“Right. An oath. I shouldn’t have asked.” I turned away from him, feeling frustrated and a little betrayed, when he grabbed my arm. He pulled me closer and pressed his lips to my ear.
“She fears for you to know the truth.”
“Why?”
“She is afraid that her closely guarded lie will be revealed. But she is only delaying the inevitable. Soon, you will find out the truth, and when that happens, you must not let her realize that you know, or she will kill you.”
I stared at him, shocked. “Kill me? Kull, what happened here?”
“I cannot tell you. But if you keep your mind open, then soon you will understand.”
I nodded. He took my hand and led me out of the room.
Euralysia’s silhouette appeared at the end of the hallway, lit only by the silver light. She had a waifish form that seemed to move like smoke. We followed her past another mirror that focused the light down a hallway to our right, and then we entered a huge room.
The same sun motif that we’d found in the dragon caves was also in this room. Scrolls sat on dusty shelves, and slivers of early morning sunlight drifted through skylights overhead, illuminating the stonework and elaborately carved pillars.
“Wait for me here,” the princess said. “I shall return shortly.” She wandered into the towering stacks until she was out of sight.
Instead of waiting, Kull pulled me outside the room and into a separate hallway.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
He shook his head. When we made it to the mirror we’d passed earlier, he glanced at it and then turned to me.
“I noticed it when we walked past earlier. There is a small lever, see here?” He pointed to a green oxidized bar that ran vertically along the wall, just outside the mirror’s frame.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I am not sure, but there may be something hidden behind this mirror.” He pulled the lever, and the mirror swung open. Cobwebs clung to the edges, and Kull brushed them away to reveal a small opening leading inside a dark room.
“A secret passageway?” I asked.
“No, a secret room.”
“What’s inside?”
“I cannot say for certain, but I suspect this is the place where we will find the answers to our questions. However, we must be quick. The princess will become suspicious if we are gone too long.”
“I understand.”
We entered the darkened room. Only the silver light from outside the doorway lit the small space. Rounded tubes, similar to the iron lungs used during polio epidemics, lined the walls. Small, rounded windows had been worked into the tubes’ metallic surfaces. Some of the windows had burst open, and globs of goo oozed from the broken glass.
I glanced inside one of the busted tubes. A corpse floated in a gelatinous solution. My stomach clenched at the smell of rotting organ tissues.
The corpse may have been decades old, perhaps even centuries old. But now, with the loss of magic and the preservation properties gone, the flesh had begun to rot. Yellow clumps of fat, sinew, and muscle bulged and broke through the bloated skin. Gray skeleton peeked through the broken tissues. The gases produced from the rotting corpse must have caused the glass to rupture.
My stomach heaved.
Kull stood with me, but his face gave no indication of emotion. He stood with a straight back and clenched jaw, his hand on his sword.
I backed away from the corpse and leaned against the wall. The bricks were too warm. Or was I too warm? I couldn’t be sure.
Tears stung my eyes as the death-stench engulfed my lungs. Holding my breath didn’t help much. I shielded my nose with the crook of my arm as I tried to leave the room, but Kull stopped me.
“What did you see?”
“A rotting corpse. Not much else.”
“Look again.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer, although I knew I had overlooked something important. More than anything, I wanted to leave the room, but I needed answers, so I forced myself to walk back to the metal sarcophagus. Peering inside, I did my best to take everything in. But what was I looking for?
The decomposition suggested the corpse had been rotting for at least a week, which confirmed my suspicions that it would have started decaying when the magic had faded. Small wires ran from the inside of the metal capsule straight into the person’s brain. Some sort of mental manipulation, perhaps? But why would they need to experiment on the brain?
I was reminded of my conversation with the princess about the voic-py’anah. Was this the elven torture she had spoken of?
I moved to the next capsule. Sweat beaded on the back of my neck. How much longer could I hold my breath?
The body in this capsule looked different from the first. For one, the skin was translucent. A side effect of the torture? The teeth had grown long and protruded from an elongated jaw. I also noted the pointed ears.
I found another capsule at the end of the row that caught my attention. Instead of being broken, the lid had been opened. Upon closer inspection, I found it empty. Most of the gelatinous fluid had drained onto the floor. My shoes made syrupy sucking noises as I edged closer to the tube. Kull followed me without speaking.
Upon closer scrutiny, I noticed that the two lid latches had been broken.
Sounds of hissing came from behind us.
My heart stopped.
I slowly turned around. Kull pulled his sword free, its blade gleaming in the dim light. A gray creature huddled in the corner. Its eyes were matted over, and long, untrimmed fingernails grew from crooked fingers. Blood dripped from holes in its head where the wires must have been.
It could have been elven once, judging by the narrow, pointed ears. It was small, perhaps only four feet tall. But what sort of creature was it? The pieces began to fall into place as I realized which species it most closely resembled.
Goblin.
I stumbled back.
The thing clutched at its stomach, making a desperate moaning sound. Its leg bones
