Snowclaw climb up after him.
“What’s the matter, Jacoby? Waiting for your Sherpa guide?”
Jacoby smiled thinly. “You’re young — you go up.”
Gene bent to peer at the surface of the rock. It looked like anthracite but was as hard as granite. “Okay, I will.”
It was tough going, and Gene made it almost to the top. What made him stop was the sight of the bottommost spike of the jewel floating inches off the sharp apex of the rock. There was something else going on up here. He heard a faint crackling and a barely audible hum like the singing of high-tension electrical lines. He looked more closely at the jewel. Faint blue lines of force stretched between the underside of the jewel and the peak of the black massif.
The tip of one of the spikes hung directly above him. He reached, slowly, putting out his index finger. He hesitated, finger poised. He drew back. Then he touched it.
It was cold, very cold. He took his finger away and rubbed its tip against his breeches.
“Some kind of weird,” he muttered.
When he got back down, they were all waiting for him.
“What’s up there?” Linda wanted to know.
“Some guy selling Amway. What do you people want to do?”
“I’d like to get out of here,” Linda said. “It’s cold, and that thing up there is giving me the spooks.”
When they had climbed back up out of the amphitheater, Linda materialized another doorway, this one leading into a curving passageway. They turned right and followed it until it met another tube leading away from the outer wall of the amphitheater.
At length Kwip halted. “Gods of a pig’s arse.”
“What?” Gene asked.
“Left me rucksack back there. I shan’t be a minute.” He turned and headed back.
“Wait, I’ll go with you.”
“You needn’t bother, my friend.”
Gene stopped running after Kwip, watched until the dark-bearded man rounded the corner, then walked back.
Linda asked, “Anyone for lunch? Dinner? Whatever it is.”
Jacoby patted his stomach. “Always feeding time at this zoo, I’m afraid. Another wedding feast, my dear?”
“No, I’m going to try for my friend Shelly’s brother’s bar mitzvah.”
Gene said, “I could go for a corned beef on rye piled with cole slaw with Russian dressing.”
“I like a man who knows what he wants. It was a sit-down dinner, though. I don’t remember if they had cold cuts.”
They didn’t, although there were a number of sizable rib roasts.
“Oh, now I remember,” Linda said. “Prime rib au jus.”
“Kosher, I guess,” Gene said.
“You bet. Will you carve, Gene?”
“Sure. What’ll it be, Jacoby? Well-done, medium, rare, still ruminating …?”
Jacoby was staring back down the hall. “Hm? Oh, rare will be fine.”
Gene handed him a plate with a slab of meat on it. Jacoby looked at it, then resumed gazing down the corridor.
Gene served Linda, then Snowclaw, who’d commented that the stuff looked edible enough to sample. Gene cut a medium-rare slice for himself and sat down. He was about to dig in when he noticed Jacoby still looking off moodily.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t trust that chap.”
“He seems like a nice man,” Linda said. “A little strange. I mean, he asked me for that tool, and I gave it to him, but I don’t have the slightest idea what he wanted it for.”
Gene cocked an eyebrow. “What tool?”
“Didn’t you — Oh, you guys were climbing the rock. He wanted a little … what would you call it? A hammer with a sort of chisel on one end of it. A pickax. Like a thing a mountain climber uses. He described it to me, and I whipped one up for him.”
Gene looked at Jacoby.
“You don’t think —” Gene began, but just then a ringing came from the hall of the jewel, as from a strange and ominous bell, growing louder and louder ….
I’m thrice damned, Kwip thought as he climbed.
He’d have to make this quick. He neared the top, stopped and searched for a suitable spike, one small enough to hide in the backpack.
One of the smaller shafts caught his eye. He reached, and could just barely grasp its tip. No good. He stepped up higher and reached again. The jewel was cold to the touch.
Damn me, Kwip thought, I’d steal from the Dark One himself. But I must, I must have at least a part of it!
He got out the pickax, reached up and grasped the shaft. It felt like ice, but its warm amber light filled his eyes, and the shifting fire drew him into its warmth. He struck with the pick end of the tool. With a sharp, high- pitched pinging sound the end of the shaft broke off easily in his hand. He inspected the fragment briefly, noting that it still glowed. He looked about, listening. Droning like a crystal bell, the entire jewel began to resonate with the sound of the breaking.
He dropped the crystal into the backpack and hurried down. By the time he reached bottom, the ringing had grown into an ear-splitting alarm, its painfully high note reverberating in the stone bowl of the amphitheater, growing ever louder. As echoes multiplied, the noise swelled to an overwhelming crescendo, and soon the air was rent by an unbearably loud, horrendous keening that shook the ancient walls.
The floor quaked. Kwip stumbled and fell. He got to his knees and covered his ears. His scream of pain went unheard as the air shattered around him.
Library
Osmirik laid the heavy folio aside and rubbed his eyes. He had read enough, and the truth lay on him like the rubble of a landslide. His worst fears had been justified. The ancient chroniclers were quite clear on the matter.
Despite the sick, hollow feeling in his stomach, he was scholar enough to still be in awe of the books and scrolls that lay piled before him. Priceless specimens such as these were not to be found even in Hunra, nor anywhere else, he suspected. He felt a distant pang of regret that they would most likely be blown to dust and scattered to the winds when the castle vanished. Or perhaps they, too, were mere conjurings.
It did not matter. All that mattered was thwarting Melydia. But how?
Mad Melydia. She would stop at nothing in her quest for vengeance. For years she nursed the wound that Incarnadine had inflicted; for years she plotted and schemed. She learned her Arts well, then cast about for suitable puppets to employ in her little dumb show. To the east lived a prince with a domineering empress mother. He needed lands to conquer, and a bride on whom his mother would look with favor. A spell, a puff of smoke from a brazier, and he did Melydia’s bidding, while the empress looked on with an approving smile.
Osmirik laughed mirthlessly. What a tawdry little world it was, that armies were moved by the machinations of a scheming witch, that by her wiles castles fell, and worlds ended.…
He knew only he could stop her — physically, if that be the only way. He would sniff her out, her and her plots and philters, regain her confidence, make as if to assist her, and then —
What? He would know only if and when that time came.
Doubts gnawed. Was it inevitable? And what of the prophecies? He reached for another book and opened it,
