The Guardian

Xil had learned long ago that the dead were not always the most dangerous things in a tomb.

Sometimes the living were worse.

Sometimes the things left behind had never been alive at all.

He stood beside Vegon and studied the damaged wall.

The red drake had struck it twice during the fight, shattering the carved outer stone and exposing a darker layer beneath. At first glance, Jandar had been right. It was a wall.

At second glance, Vegon was right.

That was becoming an irritatingly common occurrence.

“There,” Vegon said.

He ran his fingers along the place where the crack stopped. It ended in a straight vertical line.

Deacon came closer and tapped the stone with the pommel of his weapon. The first strike produced the solid report of thick masonry. Six inches to the right, the sound changed.

Hollow.

Jandar leaned over Vegon's shoulder. “Secret door?”

“Possibly.”

“Hidden passage?”

“Possibly.”

“Ancient treasure vault?”

Vegon looked at him. “Why does every possibility improve when you describe it?”

“Experience.”

“With treasure?”

“With possibilities.”

Zook had already begun examining the floor. He brushed broken stone aside and traced the base of the wall with his fingers.

“No tracks.”

“Through a wall?” Jandar asked.

Zook looked up. “That's usually how secret doors work.”

Mills laughed quietly.

Jandar pointed at him. “Do not encourage them.”

Mills opened his book.

“That is exactly the opposite of what I intend to do.”

Xil let them talk.

He was listening to the room.

Not for footsteps.

Not for another drake.

For something else.

The three creatures lay dead behind them. Their blood darkened the ancient floor, and the air still carried the smell of it beneath the dust. Xil could hear the others breathing, hear Vegon scraping loose fragments from the damaged wall, hear Mills's pen moving across paper.

Nothing else.

Yet he had the persistent feeling that they were no longer simply exploring an abandoned temple.

He had felt it since entering the structure.

The swamp outside had been alive and dangerous. The temple was different. Its dangers had purpose.

The boulder had not fallen because stone weakened.

The doors did not carry them from chamber to chamber because the temple was broken.

The drakes had not wandered here by accident.

Someone had wanted intruders stopped.

They had simply refused to stop.

“Xil?”

He looked up.

Deacon was watching him.

“What?”

“You're staring.”

“I was thinking.”

Jandar glanced over. “Careful. That's how Vegon started.”

Xil ignored him and looked at the damaged wall again.

“Whatever is beyond there was hidden.”

“That is generally the purpose of a secret door,” Vegon said.

“I know.”

Vegon waited.

Xil continued. “Which means someone did not want it found.”

Jandar nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. That is also generally the purpose of a secret door.”

Xil looked at him.

Jandar smiled.

Deacon said, “He's right.”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

That was unfortunate.

Vegon had found a recessed catch behind one of the broken carvings. He pressed it.

Something moved inside the wall.

Stone ground against stone.

Everyone stepped back.

A narrow section shifted inward, then slid sideways into darkness.

Jandar peered through the opening.

“Now it is a secret door.”

Zook moved in front of him.

“Wait.”

“I was only looking.”

“You look with your whole body.”

“That is because I am thorough.”

Zook crouched at the threshold and examined the floor beyond. Xil watched him work. The gnome had been more cautious since the swamp, although cautious for Zook still involved putting his face remarkably close to potentially lethal things.

“Nothing obvious,” Zook said.

“Those are my favorite traps,” Jandar replied.

Deacon went first.

That surprised no one.

The passage beyond was narrow and descended several steps before turning sharply. Xil followed behind Jandar, with Vegon, Zook and Mills close enough that nobody could disappear through another impossible doorway without witnesses.

The corridor ended at a small chamber.

Empty.

Almost.

A stone chest sat against one wall.

Jandar's expression brightened.

“No.”

He looked at Xil. “I haven't done anything.”

“Yet.”

“Your lack of faith wounds me.”

“You opened a door yesterday and nearly got crushed by a boulder.”

