The Mists of Sorrow: The Morcyth Saga Book Seven (69 page)

Jiron steps back and makes room for him to
enter. “Hope they don’t sense that,” he says indicating the
barrier.

“So do I,” replies James. Creating a second
orb on his palm, he begins moving forward into the room. At first
he moves cautiously. Every step he takes, expecting something to
happen. But after the fourth step, the room remains quiet. At the
sixth step, he gains confidence and begins moving a bit
quicker.

Then it happens. He must have stepped on a
pressure plate or something for a four foot iron spear shoots up
out of the floor beneath him. It strikes the underside of the
barrier and launches the barrier with him in it upward.

“James!” Miko exclaims from where he’s
watching in the doorway.

As he and the barrier come to land back down
on the floor with jarring impact, another trigger is activated.
Directly beneath him, a spear shoots up out of the floor. Again he
and the barrier are catapulted upward, this time James is thrown on
his side within the barrier. “Ahhh!” James hollers as he’s thrown
further into the room.

Then every time he lands, another spear
shoots upward and propels him further down the long narrow room.
Head over heels, he’s propelled as spear after spear launches him
and his barrier further along until it finally hitting the wall at
the end of the room and coming to rest.

“James!” Jiron hollers. “Are you okay?”

Sitting there in the barrier, he wonders the
same thing himself. Doing a quick self check he finds nothing
broken, just a few bruises from where he hit the ground hard a
couple times. “Yeah!” he hollers back, “I’m fine.”

Glancing to the wall at the end of the room,
he discovers another door. Between where he sits and the doorway
Jiron and the others are standing at is a patchwork of iron spears
sticking upright out of the floor. “There’s a door down here,” he
hollers to the others. “Make your way down. Step as closely to the
spears sticking out of the floor as you can and you should be
okay.”

He dispels his barrier and gets to his feet
as the others begin moving into the room. Following the same route
the spears sped him along the first time, the others cross the
room. He can hear Jiron say, “Step where I step”, as he leads the
others from one spear to the next.

No further spears erupt from the floor and
they finally join him at the far end of the room. “Secret door, now
deadly spears,” comments Potbelly. “Can’t wait to see what we’ll
discover when we reach the next set of annotations.”

“Probably a demon or something,” guesses
Scar.

James produces the diagram and sees that
another corridor extends from the other side of the door they’re
standing next to. At the end it looks like a spiral staircase goes
either up or down then another long corridor before they reach a
round room with a circle drawn in the middle. In the corridor just
before the round room is where the next set of annotations is
noted.

As Jiron listens at the door for any sound
coming from the other side, James cancels the second orb, leaving
just the orb Jiron is carrying. Not hearing anything, Jiron opens
the door and they begin working their way down the hallway.

Halfway down the corridor, something causes
Miko to glance backward. His heart skips a beat when he sees light
now coming from the room with the spikes they had just left.
“James!” he says as he points back they way they came.

The tone of his voice brings the others to a
halt and they turn to see what he’s pointing at. “Oh no,” Brother
Willim says as he sees the light within the room growing
brighter.

Then all of a sudden temple guards emerge
from the doorway. When they see them there, they draw their weapons
and charge. There’s at least a dozen or more of them coming through
the doorway.

Scar pulls forth his swords and says over
his shoulder, “Keep going.” As Potbelly draws his sword and knife
he adds, “We’ll hold them off.” When it looks like the others are
hesitating, Scar yells, “Go!”

Then he and Potbelly move forward to engage
the oncoming guards. “First one to Coryntia’s realm buys,” Potbelly
says.

“You’re on,” Scar replies then the battle is
upon them.

Jiron sees James beginning to pull a slug
out of his slug belt. He places a hand on his arm and says, “No
magic. If they think we’re just thieves, they’ll send guards. If
you start throwing magic around, the priests will come.”

“He’s right,” Brother Willim says.

