's entrance. The skull could spend the next few centuries reading about the lovely opportunities for a dead couple hoping to expand their crypt in the few pamphlets that refused to crumble.

Aldrin raised his lantern, the light parting the thick darkness as if it were an inconvenient sea. It landed upon a small plaque a few feet deeper in. Without looking at the others, the prince followed, his eyes scanning across a language he couldn't read.
 

"What's it say?" Kynton asked, trying to shuffle his foot away from the inky threshold.

"I have no idea," Aldrin answered truthfully. The plaque was large with a strange drawing of a watercolor world where a woman stuck a large pike into the belly of what seemed to be a land whale, or possibly a giant toad. He swung his lantern about, trying to get a sense for what he was looking at, "There's another one!" he called out rushing deeper in, taking the light with him.

"We should follow," Ciara said. The others shifted and shrugged, none wanting to step foot into the open jaws of the beast. "He has the only light source," she said before placing one shiny boot deep into the night. It vanished from her vision, but the shadows didn't nibble it off or turn it into a chicken. Without looking for compliance from the others she pushed on, chasing after the prince on a discovery high.
 

She bumped into Aldrin's shoulder as he crouched over the fourth plaque along the path. This had a painting of a watercolor rock, cracked in half to show some bits of grain inside. "I think I am getting the hang of this language. I believe 'coprolite' refers to a kind of candy."

Ciara peered at the brown lump rock and the gibberish etched across it, not wanting to break Aldrin's heart with her own thoughts. "What are these?" she settled her hand against the stone plaque propped up upon a deep indentation in the wall.

"A shrine, perhaps?" A few coins glinted in a small cup placed beneath each plaque.

"Stop stepping on my heels!" Kitten's voice rang out across the hushed silence of the walkway, "I should give you such a spanking, you she devil."

"It was I," the rich honey of the assassin's voice answered back as if he were daring the priest to try.

"Oh, right, hey look, here's our little kingy!" he walked into Aldrin's light, his face puckered as if he were forcing himself to take a rather pungent medicine.
 

"You were unable to lose them, I see," the kingy said pointedly to Ciara.

"Worse than stray cats," she answered back as the dwarven light illuminated the black face of Taban and the shocked white of Isa.

Aldrin rose and shifted the lantern so it could put out as much light as possible. Through the scopious blackness, the best this did was cast a small halo around their company as they pressed together, still watching the shadows for something alive...or dead. Moving as a living doughnut, the group pressed deeper onward, forcing Aldrin to bypass the rest of the plaques he couldn't read, though they couldn't stop him from running over to a strange straw man decked out in ancient armor and posed to be fighting what looked like an oversized lizard reared up on its hind legs. "Look how tiny its front legs are," Kynton pointed out as Taban pulled the boy on, "How could it scratch itself with those?"

The plaques and dioramas gave way to a third and final doorway. This was one person wide; the better to crowd control, my dear. And there could be no doubt by the imposing set of weaponry laid against the doorframe that this led to something impressive. They paused as one, each eye trying to pierce the darkness.
 

"We could draw straws," Kynton said, his breath turning to smoke in the creeping chill of the underworld.

"Or we could throw you in and see what happens," Isa said, her eyes nearly glowing from the blue invading her iris.
 

The boy king looked up over at Ciara. Everything his plans rested on, every throw of this winter long die came down to what was inside this final room. His lower lip trembled, though he was uncertain if it was fear or hypothermia.
 

She tried to judge the terror crawling across Aldrin's face, not quite at "there's an assassin chasing me in the woods" levels yet, but there were certainly hints of "I have to give a speech in front of my sworn enemy while wearing no trousers." Closing her eyes, she took a daring step forward deep into the shrouded room and crushed a wire.

"What the..." she tried to pull her foot back, but that unleashed the tension and a series of rolls, thuds, twanks, thwacks, and kajiggers rolled about the room as something moved in the darkness. Ciara got her dagger out just as a spark flashed in the darkness and tumbled to the ground, erupting the entire room in flames. She jumped back into Aldrin, but lowered her hand as the rim of the room lit up by a small canal of aflame oil. Her eyes pulled away from the licking fire to the splendor of Cas's tomb before her.