Shepherd's Quest: The Broken Key #1

  “Where are they?” Riyan asked. It’s been a quarter hour since their return to the hall and he was beginning to get worried. Chad and Bart should have returned by now.

  “Maybe something happened to them?” suggested Kevik.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Riyan. “We would have heard something, a cry at least.”

  Riyan stood by the window, anxious now that the sun has all but disappeared. Gazing at the sky, he saw the first star of the evening appear. “We better go look for them,” he finally said.

  “Let’s take a lantern with us,” advised Kevik. “It’s going to be dark soon.”

  “Good idea,” agreed Riyan. Returning back outside to where the horses were tied, he retrieved his lantern and lit it. He then made his way back into the building and nodded to Kevik. “Alright, let’s go find them.”

  From their experience of searching the upper floors, they knew the building was large and it would take some time to completely search every room. “I hope they don’t return while we’re gone,” Kevik said.

  “I hope that they do,” replied Riyan. “At least they would be alright.” He held the lantern up high as he gazed at the ground. With all the times he and Kevik had crisscrossed the hall, it was hard to determine which way Bart and Chad had gone by the footprints in the dust and dirt. He was quick to realize that this was getting him nowhere and began examining the hallways and rooms to see which way their path led.

  There were two places where footprints were clearly visible, one was a hallway and another was a room. He couldn’t help but remember the times he had to hunt for Black Face when he wandered off. There were times when the stupid sheep wouldn’t make any noise that would help in finding him. Nine times out of ten Black Face would be found contentedly munching the leaves of the berry vines he liked so much.

  “Which way?” asked Kevik.

  “I’m not sure,” replied Riyan. Putting his fingers to his lips, he whistled loudly three times just as he would to call his sheep. After the third whistle, they held still to listen. Silence was all they heard.

  “Come on,” Riyan said as he entered the hallway. Their trail was clearly visible and they had no trouble in following it. At the first doorway they saw two sets of footprints, one entering the room and another leaving. They followed the trail as it went into the room. Inside they found where Chad and Bart had rooted through the dirt and leaves before leaving. With no other exit and the entirety of the room clearly visible, they stepped back out into the corridor and continued on.

  Room after room the path of footprints led them onward in their search. Each room they came to, they made a quick scan to be sure Bart and Chad weren’t still there before continuing on. When a room held another exit such as a door or hallway, Riyan would try to determine which way their tracks went. Whichever way they led, he and Kevik would move to follow.

  Bart finished checking the door for the third time. There was no handle or keyhole on this side. He even went so far as to wedge his knife in the space between the door and the doorjamb to try and pry it open with the blade. He felt the door move slightly before the locking mechanism stopped it.

  “There’s no way out,” he said as he gave up and turned back toward Chad.

  Chad stood there with the tube lantern in hand. He had been holding it to give Bart light with which to work. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Wait for Riyan and Kevik to find us,” he explained. “Though as big as this place is it could take some time.”

  “Maybe you could take a look at the chest?” suggested Chad. “Seeing as how we’re not going anywhere for awhile.”

  “Sure,” agreed Bart. “Stay just behind me and shine the light on the lock.” He took out his lockpicks and selected the two he normally used on locks such as these. “Up a little,” he said when Chad had let the light drop down too far. “You need to hold it steady and level. If you hold it at an angle, the candle will burn off center and the wax will melt all the faster.”

  “Alright,” agreed Chad as the light came back to the locking mechanism.

  Bart worked on the chest while the light wavered at times in Chad’s hand. He found a trap and quickly disarmed it. It was a rather simple trap, a variant on the Prick of Poison where instead of coming out and pricking, this one would actually shoot out.

  Once the trap was taken care of, the lock itself was easy. A few moments later, Bart was putting his picks back in the rolled leather carrier. Then while Chad held the light, he opened the lid.

  Immediately upon opening, the light from the tube lantern was refracted by the two dozen gems held within. Not only gems but a large pile of coins as well. There were a multitude of bright shiny coppers, with many of the silver mixed in. But what drew their attention were the golden coins. Larger than the silvers, these gold coins were stamped with the same symbol and face as were the copper and silver coins.

  Bart picked one up and held it in the light. “This has to be worth quite a bit,” he said. Then he gauged its weight as it lay in his palm. “Easily twice the weight of our own gold sovereigns.”

  “Oh man,” Chad said as he came forward.

  Also in the chest were three identical bottles, a scabbard with a knife’s hilt sticking out, and a three inch long ivory tube. Chad took one of the potion bottles and held it up to the light. He grew excited when he saw there was liquid still inside.