“That was a completely different door.”

Zook moved toward the chest.

Jandar sighed. “Why does nobody stop him?”

“Because he checks for traps,” Deacon said.

“I check for traps.”

“No. You open things and discover traps.”

“That is a form of checking.”

They found nothing dangerous in the chest.

They found almost nothing useful either.

Time had destroyed whatever cloth or paper had once been stored there, leaving fragments, dust and several corroded metal objects Vegon examined before deciding they were worthless.

Jandar looked personally betrayed.

“I was promised a secret room.”

“No one promised you anything,” Xil said.

“The wall did.”

“The wall did not speak.”

“Not to you.”

They continued.

Another door led them into a larger chamber, then another corridor. The temple seemed determined to offer just enough progress to convince them that progress existed.

The rooms were not all empty.

One held the remnants of furniture that collapsed when Deacon touched it.

Another contained an old rug spread across the floor. Jandar declared it the most valuable thing they had found in the temple so far and suggested they take it.

Deacon asked whether he intended to carry it.

Jandar abandoned the idea.

They found another passage leading upward.

Then another leading down.

At one point, they emerged through a doorway Xil was certain should have taken them farther into the temple and instead found themselves looking into a chamber they had passed earlier.

Vegon became very quiet.

That was how Xil knew he was angry.

Jandar knew too.

“Would you like me to say it?”

“No.”

“We're lost.”

“We are not lost.”

“You said that last time.”

“And I was correct.”

“Were we lost last time?”

Vegon continued walking.

“That is not relevant.”

“It feels relevant.”

The temple was making fools of all of them.

Xil suspected that was deliberate.

Eventually they found a broad descending corridor unlike the others.

The walls were smoother here. The carvings had changed as well, becoming less geometric and more deliberate. Lines curved around one another in patterns Xil did not recognize.

He stopped at one.

A symbol had been cut deeply into the stone.

Not a word.

Not any holy mark he knew.

But there was intent in it.

Vegon noticed him studying it.

“Recognize it?”

“No.”

“Religious?”

“Possibly.”

“That means you don't know.”

“Yes.”

Jandar looked pleased.

“Finally.”

Xil turned his head.

“Finally what?”

“Someone admits it.”

Vegon muttered something in Elvish.

Jandar smiled. “I assume that was complimentary.”

“It was not.”

The corridor opened into darkness.

Not ordinary darkness.

Xil knew that before he crossed the threshold.

His light reached the chamber and stopped.

There was no gradual fading. Illumination simply failed beyond a certain point, swallowed by blackness so complete that even his drow eyes found nothing useful within it.

Deacon stopped beside him.

“Magic?”

“Yes.”

Vegon stepped closer.

“Definitely.”

Jandar leaned forward.

“Dangerous?”

Xil looked at him.

“Definitely.”

“Good. We're learning.”

A shape slowly became visible beyond the edge of the darkness.

Red cloth.

No.

A tapestry.

As they moved nearer, more of it emerged. It hung against the far wall, enormous enough to reach nearly from floor to ceiling. A symbol dominated its center, rendered in dark lines against the faded red fabric.

Xil did not recognize that either.

He disliked that more.

“Anything?” Deacon asked.

Xil shook his head.

“Not one of yours?” Jandar asked.

“One of my what?”

“Religious things.”

“No.”

“Vegon?”

The wizard stared at it.

“I've never seen it.”

Jandar looked at Zook.

Zook shrugged.

“Mills?”

The minstrel had already begun sketching it.

“No idea.”

Jandar placed his hands on his hips.

“At last, I am surrounded by experts.”

Xil barely heard him.

Something about the chamber felt occupied.

He could not see anything moving.

He could not hear breathing.

But the darkness did not feel empty.

Xil touched the holy symbol at his chest.

He had known places like this before.

Not temples.

Not exactly.

Places where devotion had remained after the worshippers were gone. Places where grief had settled so deeply into stone that generations later a person could still feel it. Tombs where the dead had forgotten their names but remembered their duty.

