Cursed Bones

chapter 37



Despite her desire to study the rest of the journal and the uneasiness caused by the eerie noises in the darkness, Isabel’s exhaustion caught up with her. She woke the following morning, stiff and sore from sitting up against her pack all night. She rubbed her neck as she stood up and looked around. The swamp was as quiet and dreary as ever.

She moved slower due to her sore muscles but still managed to reach solid ground just before nightfall. Rather than going ashore and risking the predators that lived there, she tied off a hundred feet from the swamp’s edge and slept on her raft. Alexander appeared when she woke.

“Were you watching me sleep?” she asked groggily as she stretched.

He just smiled with a shrug.

“Their boat is tied off a few hundred feet to the north,” he said. “They went straight to an overgrown structure on the side of the mountain and made camp just inside. Hazel has them up and moving like she knows where she’s going and that’s saying something because that place is like a maze.”

“How will I find them?”

“I’ll guide you,” Alexander said, “but you should probably get moving.”

“First, I’m going to move their boat,” Isabel said with a devious smile.

After finding their boat and rowing it to a thicket just south of where she’d hidden her raft, she headed along the edge of the swamp, reasoning that the vorash would probably do most of their hunting deeper in the jungle that covered the foothills surrounding the mountain.

Near where Hazel and her friends had come ashore, she picked up their trail and cautiously made her way into the jungle, keeping a watchful eye for any sign of danger, using Slyder to scout for her as well. Several hundred feet from a small stone structure built into the side of the mountain, now completely overgrown and barely discernable, Isabel stopped again to survey her surroundings through Slyder’s eyes.

Four creatures were sniffing around the entrance—vorash. They were even more frightening than Alexander’s description. They seemed to be searching the area but were unwilling to enter the structure itself. Isabel waited, watching them until they used their tentacles to pull themselves up into nearby trees where they concealed themselves in the foliage, lying in wait over the entrance.

Isabel weighed her options. She could try to fight her way through, but she doubted she could kill all four before they were on her, and even if she could make it to the structure and get inside, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t pursue her. She settled on using the potion of invisibility she’d discovered in Hazel’s workshop, hoping it would work as expected.

After drinking the syrupy sweet liquid, she was pleased to see herself vanish from view. Carefully, quietly, she made her way toward the structure. The vorash were watching the area intently and were starting to become restless as if they sensed something nearby. She drew closer to the partially obstructed entrance; a large support stone had fallen across the doorway leaving just a small gap at the base.

Twenty feet from her objective, the vorash roared as one and she realized that the potion had run its course. She was visible again. The vorash were coming, all four of them swinging from their perches high in the trees overhead and reaching the ground far more quickly than she would have imagined.

She raced for the entrance, relying on speed driven by fear to help her reach the relative safety of the structure before the vorash reached her. A tentacle snapped out from the brush, hitting her across the shins, sending her sprawling on her face just feet from the entrance. She scrambled toward the opening, willing the pain shooting up her legs to the back of her mind when a viselike grip caught her by the ankle.

Rolling onto her back and swinging her sword wildly, she caught the tentacle of the creature just above the three-fingered hand, severing it and drawing a scream of rage and pain. Another tentacle struck her in the chest, knocking her breath out as she crawled backward, struggling desperately to reach the structure before the vorash reached her. The other three were nearly within reach when the first leapt into the air, coming down on top of her. She rolled to the side, slashing frantically with her sword, her blade cutting to the bone in the back of the monster’s leg. The vorash shrieked in pain and leapt away with Isabel’s sword still stuck in its leg.

She scrambled through the hole into the darkness but another tentacle grabbed her by the ankle, sending pain shooting anew up her leg, trying to drag her back into the daylight. She turned and plunged her dagger into the tentacle and it released her, the vorash howling in pain. Isabel scrambled backward into the relative shelter of the ruined building.

She found herself in a simple stone room that was once nothing but a secure entry hall with one door leading to the jungle and another leading into the fortress. Two tentacles pursued her into the darkness, flailing around near the entrance as she backed up to the opposite wall, muttering the words of her shield spell. As much as they wanted her, they didn’t seem willing to enter the structure to come and get her, a fact she was grateful for … the pain throbbing in her legs was threatening to overwhelm her. She was bleeding from the ankle and her shins were so bruised, she doubted she could stand.

Holding up her jar of glowing lichen, she peered down the corridor leading into the darkness for as far as she could see. When she heard the vorash making noise outside like they were feasting on something, she lay on her side to get a view through what was left of the door. Two of the vorash were savagely eating the other two, the one she’d seriously wounded with her sword and the one she’d stabbed with her poisoned dagger. The beasts were tearing their former companions apart and devouring them in chunks.

