“What next?” asked Kendaric.
“We have the hand and the artifact,” said Solon.
James unshouldered his backpack and took out the talisman and the vampire hand. He wrapped the ringers of the dead hand around the charm and raised it to the portal. He tried a half-dozen combinations of pressure and patterns, and finally put it down.
“Hilda didn’t tell us everything,” James observed as he replaced the items in his backpack.
“But she did tell us to return,” Jazhara reminded him.
“Let’s go ask her,” said James. He reshouldered his pack and stood up.
The walk up to the top of the point took less than a half-hour. Hilda was waiting for them when they reached the hut. “Got the vampire, did you?” she asked.
“Yes,” said James. “How did you know?”
“It didn’t take magic, boy. If you hadn’t gotten him, he’d have gotten you and you wouldn’t be standing here.” She turned and said, “Come in and listen.”
They followed, and once inside the old woman said, “Give me the hand.”
James opened his backpack and gave her the creature’s hand. She took a large iron skillet from a hook above the fire and placed the vampire’s hand in it. Thrusting it into the flames, she said, “This is the unpleasant part.”
The flesh of the creature’s hand shriveled and blackened, then a putrid blue flame sprang up around it. In a few moments, only blackened bones remained.
She pulled the pan out and set it on the stone hearth. “Let it cool for a moment.”
“Can you tell us something of what we face?” asked Jazhara.
Hilda looked grim. “That is why I didn’t tell you about the need to reduce the creature’s hand to ash. That is why I didn’t give you the pattern of the lock.” She looked from face to face. “You are about to face a great evil and I had to know you are worthy. Your defeat of the Vampire Lord shows that you have the necessary determination and bravery. But you face a far worse foe.
“For many years I’ve known the Black Pearl Temple was under the cliffs. I have never been able to see inside, except by my arts. And what little of that I can see is evil beyond imagining.”
“What ‘great evil’ do you speak of?” asked Solon.
“Where to start?” asked Hilda rhetorically. “The sailors who’ve died offshore, and there have been many, have never known true rest. Instead, their souls are enslaved to whatever dark power rules in the temple. I can feel its presence, like a great eye. It was closed for years, but now it is open and it is watching this area.”
James thought about the battle at Sethanon, when the false prophet of the moredhel, Murmandamus, captured the dying energy of his servants to fuel his attempt to seize the Lifestone under Sethanon. “So we can assume that this plan - whatever it is,” he added quickly, so as not to inadvertently mention the recovery of the Tear to Hilda, “has been underway for a great deal of time.”
“Assuredly,” said Hilda. She stood and moved over to her chest, opened it and retrieved an artifact. “But the eye didn’t know that it was being watched.” She held out a long, slender object, a wand or stick seemingly fashioned from frosty crystal. “I dared used this but once, and I have put it away since in anticipation of this moment. I caution you, what you see may be disturbing.”
She waved the object in the air and intoned a spell, and suddenly a rift appeared in the air before them, black, but somehow with the suggestion of color within. Then an image sprang to life, and they could see the interior of a cavern. An ornate mirror hung on a stone wall. They could see a figure approaching, reflected in the mirror before them, and Jazhara and Solon both muttered quiet oaths. The figure was one James had seen before, or rather its like, a long-dead priest or magician, animated by the black arts. He had faced such a one as this under the ancient abandoned Keshian fortress in the south of the Kingdom months before, and knew that there was a link between what had been discovered there and what was occurring now.
The figure waved a bony hand and the image of a man appeared in the mirror. The man was hawk-beaked, with eyes that seemed to possess a burning black fire. His pate was bald, and he let his long gray hair flow down around his shoulders. He wore clothing of nondescript fashion, looking as much like a merchant as anything else. Then they heard the voice of the undead magician.
‘They come,” he said.
The man in the mirror asked, “Is the guildsman with them?”
“As planned. They will be sacrificed at dawn. Do you have the amulet?”
“No,” answered the man. “My pawn still has it.”
The undead creature said, “You held it, but it was the voice of our god that filled it with power. It has chosen another, just as it chose you over me.”
The man in the mirror evidenced irritation at that comment. “But he is not worthy of the power.”
“Nevertheless, without the amulet, we cannot proceed.”