The others saw an empty room.

Xil felt watched.

“Wait.”

Jandar had already taken a step into the darkness.

He stopped.

“What?”

“Something is here.”

Deacon raised his crossbow.

Zook reached for an arrow.

Vegon looked around.

“Where?”

“I don't know.”

Jandar glanced into the darkness.

“Well, that narrows it considerably.”

Xil ignored him.

“Stay together.”

Jandar looked at him.

“That was Zook's line.”

“It was good advice.”

“That does not make stealing it right.”

Then Jandar stepped forward.

The voice came from everywhere.

“You dare enter my master's chamber.”

Jandar stopped.

The words echoed from the walls and ceiling, deep and rasping enough that Xil felt them as much as heard them.

Nobody joked.

For once.

Xil stepped forward.

“Who speaks?”

No answer.

The darkness shifted.

Something appeared above the altar at the center of the chamber.

At first Xil thought it was smoke.

Then the smoke took shape.

A figure hung in the air, neither standing nor floating. It had the suggestion of a body rather than a body itself, a humanoid form wrapped in darkness that moved like torn cloth underwater. Its face seemed to exist only when Xil looked away from it. When he tried to focus on the features, they blurred.

But the eyes remained.

Pale.

Fixed upon them.

Jandar drew his rapier.

“We're looking for Orozon.”

The apparition turned toward him.

Xil felt the room tighten.

“Jandar.”

“What?”

“Stop talking.”

“That seems unlikely to improve its mood.”

“You are in its master's chamber.”

“So?”

“So perhaps insulting the master is unwise.”

Jandar looked at the apparition.

Then back at Xil.

“I hadn't insulted him yet.”

The spirit moved.

Xil felt it before he saw it.

Pressure entered his mind.

Not a thought.

A hand.

Cold fingers seemed to reach behind his eyes and search for something to grip.

He pushed back instinctively, calling upon the discipline that had been drilled into him long before he had understood why anyone would need it.

The presence slipped away.

Deacon grunted.

Xil turned.

The fighter's face had gone blank.

“Deacon?”

Deacon raised his weapon.

Not toward the spirit.

Toward Jandar.

Jandar stared at him.

“Chris—”

Deacon attacked.

Jandar twisted aside as the weapon cut through the space where he had been standing.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

Deacon blinked.

His expression changed from emptiness to horror.

“I—”

The guardian moved again.

A wave of force crossed the chamber.

Xil felt it enter him.

Cold.

Ancient.

For one terrible moment his body ceased to belong to him.

He could see.

He could hear.

He could think.

But movement was gone.

Beside him, Jandar had frozen as well.

Deacon stood rigid.

The guardian drifted away from the altar.

Zook fired.

His arrow passed through the edge of the creature's form and struck stone beyond.

Not harmlessly.

The spirit reacted.

But not enough.

“Magic!” Vegon shouted. “Use magic!”

An excellent suggestion.

Xil would have appreciated the ability to move.

He fought against the paralysis.

Nothing.

The guardian turned toward him.

It knew.

That realization was worse than the paralysis itself.

It knew what Xil was.

Not his name.

Not his history.

Something simpler.

Cleric.

Priest.

One who stood between the living and things that should have passed beyond them.

The apparition came closer.

Xil felt no hatred from it.

That frightened him.

Hatred could be understood.

This was duty.

The guardian had been placed here to protect something, and centuries had not altered that purpose.

Xil wondered how many others had entered this chamber.

How many had heard the same warning.

How many had died here.

Then the paralysis released him.

He drew a breath.

The guardian turned toward Jandar.

Xil raised his holy symbol.

“No.”

Power answered.

Light gathered around his hand, not bright like Vegon's magic, but warm and steady. Xil stepped toward the apparition.

“Whatever oath holds you here,” he said, “your time is done.”

The guardian faced him.

