“Interesting,” commented Tarrel. “My Aereni’s kind of rusty, but I think that says ‘Master.’ Wait!”
His warning came too late. Mordan swung the door open, took half a pace into the passage beyond—and stopped in midstride. Brey and Tarrel stared for a few moments, but he didn’t move. He didn’t even look as though he was breathing.
“It’s probably trapped.” Tarrel finished tonelessly, looking at Brey with a gesture of despair. Standing as far from the doorway as she could, she grabbed Mordan by the neck and dragged him back into the room. He was as stiff as a statue. She laid him down on the stone floor; his forward foot stuck incongruously into the air, frozen before he could finish his step.
Tarrel examined him, then breathed a sigh of relief.
“Looks like he’s only paralyzed,” he said. “With luck, he’ll come round in a minute or two.” He searched the ground just beyond the doorway, and held up a pinch of dirt between finger and thumb.
“This was on the floor,” he said, “marking out some kind of glyph until our brilliant colleague disturbed it.” Brey was looking down at Mordan in concern.
“Are you sure he’ll snap out of it by himself?”
“Not completely sure,” said Tarrel, “but most magical paralysis doesn’t last too long. I’ll give him till I’ve looked over those rooms he found down the passage. If he isn’t moving by then, I’ve got a scroll that ought to fix him up.”
“You seem to know a lot about magic,” said Brey. “Did you train as a wizard?”
“No,” Tarrel replied, “but I’ve made a study of scrolls and things. If I can figure out how something works, I can usually use it.”
“Like the wand?” Brey asked. Tarrel trotted off to examine the rooms Mordan had found earlier.
As Tarrel had predicted, Mordan’s paralysis did not last long. After a minute or so his heel dropped to the floor. He blinked and sat up, surprised to find himself prone.
“What happened?” he asked Brey.
“According to Tarrel, you walked into a trap,” she replied. “Next time, be more careful—you could have been killed!”
“I didn’t know you cared,” he said, climbing to his feet. Brey gave him a sour smile. “Where is Tarrel, by the way?”
“Checking out those rooms you found,” said Brey, pointing to the passage. Just as they reached it, Tarrel emerged, with his sack slung over his shoulder.
“You were right about the spellcasting,” he said. “There’s not much in those rooms, but I did pick up a few spellbooks. Mostly necromancy, by the look of them.”
“Makes sense,” said Mordan.
“Well, then,” said Tarrel briskly, “time to see the master’s quarters.” He strode toward the doorway.
“Watch out for that trap,” warned Mordan.
Tarrel grinned back at him. “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “You took care of it when you set it off.” Mordan scowled and drew his rapier, following Tarrel through the doorway into a short passage.
At the end of the passage was a round chamber with a domed roof. It was dominated by a stepped dais supporting an ornate throne, which was apparently made of fused bones. Skulls decorated the back and the ends of the arm rests. Tarrel looked at it through his crystal lens.
“It’s not magical,” he said. The three looked around the chamber. There were two doors, one on each side of the throne. Between the doors, the walls were decorated with weird tapestries depicting scenes of life, death, and undeath.
Tarrel examined the doors. The one on the left was carved with the symbol of a fanged, demonic face, its mouth open as if to devour all who dared enter.
“I know that sign,” said Brey with a shudder. “The Blood of Vol.”
The second door, on the right of the grisly throne, was marked with the same elven rune that they had seen before.
“The master’s chamber?” wondered Mordan.
Tarrel approached the door with caution, examining it carefully through his crystal lens. Then he dropped to a crouch and looked at the floor immediately in front of it. Putting on a thick leather glove, he turned the iron handle and pushed the door. It swung open with a faint creak.
“After you,” said Mordan. Tarrel stepped cautiously through the doorway, and the others followed.
The room beyond was smaller than they expected. There was scarcely enough space for the plain wooden bed and tall cupboard. The walls were completely bare.
Inside the cupboard, Tarrel found a few changes of clothing, including a couple of richly worked ceremonial robes, which he stuffed into his sack. Mordan, meanwhile, was examining the bed but found nothing except a ceramic chamber-pot.
“I guess he wasn’t undead,” he said, holding the pot up. Tarrel suppressed a laugh; Brey just averted her eyes and muttered something about boys.
The mood was more somber, though, when they returned to the antechamber and looked again at the demonic face inscribed on the other door.
“Allow me,” said Brey. She shattered the door with a powerful kick, sending splinters flying into the space beyond. The demonic face was destroyed.
Inside, it was too dark for Mordan to see anything. Trampling the fragments of the broken door, Brey and Tarrel went in, while Mordan reached into a pocket and pulled out the glowing pebble that Tarrel had given him. Holding it over his head, he saw a small room with a stone altar at the back, and other objects ranged around it.
The walls were black, and covered with a fine arcane script written in something brown and powdered. Tarrel was looking at the script and making notes, while Brey scratched off some of the brown pigment with a fingernail and sniffed it cautiously.
“Blood,” she said, to no one in particular.
Tarrel looked up from his examination of the script. “Blood of Vol,” he replied. “Your former employer had his own private chapel.” He turned and examined the altar.
The altar was a block of dark green stone the size of a small table, flecked and veined with scarlet. A depression in the top held more dried blood, and flanking the bowl were two candlesticks made of bone. They had a skeletal hand at each end: the burnt-down nub of a rune-inscribed candle was clutched in the fingers of the upper hand, while the lower one stood on its spread fingertips like a weird spider. Tarrel began sketching.
Standing in front of the altar was a prayer-stand of black wood, inlaid with elaborate patterns in bone. On its rail, a book lay open. Brey glanced at down and flinched, instinctively making the sign of the Silver Flame. She picked the book up, and tore it in half down the spine.
“Hey!” called Tarrel, turning at the sound. “Don’t do that! That’s evidence!” He laid a restraining hand on Brey’s arm and noticed that she was trembling.
“It’s a blasphemy,” she said between clenched teeth. “It must be destroyed, in the name of the—of the …” Her voice tailed off; she still could not pronounce the name of her deity.
“Silver Flame,” said Tarrel gently, finishing her sentence. Brey winced at the sound, but gave him a wan smile. “I’ll make you a deal,” Tarrel continued. “Just for now, let me put it in my sack, where it can’t do any harm to anyone. When all this is over, I’ll give it back to you—or I’ll take it to Thrane and hand it over to the Church—and then it can be destroyed with all the ceremony, and righteous wrath, and anything else you want.” He looked at Brey, holding the mouth of his sack open. Slowly, she relaxed her grip on the two halves of the book.
“Don’t read it,” she said, fixing him with an urgent gaze. “It’s …”
“Don’t worry,” said Tarrel. “I won’t. But I would like an expert to look it over—with proper magical and religious precautions, of course. It could tell us something about what we’re up against—maybe even give us some idea of a weakness.” There was a moment’s pause, and then Brey dropped the pieces into the sack. Tarrel closed the top quickly.