Isabel stifled an urge to vomit as she started pulling herself down the corridor into the darkness. Once she was several dozen feet away from the entry chamber, she stopped to rest, listening intently for any hint that the vorash would follow her. When the sounds of their cannibalistic meal subsided, she decided she was safe for the moment and drank the healing potion, knowing full well that she would be unconscious and vulnerable while it did its work, but also knowing that she didn’t have any time to waste. Her legs were too badly injured to carry her and she needed speed if she was to prevent Hazel from sacrificing Hector and Horace.

When she awoke, Alexander was standing over her.

“That was a terrible risk,” he said.

“Which part? Trying to get past the vorash or drinking the healing potion?”

“Both, but I guess I understand,” he said. “Two of them are still out there waiting up in the trees.”

“I used the invisibility potion and it worked,” Isabel said, “for about a minute, then I became visible again right under them. They almost got me. I’m just glad they don’t like the indoors.”

“Small favors,” Alexander said. “Looks like they’re using your sword as bait. I wouldn’t recommend going back for it.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Isabel said, removing her scabbard from her belt and setting it against the wall. “In fact, I might look for another way out of this place just in case they’re patient enough to wait for me here.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Alexander said. “I asked the sovereigns about the ghidora. Malachi said it’s a stalker-demon sort of like a scourgling.”

“Dear Maker,” Isabel whispered.

“Once summoned, it requires a sacrifice for each target it’s given,” Alexander said, “and the one sacrificed has to have a link with the firmament, even a limited link like that of a sorcerer.”

“What’s it do in the meantime?” Isabel asked.

“Apparently, it goes to the place where it was originally summoned and turns to stone.”

“Can it be killed?”

“With sufficient damage,” Alexander said. “Its skin isn’t impenetrable like a scourgling but its hide is like armor.”

“What’s it look like?”

“Malachi didn’t know since he’s never summoned one,” Alexander said.

“All right, so where do I go from here?”

“I’ll guide you,” Alexander said, transforming into a ball of light and floating slowly down the corridor, which ran straight into the mountain for several hundred feet before coming to a spiral staircase leading up. By the time Isabel reached the top, her legs burned from the exertion and she was breathing heavily. The stairs ended on a landing facing a bare stone wall with a lever beside it. She pulled the lever and watched the wall slide toward her, then swing open on a hinge.

She peered into the room beyond. It looked like it had once been a reading room but now the walls were lined with moldering mounds of decaying books. After she stepped inside, the door closed behind her, forming a nondescript wall.

“This must have been one of his escape routes,” she said.

“That’s what I figured too,” Alexander said, though he didn’t change from his form as a ball of light.

“Huh, I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I’m getting better with practice.”

Isabel headed for the only door and stepped through into a larger room that looked like it was once the central room in an elaborate suite of living quarters. The furniture was all decayed beyond recognition and the place felt as cold and dead as the reading room, except for the freshly killed creature splayed out on the floor and the signs of a recent struggle.

Isabel couldn’t even begin to guess what the creature was. It looked like a cross between a giant rat and an armadillo, heavily scaled along the sides and back with an elongated snout ending in fangs. It must have weighed a hundred pounds.

“Looks like Hector and Horace were here,” Isabel said. “I’d feel a lot better if I had a sword.”

“I can imagine. We should keep moving.”

Alexander led the way, bobbling through the air and illuminating the path as he navigated through the living quarters of the underground facility. Passing an intersection, Isabel heard a squeal and a scuffling coming toward her from the darkness. She immediately started casting a spell.

Another creature like the one killed in the living quarters charged toward her out of the darkness of the side passage. She released her force-push, sending the ugly-looking beast sprawling backward. It scrambled to its feet and raced away back into the darkness.

“At least it’s a coward,” Isabel said. “What do you think we should call those things?”

“Ugly. Come on, let’s get out of here before it comes back with its friends.”

A few minutes and a number of twists and turns through the sprawling complex later, they came to a large room with a line of support pillars running down the middle. In the corners near the door stood a pair of grotesquely ugly statues; the carved stone creatures were squatting down on top of short round pedestals with their clawed hands grasping the edge between their feet. Their faces were almost like a dog’s, except their snouts were shorter; their mouths were open wide, revealing rows of needlelike teeth. Horns swept back and out from their brows, and batlike wings sprouted from their shoulders.

When Isabel stepped into the room, she heard a muffled click and felt the stone beneath her feet shift ever so slightly. She froze in place, waiting for the trap to spring, her heart hammering in her chest.

One of the statues began to move. Its eyes took on a dull reddish glow and it slowly turned to look at her as it started to stand. Isabel didn’t waste another second, racing deeper into the room as she muttered the words of her shield spell.

Alexander separated into six glowing orbs, increasing the illumination enough to fill the entire room with light. Both statues were up and stretching as if they’d been standing in place for a very long time. Even though they moved like flesh and bone, they looked like they were still made of stone.

The moment her shield formed, Isabel started casting a light-lance. The first statue to wake leapt from the pedestal, gliding toward her on outstretched wings. Her spell fired, burning its right wing off at the shoulder and sending it crashing into the ground in a jumble.