For the first time, its form recoiled.

Good.

Xil pushed harder.

He spoke the words he had been taught for the restless dead, words older than the Order, older than the kingdoms that now claimed them. They were not a spell so much as a declaration.

You have died.

You do not belong here.

Go.

The guardian pulled away.

For an instant Xil thought it would work.

The darkness around it twisted.

The spirit retreated toward the far side of the chamber.

Jandar regained movement and immediately raised his rapier.

Xil put out one hand.

“Wait.”

Jandar looked at him as though Xil had suggested they invite the thing to dinner.

“Wait?”

“It may leave.”

The guardian stopped.

Its pale eyes remained fixed on Xil.

Then Vegon's magic struck it.

The spell flashed across the apparition.

The guardian screamed.

Whatever hold Xil had established broke.

“Vegon!”

“What?”

“I was driving it away.”

“It was attacking us.”

“It was retreating.”

“It stopped.”

“Because you hit it!”

The guardian surged forward.

Jandar looked between them.

“I feel this discussion may have become academic.”

He was right.

The guardian struck.

Not with a weapon.

Its hand passed through Deacon's armor and into his chest.

Deacon screamed.

Xil felt the wrongness of it.

The spirit did not cut flesh.

It touched whatever lay beneath.

Life.

Memory.

Soul.

Deacon staggered backward, suddenly pale.

Xil moved toward him.

“Stay with me.”

“I am.”

“You look terrible.”

“Thank you.”

Xil pressed one hand against Deacon's armor and sent healing into him.

The warmth answered immediately.

Deacon's color improved.

“Better?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The guardian came again.

Jandar intercepted it.

His blade glimmered faintly as it passed through the spirit's form. This time the creature reacted violently, twisting away.

Jandar smiled.

“That worked.”

“Magic weapon,” Vegon said.

“I knew that.”

“No, you didn't.”

“I suspected it.”

Zook's next arrow carried the same faint shimmer.

It struck.

The guardian recoiled.

Now they understood.

The fight changed.

Deacon switched weapons.

Jandar stayed close enough to keep the apparition occupied, darting in whenever its attention moved elsewhere. Zook kept his distance and chose his shots. Vegon abandoned lightning after the first spell seemed to wash across the creature with less effect than expected.

Xil watched all of it while keeping one eye on the guardian.

Something still bothered him.

Not what it was.

Why it was.

“You dare enter my master's chamber.”

Those had been its first words.

Not my chamber.

Not leave this place.

My master's chamber.

Orozon.

If the guardian served him, then whatever lay deeper inside this temple mattered enough to leave a protector behind for centuries.

Xil wondered if killing that protector was wise.

Then the guardian reached into Jandar's mind.

Jandar staggered.

His face changed.

For perhaps a second, Xil saw genuine terror there.

Not surprise.

Not the exaggerated outrage Jandar wore whenever someone damaged his coat.

Fear.

The guardian moved toward him.

Jandar could not move.

“Jandar!”

No response.

Xil raised his symbol again.

The guardian turned.

“Look at me.”

Its pale eyes found him.

Xil felt its presence touch his mind.

He let it.

Not completely.

Enough.

Cold flooded through him.

Images came with it.

Stone.

Darkness.

Waiting.

Not years.

Centuries.

The sensation was too vast to understand. A duty repeated so long that duty had become identity.

Guard.

Protect.

Wait.

Xil pushed back.

The connection broke.

He staggered.

The guardian recoiled.

For the first time, Xil thought he understood why the thing frightened him.

It was not trapped here.

It had chosen to remain.

Or whatever remained of it had.

“Xil!”

Vegon.

The guardian was moving toward him again.

Xil brought his weapon up.

The spirit struck.

Cold passed through his body.

His vision went white.

He heard someone shout his name.

Then the chamber returned.

Xil was on one knee.

His hand still gripped his holy symbol.

Good.

That seemed important.

A shadow moved above him.

He raised his weapon and struck.

