James West - Lady Of Regret

A few miles outside the city, Nesaea and Fira halted their horses atop a grassy hill overlooking an ancient graveyard. Tall grass and briars had overgrown most of it, leaving the roofs of several burial vaults poking up. Beyond those, the rolling amber plain stretched north to the hazed feet of the Gyntors. Peaks grim and dark and jagged reached all the way to the Sea of Muika, and beyond. Even from afar, that barrier to the Iron Marches held an air of foreboding. Only crazed traders and unwitting fools dared cross the spine of the Gyntors, what with its abundance of unspeakable creatures and haunted places.

Fira’s attention rested elsewhere. “How can a thing of gold be so ugly?” she asked, lips turned down in distaste.

“Not ugly, merely stark,” Nesaea said.

Dionis Keep sat atop a jutting blade of rock, both made golden by the rising sun. The keep’s curtain wall stood high, buttressed by a score of drum towers pocked with arrow loops. A stone bridge, supported with a dozen high arches, spanned the eastern flank of the River Idoril, and ended at a drawbridge.

“You really think your father is in there?” Fira asked.

“Lynira believes he is.”

“Are you sure you care to risk your neck for the man who never sought you out-”

Nesaea cut her off with a brisk shake of her head. “I swore an oath to myself, and it remains unfulfilled. Besides, as I believed he was killed, my father doubtless believed I was dead, along with my mother.”

She was not so sure about that. If Sytheus had returned to their razed home, he would have found Nesaea was not among the dead. Raids around Alhaz were not common, but when they occurred, those taken usually ended up in Giliron. She had loved her father deeply, but even as a girl she had known he was more coward than warrior. She had never hated him for it, but until the day she escaped Giliron on her own, she had looked for his coming.

“Forgive me for saying,” Fira said, interrupting Nesaea’s thoughts, “but I do not like what you intend.”

“It will not be easy,” Nesaea agreed, knowing Fira would dislike what came next. “I need you to guard the entrance.”

“I should join you!”

“Not this time,” Nesaea said.

“And if someone happens along, say a few of Lord Arthard’s men?”

“First and foremost, stay out of sight.” Nesaea pointed out the vault she planned to enter, easily large enough to conceal a woman and two horses. “If you are seen, do what you must to dissuade them from investigating too carefully.”

The challenge brightened Fira’s eyes, put a fetching dimple in one cheek. “Don’t fret over that.”

Nesaea heeled her mount and led Fira down the grassy slope, passed through the stone gate letting into the graveyard, and wended through the prickly brush to the burial vault. Its facade, all of snowy marble and heavily engraved, resembled a miniature palace, more than a resting place for old bones.

Lynira had assured her the structure served as the entrance to a secret passage that traveled under the river. Looking across the sluggish green breadth of the Idoril, imagining some secret way under it, all damp and dark, Nesaea had second thoughts about making the journey. I have to try , she thought, dismounting.

After they secured their horses, Nesaea parted the brush at the back of the vault, revealing a small iron door. Retrieving her lock picks, she set to work opening the door. After several tries, she heard a series of soft snicks. She carefully twisted the picks, retracting the bolt.

Nesaea tucked away her tools, then cautiously pushed the door inward on groaning hinges. The smell of dust and damp washed over her.

“Sure you want me to stay behind?” Fira asked, looking past Nesaea into the waiting darkness.

“No,” Nesaea admitted, drawing the Eye of Nami-Ja from its leather pouch. “But it’s better for you to guard my escape, than to allow someone to bar my way.”

Fira glanced round the graveyard, then to the top of the hill they had descended. “Very well,” she said reluctantly.

“Just keep your head down,” Nesaea said with more confidence than she felt. “And make sure you close the door after me. If you have to hide, I don’t want anyone to think grave robbers are about.”

She entered the mausoleum before Fira could give a reason not to. The glowing orb lit the way down a set of narrow stone steps. Behind her, the door shut with a low boom, severing the daylight.

At the bottom of the steps, Nesaea found dust coating everything except an iron sepulcher centered in the small chamber. It looked to have been swept clean, and shone dull gray. Nesaea ran her hand over its cool, pitted surface, seeking the head of a graven lion. There were many, but according to Lynira, the one she sought should be loose.

She had circled the sepulcher twice before her fingers chanced upon the right lion. She gave it a wiggle, then pushed hard. A low clunk sounded, followed by a grinding noise. The lid began to clank and shudder open.

Nesaea held the Eye of Nami-Ja high, and drew her belt knife, the little girl she had once been certain some walking horror was about to creep out. Nothing escaped, save a strong boggy odor, and the faint wail of wind.

She edged closer, peeked inside. Instead of a cobwebbed corpse wrapped in grave clothes, she saw another set of stone steps leading down into darkness so thick that even the Eye of Nami-Ja could not penetrate it. She took a fearful step back before halting herself.

Instead of abandoning the quest, Nesaea visualized her father, a man she had not seen in two decades. She remembered his laughter, always quick and easy, even when things went wrong for him, which they almost always did. For the first time in all her travels, there was a better than good chance he waited just ahead. And if he was locked in some musty dungeon, no matter what he might have done to earn imprisonment, he needed her help.

She took a deep breath, climbed onto the edge of the sepulcher, and started down. The deeper she went into the earth, the cooler and damper the air became. Where the walls started off as dressed stone, they soon became roughhewn rock, slicked by dripping moisture, and knobby with pale fungus.

At the bottom, she came to a wide cave with a low ceiling. Mud squished under her riding boots. In places where her light did not shine, vermin chattered. When she raised the orb overhead, stealthy shapes slithered out of sight. Here and there, small eyes reflected light, blinking with more curiosity than fear.

After casting about and finding nothing of interest beyond a rotten barrel and a yellowed skeleton that might have belonged to a cat, Nesaea struck off at a quick clip.

The passage ran straight and true for a long time. With each step, the sound of wind grew louder. A little farther on, she discovered not wind, but a stream rushing through a crack in one wall, and vanishing into another crack in the opposite wall.

After leaping across it, she pressed on until coming to a door of iron bars. When she brushed a finger against one, rust flaked off, but the remaining iron was thick as her wrist. A lock and a coil of heavy chain secured the door.

Nesaea tried to get at the lock with her picks, but it was on the wrong side of the bars. She withdrew a small vial from a pocket sewn inside her cloak. The fluid within the container was not magical, but to anyone unlearned in alchemy, the results would appear so.

With the utmost care, she pried off the cork stopper, dribbled a few drops into the lock’s keyhole. Her elbow struck an iron bar, jostling a few more drops in. Nesaea caught her breath. Too much of any good thing could go bad in a hurry. With a sharp hiss, tendrils of smoke began drifting out of the aperture. As an acrid stench filled the cave, the round body of the iron lock started glowing, as if heated in a forge fire. A few seconds more, and it began to deform, slowly elongating and stretching to the floor. More smoke billowed, and glowing drops of molten iron began dripping to sizzle and hiss in the mud.