The flower survived the first hour.
Hexen checked twice.
He pretended the second time was because he needed to examine the soil around the dead growth, but Fendor noticed him crouching beside the small bloom again and had the decency not to mention it.
The Moaning Waters were changing.
Not healing. Not yet.
The damage left by the alien growth could not be undone merely because its roots had stopped feeding. Entire stands of reeds remained brown. Trees leaned dead above black water. Burn scars from the battle marked the wetland in places, and the carcass of the enormous tentacled amphibian had begun attracting every scavenger brave or stupid enough to approach.
But the fog was gone.
Sunlight reached the swamp.
Birds had returned cautiously to the trees.
The difference was enough.
They searched before leaving.
That had become instinct. Anything powerful enough to poison an entire wetland rarely existed alone, and the spider-like creatures had already proven that the corruption extended beyond what could be seen from the road.
Isamu ranged ahead while the others worked outward from the ruined growth.
There were tracks everywhere now that the haze no longer concealed them—some theirs, some belonging to the creatures they had fought, many impossible to separate from the ordinary passage of swamp life. Kaylor circled above on the peryton for part of the search, watching for anything large enough to make another surprise undesirable.
Fendor remained closer to Hexen than usual.
He said nothing about it.
Neither did Hexen.
There would be time to discuss the death that had happened and unhappened.
Later.
Hexen disliked how often that word had become useful.
He remembered the Vorpal blade.
Not merely seeing it.
Feeling it.
There had been no pain for long. That was one mercy. There had been the strike, a terrible instant of physical wrongness, and then the impossible perspective of the world continuing without his body beneath him.
Then Wish.
Then Fendor's sword coming toward him again.
The second stroke had wounded him.
The first had killed him.
Both were memories.
Hexen had spent years learning that nature did not care whether something was comfortable. Death was part of life. Grim Harvest understood that more intimately than he preferred.
But death was supposed to remain where it happened.
He touched his neck.
Whole.
"Still there," Kaylor called from above.
Hexen looked up.
The dragonborn circled lazily on the peryton.
"What?"
"Your head."
Fendor closed his eyes.
"Kaylor."
"What?"
"There are moments when silence is a gift."
Kaylor considered that.
"I've never received one."
Despite himself, Hexen laughed.
That helped.
A little.
Isamu called from the northeast.
"Here."
The others converged.
At first Hexen thought Isamu had found another remnant of the corruption.
Color stood out among the dark swamp vegetation.
After everything they had just destroyed, color had become suspicious.
This was different.
The tree rose from a small island of relatively firm ground, perhaps thirty feet beyond a winding channel of black water. Its trunk was pale beneath bark mottled with subtle bands of amber, blue and deep red. The colors did not glow. They belonged to the wood itself, shifting with the angle of sunlight and giving the strange impression that several seasons had been preserved in the same tree.
Its leaves were even stranger.
Green dominated, but not completely. Gold ran along some edges. Others carried a faint blue sheen. A handful near the upper branches were crimson despite the season.
Fendor stopped.
"Please tell me that isn't another one."
Hexen had already moved closer.
"No."
"Confident?"
"Yes."
Nethnarel studied it.
The tree possessed magic.
She could feel that much.
But not the wrongness of the thing they had burned.
No pressure against reality.
No sense that it had taken the idea of a plant and reproduced it without understanding what plants were.
This one belonged.
Somehow.
Hexen stepped onto the island.
The swamp remained firm beneath him.
He approached the tree slowly.
Recognition took time.
Not because the tree was unfamiliar.
Because it should not have existed.
He stopped beneath the outer branches.
"No."
Kaylor landed nearby.
The peryton folded its wings.
"No what?"
Hexen looked up through the colored leaves.
"I know this."
Fendor came closer.
"You've seen one?"
"No."
"That is usually the opposite of knowing something."
Hexen ignored him.
Some knowledge came from experience.
Some came from books.
Druids collected another kind entirely—the accumulated memory of species, seasons and places, names passed through circles long after the things bearing those names had vanished.
Hexen had read about this tree.
Ancient texts.
Fragments.
Illustrations copied so many times that later scribes had begun treating the colors as metaphor.
"Linnar," he said.
Nethnarel looked at him.
"What?"
"A Linnar tree."
He placed his palm against the trunk.
The bark felt warm.
Alive.
Completely ordinary beneath the impossible fact of its existence.
"They're extinct."
Kaylor glanced upward.
"This one isn't."
"Helpful."
"Thank you."
Hexen walked around the trunk.
"There hasn't been a living Linnar for thousands of years."
That silenced even Fendor.
The elf approached more carefully.
"Thousands?"
"According to every record I've seen."
Nethnarel touched one low leaf between two fingers.
"Then how is this here?"
Hexen looked around the swamp.
"I don't know."
That answer had returned far too quickly to their lives.
Isamu crouched near the roots.
The Swarm Gloves shifted faintly over his hands, a single beetle emerging and disappearing between his fingers.
"Does it have anything to do with what we destroyed?"
"No."
Hexen's answer came immediately.
He looked toward the ruined stretch of swamp behind them.
"That thing was foreign. This isn't."
