‘It should be aroundhere somewhere,’ whispered Miranda. ‘It’s a large ceramic pot fullof the ashes of their ancestors. They bury them just under theground, and every time someone dies they burn the dead body and addsome of the body’s ashes to the urn and mix them in. It is supposedto help guide the dead to their ancestors.’
‘Do you think the urnhas any magic on it?’ asked Aquitain.
‘I doubt it, they knowvery little magic,’ Miranda replied.
‘Do they have any fancyopening ritual?
‘Yes, yes they do, nowthat you mention it.’
‘Well I’ll bet you agood dinner it’s magical,’ said Aquitain.
‘I don’t gamble,wizard.’
‘Ha, that’s a joke.Everything we’re doing today is a gamble. There’s a good chancethat it will work, but also a chance that it won’t.’
‘I trust in the Ladythat our plan today will work,’ she said.
‘Let’s see if it’smagical.’ And he first used his power to detect the glow of magic,then his power to control light, reducing the light intensity inthe area around them to near darkness.
‘What are you doing?’Miranda asked urgently.
‘The morning sunshineis too bright to see if there’s anything magical around here,’ hesaid as he scanned the ground around them, then added ‘There, overthere. There’s something magic in the ground.’
He allowed the lightlevel to return to normal and quickly crossed to where he wasdetecting some magic glow in the ground. He carefully dug aroundwith his hands in the loose, sandy soil, and outlined a circularobject just beneath the surface. He cleared the sand away andunearthed a glazed brown ceramic pot an arm span wide, but only ahand span deep. Around the sides were etched symbols of power.
‘The Lady is on ourside today. She’s revealed the urn’s location.’
‘I won a dinner! Whatare you going to make for me?’
‘You didn’t win. Ididn’t take your bet.’
‘Yes you did. You saidthe urn wouldn’t have any magic on it and I bet it would. Look atthe urn. It’s magical. I won the bet.’
‘All right you had alucky guess, but that’s all.’
‘I think that we shouldtake the urn to the cave now. We’re half way there, I’m almostinvisible and we can teleport out if we have any problems.’
‘But that wasn’t theplan. We should stick to the plan,’ Miranda said.
‘Why? We’re ahead ofwhere we expected to be. Let’s just drop off the urn. I’ll get mychaos matter and we’ll teleport back to the hideout. If the catscome it’ll be too late, we’ll be gone. I might even be able to getmy body shell.’
‘It’s risky,’ she said.‘There’s too much light. We’ll be seen.’
‘I bet you anotherdinner that we can do it.’
‘But that’s a stupidbet. If you lose and get killed you won’t be able to pay up.’
‘Well then, we’ll beeven won’t we?’
‘You’re a fool, wizard.This isn’t a game. If we get it wrong then it’s our lives.’
‘Perhaps and perhapsnot. Maybe your Lady doesn’t want us to die yet.’
‘If she lets anybodydie it will be you, wizard, for being so rash and stupid. Come onthen, lets get it over with; and I’m not getting you two dinners.If this works, maybe one.’ And she set off so that he couldn’t seethe look on her face.
Aquitain smugly pickedup the urn, raised it onto one shoulder and followed her as shecarefully moved towards the rear of the village. When they reachedthe track they followed the tree line instead of walking in theopen, and after twenty minutes they were at the top of the trackacross the open area, opposite the shrine.
There were no catsvisible but they could see Aquitain’s body shell lying where he hadleft it, and all was quiet. Miranda shape changed to her jungle catform and carefully scouted all the way around the edge of the openspace to the right of the track. She then lay in the shade of thegully wall watching while Aquitain carefully made his way around toher. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary so he continued into thecave, keeping in contact with her through the mindlink.
He created light onAlpha and it became a torch. The stench would have been simplyawful for a newman but it didn’t worry him at all. He heard a faintbuzzing sound in there so he enhanced the light intensity and Alphailluminated the cave once more. The pile of lizard bodies was justas horrible as ever but was now covered in countless flies andmaggots, making it look almost alive. He could feel the feeling offear change to one of expectancy as he walked into the area luggingthe urn. The spirits must have recognised it.
He placed the urn nextto the wall and headed to the last place that he had seen his ballof chaos matter, stopping dead in his tracks as he drew near. Theball wasn’t there. Instead, in its place, was a large cat claw twohand spans across. He activated his magic detection ability andcast his vision around the cavern. He saw some magic glow on thebody of the dead druid but the cat claw in front of him was totallyblack, as if it was his chaos matter. He tried to get it toreshape, but it didn’t respond.
‘Miranda we have aproblem.’
‘What?’ she respondedquickly.
‘Something’s happenedto my chaos matter ‘ and he sent her an image +<image of catclaw>.
‘Are you sure it’s yourchaos matter?’ she asked.
Just to be sure, hewalked around the cave to all the other dead bodies not on thepile, and looked all about but found no ball of chaos matter.
‘No that’s it! It’s nowa claw.’
‘Well what are yougoing to do? Leave it or take it? You have to decide quickly.’
‘I know. I’ve got a badfeeling about this. I’m going to tie a long bit of string around itand drag it over to me. If it doesn’t set off a trap, then I’llpick it up and run out to you, and we’ll teleport back to thehideout.’
He found severallengths of rope, tied them together and made a loop at one end, andgently laid it around the claw. He then went to the other end ofthe