The blow connected.

The guardian twisted away.

Jandar came from the side, his rapier passing through the apparition's torso. Zook's arrow followed.

The guardian screamed.

Deacon fired.

Another hit.

The spirit began to lose shape.

Its edges came apart like smoke in wind.

“Keep going!” Vegon shouted.

Xil stood.

The guardian looked at him.

Not Jandar.

Not Deacon.

Him.

Xil saw no plea in its face.

No request for mercy.

Only certainty.

It believed they were wrong.

That knowledge settled inside him.

He raised his holy symbol one final time.

“If your purpose was righteous,” Xil said quietly, “then forgive us.”

Jandar glanced at him.

The guardian did not.

Perhaps it could not.

Perhaps forgiveness had never been part of its purpose.

Power gathered in Xil's hand.

He released it.

Radiance struck the apparition.

The spirit convulsed.

Jandar moved at the same moment, driving his blade through its center.

The guardian came apart.

Not like flesh.

Not like the drakes.

Its body dissolved from the edges inward, darkness peeling away into threads that vanished before reaching the floor.

The chamber brightened.

The unnatural darkness receded.

Then the guardian laughed.

Xil froze.

It was not the laugh of something defeated.

That would have been easier.

There was knowledge in it.

Certainty.

The fading face turned toward them.

“You do not know what it is you have done.”

Then it was gone.

The glow around the altar vanished with it.

Silence filled the chamber.

Nobody moved.

Jandar finally lowered his rapier.

“I suppose we'll find out.”

Xil looked at him.

Jandar's attempt at humor sounded thin even to Jandar.

Deacon sat heavily on the edge of the altar.

“What did it mean?”

Vegon was already staring at the symbols carved into the floor.

“We don't know.”

“That's becoming a theme,” Jandar said.

Xil barely heard them.

He walked to the center of the chamber.

The altar was ordinary stone now. Around it, symbols had been carved into the floor in a broad pattern. Whatever power had illuminated them during the guardian's presence was gone, leaving only grooves in ancient stone.

Xil knelt.

He traced one without touching it.

Nothing.

No recognition.

No sudden revelation.

He had hoped for one.

Vegon crouched beside him.

“Do you know them?”

“No.”

“They don't match the standing stone.”

“No.”

Vegon looked toward the place where the guardian had disappeared.

“Do you think it was telling the truth?”

Xil looked at him.

“Why wouldn't it?”

“Because it was trying to kill us.”

“That does not make it a liar.”

Vegon considered that.

Xil stood.

Jandar had moved toward the enormous tapestry.

“We came here for something.”

Xil turned.

“That does not mean we should ignore what it said.”

“I didn't say we should.”

“You're already searching the room.”

“Yes.”

Jandar looked at him as though those facts had nothing to do with each other.

Xil almost argued.

Instead, he stopped.

Because Jandar was right about one thing.

They had come here for a reason.

Mills had been poisoned.

Something was happening in the swamp.

Orozon's temple had been their destination before they knew a guardian waited inside it.

A warning changed what they knew.

It did not tell them what to do.

That was the problem with warnings.

They were much more useful afterward.

Zook joined Jandar at the tapestry.

The enormous fabric dominated the wall now that the darkness had lifted. The strange symbol remained at its center.

Xil approached it.

“Anything?” Deacon asked.

Xil studied the mark again.

“No.”

He hated saying that.

He was a cleric. People expected clerics to recognize symbols scratched into tombs. Apparently anyone who spent enough time around gods was supposed to know what every dead civilization had believed.

This one meant nothing to him.

Vegon did no better.

Mills sketched it carefully.

Jandar moved to one side of the tapestry.

“There is a seam.”

Xil stepped closer.

He was right.

What had appeared to be one enormous hanging was actually two panels joined at the center.

Jandar reached toward it.

“Wait.”

Jandar looked over his shoulder.

“You say that a great deal.”

“And yet you remain alive.”

