“Apparently it’s through that door, but we haven’t—”
“Through that door is death,” Thranic told her. He spoke for the first time, his voice a hissing rasp. “Death for all the children of Maribor. The last emperor’s guardian watches the Vault of Days and will not suffer anyone’s passage.”
“Guardian?” she asked.
“A Gilarabrywn,” Hadrian told her. “A big one.”
“Well, of course it’s big, if it’s a Gilarabrywn.”
Hadrian smiled. “You don’t understand. This one is really big.”
“Is there a sword? There has to be a sword to slay it, right?”
Hadrian sighed. “Royce says there’s another door on the far side. Maybe it’s over there. We don’t know. Besides, you realize there’s no reason for the sword to be down here at all.”
“We have to look. We have to…”
The sword.
“What is it?” Hadrian asked.
“Is the Gilarabrywn bigger than the one in Avempartha?”
“A lot bigger.”
“It would be,” she said, remembering her dream. “And the sword is there, on the far side of the room.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it… or at least, Esrahaddon did. Emperor Nareion created the Gilarabrywn himself. Esrahaddon enchanted the blade of the king’s sword with the name and Nareion conjured the beast. Only he did it with his own blood. He sacrificed himself in the making, adding power to the Gilarabrywn and assigning it the task of guarding the tombs where Esrahaddon hid the horn.”
The sentinel eyed her curiously. “The Patriarch was not aware of its existence, nor did we realize it was there until we opened that door. No spell, no stealth, no army, no wishful thinking will grant anyone access to the room beyond. The quest for the horn ends here.”
“And someone sealed the way out,” Gaunt reminded her. He reclined on his pack. His fur-lined houppelande, pulled tight to his chin, was torn and stained. His chaperon hat was a rumpled mess, the folds ripped and pulled down over his ears. The liripipe was missing altogether and Arista only then realized the same black cloth of Gaunt’s headdress wrapped Mauvin’s arm. “Which means we’re trapped in this room until we die of thirst or starvation. At least this bugger was able to live off goblins. What are we going to do, carve up each other?”
“Don’t be so optimistic, Mr. Sunshine,” Mauvin told him. “You might just get our hopes too high, and then we’ll be disappointed in the end.”
“We have to try something,” she said.
“We will,” Hadrian assured her. “Royce and I don’t give up that easily—you know that—but you should rest more before we do anything. We might need you. By the way, what did you mean by ‘he did it’?”
“What?”
“When you woke up, you said, ‘He did it.’ It sounded important. Another one of your dreams?”
“Oh, that, yeah,” she said, confused for a moment, trying to remember. Already the memory was fogged and blowing away. “It was Esrahaddon, he did this.”
“Did what?”
“All this,” she said, pointing up and whirling her hand around. “He destroyed the city—just like they said he did. You remember what I did at the stairs? Well, he was a bit more powerful. He collapsed the entire city, sunk and buried it.”
“So he wasn’t kidding when he said he was better with hands,” Royce observed.
“And the people?” Mauvin asked.
“They were having a Founder’s Day celebration. The city was packed with people, all the dignitaries, all the knights and Cenzars, and… yes, he killed everyone.”
“Of course he did!” Thranic shouted as best he could. “Did you think the church lied? Esrahaddon destroyed the empire!”
“No,” she said. “He tried to save it. It was Patriarch Venlin who betrayed the emperor. He was behind it all. Somehow, he convinced the Teshlor and the Cenzar to join him. He wanted to overthrow the emperor, kill him and wipe out his entire family. I think it was his intention to become the new ruler. But Esrahaddon stopped him. He got the emperor’s son, Nevrik, out, then destroyed the city. I think he was trying to kill everyone associated with the rebellion, literally crushing all the enemies of Nevrik in one stroke. He expected to die along with them.”
“But Esrahaddon survived,” Hadrian said.
“So did Venlin,” she added. “I don’t know how. Maybe Yolric, or no—Venlin may have done something—cast some spell.”
“The Patriarch was a wizard?” Hadrian asked.
She nodded. “A very powerful one, I think. More powerful than Esrahaddon.”
“That’s blasphemy!” Thranic said accusingly, and then fell into a coughing fit that left him exhausted.