Now, the fools stood before a set of imposing doors over twenty feet high. Even from here Durgoth could see that the portal was composed entirely of silver, catching the torchlight and sending shimmering waves of illumination cascading throughout the room. Beyond that door, however, the cleric could sense a brooding presence. It beat against his mind even now, threatening to rip away thought and sanity in a wave of darkness. Durgoth steeled himself against its power, recalling a defensive spell, and managed a small smile as the pressure in his head receded.
A cry of pain from the assembled Nyrondese drew his attention. The fire-haired bard stood to the left of her oafish warrior, who had fallen to his knees. In the fighter’s right hand, Durgoth could see the cylindrical key, still glowing from whatever spell had activated when he had pressed it to the door.
“I’m all right,” he heard the man say as he rose unsteadily to his feet, “but I don’t think this is the right key.”
“Perhaps we should use the first key we found in the preparation room?” This came from the elf.
The bard shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.
Durgoth ground his teeth in frustration. It was impossible to imagine how these fools had managed to penetrate so far into the tomb. He watched the assembled Nyrondese as they debated their next course of action, and he was almost as surprised as they when Bredeth gave a cry of anger and swung his blade at the door. The door gave out a sonorous peal when the sword rebounded off its face.
And then it began to bleed. At first, the deep crimson liquid trickled from the spot of contact, but it soon increased its flow until a steady stream of blood shot out from the door. Durgoth watched as the party recovered from its initial shock, but it soon became clear that, despite their efforts to staunch the bizarre wound, the blood would continue to stream out of the door. Already, it covered the steps and pooled thinly around the cleric’s feet.
They were arguing now, heatedly trying to determine their next move. This time, Durgoth found himself fighting the urge to order an attack, but he needed them to bypass the tomb’s remaining traps and summon the presence of Acererak. Once that had been accomplished, he would kill each one of them with impunity.
“Enough, all of you!” shouted the bard, and to Durgoth’s great surprise, they all listened. “I think I’ve found out how to bypass this door,” she said. “Acererak’s riddle speaks of the throne that’s key and keyed. Well, we know that the throne itself was keyed. Bredeth used the scepter to unlock the passage beneath it.” She cast a grateful glance at the young noble. “What if the scepter is also the key for this door?”
“You speak wisdom,” the decrepit mage responded, turning to the rest of the group. Durgoth, still hiding in the shadows, shook his head. A part of him longed to snap the patronizing nobleman’s brittle neck. Only a few more minutes, he thought, and I can rid myself of all of them.
“What side of the scepter did you use to unlock the throne?” the wizard asked.
“The side with the silver knob,” the young man responded.
The mage nodded and took the scepter from the bard. Durgoth watched as the old man placed the implement’s gold ball against a depression in the doors. There was a moment of complete silence. The stream of blood slowed to a trickle and finally stopped.
Durgoth watched with barely contained excitement as the doors swung silently open. He crept to the back of the passage where the remainder of his followers waited expectantly. In a short while, his quest would be complete. Years of patient struggle and endless plotting would finally pay off.
And the killing would begin.
24
Kaerion entered the imposing chamber with his sword drawn, ready for an attack—and nearly dropped the weapon as a bright wave of illumination assaulted his eyes. Blinking hard to adjust his vision, he called out a warning to the rest of the party. They entered slowly, cautious of the dangers that might lay hidden in this room.
Unlike the halls within the rest of the tomb, this square chamber contained elaborately crafted gold sconces spaced regularly along the walls. A bright yellow flame burned hotly within each of the gilded holders. Like the ceiling in the foyer from whence the party had come, polished silver covered the roof of this room, reflecting and magnifying the light from each sconce so intensely that it took Kaerion a few moments to realize that the flames burned with an unearthly power. They neither flickered nor reacted to the passage of the party in any way.
A few more steps carried him into the center of the chamber. What he saw nearly took his breath away. Kaerion stood, not upon the familiar gray stone that had made up most of the tomb, but on top of a floor composed of a semi-precious material—agate from the look of it—crafted and polished to gleaming perfection. A granite sarcophagus rested on the floor against the far wall, and even from his position Kaerion could see the slant and whorl of ancient glyphs inscribed about its surface. In front of the burial mound stood an oversized bronze urn. The unmistakable flash of gold filigree caught his eye as the object’s decorative swirls reflected the light. Kaerion watched warily as a thin stream of bluish-gray smoke issued forth from a vent near the urn’s brass stopper.
“Will you look at that,” a voice from behind him said. Kaerion looked at the speaker and was surprised to find himself regarding Landra. The guard captain had moved forward with the rest of the party and stopped in the chamber’s center. She gazed intently at the two massive iron chests that sat to either side of the sarcophagus.
“This must be Acererak’s treasury,” Landra said in a hushed voice. If this were any other place at any other time, Kaerion might have smiled. This was the first time he had seen the veteran awed by anything.
“Be careful about what you touch,” Phathas wheezed. “I don’t think we’ve reached the heart of this tomb yet.”
Concerned but mindful of the mage’s pride, Kaerion watched as the old wizard walked unsteadily toward the sarcophagus and lifted his staff above its granite lid Phathas muttered a few words and then took a step back, a look of surprise stamped clearly upon his wizened face. “Nothing!” the mage exclaimed.
“There are no spells on the sarcophagus?” Gerwyth asked as he walked gracefully up to the man.
“No. I mean that I felt nothing,” the mage explained in a tone so exasperated that Kaerion winced in sympathy for his friend’s innocent question. “My spell didn’t work!” Phathas began to cast another spell. Again nothing happened. “It appears that something is interfering with my magic,” the old man said. “What about you Majandra?”
It only took a few moments for the bard to determine that she too was affected by this strange occurrence. “Well,” she said in a tone so similar to Phathas’ earlier exclamation that Kaerion had to fight off the urge to smile, “whatever wards are blocking our magic don’t seem to be affecting the tomb itself.” The bard pointed to the wall sconces.
“Shouldn’t we open the sarcophagus?” Bredeth asked. “It might be Acererak’s final resting place.”
“No,” Kaerion found himself saying. “Acererak is close, but he isn’t here.”
The others looked at him, but he merely shrugged. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He could feel the evil wizard’s presence like a canker in his mind. He’d felt it before—briefly, when they had first entered the Vast Swamp. There, however, it had been merely a trickle of premonition. Here, close to the heart of Acererak’s damned crypt, the force of it nearly made him ill. He hadn’t felt such things since Dorakaa—and the implications of that were almost more terrifying than the palpable sense of Acererak’s presence.