The Time of Troubles had followed forty years after that, and none of Faer?n remained untouched. Gods had walked the lands, and death and destruction had followed. The building of more gravesites had followed as well.
Knowing that the other boys in the group were on the verge of deserting him, Cerril plucked Malar's coin from his belt pouch. The gold coin glinted dully under the overcast night sky.
Effortlessly sliding the gold coin on top of his thumb, Cerril sent it flipping through the air with a practiced toss. Even heavy as it was, the gold coin twisted and twinkled, making the most of the available light.
At the apex of its flight, the coin seemed to catch a brilliant streak of light. The gold burned reddish-yellow for a moment, like it had suddenly caught fire or was freshly hammered from a dwarven forge. Noticing the effect, Cerril feared for his hand as the coin plummeted. Over the last three days, he'd felt nothing but evil from the coin.
The fire died out in the coin as suddenly as it had come. It fell heavily into Cerril's palm. Even if he'd deliberately tried to miss the coin, the cursed thing would have landed in his hand. Despite trying to lose the coin over the past few days, even to the point of luring pickpockets to snatch it from him, Cerril had been unable to get rid of the thing.
Cerril gazed at the coin lying against his palm. The heavy heat of the coin weighed against his palm. Breathlessly, he curled his fingers over it.
"That was a sign," Hekkel whispered.
"We're in the right place," someone else added.
"Where, Cerril?" another boy asked. "Which way do we head?"
For a moment, Cerril was afraid to answer, certain that the coin was only fooling with him. He felt a burning grip seize his heart and tug him forward, and he took a stumbling, protesting step. For a moment, the pressure around Cerril's heart eased, but it immediately tightened again, drawing him forward.
"This way," Cerril said in a squeaking voice that surprised him.
He raised his hand with the coin in it, as if the coin was now leading him. The others couldn't feel the pressure around his heart, but they couldn't miss the raised arm.
"It's pulling him!" one of the boys crowed excitedly. "The damn thing is leading him."
Cerril stumbled through the graveyard, feeling the pressure inside his chest increase even as he fought against it. He grew more afraid. Malar was a dark god, given to vengeance and bloodlust. During the Time of Troubles, Malar had tried to invade Gulthmere Forest and destroy the Emerald Enclave druids there. Nobanion, the Lion God of Gulthmere, also known as the guardian of the Reach, had turned the Stalker away from the forest.
The viselike grip tightened around Cerril's heart, urging him on. Drums sounded in the boy's ears, and for a moment he thought someone was beating them in the graveyard, then he realized that the sound came from the panicked rush of blood pounding through his own head.
Cerril's pace quickened from a halting stride to an uncertain-footed trot. He listened to his own footfalls smack against the rain-drenched loam. Weeds rustled as they pulled at the blanket he wore around his shoulders. Dead branches scraped through his hair and against his skin like a beast's claws.
High-pitched squeaks erupted from the dozens of rats that ran in front of Cerril. Several narrowly escaped getting trampled beneath the boys' feet as they pursued Cerril. Their excited whispers echoed in his ears.
Propelled by the anxiety that filled him and pressed against his heart, Cerril ran through the thickets of brush and fallen trees. Cheaply-made grave markers shattered beneath his feet. Here and there a few graves stood partially open, their denizens strewn across the ground. Grave robbers plied their craft in Alagh?n, but most stayed away from the burial grounds of the wealthy due to the wards that guarded them. None of them were brave enough to attempt robbing the grave of a wizard.
Perspiration poured from Cerril, forced out by the fever that filled him onto his chilled skin. Black spots swam in his vision as he rounded a freestanding tomb that had its roof partially caved in by a lightning-blasted oak.
A dozen crypts stood against the cemetery's back wall. Vines covered the wall. Flowers and leaves along the vines shivered as the cool wind raked its talons through them. Most of the crypts were in various stages of disrepair. Some of them were only a framework that had folded down onto the stone coffins.
Cerril's eyes lit on the largest of the crypts.
There, he told himself, and he knew he was right. Malar's coin pulsed strongly within his closed fist.