  Bart grabbed the scabbard with the knife. When he removed the knife, to his astonishment, he found the blade still serviceable. No trace of rust marred its surface and when he ran the edge along a finger, discovered that it still held an edge. Putting his bloody finger to his lips, he worked to stop the bleeding while he tucked the scabbard with the knife safely held within, into the waistline of his trousers.

  The ivory tube, now that was definitely odd. It had writing inscribed upon it and one end looked as if it would pop off. Chad held it in his hand. “What is this?” he asked Bart.

  “Not sure,” admitted Bart when he moved closer to look at it. “It may hold something though.” He then pointed to the end that could come off. “Removing this end might open it.”

  “Should I?” he asked.

  Bart shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  Chad contemplated whether to open it or not for a moment before handing the tube lantern to Bart. He held the tube vertical and gripped the end. Twisting the end he was pleased to feel it turn in his hand. Emboldened, he twisted and pulled the end completely off.

  “Well?” asked Bart when Chad looked into the hollow opening.

  “Not sure,” he replied. “May be something in here.” He cupped his other hand and brought it to the opening to catch whatever might come out as he slowly upended the tube. He slowly tipped the tube on its side until three small granules of white crystal spilled from the end and landed on his palm. He then raised the tube back in an upright position and replaced the end back onto it.

  Holding his palm up to the light he asked, “What are these?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Bart said as he took a closer look.

  All of a sudden, it looked as if the crystals turned into liquid and sank into the skin of Chad’s palm. No sooner did the liquid disappear than his hand began to grow numb. The numbness started spreading outward from where the liquid had entered his skin.

  “Bart!” he cried as he started shaking his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” Bart asked as he saw Chad shaking his hand and rubbing it on his pant’s leg.

  “I can’t feel my hand!” he cried hysterically.

  Bart grabbed the wrist of the affected hand and stilled his thrashing. There were no discolorations or swelling as one would expect from a poison. He poked the palm with his finger. “Did you feel that?”

  “No!” exclaimed Chad, fear of what may be happening to him causing him to blurt it out with more feeling than he had intended. “My wrist is growing numb now too,” he said in a slightly calmer voice though there was still an undercurrent of fe
ar audible. Chad’s eyes grew wide as he saw Bart set the tube lantern on the floor and then remove his belt knife. “What are you going to do?”

  “Prick your palm and see if you feel it,” he explained.

  Chad tried to pull back his hand from the knife’s point but Bart had too strong a grip. “Hold still.” He brought the tip to Chad’s palm and pricked it. “Did you feel that?” he asked.

  Shaking his head, Chad said, “No.” A small drop of blood welled out from the wound.

  Bart began pressing Chad’s skin as he worked his way from his palm, past his wrist, and up the arm. By the time Chad said he could feel what he was doing, Bart had made it midway up his forearm.

  “I think it’s stopped spreading,” Chad said. He then tried to flex his fingers but couldn’t. Then he concentrated hard as he worked to flex his fingers and only managed a small twitch from his forefinger. With a panicked look, he turned his gaze to Bart. He held up his hand and practically screamed, “I can’t move them!”

  They had been following the trail left by Bart and Chad for a half hour now, and still hadn’t come across them.

  “Do you think they might have left the building?” asked Kevik.

  Riyan came to a stop as that possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind. “Man I hope not,” he said. The thought of having to search for them in the dark ruins outside sent a shiver down his spine. “I doubt if they would have gone anywhere.”

  Lowering his voice Kevik said, “Maybe it was whatever the totem warned us about? Maybe it has already got to them?”

  A chill passed through Riyan at his words. “Now don’t start talking like that,” he told him. “They are here somewhere.”

  “Then why haven’t we found them yet?” replied Kevik.

  “I don’t know,” Riyan said. Then with conviction he said once more, “But they’re here!” As he left the hall and proceeded down to another room, the shadows began to have a more ominous feel to them. Scenes of what could have happened to his friends played through his mind, none of which offered him any comfort.

  At the entrance to the room, he noted that the trail of footprints they had been following didn’t extend past the doorway into the next room. Rather, they entered the room but didn’t come out.

  It was a fair sized room, similar in nature and size to the ones they had already checked. At the far end of the left wall stood a sturdy door. They did a quick check, found the door to be locked, and reentered the hallway. Then just as he had done a dozen times the last half hour, he blew three sharp whistles.

  “Did you hear that?” asked Chad. He was sure he had just heard three whistles, reminiscent of the ones Riyan would use to call his sheep.

  “Hear what?” asked Bart.

