The Bonds of Blood (42 page)

The third spot of light was the same in
characteristic as the other two except it hovered in a spot just
before the doorway, on the ground. This light stayed central,
though within it eddied like those before the wall. While the spot
did not move, it appeared to be supplicating itself before the
crystal, as if begging entry to the room beyond. It was only then,
looking at the light on the floor, that Jovian realized what he was
looking at were not circles of light but instead cylindrical forms
of light.

“What are they?” Jovian heard Angelica
ask over the lingering ringing that invaded his
eardrums.

“I am not sure,” Grace
responded.

“Is it some kind of entryway?” Jovian
asked.

Grace looked with new eyes and fell
silent, There was a pattern to the shifting lights.

They stood there for some time waiting
for something to happen, but nothing did. The light did not move or
change other than continuing to eddy and swirl.

“So what do you think we should do?”
Grace finally asked.

“I think it is only fitting, seeing how
the light responded to Angelica’s presence, that we might actually
have to come in contact with these new light forms.”

“But how are we going to do that?”
Angelica protested pointing at the scene laid out before them. “The
door is too wide for even Maeven to stretch his arms across the
width. If what you suggest is true then it would take all three of
us, and then who will lead the horses through?”

“I am not suggesting that we leave them
behind,” Jovian reasoned. “At the moment, however, this is the best
plan we have, since smashing the crystal did not work. I do not
know if this will work, and if it will none of us know how it will
work. We could be transported into the other room, or it could
unlock the way before us, that is, if it even works and doesn’t
kill us instead.”

“That’s a way to reassure us, Jovian,”
Angelica scoffed.

“Angelica take the right, I will take
the left, Jovian you have the door.” Grace made a motion with her
hand that brooked no argument and made her way to the left side of
the entry. In silence they followed her lead.

They all stood staring at the spots
before them, hopeful that this might be the way through the door,
yet also dreading that this might be the end of their lives. They
had no idea what would happen, but if they did not try something
they knew that death was a certainty.

“Are we ready?” Jovian asked standing
poised before his cylinder of light.

“Yes,” Grace confirmed, and Angelica
nodded.

The two women raised their hands, and
Jovian slowly stepped into the light.

The tunnel was gone. There was no rock
walls around him, no worry of what might happen. Only Jovian and
the light, the light in a way he had never sensed it before. He had
known all his life that light filled physical space, but he was
never aware that one could feel light.

This was his first impression of being
in the presence of the light. His senses were consumed not only by
the brilliance of the light, which he had to guard his eyes
against, but also from the heat that seemed to increase with every
moment he stayed in the light. There was a thrumming too, as if the
light beat against his skin in short, powerful bursts of wind. He
felt the light as its foggy appearance floated around his ankles,
slipped up his leg, caressed under his trousers.

As quickly as the sensation started, it
was gone. Jovian found himself kneeling on the ground in near
darkness compared to the brilliance of the light. He was sweating
from the heat, his curly hair matted to his forehead, and beads of
sweat lodged themselves in the tangle of whiskers he had acquired
since being on the road.

He looked up with weary eyes. The light
within the room beyond was enough to illuminate Angelica and Grace,
whose hands were pressed resolutely against the wall, their backs
arched, and their mouths opened in what could either be ecstasy or
unspeakable pain. Jovian knew exactly what they were feeling, for
he had only just experienced it.

In moments both of them slumped to the
ground, and there was a shattering sound, like thin glass being
smashed into a million pieces. In a blinding flash the noise came,
and Jovian found himself once more covering his eyes.

When the light faded Jovian looked up
and saw that the crystal was gone, and beyond laid a room filled
with pulsing blue light. Dozens of stalagmite and stalactite rose
from the floor and clung powerfully to the ceiling. It was not a
central part of the room that glowed, but instead the ethereal
light seemed to be radiating instead from the rock formations that
towered up out of the floor and hung from the ceiling.

Sometime during his surveillance of the
room Grace and Angelica had both made it to their feet and now
stood posed at either side of the door, looking in even as he
stared in amazement at the Wyrd display of the glowing rocks from
where he knelt on the ground.

The light flickered here and there and
when one stalagmite dimmed it was only to be replaced by another
formation glowing. It went like this for a while as they watched.
Always the same number of lights glowed, and when one rock dimmed
another flared to life in a flickering glow that slowly gained in
strength as its predecessor died out.

“What now?” Jovian breathed breaking
the silence in an almost sacrilegious way.

“I suppose now we enter the room,”
Grace said, her voice croaking from the parched state of traveling
in a musty underground tunnel for several days.

“I will gather the horses,” Angelica
said helping Jovian stand.

Jovian noticed, as he neared the door,
there was a peculiar draft of wind that whistled through the room
and buffeted him as it blew out of the door. With the wind the
scent of patchouli came to him, and with the smell came memories
from his childhood and a sense of power. He fought the urge to
close his eyes and let the scent carry him on his ocean of
memories, as patchouli always threatened to do to him.

“Are we ready?” Angelica asked guiding
the horses up to the entry.

Jovian nodded and stepped
in.

There was another flare of light, this
time not as intense as before but still enough to render sight
impossible. The light came and went so fast that by the time they
tried to guard their eyes against it had already dimmed
again.

With the flaring light again came
another sound that represented water freezing at an insanely rapid
pace, and when they turned back they saw the way had sealed behind
them: they were trapped within the room.

