“I told you that there is illumination in the darkness beyond what eyes can see.” She smiled mysteriously. “Come with me, and I’ll show you exactly what I mean.”
Chapter Four
Intrigued, I followed Isu through the crypt, trying not to lose focus by staring too hard at those big, round, firm buttcheeks that shifted so enticingly in front of me with every step she took. She led me to the oldest tomb in the crypt, that of the first Lord Chauzec, who built the first castle on this site well over a thousand years ago.
The old castle had been demolished a couple hundred years ago and replaced with this new, bigger Keep as the town of Brakith had grown, and these crypts were about all that remained of the original structure. Thankfully, this tomb—that of Uger Chauzec, the first Lord Chauzec—hadn’t been desecrated by my uncle or destroyed in the battle. However, when I reached it, I saw that Uger’s stone coffin had been opened.
“Hey!” I said, sudden anger shooting through me. “What’s going on here, Isu? Did you open this coffin?”
“I did, yes,” she answered coolly.
“What the fuck?! That’s my ancestor’s grave! Who the hell gave you permission to do that? How could you just do that without asking me?!”
“Curiosity.”
Her eyes gleamed in the light, and her lips curved up into a smug smirk. She had done this just to piss me off. Well, if that had been her aim in doing this, she had succeeded.
“That’s all you’re going to say about why you desecrated one of my most important ancestor’s graves… ‘curiosity’?! Are you fucking serious?!”
“Come here, Vance, and calm down. Why, I had no idea you were so concerned about silly mortal customs. Strange for a god to be so concerned with the matters of mere mortals, but who am I to judge? I’m just a—”
“I don’t want to hear that whole ‘I’m just a necromancer’ thing now, seriously. Okay, fine, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, but if there isn’t some seriously earth-shattering revelation at the bottom of what you’ve done, you’re in deep shit. And that’s no joke, Isu.”
“Trust me,” she purred.
“Just about as far as I can throw you,” I said.
“Come.” She took my hand and led me up to the opened coffin. “Touch your ancestor’s skull.”
I’d been practicing this ability of mine, which I’d first discovered in Kroth. Those first few times I’d done it—“traveling” back through time and “seeing” the past through the eyes of the dead, essentially experiencing their last few moments before they died—it had been a disorienting, almost debilitating experience. With a bit of practice, however, I’d gotten a lot better at it, and while it still kind of took it out of me, it no longer left me feeling like I’d been kicked around by a pack of cave trolls.
“All right.” I stepped up to the coffin and placed my hand on Uger’s skull.
With a zapping jolt, as if I’d touched a minor streak of lightning, my mind was sucked back a thousand years, my experience of the present melding with Uger’s ancient memories of his last moments.
I—Uger—was on a bed, in a room with walls of stone on which tapestries and old-style shields were mounted. This had to be the lord’s chamber of the old castle. I looked down and saw my body half-covered by a sheet. It was the wrinkly, sunken body of a very old man. Surrounding me were some middle-aged men who sort of looked like me—my sons. There were also younger men, my grandsons, and some young boys, who were my great-grandsons. Also, there were a number of very young, very hot women, who, Uger’s memories were telling me, were his concubines.
Nice one, great-great-whatever grandpa! Looks like a taste for sweet pussy was something that went a long way back in the Chauzec family line.
Everyone gathered around the bed was crying; they knew these were my last moments. I’d obviously lived a long and good life, and I was almost ready to leave this world. But something was bugging me. Something very important. Something that wasn’t finished. There was something I needed to know before I passed, but what was it?
Suddenly, a man pushed through the crowd around my bed—a foreign man, Yengish. This was interesting. Dressed in flowing red and gold robes of silk, he had a katana sheathed on his hip, and his long, straight black hair was tied into an intricate knot on the top of his head. He had long mustaches that hung down past the sides of his mouth almost to his chest.
“Lord Chauzec.” He bowed low. “I am Tendo, grandson of Kemji.”
Uger’s memories told me that this Kemji was a very close friend, but not just a friend—an ally, a partner he’d fought alongside on some quest that had consequences for all of Prand.
I saw my—Uger’s—wrinkled, liver-spotted hand reach up. Tendo took my hand and clasped it, then touched his forehead three times to my knuckles in a gesture of respect reserved for great warriors in Yeng.
What was this? My ancestor had been some sort of great warrior in Yeng? And he and some Yengish warrior called Kemji had vanquished some foe in a battle that, it seemed, had had major consequences for the entire world.
“I am glad that I got to you in time, Lord Chauzec,” Tendo said. “I have not slept in days. I had to reach you before… before you…”
“And I’m honored that you did this,” I—Uger—croaked. “But please, my boy… I have but a few moments left. Your grandfather’s gauntlets…”
“It is done, Lord Chauzec,” Tendo answered. “My venerated grandfather’s gauntlets have been hidden, locked away in a labyrinth beneath an ancient pyramid, protected by many traps. The secret of the gauntlets’ location will, however, remain in my family and yours, passed down from generation to generation, just in case the