Cerril glanced across the rear section of the graveyard. His eyes focused on the squat, broad building that tucked into the graveyard's back wall. The roof was angled just enough to keep rainwater from collecting on it. Despite the building's obvious age, the roof remained intact, covered in wooden shingles that had to have only been replaced a few years before. None of the other crypts had a roof in such good repair.
"Is that it?" Two-Fingers asked.
"Yes," Cerril said, unable to stay back any longer.
The grip on his heart was too firm, too sure. He followed an overgrown path between rows of graves littered with rubble. No ornate markers or statuary occupied the graveyard's rearmost section.
The crypt was less than ten feet tall and was easily forty feet across. Though he couldn't accurately judge how far back the crypt went, Cerril felt certain it had to have been as deep as it was wide, if not deeper. Cracks tracked several of the layers of stone used in the building's construction. Weeds and saplings jutted from the cracks, seemingly growing from the building's corpse. A short flight of steep steps led up to a wide entrance where splintered wooden doors sagged from broken hinges. The thin veneer of stain and lacquer had worn away in places.
"Do you know what this building is?" Hekkel asked in a hushed voice.
"What is it?" Two-Fingers asked.
"See?" Hekkel pointed, just barely visible from the corner of Cerril's eye. "If you look hard under those creepers and vines, you can see a symbol there."
"It looks like the head of a goose," Two-Fingers said.
"Not a goose," Hekkel said. "That's a picture of a stream or a river pouring down into a lake."
"You think this is a well house?" Two-Fingers asked. "Or a bathhouse where the dead are cleaned?"
A couple of the boys cursed as they considered that possibility.
Cerril knew he almost lost part of his group then, and he didn't want to face alone whatever lurked inside. "It's not a bathhouse for the dead. That sign belongs to Eldath."
"Who is Eldath?" one of the younger boys asked. His name was Aran, and he'd only arrived in Alagh?n a few months before, an immigrant from the Whamite Isles that had been nearly destroyed during the Serosian War. Legend had it that the Taker, Iakhovas, had caused the destruction of the Whamite Isles. Now, according to reports, only the undead remnants of the island populations lived there.
Steadily feeling the pull from inside the building, Cerril reached the top of the short flight of stairs and walked into the crypt. Shadows cloistered in all the corners and it was hard to keep from imagining them moving.
"Eldath is a goddess," Hekkel whispered as the group followed. "They call her the Quiet One. She's a healer, and she serves Silvanus and helps the druids of the Emerald Enclave."
One of the boys cursed and spat. "My brother works as a logger. He hates the damned druids because they keep interfering with his work and making things hard for everybody."
"So this house belongs to Eldath?" Aran asked.
"No," Cerril answered. "It belongs to the Temple of the Trembling Flower. They represent Eldath in Alagh?n."
"I've never heard of it."
"The temple is small," Two-Fingers answered, surprising Cerril by even knowing of it. "Not many people are interested in worshiping a goddess who preaches that peaceful intentions can overcome a sword blow."
"So why would a coin bearing Malar's symbol call us here?" Aran asked.
The question, Cerril knew, was a good one-one that Cerril had been entertaining since he'd recognized the structure for what it was.
"Malar directs his believers to destroy the followers of Eldath as a show of faith to him."
"Bet that would make Eldath's priests take up a mace or a cudgel," Aran said.
"No," Cerril replied as he brushed away the cobwebs that blocked the entrance to the building, "it only makes for fewer worshipers for Eldath."
He peered inside the structure and saw cheaply made caskets crumbling on iron-studded shelves. Several of the caskets had broken and moldered away, revealing bits of skeletons wearing scraps of clothing.
"Damn!" Hekkel swore. "Skeletons! Those Cyric-blasted things could be enchanted to come alive and attack anyone who enters this place."
Cerril turned when he heard the footsteps of the group halt behind him. The fever burned within him again, pulsing at his temples.
"Those skeletons aren't going to rise," he said.
"There's no reason for us to be here, Cerril. You can go the rest of the way yourself. Malar's geas was laid on you, not us."
"Then I'll go myself," Cerril said, and his words echoed throughout the building.