to see one of the cultists enter or leave the building.
None had.
Nor had anyone walked down the street. And no wonder-all of the buildings in the area, including the one behind Arvin and Nicco, bore a faded yellow hand on their doors.
Arvin was getting impatient. The throbbing in his head wasn’t helping. “This is useless,” he griped. “We’ve got the key; let’s use it.”
Nicco nodded. “It looks as though we’ll have to. But first, a precaution.”
The cleric began a soft chant. When it ended, he vanished from sight. The only way Arvin could tell that Nicco was still standing beside him was by the sound of his breathing and the rustle of Nicco’s kilt as the cleric shifted position.
“Your turn,” Nicco said. “Ready?”
When Arvin nodded, Nicco repeated his prayer. Arvin felt a light touch on his shoulder-and suddenly couldn’t see his body. It was an odd sensation. Being unable to see his own feet made Arvin feel as if he were floating in the air. He touched a hand to his chest, reassuring himself he was still corporeal.
“Is the key in your hand?” Nicco asked.
Arvin held it up. “Right here.”
Instead of taking it, Nicco grasped Arvin’s arm and steered him across the street. When they reached the crematorium, Nicco guided the jagged-toothed key up to what, to Arvin, appeared to be solid stone, and Arvin felt the key enter a keyhole. Nicco let go of his arm. The cleric was obviously wary about whatever traps might protect the door. Wetting his lips, Arvin turned the key in the lock and heard a faint click. With a hiss of relief-the poisoned needle he’d half-expected to emerge from the lock mechanism hadn’t-he eased the door open. Then, pocketing the key, he whispered the command that materialized the dagger from his glove.
“You first, this time,” he told Nicco. He waited until he had felt Nicco brush past him then closed the door behind them.
They stood in a round, empty room as large as the building itself. At its center was a circular platform, about ankle high. Around its circumference were dozens of tiny, finger-sized flames that filled the room with a flickering light. They burned with a faint hissing noise and seemed to be jetting out of holes in the platform.
Arvin hadn’t known what to expect a crematorium to look like, but this certainly wasn’t it.
Beside him, Nicco murmured the prayer that would allow him to see things as they truly were.
“Is there a way out of this room?” Arvin breathed.
The tinkling of Nicco’s earring told Arvin the cleric was shaking his head. “My prayer would have revealed any hidden doors. It found none,” he whispered. “I’m going to search the platform.”
“Be careful,” Arvin warned. “It might teleport you to the Plane of Fire.”
“That would require a teleportation circle-something only a wizard can create,” Nicco answered, his voice moving toward the platform. “We clerics must rely upon phase doors, which merely open an ethereal passage through stone.”
Arvin saw the flames flicker as the cleric walked around the platform. “Are you certain the cultists use this place?” Nicco asked.
Arvin was starting to wonder the same thing. He fingered the key in his pocket. Then his eye fell on something-a small leather pouch that lay on the other side of the platform. He strode over to it and picked it up, and felt something inside it twitch. He raised the now-invisible pouch to his nose and caught a faint leafy smell he recognized at once-assassin vine.
“Nicco,” he whispered. “The Pox were here-or at least, they kept their victims here. I’ve just found my friend’s pouch.”
There was no reply.
“Nicco?”
Worried that the cleric might have stepped onto the platform and been teleported away, Arvin tucked the pouch in a pocket and crossed the room. He stood beside the platform, listening, and heard what sounded like snoring over the hiss of the flames. It seemed to be coming from the center of the platform.
Wary of the flames, Arvin leaned across the platform. His hand brushed against tassels-one end of Nicco’s sash. The cleric must have fallen victim to a spell that sent him into a magical slumber. Arvin grabbed the sash and tried to pull Nicco toward him, but when he yanked, the sash suddenly came free, sending him stumbling backward. Dropping it, Arvin made a circuit of the platform. He leaned over it as much as he dared, but his questing hands encountered only air. He could hear Nicco snoring but couldn’t reach him. The platform was simply too wide. Nicco must be lying directly at its center.
Arvin paused, thinking. Whatever laid Nicco low hadn’t taken effect immediately. Maybe if Arvin didn’t venture too close to the center of the platform, he’d be safe. He couldn’t just let the cleric lie there. If he did, Nicco might never wake up.
Arvin stepped up onto the platform.
As soon as he did, he felt a rush of vertigo. It was as if someone had grabbed hold of his trousers at the hip and yanked, sending him tumbling forward. Too late, he realized what had happened. The key in his trouser pocket must have triggered something-one of the phase doors that Nicco had spoken about. Like an anchor chained to Arvin, the key pulled him down into a patch of blurry, queasy nothingness.
Arvin landed facedown on a hard stone floor, knocking the air from his lungs. He felt a throbbing in his lip and tasted blood; his lip was split. Hissing with pain, he sat up and looked around and found that he was in utter darkness. He wet his lips and found them coated with a damp, gritty substance that tasted of ashes.
The remains of the cremated dead.
He spat several times, not stopping until his mouth was clean. Then he rose to his feet. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a faint chanting-the voices of the cultists, raised in prayer to their loathsome god. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw, in the direction the chanting was coming from, a patch of faint reddish light, rectangular in shape-a hallway. As he stared at it, something small scurried across the floor nearby, making him hiss in alarm.
It’s just a rat, he admonished himself angrily, embarrassed at having startled. Where’s your self-control?
He raised a hand and found that the ceiling was just overhead. Its stonework felt solid. He tried prodding it with the key, but nothing happened. Whatever doorway Arvin had just passed through appeared to work only in one direction.
Somewhere above, Nicco lay in magical slumber. The cleric might as well have been in another city, for all the good he was going to be.
Arvin worked his way around the room, feeling the walls. He didn’t find any other exits; there was only one way out.
Toward the chanting voices.
He shuddered at the thought of facing the cultists alone and raised a hand to touch the bead at his throat. “Nine-”
The bead wasn’t there.
Hissing in alarm, Arvin dropped to his knees and scuffed around in the ash. Dust rose to his nostrils and he choked back a sneeze. Then he spotted something near the middle of the room-a faint blue glow. Brushing the ash away from it, he saw that it was coming from his bead. It was no longer smooth and round; fully half of the clay had crumbled away and something was protruding out of it-a slim length of crystal that glowed with a faint blue light.
A power stone.
Suddenly, his mother’s last goodbye made sense. “Don’t lose this bead,” she’d told him as she tied the thong around his neck. “I made it myself. I had intended to give it to you when you’re older but…” She paused, eyes glistening, then stood. “One day, that bead may grant you nine lives, just like a cat. Remember that-and keep it safe. Don’t ever take it off.”
“Nine lives,” Arvin repeated in an anguished whisper as he stared at the power stone. “And you gave them to me. Why didn’t you use them to save yourself instead?” He knew the answer, of course. That his mother must have foreseen her death in the dream she had the night before-and, contrary to her assurances, believed it to be inevitable.
