The Golden Key (Book 3) Read Free

stay under that scum a long time, his nose jutting up into it
just far enough to snatch a breath or two. That scum had smelled bad enough,
but this stuff reeked much worse: it had the stench of decay clinging to it.
    He rose to his knees and shook his arms several times before
the last of the muck sloughed away from him. Then he peeled it away from the
hilts of his sword and throwing knives. Then he realized he could see the dingy
gray crud spreading out across the floor around him. I’m not blind , he
thought, relieved despite his confusion. The Viper’s Eyes had replaced his own,
but now? He reached up to touch one of them—and jerked his head back, cursing
and blinking rapidly. The slime on his finger burned , and when he tried
to rub it out of his eye it only made things worse. It was only after he had
scraped away the crud and used the underside of his tunic to wipe at his eyes
and face that the burning eased.
    He sighed and blinked back the tears to clear away the
haziness. The room was almost completely black but for a strange, dull, orange glow
emanating from a corner far ahead of him. It wasn’t much light, but he had long
ago learned to navigate in this kind of near darkness, and it gave a strange
cast to everything. The room was expansive, at least forty feet square with an
eight-foot high ceiling. To his immediate left, some twenty feet away, the room
was in shadow that gradually lessened as it approached the well-lit corner. The
lighting continued along the far wall in front of him, and then dwindled to the
right until it was lost in a darkness his eyes couldn’t penetrate. If there was
a wall to his right, it was too deep in the darkness to be seen. Four large
columns, evenly spaced, held up the ceiling, blocking his view of parts of the
room, and he would have to move to see around them. But the floor was too slick
to risk it at the moment.
    He couldn’t see what was causing the strange orange glow,
but it was much too diffuse and dim to be a torch or candle. It was steady and
soft like Angus’s Lamplight spell, but it wasn’t shaped like a ball. It wasn’t
shaped like anything, really; it looked as if someone had painted it onto the
wall and had done a horrid job of it. It was thick and wide and brightest in
the far corner but tapered to a narrow slit halfway down the wall to his left. It
was a long wall, and there were several sarcophagi evenly spaced along its
length. He couldn’t see the details of the sarcophagi; the light smothering
them was too dim to note any details at this distance. They lined the wall to
the left, curled around the well-lit corner, and continued all along the far
wall until they disappeared into the darkness.
    Giorge gulped and twisted around on his knees, turning right
until he was facing the direction from which he had emerged. There were more
sarcophagi along that wall, emerging from the darkness concealing the wall to
his right, but they were open and empty, as if they were patiently waiting for
occupants. The last empty one was directly behind him, about eight feet away,
with its lid dangling from a broken hinge. Why was I in that? Giorge wondered
as he tried to stand up and his foot slid out from under him. He moved to catch
himself, but the floor was too slick and he barely managed to keep from banging
his head as he fell flat again. He stayed there for a long moment, and then
gradually worked his way to his feet. He looked down at the floor and tested
his footing as he took each step in the goo, and even with those precautions,
he had to adjust his center of gravity several times to keep from falling. It
was like walking on ice covered in a thick layer of lamp oil.
    When he was close to the sarcophagus, he took hold of the
lid and swung it closed. He shuddered as he stared at the image on the lid: it
was his image. Even in the shadows, it was like looking in a tarnished
mirror, so amazing were the details of the workmanship. He ran his fingers over
the face of the