“No, another man. Lord Marius, he called himself. I knew nothing would be the same after that. I never had to worry—now it’s all falling on me.” He looked at the door to the Vault of Days. “If I go in there, I’ll die. I know it.”
Hadrian reached into his shirt and pulled a chain over his head. Gaunt’s eyes widened as the fighter held it up. “Esrahaddon made the medallion you wore, just as he made this one. Just as you received yours from your mother, my father left me this. I am certain they are the same. If you agree to go in—to try and cross the room—I will give it to you.”
“Let me see it!”
Hadrian handed the necklace to him. Gaunt fell to his knees next to the lantern and studied the amulet’s face. “It is the same.”
“Well?” Hadrian asked.
“Okay,” Gaunt replied. “With this I’ll do it… but I’ll keep it afterward, right? It’s mine for good now, yes? I won’t do it otherwise.”
“I will let you keep it, but on one more condition. Modina keeps the crown.”
Gaunt glared at him.
“Tear up the contract you had with her. If you agree to let her remain empress, then you can keep it.”
Gaunt felt the medallion between his fingers. He rubbed it, his eyes shifting in thought. He looked back at the door to the vault and sighed. “Okay,” he said, and slipped the chain over his head, smiling.
“The agreement?”
Gaunt scowled, then pulled the parchment from his clothes and gave it to Hadrian, who tore it up, adding the scraps to the pile on the floor.
“How about you?” Hadrian asked Arista.
“Still a bit tired, but I won’t get any sleep now.”
Hadrian stood up and walked to the door. “Myron, you might want to start praying.”
The monk nodded.
“Degan?” Arista called. “Degan?”
Gaunt looked up from his new necklace with an annoyed expression.
“When you get across,” Arista told him, “look for the horn in the tomb. I don’t know where it will be. I don’t even know what it will look like, but it is there.”
“If you can’t find it,” Hadrian said, “look for a sword with writing on the blade. You can kill the Gilarabrywn with it. You just have to stab it. It doesn’t matter where. Just drive the word written on the blade into its body.”
“If something goes wrong, run back and I will try to protect you,” Arista said.
Hadrian handed Gaunt the lantern. “Good luck.”
Gaunt stood before them, clutching his new medallion and the light. His long cloak was discarded in tatters on the floor, his hat disheveled, his face sick. Hadrian and Royce slid the latches and drew back the bolts. The metal made a disturbing squeal; then the door came free. Hadrian raised his foot and kicked the door open. It swung back with a groan, a large hollow sound that suggested the vast volume of the chamber beyond.
Gaunt took a step, raised the lantern, and peered in. “I can’t see anything.”
“It’s there,” Royce whispered to him. The thief stood behind Gaunt. “Right in the middle of the room. It looks like it’s sleeping.”
“Go on, Degan,” Arista said. “Maybe you can sneak by.”
“Yeah—sneak,” he said, and stepped forward, leaving Arista and Royce standing side by side in the doorway with Hadrian looking over their shoulders.
“Stop breathing so hard,” Royce snapped. “Breathe through your mouth, at least.”
“Right,” he said, and took another step. “Is it moving?”
“No,” Royce told him.
Gaunt took three more steps. The lantern in his hand began to jingle a bit as his arm shook.
“Why doesn’t he just scream, ‘Come eat me!’?” Royce hissed in frustration.
Arista watched as the lantern bobbed. The light revealed nothing of the walls or ceiling and illuminated only one side of Gaunt as he appeared to walk into a void of nothingness.
“How big is this room?” she asked.
“Huge,” Royce told her.
She tried to remember the dream. She vaguely recalled the emperor on the floor of a large chamber with painted walls and a series of statues—statues that represented all the past emperors—a memorial hall.
“He seems to be doing pretty good,” Hadrian observed.
“He’s halfway to it,” Royce reported. “Walking real slow.”
“I think I can see it,” Arista said. Something ahead of Gaunt was finally illuminated by his light. It was big. “Is that it? Is that—Oh my god, that’s just its foot?”
“I said it was big,” Royce told her.
As Gaunt approached, his lantern revealed a mammoth creature. A clawed foot lay no more than ten feet away, yet its tail stretched too far into the darkness to see. Its two great leathery wings were folded at its sides as towering tents of skin stretched out on talon-endowed poles. Its huge head, with a long snout, raised ears, and fanged teeth, lay between its forefeet, making it seem as innocent as a sleeping dog—only it was not sleeping. Two eyes, each one larger than a wagon wheel, watched him, unblinking.
The moment it raised its head, Degan stopped moving. Even across the distance, they heard his labored, rapid breath.