  “I think it was Riyan,” he replied. He moved to the door and began banging on it with his good hand. His other hand was still numb and hung at his side. Fortunately, the numbness still hadn’t travel any further than midway up his forearm. “Riyan!” he yelled.

  Bart came next to him and added his effort in banging on the door.

  Riyan was about to walk away from the room when an ominous thumping began to be heard. In the state that he was in, what with beginning to believe that something malign had taken off with his friends, the banging sounded to him like the whisper of heartbeats from those long dead.

  “It’s coming for us,” he said, fear beginning to take hold. His imagination suddenly kicked into high gear which only tightened fear’s hold on him.

  Kevik drew close to him as he too heard the thumping of the telltale heartbeats. Riyan’s fear was contagious and he yelled, “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Fleeing down the hallway, they ran as fast as they could and didn’t stop until they were back in the large hall by the entrance. When they neared the door leading outside, they came to a halt. “I think it’s gone,” stated Kevik as the heartbeats of the dead could no longer be heard.

  Riyan nodded as he worked to quiet his rapidly beating heart. “That was close.” He glanced in the direction of the mouth of the hallway from which they had just escaped. The part of the ground floor they have yet to search still lies down that hallway, beyond where they heard the heartbeats of the dead.

  Outside, night had fallen with a vengeance. The stars overhead gave an eerie feel to the ruins and his imagination began working overtime once again. When he thought he saw a ghost passing from one building to the next, he quickly turned away from the window.

  “It’s not real,” he told himself. Then he forced himself to look out again and found the ghost was gone.

  “You okay?” asked Kevik.

  “My imagination is running away with me,” he said. Rather unnerved right now, he took a few deep breaths and tried to calm himself. He realized he won’t be good for anything if he continued to let his fears control him. Turning towards the hallway, he steeled himself to reenter it again. He must be brave for his friends. Just to reassure himself, he cast a look outside one more time and was relieved when his imagination didn’t bring another ghost to haunt him.

  “We’re going back!” he said with conviction as he glanced to Kevik.

  “Alright,” Kevik said with less courage than Riyan was displaying.

  Riyan took a moment to remove his sling and ready a stone within its cup. Then with lantern in one hand and sling in the other, he crossed the hall and entered the hallway. Behind him he could feel where Kevik was gripping the back of his shirt.

  When they drew near to the spot where they heard the heartbeats last time, he paused and listened for a moment. He sighed in relief when the heartbeats could no longer be heard. Maybe it had only been his imagination after all.

  Coming to the doorway of the last room they searched, he again saw where the trail of footprints ended. The floor of the hallway extending past the doorway looked as if no one had been on it for ages.

  “They entered this room,” he said, “then vanished.” He again looked at the door he checked the first time, the one that had been locked. Other than the one he and Kevik were standing at, and the window, it’s the only other possible way out. He was certain they wouldn’t have gone through the window.

  Then his gaze settled on the door and he stood there in thought for a moment. “Maybe it wasn’t spirits we heard,” he said to Kevik. Entering the room, he crossed to the door. “Maybe it was the pounding of fists on this door?” Now that fear no longer held him in its grip, he could come at this with more logic and less emotion.

  He came close to the door and whistled three times loudly. No sooner did his third whistle end then banging could be heard coming from the other side. Moving his mouth right next to the door he hollered, “Bart, Chad, are you in there?”

  Their response was muffled by the door but he distinctly heard them say, “Yes!”

  Riyan grinned and turned to glance at Kevik. “We found them,” he said. Then he sobered up and added, “There’s no need to tell them we ran away the first time thinking they were ghosts or anything.”

  Kevik nodded and returned his grin. “No problem there.”

  Turning his attention back to the door, he tried to open it. “It’s locked!” he hollered to those on the other side.

  “It’s locked he says,” Chad says sarcastically to Bart. “Of course it’s locked,” he yelled through the door. “If it wasn’t we wouldn’t still be in here.”

  “Get away,” Bart said as he pulled him from the door. “You’re not helping any.”

  Chad gave him a less than pleased look as he came to a stop three feet from the door.

  “Riyan!” Bart yelled.

  From the other side he could barely hear Riyan reply, “Yes?”

  “You have to open the door from your side,” he hollered. “Do you understand?” A moment’s quiet then he heard, “Yes.”

  He and Chad stood there for a moment and then heard thudding noises coming from the other side. Bart glanced to Chad and shook his head. “I think he’s trying to smash through by running
into it.”

  “Isn’t the door a bit strong for that to work?” Chad asked.

  “Exactly,” Bart replied. He waited until another thump came then hollered. “Riyan!”

