The Golden Key (Book 3) Read Free Page B

lifelike, so realistic, that he sagged to his knees. “Mother,”
he gasped as he clung tightly to the lid of his sarcophagus with his left hand.
His right hand, quivering, stretched out for his mother’s sarcophagus. He slid
closer to it, and his fingertips brushed across the cold wood of his mother’s
hand. A moment later, he lunged forward, grappling the wooden sarcophagus as if
he were a small boy clinging to his mother’s legs to prevent her from leaving.
“Momma,” he whimpered as the tears cascaded down his cheeks and the sobs burbled
in his chest.

3
    Angus half-opened his eyes and looked around without moving.
He saw nothing except the peculiar bluish glow of sunlight passing through a
thick layer of ice. It was an attractive color, one that reminded him of the
watery depths of Embril’s eye. Only her eye was a bit darker, a bit deeper, and
far less deadly than the blueness pressing down upon him.
    There was something in his left hand. It was thin and round
and cold, and he grasped it as tightly as he would his last breath. It was the
right size for a quill, but it wasn’t like any quill he had ever used. Quills
were nearly smooth, and the imperfections on their surfaces were infrequent and
random. This thin, cylindrical object’s surface was etched with complex
patterns, and some of them felt familiar to him. They were similar to the knots
he used to cast the flying spell.
    Magic! He thought suddenly, fiercely, and his eyes
snapped fully open. I lost my magic! That’s why I fell—I couldn’t fly! Sardach
dropped me and I couldn’t see the magic!
    A sharp pain riddled through his chest as he gasped, and he
forced himself to calm down, to take slow, shallow breaths. Broken ribs? Yes, they were broken. His chest felt like it had been crushed by the
unrelenting coils of a giant snake. He lifted his left hand—it moved easily,
painlessly—and a sharp pain radiated out from his lower back as he shifted
against something hard and jagged beneath him. It had the shape and texture of
a burl and bit painfully into his lower back. There was something else beneath
him, and it felt like a thick, leafless branch. He tried to shift his weight
from the knothole onto the branch, but an intense pain erupted in his right
shoulder as soon as he began to move. He winced and settled back down on the
knothole; it was an inconvenient pain, not a mind-wrenching, debilitating one
like his shoulder.
    He closed his eyes and focused on the pain, trying to force
it away. It wasn’t a branch he was lying on; it was his right arm. It was
pinned beneath him, twisted into an unnatural position. He couldn’t feel it,
but his right shoulder felt like the arm had been pulled from its socket, and
bones had grated against each other when he had shifted position. He lay still
until the pain eased, and then tried to wiggle his toes. His right thigh
answered with a dull throbbing sensation, but he couldn’t feel his left foot.
Was it gone? Or was it numb, like his right arm? It didn’t matter; he was
alive. He should be dead.
    Angus held what was in his hand up in front of his eyes and
tried to focus on it. It was an ivory wand, the one that—
    Yes, that was what had happened. He had fallen a long way
and used the wand to deflect himself away from the mountainside. It was a
desperate gamble, but what choice had he had? He couldn’t fly, and hitting the
mountainside at that speed would have killed him. Even so, it shouldn’t have
worked—but it must have done enough for him to survive. He frowned. How had he
gotten buried in the ice?
    He looked up through the vertical shaft. It was ovular, and
had smooth, irregular walls as if something warm had gradually melted through
the ice and left behind the meandering shaft. Could he have done it? It was the
right dimensions if his body had toppled over itself on the way down, and his
robe did keep his body temperature constant. If he had been pressed against the
ice for long enough… It was a