Chapter 11
1586 Words
11
Marcus scurried over to the doors and looked inside. “By Gad. . . “ he whispered.
“By technology,” Sage corrected him.
I squinted into the darkness. “So should we have someone stay out of here in case technology decides to lock us in?”
Midge flapped his wings and twittered. Bee nodded. “Yes, I quite agree. Those doors sounded just awful.”
Sage illuminated his hand with flame and stepped into the hall. He peeked behind the left-hand door and pursed his lips. “I think these gears have sprung their last.”
“Fifteen centuries will do that,” Caius quipped.
“Then let’s go inside!” Marcus insisted as he dashed inside.
“Marcus!” Caius shouted.
Marcus skidded to a stop and sheepishly looked over his shoulder. “But the doors won’t close on us, right?”
“That doesn’t mean there might not be any other dangers like traps,” Caius pointed out.
Sage held his hand aloft and studied the wide hall with its stone floor. “This hall was tread by many feet. I doubt they would risk a mourner falling into a pit or being impaled by a spear that shot out of the wall.”
Marcus scurried back to us and pulled on Caius’ hand. “Then let’s go!”
We walked into the hall and our steps echoed off the walls. Sage’s light shone twenty feet in front of us and showed niches in the stone. I paused beside one of them and squinted into the shadows. A gasp escaped my lips and I started back.
Caius was at my side in a second and grabbed my hands. “What’s wrong?”
I pointed a shaking finger at the niche. “I think I met one of the residents.”
My quivering digit pointed at a pile of bones, and atop them was a grinning skull. Sage returned and inspected some other niches close at hand. “This was apparently a communal burial area.”
“I guess that’s why nobody’s ever found any graves of them,” Caius mused as he swept his eyes up and down the wall. “There must be hundreds of them in here.”
“Their treasure must be at the end of the hall!” Marcus insisted.
Sage smiled at him. “Then let us go see.”
We continued on through corridor of the dead and to its end. The hall opened to a circular room with a domed ceiling much like a miniature basilica. The curved walls were filled with hundreds more niches, all of them filled with grinning skulls.
In the center of the room sat three large stone sarcophagus. The coffins had been carved from the stone itself and were smoothed to a shine. The natural rock had swirls and knots, and by Sage’s light all those imperfections created a dazzling tapestry of life in stone. The only markings on the lids was a three-pointed star surrounded by a circle carved into the stone at the head over the chest area. On each of the feet on the sides of the sarcophagus were impressions of three figures looking as they did outside the tomb.
“Did they use magic to cut into this rock?” Caius wondered.
Sage brushed his hand against the stone wall and shook his head. “No. I believe this was done by a precise cutting automata.”
“You mean like the technology we saw in Staba?” I guessed.
He nodded. “I believe so. From what I garnered from the journal, the exiles took with them as much of their technology as they could carry. That would include tools needed to cut stone and wood.”
Marcus hurried into the room and looked around. “Forget the rock! Where’s the treasure?”
“Didn’t the riddle mention something about legs?” I reminded my companions.
Marcus leapt up to the center sarcophagus and grabbed the thick lid. “Maybe it’s in the coffins!”
Caius grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. “If it is then we’re not getting it.”
Marcus puckered out his lips in a pout. “But we’re so close.”
“We don’t know that,” Caius countered.
Sage flipped through the journal and reread the passage about the treasure. “To lie forever among between the two. To lie in private, a leg but no shoe.”
“See?” Marcus insisted as he pointed with his free hand at the center sarcophagus. “It’s in there!”
Caius pursed his lips and looked over to Sage and Bee. “You guys ever robbed a tomb?”
Sage clapped the journal shut and shook his head. “No.”
“And we don’t intend to do it now,” Bee added.
Caius returned his attention to his brother. “That makes it almost unanimous. What about you, Marcus? You wouldn’t disturb someone’s sleep like that, would you?”
Marcus’ face fell and he hung his head. “I guess not. . .”
Caius smiled and released him. “Good, because I don’t want to start doing it myself, either. Think if you were nice and comfortable in the ground for all these years and then somebody dug you up.”
