you think that Malar would call me here, to this place claimed by Eldath, and not reward me?'
Hekkel's response died on his lips as the possibility locked into his brain.
'I'm sure,' Cerril said, turning back to continue through the rooms of broken caskets and dismembered skeletons dressed in rags, 'that there's enough here to take care of us all, at least for those among you brave enough to see this thing through.'
'Cerril's right,' Two-Fingers agreed in a stronger voice. 'Whatever Malar's giving him for this service, he's being generous enough to share it with us.'
'Cerril's not a generous person,' Hekkel objected.
But no one was listening to what Hekkel had to say anymore, Cerril noticed. The lure of gold and treasure was too much for the other boys. Alagh?n was a city filled with small treasures that had been hidden away and found many years later, and it was filled with still more stories of those forgotten treasures left by wealthy merchants, pirates, thieves, and nobility that had visited the Jewel of Turmish. Inventing the possibility of another such treasure was no stretch at all.
'What was this place?' Two-Fingers asked, following Cerril through the doorway into another room.
Cerril followed the pounding in his chest, going straight back and avoiding the other rooms that lay off the first one. He brushed more cobwebs from another open doorway.
'This was a charity crypt,' he said. 'People who die without kith or kin to bury them, or those who wander into Alagh?n and get killed but go unclaimed, end up here.'
'The priests say they care about these people?' Hekkel sounded doubtful.
'No,' Cerril replied, stepping through another doorway and across a broken skeleton that was sprawled on the floor, 'the Assembly of Stars pays the temples. Other rulers paid them in the past.'
'Why?' Two-Fingers asked.
'Because,' Aran put in, 'corpses that don't have a proper burial sometimes rise and walk again. I heard stories about that.'
'You should be real familiar with that,' Hekkel said, 'after what happened to the Whamite Isles. Heard there's a lot of dead up walking around over there.'
'Take that back,' Aran said angrily. 'Take that back or you'll be sorry!'
'Oh yeah?' Hekkel said. 'And why will I be sorry?'
'Because I'll catch you sleeping,' Aran said. 'I'll catch you sleeping and I'll cut off your ears. You'll never pass a mirror again without realizing how sorry you were for saying that.'
'You little runt,' Hekkel said.
Cerril considered turning around and slapping them both down-their strident voices whipped the pounding between his temples into a renewed frenzy-then the closed door at the back of the charity crypt caught his eye. He stared at the wooden marker embossed with the flowing river of Eldath on it. 'Quiet,' Two-Fingers ordered. 'Cerril's found something.' Instantly, all other noise inside the charity crypt stopped. Cerril could almost hear the group stop breathing behind him. He stepped forward and tried the door. The handle refused to turn, and the door wouldn't budge. Cerril stepped back and raised his voice. 'Two-Fingers.' 'Yeah.' 'Open the door.' Two-Fingers moved forward, almost big enough to fill the front of the door. 'Do you want it all in one piece?' he asked. 'I don't care.' Bracing himself, Two-Fingers slammed a shoulder against the door. The old, rotted wood shattered. Instead of the door breaking open, though, a hole appeared and Two-Fingers accidentally staggered through. The bigger boy turned around, shocked by his own success, and said, 'It's open.' The door opened onto a small room that once must have housed a record keeper's office. A scribe's inkpot lay shattered on the stone floor, and moldering books lined shelves built into the walls. 'Light a candle,' Cerril said as he stared around the room. Someone took one of the candle stubs from a mounting on the wall and lit it. The wavering yellow flame filled the small room with light and hard-carved shadows that danced on the walls. 'I don't see any treasure,' Hekkel commented. Cerril went through the books, not knowing exactly what it was that he hoped to find. There was nothing in the book stacks, and equally nothing in the small desk against the wall. He knelt down, checking under the drawers because he'd learned that people often stuck secreted items there. None of the drawers had anything stuck under them. He noticed a shattered inkpot on the floor. The small, fragmented glass pieces reflected light from the candle. The ink had been spilled dozens of years before and had dried to a solid black spot. However, the pool of dried liquid inscribed two fairly straight lines that ran perpendicular to one another. Cerril knee-walked over to the lines. Seeing the way the ink seemed to have suddenly stopped in both places, he drew his dagger and traced the blade's sharp point along the edges. 