Cow skulls.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of white, empty- eyed cow skulls.
Aahz finished making sure the slats were back in place behind us, then turned and stopped cold beside me. I was glad to see he had the same reaction I did. It was always good to know my mentor could be shocked.
"Someone want to explain this to me?" Glenda asked, her voice echoing through the remains of an entire herd.
"Maybe it's a thousand years of former royal family?" Aahz said. "Look at that one."
He pointed at one skull hung on the wall, ornately decorated with gems.
I knew that wasn't exactly right. I could feel it in the energy in this place. After a moment I turned to Tanda.
"Can you feel anything odd in here?"
"Power," she said.
"An energy focus?" Aahz asked.
"Sure seems that way," Tanda said. "Or maybe there's something special about these skulls, something in them that magnifies the magikal power of this area and turns it into something different."
I found myself, to my own amazement, moving forward toward the closest shelf of skulls. I reached out and lightly touched the smooth, cool surface of one. It did have energy, but not energy like I had been taught by Aahz to use. There was different energy in it, used for something more than just magik.
"Vampire energy," I said.
Tanda and Glenda came up beside me, each carefully reach ing out and touching a skull.
"He's right," Tanda said. "These skulls seem to take magical energy and change it, radiating the new energy needed to turn cows into vampires."
"Are you kidding me?" Aahz asked, standing off to one side.
"No, she's not," Glenda said. She waved her hand at the thousands and thousands of skulls. "Welcome to the energy source of the vampire rulers of this world."
"And the energy is starting to get stronger," Tanda said. "I can feel it."
"The sun is going down," I said. "We need to get out of here."
I opened up the map and looked at it. Through the room, against the far wall, was the door we needed to go through. And on the other side of that door was something I hadn't expected us to get so close to this fast.
The golden cow.
The treasure we had come so far to find. It was one secret door away, in a room called the Meadow.
"Take a look at this," I said, spreading the map out for everyone to see.
"Now what do we do?"
Aahz looked at the map and smiled.
"We go capture us a leader as a hostage and make sure we get our freedom."
"Sounds good to me," Tanda said.
"Why don't I think it's going to be that easy?" I said.
"Because it never is." Glenda said.
Around me the empty-eyed cow skulls started to hum faintly and vibrate a little, filling the room with a noise that ate at my very soul.
"Whatever we're going to do," Tanda said, her hands over her ears, "let's do it fast."
Again I stuffed the map in my pouch and, with my hands over my ears as well, I headed through the middle of thousands of humming skulls toward the secret panel in the far wall.
By the time I got there the sound from the skulls in my head was so painful I didn't even stop. I just went right on through and out onto a thick carpet of beautiful grass.
Aahz, Tanda, and Glenda followed me, with Aahz shut ting the secret panel behind us, instantly stopping the painful energy pounding at my head. I would have been relieved if I hadn't been so stunned at what faced me.
There was a guy, sitting in a lounge chair on the other side of the field of grass, reading a newspaper. If he had had on a white apron, he would have looked almost exactly like the guy who had waited on us in Audry's.
The setting sun was pouring through one of the room's giant windows and turning the nearby hills to a wonderful shade of gold and pink and red.
I glanced around. Except for the patch of grass we were standing on, the room looked like a large suite, with a big bed, a kitchen against one wall, and a private bathroom area off to one side.
The guy was sitting in what looked like a livingroom area, except that there was only one chair. He looked over at us, then shook his head as if not believing what he was seeing. Then he looked at us again and jumped to his feet, an expression of sheer joy and happiness on his face.
"My wonderful heavens!" he shouted. "You've finally come!"
"I think he's happy to see us," Tanda whispered.
The guy came toward us, his face almost breaking from the smile filling it.
"Really happy," I whispered back.
"My friends, my friends, come in," he said, motioning us to come toward his living area. "Don't be afraid. I'm just so happy you have arrived."
"You are?" Aahz asked.
The guy laughed.
"I am. I honestly am. I can't believe after all this time the map has finally brought someone to rescue me!"
Chapter Thirteen
"You can't always get what you want."
M. JAGGER
The guy led us off the grass and into what was clearly his home.
"Sorry for the mess," he said, scampering about picking up a book here, a notebook there, some dishes which he quickly put in the sink. We all just sort of stood in a group watching him. "My name is Harold. I'm sorry I don't have enough chairs for you all."
He looked like a Harold. The name fit him, and all the other guys who looked a lot like him in all the Audry's-like places we had been in. Harold pulled his one kitchen chair away from the small table and set it out, then indicated that one of us should take it and another should take his recliner. It was beyond clear that he never got guests of any kind-at least the type of guests he wanted to sit down with. I think at that point we were all so stunned by what he had said, we really weren't reacting well. I know I wasn't. I have no real idea what I thought I was going to find when we got to the "treasure," but a guy waiting to be rescued sure wasn't it. And a guy who had used the map to bring his rescuers would have never occurred to me. Only Glenda took his offer of the recliner and settled into it with a deep sigh. The guy looked at her, worried.
"You were captured and taken last night, were you not?"
"I was," she said.
Harold looked sincerely upset. "I'm so sorry. You're so lucky you survived it."
"We saw a room full of people who didn't," Aahz said.
The poor guy looked like he might just faint away right there. He was wringing his hands, shaking his head, and pacing.
"It's all my fault, you know. All my fault."
"Okay," Aahz said, trying to calm the guy a little. "You want to explain to us what's going on?"
"Actually start from the beginning," I said, leaning against the kitchen counter.
From where I stood I could see out the two-story-tall win dows that flanked one side of the big room. The valley below was in complete shadow, but the sun still covered the moun tains and streamed in through the window onto the grass. If this was a prison, it was the nicest jail cell I had seen in a long time.
Harold nodded. "I'm sorry, I am just so shocked you are here, that the map worked."
"The beginning," Aahz reminded him.
"Please?" Tanda said. "Right now you are looking at four of the most confused people you have ever seen."