“Get through the door,” Alexander said as the second took to wing.

Isabel raced for the far end of the large room and the heavy circular stone door that looked like it was designed to roll into place from a slot in the wall. It had long since broken and rolled slightly back into its recess, opening the way to the room beyond but just barely.

Just as she reached the door, the creature crashed into her, clawing and snapping with single-minded malevolence, yet failing to penetrate her shield. Isabel turned to face the thing. It had her pinned to the door, flailing against her shield with mindless determination and almost desperate viciousness. She reached out, placing her hand on its chest as she cast her force-push, blasting the creature up and back. It struck the nearest pillar squarely, cracking the ancient stone and causing it to buckle.

Seeing the first creature charging toward her, she scrambled through the narrow gap just as the support pillar buckled and the heavy stone ceiling collapsed, crushing the two creatures, sealing the entrance, and filling the room she now occupied with a cloud of dust.

Isabel got to her feet and looked around. She was in a large workroom. Once, long ago, the place might have housed a forge and a variety of other tools and machines designed to work stone, steel, and wood into works of art or utility. Now it was empty and cold.

Alexander bobbled over to the far side of the room and stopped at the top of another spiral staircase leading back down into the heart of the mountain. Isabel headed toward him while quickly looking around for anything she could use as a weapon. Unfortunately, time had rendered everything in the room worthless.

The staircase spiraled down into the mountain. When they reached a level with a door leading into a dark hallway, Alexander continued downward.

“What’s in there?”

“I’m not sure, but Hazel is farther down.”

Finally, the staircase stopped at a point perhaps even deeper than where she’d entered the vast underground fortress and laboratory. It opened into a large circular room with a dozen passages leading away like spokes on the hub of a wheel. The floor was laid out with black and white tiles in a checkerboard pattern, each about two feet square. Several corpses, long-dead, littered the room. The only thing they all had in common was that each appeared to have been standing on a black square when he died.

Isabel cautiously worked her way to the first man, taking his sword and testing it, but finding that it had rusted to the point of uselessness. Deciding that none of the dead explorers’ equipment was still useful, she looked closer at the dust covering the floor and saw several sets of footprints, all stepping on white squares, leading to one passage. She made her way there, relieved to be out of the deadly chamber.

“This passage leads to where they were when I last checked on them,” Alexander said, floating into the darkness of the corridor.

It ran for hundreds of feet until Isabel could just make out a faint glow coming from the far end of the passage. Alexander vanished, leaving her in the darkness, so she could approach without alerting Hazel. She cast her shield spell while she walked, mentally preparing for the battle to come, knowing that she might have to fight Hector and Horace in the bargain.

The passage opened into a circular room. Two veins of softly glowing crystal rose from the floor to the ceiling. Within each was carved a chamber. A conduit of crystal running between both chambers held a panel with a single emerald set into it. Isabel heard whimpering before she saw the figure slumped to the floor in one of the chambers. She approached cautiously, her anger hot and ready. Seeing the form of Hazel in the chamber, she began speaking the words of her light-lance, forcefully and deliberately.

She raised her hand toward Hazel and the old witch looked up, tears streaming down her face, confusion and fear in her eyes.

“Isabel, please help me,” she said.

Isabel frowned in momentary confusion until she remembered that the focus of Hazel’s magic was belief.

Seeing Isabel’s resolve harden, Hazel sobbed and put her hands up in front of her face to ward against a spell that would kill her in a flash.

“Stop!” Alexander said, materializing before Hazel.

Isabel reined in her spell, letting go of the thought-form she was about to release into the firmament but holding on to her anger.

“Why? You said it yourself; we’re at war with her.”

“I don’t think this is Hazel,” Alexander said. “Her colors are all wrong.”

“Please help me, Isabel. It’s me … Ayela. Hazel stole my body.”

Isabel gasped, her eyes going wide. “Dear Maker, is such a thing even possible?”

“I think that’s what these chambers do,” Alexander said. “Also, her colors say she’s telling the truth.”

“How do we reverse it?” Isabel asked.

“I’m not sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say you would have to put them both back into these chambers again. I’ll go consult with the sovereigns and then find Hector, Horace, and Hazel. Take care of Ayela and make your way back to the black-and-white room. Wait for me there.”

Isabel nodded, going to Ayela. “I’m so sorry, Ayela. I didn’t know.”

“How could you? This kind of thing isn’t supposed to be possible. I’m the one who should apologize. I took you right to her and she left you in the swamp to die. I can’t believe I trusted her.”

“You believed what you wanted to believe,” Isabel said. “It happens to the best of us.”

“What am I going to do? I feel like my life is suddenly over.”

“I’m going to help you. I promise.”

“Thank you, Isabel,” Ayela said, wiping tears from her old and wrinkled face and looking up sheepishly. “Do you have anything to eat? Hazel took all of my things when she left me here.”

Isabel gave her a bag of dried apples and they started toward the black-and-white room.

Alexander appeared just before they arrived.