  “Yes?” the reply came.

  “That’s not going to work, you’ll have to pick the lock,” he hollered.

  There was another moment of silence then he heard Riyan ask, “With what?”

  Bart took a moment to try and think of what Riyan might have that would work. Unfortunately his lockpicks were in here with him. “You’ll have to use your knife!”

  “Okay,” replied Riyan. “How?”

  Realizing he was going to have to talk him through it, he got comfortable. This could take awhile.

  Ten minutes later, Riyan now had a fair understanding of how locks worked. He had the tip of his knife inserted in the lock and was working more by feel than anything else. From the other side, he heard Bart ask, “Do you feel the grove?”

  “Yes,” he replied. It took Bart some doing but he had finally gotten it through to him what grove he was talking about.

  “Okay,” Bart said. “You have to move it along the groove until something stops it.”

  He very carefully moved the tip of the knife along the grove until the point was stopped by a piece of metal. “I’m there.”

  “Listen carefully to what I say before you begin,” Bart told him. “First of all, you have to push the metal that stopped the tip of your knife upward and slightly to the left. At the same time you have to push inward. If you do it right, the lock will disengage and then you will be able to open the door.”

  “Alright!” he hollered back. As he began, he heard Kevik say, “Take your time.”

  He held the knife in both hands as he began doing as Bart had explained to him. He gradually lifted the piece of metal and pushed inward at the same time. Then all of a sudden he felt the piece of metal resting against the blade slip off and move back into its original position.

  “It slipped off!” he hollered to Bart.

  “That’s okay,” Bart assured him. “Just keep trying until you have it.”

  It was on his sixth try when he finally felt the piece of metal click into place. Almost hardly daring to breathe, he nodded for Kevik to try the door. When the handle turned and the door began to swing inward, he about jumped for joy.

  “You did it!” Bart exclaimed with a wide grin as he pulled the door the rest of the way open. “Make a thief of you yet.”

  Chad came out and actually gave him a hug. His left hand was hanging limp and Riyan asked him about it. He explained about the ivory tube and the crystals that caused the effect. “It’s beginning to tingle,” he said. “I think whatever it did is going away.”

  “Good,” Riyan said happily.

  Bart showed him the opened chest at the far end of the room. “Everything it held except for the bulk of the copper is in our packs,” he said. Once they were all out of the small room, the door began to swing closed again. They didn’t try to stop it.

  They showed Riyan and Kevik the potion bottles, the ivory tube, and the knife Bart had taken for his own.

  Kevik took one of the bottles in hand and a bluish glow surrounded it. “What’s he doing?” Bart asked.

  “He’s casting a spell that will tell what it is,” Riyan explained. “It’s one of the few spells he’s learned so far.”

  When the blue glow disappeared, he said, “It’s a healing potion.”

  “That could come in handy,” Bart said. Since there were three of them, he gave one to Chad and Riyan to keep in their packs.

  Chad handed the ivory tube to Kevik and asked him if he could find out what had affected him. Kevik nodded and the bluish glow enveloped it for a couple seconds before disappearing. “The crystals contained within were used by healers,” he explained. “They would use them to deaden an area before cutting into it, so their patient wouldn’t feel any pain.”

  “Never heard of anything like this,” stated Bart.

  “There are some leaves that do the same thing but not to this degree,” Kevik told them. “This could be a derivative of something similar.” He then glanced to the new knife Bart had. “Would you like me to do that as well?”

  Shrugging, Bart said, “Why not?”

  Kevik took the knife and once the spell had run its course handed it back. “It’s imbued with magic. There are two properties to the magic, one keeps it sharp and from succumbing to the elements which would ruin it, such as rust.”

  “What’s the other?” Bart asked.

  Kevik shrugged, “My spell didn’t get that far. Like I was telling Riyan earlier, the spell I am able to do only gives a few general items of information. I do know that it was forged several hundred years before it was put in that chest.”

  “I thank you for what you could tell me,” he said. “Perhaps one day I’ll be able to figure out the rest.” He undid his belt that secured his other knife around his waist and began sliding the new scabbard onto it. As he was positioning it for an easy draw, he paused and glanced back to Kevik. “It isn’t malignant is it?”

  Shaking his head, Kevik said, “No. I felt nothing like that.”

  “Good,” he replied. When he had the scabbard on where he wanted it, he buckled the belt back on around his waist. Now he had two knifes, one on either side of him. The new knife he positioned on his left side for an easy draw with his right hand.

  “Now,” he said as his gaze took in Riyan and Kevik, “did you two find anything?”

  Chapter Twenty

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