Marcus frowned at him. “I know, all right? I don’t need to think about that, I just need to remember Mom and Dad, and them not having any place to rest.”
A look of shock mixed with sorrow passed over Caius’ face before he caught himself and nodded. “Yeah. It’s like that.”
I gestured to the circular space around us. “Then how about we look everywhere else?”
Among the many dead there was no trace of any chests other than a few bare pieces of leather and a few broken pots. Sage knelt in front of the remains and brushed his hand against the floor. “Perhaps there was treasure here at one time. These depressions in the floor are in the shape of chests, and only a great wealth could have made such holes. That, or the Miamorans had a fondness for heavy stones which someone stole.”
“Whatever they held, it’s long gone now,” Caius mused.
As eager as I was to discover the treasure, it was the sarcophagus that held my attention. I walked over to the center one which stood a little higher than the other two and ran my hand down the smooth coffin lid. The white stone was a soft as fresh soap, but as hard as the toughest steel. My fingers fell into depressions that I recognized as letters of the Miamoran language.
“What’s this say?” I asked my grandfather as I pointed at some letters on the lid of the central sarcophagus.
Sage stepped up to my side and squinted at the markings. “It says ‘Aiken tos Levinan. Dearest Brother. Savior of Our Legacy. Birth Year 2860 of Sorrow, Death Year 3632 of Sorrow.’” He drew back and wrinkled his nose. “Those are quite some interesting dates.”
“I thought people in this world only lived for a couple of centuries,” I reminded him.
Sage turned his face to me and I could see the confusion on his face. “I have never heard of anyone living longer than three centuries. Even the most fantastic of tales speak only of five centuries.”
I swept my eyes over the other two sarcophagi. “What do the other ones say?”
Caius stood near the left-hand coffin and read the top. “Fen tos Levina. Birth Year 2860 of Sorrow. Death-” He paused and frowned. “It’s scratched out.”
Bee cleared her throat. “This one says Ezra tos Rothian. Birth Year 2760 of Sorrow. Death-” Midge twittered, and she nodded. “Yes, I can see that this one is also scratched out.”
“But what about the treasure?” Marcus insisted as he threw up his arms. His face was a picture of disappointment. “There has to be something here.”
Caius shook his head. “I don’t think so, Marcus. It looks like it was taken out of here a long time ago, if it ever was here.”
Marcus’ shoulders drooped and he hung his head. “But what about Father Ferrero? And everyone else.” Caius walked over and ruffled his brother’s hair. Marcus pushed his arm away and scowled at him. “I’m serious! I was going to help them!”
“You can help them even more by being there for them,” Caius countered.
Marcus sighed. “I suppose. . .”
Caius set his hand on the young lad’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. You don’t look so good.”
Marcus turned his face away. “I’m fine. . .”
Sage held his light up to the young lad and showed off his increasing pallor. “Your brother is quite right in wishing you to leave. I will read the journal and if I find anything we shall return.”
Marcus eyed my grandfather with a sharp look. “You won’t leave me behind?”.
Sage smiled and bowed his head. “Of course not. You will be the first to be informed of any new discoveries.”
Marcus’ eyes widened and looked up at Caius. “We should tell the baron what we found!”
“Or didn’t find,” Caius corrected him.
“Then let us leave these gloomy halls and partake of some more sun,” Sage suggested.
We walked back down the hall, but had a conundrum at the end. I stopped between the open doors and looked from one to the other. “What are we going to do about these things? They really won’t work again?”
“That is very doubtful,” Sage mused as he gave the mechanics behind the doors another look. “The gears are rusted and dust a foot thick covers all the oiled parts.”
“Then we’ll leave them open and get some rope from the father,” Caius suggested. “We could tie the rope to them and close them from the outside.”
Sage turned to Caius with raised eyebrows. “By Gad, that is quite an intelligent suggestion. Have those close confines within the halls of the Miamorans inspired some sense in you?”
Caius grinned. “No, it’s just a good way to sneak back out of a house if you use the rope you climbed into to close the window after you.”
“Did you really do that?” Marcus asked him.
“A few times, but let’s go get that rope.”
- Writer