“Excellent point.”

Zook checked the floor and the edges of the tapestry.

Nothing.

Jandar separated the panels.

Stone waited behind them.

He stared at it.

“Another wall.”

Vegon came closer.

Jandar looked at him.

“Go ahead.”

Vegon examined the stone.

“It appears solid.”

Jandar smiled.

“That is what you said about the last one.”

“I said no such thing.”

“Spiritually, you did.”

Zook tapped the wall.

Solid.

Deacon tried another place.

Still solid.

Xil watched.

The guardian's warning would not leave him.

You do not know what it is you have done.

Not what you are doing.

Done.

Past.

Something had already happened.

Entering the temple?

Killing the guardian?

Crossing into its master's chamber?

Perhaps simply surviving long enough to reach this wall?

He wished the thing had been less dramatic and more specific.

Jandar drew his dagger.

“What are you doing?” Deacon asked.

“Testing.”

“Testing what?”

Jandar slid the blade carefully along the wall.

Nothing.

He moved farther down.

Still nothing.

Zook picked up a broken length of wood from near the altar.

“What about this?”

Jandar stepped aside.

Zook pushed the wood against the stone.

It stopped.

He moved it.

Stopped again.

Another foot.

Stopped.

Then the end vanished.

Everyone went quiet.

Zook pulled the wood back.

It was intact.

Vegon moved immediately.

“Again.”

Zook pushed it forward.

Half the length disappeared into what looked like solid stone.

Vegon's expression changed.

Jandar sighed.

“There it is.”

“What?”

“The face.”

“What face?”

“The one you make before we do something unwise.”

Vegon ignored him and extended one hand.

Xil caught his wrist.

“No.”

Vegon looked at him.

“Zook just demonstrated that it is not solid.”

“He demonstrated that a stick can pass through it.”

“Yes.”

“You are not a stick.”

Jandar nodded.

“A rare but important distinction.”

Vegon pulled his hand free.

“I can determine whether it is illusion.”

“How?”

Vegon reached forward.

Xil almost stopped him again.

The wizard's fingers disappeared into stone.

Vegon smiled.

“Like that.”

He pushed farther.

His hand vanished to the wrist.

Then the forearm.

Nothing happened.

Jandar looked at Xil.

“I believe we've reached the point where stopping him is more dangerous than letting him continue.”

Vegon stepped through.

The wall swallowed him.

“Vegon?” Deacon called.

A moment later the wizard's head appeared from solid stone.

“There is a room.”

Jandar jumped.

“Do not do that.”

Vegon disappeared again.

Zook followed.

Then Deacon.

Jandar looked at Xil.

“After you.”

“No.”

“You are the holy one.”

“You are the brave one.”

“I have never said that.”

“You imply it constantly.”

Mills stepped between them and walked through the wall.

Both men stared.

Jandar frowned.

“He is becoming much too comfortable.”

Xil followed.

Passing through the false wall felt like walking through cool mist.

For an instant there was gray.

Then another chamber opened around him.

This one was different.

Not a guard room.

Not a passage.

Not a trap.

A red carpet crossed the floor in a straight line toward a raised pedestal.

Objects hung along the walls, dark shapes Xil could not immediately identify. A chest sat off to one side. The room was surprisingly intact, protected from the decay that had claimed so much of the temple.

But Xil saw none of those things first.

He saw the pedestal.

Something rested upon it.

A book.

Large.

Ancient.

Its cover was dark with age, its surface marked by symbols that seemed to shift beneath Xil's light.

Vegon stood at the foot of the pedestal.

For once, the wizard had nothing to say.

Xil stopped beside him.

Behind them, Jandar emerged through the false wall, followed by Mills.

No one spoke.

The guardian's final words returned to Xil.

You do not know what it is you have done.

He looked from the place where they had entered to the ancient book waiting on the pedestal.

Whatever they had done, Xil thought, perhaps they were not finished doing it yet.