“But they’ll never survive,” James says.
More guards are piling up behind the ones engaging Scar and
Potbelly.

“They know that,” Jiron says. “We have to
get to the dais!” He turns James toward him and looks him in the
eyes. “Don’t let their sacrifice be in vain!”

James glances back at the pair holding the
corridor against what now must be over three dozen guards.
Fortunately the width of the corridor prevents more than two or
three coming at them at any one time. Nodding, he turns his back on
them and follows Jiron as he runs down the corridor toward the
stairwell. Brother Willim and Miko follow close behind.

When they reach the stairwell, they glance
once more at the pair fighting in the corridor, then rush down to
the lower level. The stairs wind around four times before coming
out at another corridor. “It’s in the room at the end,” James tells
the others. “But be careful when you reach the end of the corridor,
that’s where the final set of annotations lay.”

As they head down the corridor, the sound of
the fighting going on above them gradually diminishes until they
are no longer able to hear it. Moving down quickly, they soon see
the end of the corridor ahead of them. To their surprise, the
corridor ends at a solid stone wall. Slowing down they approach the
wall cautiously.

“Another secret door?” asks Miko.

“Maybe,” replies James.
Could the final
set of annotations tell them how to get through here?
He hopes
that’s what it could mean. When he sees Jiron move to approach the
wall he says, “Be wary of traps.”

“After that room upstairs,” he replies, “you
can believe I will be.”

James joins him as he goes to the wall.
“Looks fairly normal,” Jiron says. They both begin running their
hands over the wall in an attempt to find something that will allow
them to gain access to the room containing the dais.

Miko and Brother Willim stand back about ten
feet from the end of the corridor. Miko can feel the deaths of the
guards as they fight Scar and Potbelly above them. He’s pretty sure
neither one of their friends has fallen yet. Elsewhere in the
temple, the untimely death of slaves rips through him every so
often as the priests of Dmon-Li continue their dark ritual.

His eyes wander and finally settle on a
minor imperfection in the stone of the wall next to him. Not sure
why it caught his eye, he moves closer for a better look. “I think
I found it,” he announces to the others as he runs his finger
across an indentation similar in size to the medallion James has
been carrying ever since finding it in the underground temple near
Kern.

James immediately rushes over with his orb
to see. “That’s it!” he exclaims. Pulling out the medallion bearing
the warrior priest’s insignia, he places it against the
indentation. Not exactly a perfect match, but it works.

A vibration comes to them as the end of the
corridor begins to drop down in sections. When the rumbling ceases,
the light of the orb reveals that the end of the corridor has
dropped and created a set of steps leading down.

“Yes!” exclaims Jiron. Moving forward, he
leads them down to the bottom where a short corridor connects the
stairs with a room. The light from the orb shines through the
doorway into the room and they see the dais sitting there before
them.

Moving forward, they enter the room and find
that it’s round just as the diagram had depicted. “There it is,”
James says as they move to the dais.

“It seems odd that the room containing this
dais was only reachable by going though two secret doors and a room
full of spikes,” comments Jiron. When James glances to him he adds,
“The dais in the underground temple was right where anyone could
get to it.”

James shrugs. “Maybe they were built in
different times,” he says. “The one in the underground temple could
have been constructed when they didn’t feel the need to protect
it.”

“Could be,” agrees Brother Willim. Turning
to James he says, “Now what?”

“Now we get on the dais and let it take us
to the High Temple,” he says.

“Sounds easy enough,” Miko states.

“Seeing as how I hold the medallion, it
might be best if you three were to get on first,” James suggests.
“It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to get on first and have it
activate before the rest of you have a chance to join me.”

“May have a point there,” Jiron says. Moving
forward, he hops onto the dais.

Lending Brother Willim a hand, Jiron helps
him up then is followed by Miko. “What’s going to happen when you
get on?” Miko asks.

“If it works as I think it will,” he
replies, “we’ll appear at the High Temple of Dmon-Li.”