“What do we do?” Angelica cried out in
despair. It had been so long since they had left the light of day
that everything seemed to put them all on edge, all except
Grace.

“Well panicking will not help, Angie,”
Jovian said a little harsher than he had intended. As they stood
there a stalagmite near Jovian began to dim with a strange
crackling sound, and a stalactite hanging near Grace flickered to
life with a popping sound reminiscent of fire being
kindled.

“Doesn’t this light seem almost like
the one we just stepped into?” Jovian pondered out loud nearing a
stalactite some way to the back of the cavern. “These walls all
look to be made of crystal rather than rock,” he observed now able
to see the walls of the large cavern better. In fact, he
rationalized that if it hadn’t been for the crystal walls, the
light would not be as bright as it appeared; the crystal of the
walls seemed to refract and intensify the light just as the door
had.

“So they do,” Grace said nearing the
wall closest to her left. Reaching out a withered hand she gently
rubbed the wall. She drew her hand back with a hiss. “The wall is
cold as death.”

“That is like the door,” Angelica said
dropping the reins of the horses and going to examine another wall.
“They are thicker than the door was though, so thick that you can’t
see anything beyond them.”

The room was absolutely amazing.
Everywhere Angelica looked, crystal glistened and even the ceiling
seemed to be made out of the clear blue stone. The floor rung out
hollowly as she stepped closer to the wall that radiated cold and
for a moment Angelica wished she had brought a heavier
cloak.

“What now?” Jovian asked, his voice
echoing through the huge cavern. “All of these walls are made of
crystal, so are we to imagine that the light here is the way to
unlocking the way through, like the way the light outside allowed
us in?”

“But what if it only lets us back out
the way we came in?” Angelica asked looking at her distorted
reflection in the wall.

“I am thinking that any way out of here
is better than staying for any length of time. We will need rest
before long and if the coldness growing in my feet is any
indication, this floor is as cold as the walls are; we can’t all
sleep on the horses.”

“Jovian is right,” Grace said. “We have
to try something and this crystal is way too thick the try and
smash. We need to be out of here.”

There was a slight rumbling like
thunder off in the distance, and the floor heaved slightly below
their feet. They all exchanged worried looks.

“Grace?” Jovian asked. “How big do
golems normally get?”

“That really depends,” she said looking
toward the entrance they came in hoping that she might be able to
see what was happening out in the tunnel, but like before while the
door was thin, it was impossible to see through.

“Apparently this one is rather
large.”

“So these lights are like those
outside? Maybe if we touch the rock formations as they come on then
we might get out?” Jovian asked.

“It is worth a try,” Angelica
confirmed.

“Then we all take a formation. They
light up in groupings of three, so Jovian you take that stalactite
in the front and Angelica and I will take these two stalagmite
here,” Grace said motioning to two rock formations rising out of
the floor which stood side by side. “It might be best to grasp the
rocks firmly in both hands.”

Nodding his agreement, Jovian took up
his post at the far end of the room. He was apprehensive about
touching the light again, especially after the pain he felt having
been in it before. Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he
finally sheathed his mother’s sword and clasped his hands tightly
around the point of the stalactite.

Nothing happened.

They all stood there for a moment
feeling the earth shake, watching as the stalactite shivered, but
nothing happened.

“What is going on?” Jovian asked. As he
spoke, all of their formations began to flicker out and three more
started to glow to life.

“Switch!” Grace ordered, and they
stepped to the new rocks. This time Angelica was at the far right
holding a stalactite, Jovian was grasping the stalactite directly
behind the one he had been holding previously, and Grace was right
up beside him holding the tip of another stalagmite.

When they were all in place again the
three flickered out, and they once more took up new positions as
the floor heaved and the thundering of the Golem drawing nearer
deafened them to speech.

They worked like a single unit not
needing to speak but instead instinctively knowing what needed to
be done. Ten times they switched to different rock formations, each
time hoping this worked and that they were not wasting their
time.

They were comforted in knowing that as
they switched to different rocks the fading and illuminating of the
rocks grew more rapid, as if their touching them were causing
something to happen. Soon they didn’t stay at one rock for more
than a second, long enough to grasp the point, and then having to
immediately switch to another rock. Jovian was steadily working his
way back through the cave switching from stalagmite to stalactite
while Grace and Angelica zigzagged their way from the right side of
the cavern to the left.

Finally when Jovian could not go any
further back, and Angelica and Grace were now at the very front of
the cavern where Jovian had started, the room went black. The
thundering in the earth was too loud for them to say anything to
one another, and for a time Jovian thought he might go insane in
panic.

He could not see a thing. All he could
feel was the cold and the stalagmite to which he clung. The rock
vibrated almost constantly from the dalua drawing nearer and the
sound and the darkness was almost more than he could bear. At any
moment he was sure something was going to come up behind him and
grab him. He shook with fear, his breath coming at a more rapid
pace, his heart beating in a way that almost drowned out the sound
of the thundering in the earth. He cast his eyes all about in
terror, but in the absolute darkness he could see
nothing.

The ceiling thundered one last time and
then everything grew silent in a way that made Jovian’s ears chime.
The silence was as absolute as the darkness, and for a moment he
could not even feel his own numb body.

Then he could hear it. It sounded like
the tinkling of tiny bells, a sound he had heard only a few times
before once being at Willabanter Ford. He wondered maybe if this
cavern was not the home of fairies.