'Two-Fingers,' he said, 'there's a hidden entrance here. Can you open it?' Two-Fingers removed two L-shaped shims from his clothing. Holding them tightly, he hooked the shims into the floor, getting in behind the concealed trapdoor. Growling with effort, he lifted a section of the floor away. Hekkel pushed forward the lighted candle he held. The flickering flame chewed down through the darkness that filled the opening. 'It's a passageway,' Two-Fingers said. 'I know,' Cerril said, then eased down into the opening, following the spiral staircase down into the bowels of the graveyard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The wolf gazed down from a rocky promontory forty feet above Haarn. Druz Talimsir, unaware of the wolf's vigilance, threaded through the forest only a little ahead of the druid. She'd grown quiet in her anger and had become competitive. Two days had passed since the confrontation with the slavers. Drawing back into the shadows of a gnarled oak tree whose growth had split a boulder as tall as a man on the mountainside, Haarn studied the wolf. The animal was huge, standing half again as tall as the bitch wolf that stood at his right. A jagged streak of lightning cut through the night, spearing through several clouds. In the night's usual darkness the clouds hadn't been visible, but with the lightning passing through them, they had length and width and breadth that faded away between blinks. The superheated air prickled Haarn's nose. The druid knew rain was going to come at any moment. He could feel the air laden with moisture as it wrapped around his body. Haarn knew his and the woman's scents hadn't alerted the wolf because he'd been careful to keep them downwind of the pack. Broadfoot had roamed a lot while Haarn had kept his pace down to something Druz could handle, and the bear had never gotten upwind of the wolf pack that they followed. Something else had set the wolf onto them. A chill storm wind whipped the wolf's thick gray and black fur. A narrow thatch of fur stood up along the wolf's backbone, running from his hindquarters to the top of his skull. Jagged lightning scored the sky again, striking bright light with the sudden intensity of a blacksmith's hammer. Druz fought her way up the precarious incline Haarn's tracking skills had led them to. The spoor left by the wolves had been hidden and spread out. The delays had led Druz to accuse Haarn of delaying the confrontation with the wolf. Haarn had made no response to the accusation, and Druz had remained with him. Both of them knew she had no real choice. The mercenary's anger showed in every line of her body and in the forced movements during her struggle to gain ground up the hill. Her foot slipped on the muddy loam and Haarn knew it was from fatigue. The woman had pushed herself too hard and too far. The druid had done the best he could to pace her, but she wasn't one to hold back. It was an admirable quality, but one that was misplaced in their current venture. Guilt touched Haarn. Druz Talimsir was worn out and near exhaustion. The druid knew it was his fault; he'd gotten caught up in the hunt, torn between his own convictions as they'd neared their goal, and hadn't noticed her struggles. Rock and mud clods tumbled down the mountainside as Druz pushed up another half-dozen steps. She came to a stop along the ledge. Frustration showed in the hard lines of her back. The trail they followed was little more than a game run, too narrow and too ill defined for easy passage. Lightning seared the sky again, bleaching the charcoal gray rock into the color of white bone. The wolf's eyes blazed orange like chunks of coal as it peered down from the ledge. Silver saliva gleamed on the black muzzle. The wolf's nose wrinkled, then the lips pulled back and revealed sharp teeth. He's hunting, Haarn realized. Anxious. Ill ease shifted in the druid's stomach. Animals killed to eat. That was something he understood. That was natural, but an animal that killed for sport was sickening. That trait made them almost human. Broadfoot coughed, revealing his presence in the shadows a few yards away. The bear grew impatient, and Haarn sensed a little confusion as well. Broadfoot didn't maintain a large attention span, and bears never made a practice of hunting red meat, keeping their tastes limited to nuts, fruits, tubers, and honey. After the past two days, Broadfoot knew they were searching for the wolf, though he wasn't clear on why. Even after spending years with the bear, Haarn knew that each of them had concepts that the other couldn't understand. Broadfoot followed not out of duty or curiosity, but because Haarn led. The bond between