“Then things will get interesting,” Jiron
says with a grim grin.

James sighs and says, “You could say
that.”

“Come on,” Jiron prompts when he sees him
hesitating. Holding out his hand, he offers to help him up.

Taking the hand, James steps up onto the
dais. A second later, they’re gone.

Tinok’s stomach grumbles. The time when they
should have received their third meal of the day has come and gone.
Still within the cell, the ever present fear remains with them. He
and Esix sit against the back wall side by side. They talk of their
times together, family and friends whom they’re sure they’ll never
again see, all the while trying to banish the fear that has become
an ever present, unwelcome guest.

How long they’ve been down here now isn’t
clear. The ever pervasive darkness outside their cell prevents the
possibility to accurately judge the passing of time. During a time
when Tinok was listening to Esix talk of an experience with a
neighbor’s daughter that turned into a bad situation with the
girl’s father, his eyes begin to detect a growing red glow some
distance away from their cell.

“Look!” he says as he rises to his feet.

Esix stops talking and turns his attention
toward the red glow. He, as well as the others in the cell with
him, get to their feet. The red glow continuously brightens and the
light coming from it casts eerie shadows about the cavern. For as
the light brightens, they see that they are in fact in an
underground cavern.

The ceiling vaults into darkness high above
them, a few stalagmites dot the outer edge of the cavern floor. As
the glow brightens still further, they come to realize that it
comes from an object seeming to float in mid air two feet off the
floor.

Beneath the glowing object, the floor of the
cavern has been smoothed. The smoothed area encompasses a good
portion of the cavern floor. It’s rather hard to make out, but it
appears there are six similar patterns marked out upon the floor
spaced evenly in a circle around the glowing object. Each of the
patterns is ringed itself by many symbols, symbols that hurt the
eyes if you stare at them too long. A lone circular pattern, larger
than the others, is situated not too far outside the ring of six.
Twice the number of intricate symbols encompasses that one than the
ones in the ring of six.

“What is going on?” Esix asks.

“Man I don’t know,” replies Tinok.

Then his eye catches a movement and he turns
his gaze toward a shadow. But the shadow is not remaining
motionless as a shadow should. Rather, it is moving across the
floor and through the light the way a shadow shouldn’t be able to.
The sight renews the terror that Tinok had been working to banish
to the back of his mind.

“There’s another one!” exclaims Esix, the
fear making him speak more earnestly than is his want. More than a
couple of the shadows are seen moving about out there. At last they
now know the source of their fear. All the while the red glow of
the object continues to intensify and deepen in color.

One of the other prisoners cries out and
faints when a figure appears at the bottom of the stairway. The
figure walks slowly yet steadily toward the larger circle of
symbols outside the ring of six. Little more than a shadow itself,
the figure seems to almost suck the light from the cavern as it
moves into it.

Behind the figure marches six men in armor,
all can only be warrior priests. Tinok recognizes the armor of the
one who had led them here through the Mists. Then come a dozen of
the cowled figures.

When the dark figure that is leading them
reaches the larger circle, he comes to a stop. The six warrior
priests fan out behind him, and the dozen cowled figures do the
same behind them.

Raising arms that can only be called
skeletal, the figure begins speaking. Each syllable sends fear
through the prisoners, their heads throb painfully as the words
seem to cut into their minds. Tinok finds that he’s put his hands
over his ears in an attempt to keep the sound out, but it does no
good.

At last, the figure stops speaking.
Breathing a sigh of relief as the pain stops, Tinok then is filled
with fear the likes of which he has never felt before, primal fear
that threatens to take his very sanity. For from the darkness of
the deepest part of the cavern come six monstrous monstrosities,
more terrifying than anything his imagination could ever hope to
match.

More of the prisoners faint dead away. Esix
slumps to the ground next to him and he’s unable to move to help
his friend. Incapable of tearing his eyes away, he grips the bars
of the cell in a grip so tight that his knuckles have turned
incredibly white from the strain.