The Golden Key (Book 3) Read Free Page A

image, wondering how the craftsman had managed to mimic so
perfectly the shape of his eyebrows, the curve of his nose, the glint in his
eyes…. The wood carving was ancient and looked as if it had been chiseled in an
age that had long since passed. How had that long-dead craftsman known his image so well that he could duplicate it?
    Symptata’s son , Giorge thought. The line ….
    Giorge frowned. He was not surprised that he looked like Symptata’s son—it was part of the curse—but this image was identical to
his own. Only the heir can break the curse , he thought. What were the
lines of the poem? He reached into the sling for the scroll tube, but it wasn’t
there. Had he dropped it? He looked around in the muck but couldn’t see it.
There were clumps that might be large enough to conceal it, but he didn’t
need the scroll to remember the poem. It was the last stanza, wasn’t it? “He
cursed her line of thieving whores,” he muttered, “and lies in death, awaiting
yours.”
    Giorge glanced at the sarcophagi waiting to be filled.
“There’s a lot of death here,” he whispered, “but I’m not dead.” He frowned and
looked down at the sling. The dull ache in his arm wasn’t plaguing him any
longer. He flexed his fingers and rotated his wrist, but it didn’t hurt like it
had been since he had injured it in the fall from his horse. He lifted it
easily in the sling, and finally pulled it out of the sling altogether. Ortis
said it was sprained and needed weeks to heal , he thought as he checked his
full range of motion without any hint of pain or injury. He rolled up the
sleeve of his tunic and his eyes widened: the fletching scars were gone! And
what about when he fell—
    “The frost elemental,” he almost shouted, the sound falling
as silent as the dead around him. “It killed me, didn’t it?” he muttered,
remembering the blistering cold that had smothered him, pulled him from the
lift, harassed him as he fell. Yes, he had died, he must have died—and
yet, he felt as healthy as he ever had.
    He took off the sling and let it fall to the floor. He put
his hand to his chest and felt around for the familiar lump of the Viper’s
Breath— but it was gone! He gulped and asked the chill air around him,
“Am I dead?” He paused for an answer, but when none came, he asked, his voice
sharp and much too loud, “By Onus’s Blood, what is going on here?”
    He didn’t wait for an answer; instead, he decided to take
action. The floor was slick, but he had leverage; he could use the sarcophagi
to propel him around the edge of the room, and with luck, he’d find a dry spot
to stand on. At the very least, he needed to know more about where he was, and
that meant exploring the room. He looked at the empty sarcophagi and tried to
peer through the shadows to the wall at the end. But it was too dark. He should go there first, if only because he couldn’t see what was there, and he
already knew there were sarcophagi along all the other walls. Full sarcophagi?
But he wasn’t ready to search that gloomy bit of the room; he wanted to find
out more about what he could see first. He wanted to know what was causing the
wall to glow; if it could be moved, it would make it a lot easier to search the
darkness to his right. And what about the sarcophagi? One seemed to have been
made for him, but what about the others? Were the empty ones for his children and grandchildren? If so, the others—
    He turned sharply toward the sarcophagus next to his, the
first one whose lid was closed. The image on the lid, though half-hidden in
shadow, was of a young woman with long, wavy black hair draped over her
shoulders; sweet brown eyes filled with love and kindness; a narrow, sharp
smile that was quick with a laugh or a harsh word when needed; a rounded little
nose; and soft, smooth, caramel-colored skin. The image on the lid had none of
these colors—it was just the drab gray-brown of aged wood—but what he saw in the image was so