The five of them made a simple camp just outside the seal. There they ate a final meal in the sunlight before heading in. Morget roasted the cave beetle steaks and served out large portions to each of them. “We’ll need our strength,” he explained. “We may be in there for several hours before we find the demon.”
Malden stared at the meat he was given. It was white and stringy and still attached to a piece of shriveled shell. “I’ve always found it best to exercise on an empty stomach,” he protested.
“Don’t be such a ninny,” Cythera said, laughing at him.
Malden felt his cheeks grow red. He took a small bite of the meat, and was surprised, to say the least. “Ha! This is actually pretty good. A little like crabmeat. And a bit like venison.” He ate it all, and then had another serving. There was none left by the time Herward came up to their camp, his nose twitching in the air.
“I smelled your repast,” the hermit said. “Not that I would ever consume flesh. Oh, no. Never. But I’ll admit the odor was tempting.”
Croy shrugged. “Then I am glad to say we have nothing to offer you, for I would hate to lead any man to sin.”
“Yes… that is good.” Malden could hear Herward’s stomach rumbling. “It is what She would want-”
The holy man stopped speaking then. He seemed transfixed as if by a vision.
Malden followed his gaze and saw him looking at the entrance to the Vincularium.
“The Lady be praised,” Herward said, staring in mortal dread at the opening in the seal. “She has ordained that what was closed, now may be opened.”
Malden rolled his eyes but said nothing. In his experience it was a bad idea to try to disillusion the religiously insane. Herward’s cosmology depended on everything that happened making perfect sense in the context of his faith. Upsetting that turnip cart would do no one any good.
“The chains?” Herward asked. “They were enchanted…”
Cythera put a hand on the hermit’s shoulder. “The crone of your vision allowed the enchantment to be removed,” she said. Malden silently applauded her tact. What she said was entirely true. It was Coruth who had appeared in that vision, and it was also Coruth who had given Cythera the power to drain the curses from the chains. “Clearly she approves of our enterprise.”
Herward nodded. His eyes weren’t focusing, Malden saw-they were looking at something invisible. The hermit dropped to his knees, his hands clutched together before him. “The Lady be praised! How long have I waited for this! I’ve spent years of my life studying the Elders, winkling out their secrets. How many times have I dreamt of this, of walking up here and finding the way open. How much can I learn from this place? I cannot begin to tell you what this means!”
Morget laughed. Cythera shot the barbarian a nasty look, but Morget simply shrugged. “Why then, little man, it should be your honor to go inside before us!”
Herward turned toward the barbarian and for a moment his eyes cleared and Malden could tell he was gripped by a sudden fit of lucidity. “Inside?” he asked. “Actually… go inside?”
He turned to face the opening. That dark, forbidding hole in the seal where the breath of ancient times stirred restlessly. Anything could be in there, anything at all, but most likely nothing friendly.
Every eye was on Herward as he took a step forward, then another. Even from a distance Malden could see how badly the hermit’s hands shook. Herward reached up carefully toward one of the chains, but his hand didn’t make contact. Instead, he cleared his throat, and stood up straighter, and said, “No. No… the vision was clear. I am to aid you, not join you. Someone must stay here and see to your things, yes?”
Croy walked over to the hermit and nodded sagely. “It’s what She would wish, I think.”
“Indeed. Her name be praised,” Herward said, and rushed back to stand behind Morget and Slag, who were the farthest from the opening.
Croy stayed where he was. The knight bent down and looked into the hole, and Malden saw that he wasn’t shaking at all. If anything, Croy looked like he was about to run forward and squeeze himself inside, to get at the demon in there as fast as possible.
Malden had to admit that Croy had courage. He supposed that was what made him a knight in the first place-that willingness to throw himself into danger for a noble cause. For the first time in a while, he realized he actually admired the man.
“Malden,” Croy said, “would you be so kind as to take a look, and say if we must proceed?”
“Me?” Malden asked.
But then he remembered why he’d been brought along on this journey. He was the one who was supposed to clear the Vincularium of its deadly traps.
Maybe he should have run off for Helstrow after all, and taken his chances with the law. Nothing for it now, though. He came up next to Croy and then crouched down to look at the hole. “It looks big enough for us to crawl through,” he said, rubbing his chin. He reached up to touch the stone where it had warped and flowed. It was cool to the touch now. “And I suppose there are worse ways to enter a place than through the front door.”
“Not your usual method of ingress, eh?” Slag asked. The dwarf peered into the darkness beyond the opening and pulled at his beard.
“In my line, the back door is often preferred, yes. Let’s take a look.” Malden lit a lantern and shone its light inside. He saw dull-colored rock, mostly. A wraith of mist swirled inside the opening, droplets of water catching some subterranean breeze and then flinging themselves outward, through his light. Nothing moved in there. Most like, nothing had moved in there for centuries.
He started to crawl inside, but Croy grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. “Herward is saying a prayer for us,” the knight told him.
“Oh, good. I’d hate to go in there without divine sanction.”
The prayer was a long one, but Malden consoled himself with the knowledge that the holy man would be taking care of his horse while he was inside. For free. When it was done, Malden looked at Morget, who was sharpening his axe with a whetstone. At Slag, who was trying to peer around Malden’s arm for a better look inside. At Cythera, who failed to meet his gaze. And then at Croy, who set his jaw in a determined angle.
“Shall we go inside now?” Malden asked, and gestured toward the opening.
“You first,” Slag suggested.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Malden crawled forward on his hands and knees a few feet and then slowly stood up. The light coming in through the fissure behind him illuminated no more than a patch of marble floor. On either side, and as far above him as he could imagine, lay nothing but darkness and stale air.
His eyes burned with the dark almost at once. His skin tingled and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Because his vision was next to useless, his other senses leapt to fill the gap in what he could perceive. He heard water dripping, somewhere far off. The echoes it made seemed to roll across vast smooth expanses of stone. He smelled the must of centuries, old dust and a hint of decay. His fingertips felt extremely sensitive, as if he could reach for the great darkness before him and stroke it like fur.
Not that he would probably want to.
No one had been in that room for centuries, he thought. And the last people to come through this way-the elves-had good reason to regret it. They must have believed they’d found a safe haven, a place they could fortify in their war against humanity. Instead they’d found their deaths.
Would the darkness in such a place, abandoned for so long, begin to congeal? Would it take on some semblance of life-or at least, harbor some emotion? Malden told himself he was just being silly. That the still air inside the Vincularium could not become angry on its own. There were probably ghosts inside, remnants of the elves who’d perished here. There was certainly a demon in there. But the Vincularium itself was just a pile of old stone. It could not resent his presence. It couldn’t hate him, or want him to leave.
No matter how much it felt that way.
“Is it safe?” Croy said from behind him.
Malden couldn’t help but jump. He didn’t turn around-he imagined the daylight outside would be blinding after