"But it shouldn't exist," Kaylor said.
"No."
Kaylor rested Peacemaker against one shoulder.
"That sounds familiar."
Hexen understood what he meant.
They had awakened once beneath a monument belonging to people who had died a thousand years earlier.
Them.
They knew more than most about things existing in the wrong century.
Hexen searched his memory.
There was something else.
The tree's rarity had overshadowed its purpose at first, but the old histories had not described Linnar trees merely because they were beautiful.
They had mattered.
He closed his eyes.
Words returned.
Ceremonies.
Funerals.
Heroes.
Hexen opened his eyes.
"Oh."
Fendor's expression tightened.
"I dislike that sound."
"Linnar trees weren't planted casually."
"Why?"
Hexen looked down at the earth beneath their feet.
"They marked graves."
No one spoke.
He continued.
"Not ordinary graves. Old traditions used them at the burial sites of great heroes. When someone of unusual renown died, a Linnar was planted as part of the rites."
Kaylor looked at the tree again.
The colors seemed different after that.
Less beautiful.
More solemn.
Fendor glanced at the ground.
"So we're standing on someone's grave."
"Possibly."
"That word is doing dangerous work."
Isamu stood.
"Whose?"
Hexen shook his head.
"The tree doesn't say."
Nethnarel had moved beneath the canopy.
She examined the ground, then the branches.
"If these are extinct, can we take something?"
Fendor stared at her.
Nethnarel looked back.
"For study."
"Of course."
"For planting."
Hexen's interest sharpened immediately.
That changed the question.
If the tree produced viable seed, fruit, nuts—anything from which another might be grown—then this was more than an archaeological curiosity.
A species lost for millennia might not be lost at all.
Hexen began searching the lower branches.
Nethnarel moved around the opposite side.
"Seeds?"
"Maybe."
"Fruit?"
"Possibly."
"You don't know?"
"I've never seen one."
"You just told us you knew exactly what it was."
"I know what a dragon is. That doesn't mean I know what its eggs taste like."
Kaylor looked at him.
"Do you?"
Hexen stopped.
"No."
"You hesitated."
"I hate all of you."
Nethnarel smiled and ducked beneath one of the great roots.
Then disappeared.
There was no flash.
No sound.
One moment her pale hair remained visible through the colored leaves.
The next, there was empty shadow beneath the tree.
Kaylor drew Peacemaker.
"Neth?"
Nothing.
Fendor had the Oathbow in hand almost as quickly.
Isamu moved to the place where she had vanished and stopped before crossing beneath the root.
Hexen stared at the trunk.
The Linnar tree remained peaceful.
No branch moved toward them.
No roots tightened.
No magical threat announced itself.
"Nethnarel," Kaylor called.
The swamp gave him birds and wind.
Nothing else.
Fendor looked at Hexen.
"You said the tree wasn't dangerous."
"I said it wasn't the other thing."
"An important distinction after she disappears."
Hexen crouched near the roots.
There.
Not a hole.
Not exactly.
The air beneath two massive roots looked darker than the shadow should have allowed. Perspective bent slightly around the space, making the far side seem farther away than it physically was.
A passage disguised as absence.
Hexen extended the Staff of the Woodlands.
The tip vanished.
He pulled it back.
Still there.
"She's somewhere else."
Kaylor moved toward the opening.
Fendor caught his arm.
"Perhaps we should establish where before everyone follows."
Kaylor looked at him.
"Neth is alone."
"Which is why sending all five of us blindly through the same magical hole could improve the situation or make it substantially worse."
Isamu stepped beneath the root.
He vanished.
Fendor stared at the empty place.
"Apparently the debate has concluded."
Kaylor followed.
Hexen sighed.
Then went through.
Fendor remained alone beneath the impossible tree.
He looked up.
Colored leaves shifted quietly in the sunlight.
"I hate graves."
Then he stepped beneath the roots.
The swamp disappeared.
Stone replaced it.
Nethnarel stood several paces away, apparently unharmed and visibly annoyed that anyone might have believed otherwise.
Isamu stood beside her.
Kaylor was looking upward.
Hexen arrived behind him.
Fendor appeared last.
The five found themselves at the top of a broad stair descending beneath an arched stone ceiling.
No sunlight followed them.
Nethnarel summoned light.
Warm illumination spread across walls darkened by age.
The air smelled dry.
That surprised Hexen more than the stone.
They had descended beneath a swamp. Water should have infiltrated every seam. Roots should have broken masonry apart. Mud should have found its way through cracks.
Instead the passage felt sealed against the centuries.
Carvings lined the walls.
Some had been worn almost smooth.
Others remained sharp.
A warrior bearing a broad weapon stood above enemies beneath one panel. Another showed a figure before a kneeling beast. Farther down, the same figure confronted something winged.
A dragon.
Fendor studied it.
"Subtle."
Hexen moved his light closer.
Something about the images awakened another piece of memory.
The Linnar tree.
The funeral traditions.
An old name.
He whispered it once before he was certain.
"Ragnap."
Kaylor looked at him.
"Who?"
"Ragnap the Strong."
The name sounded strange in the buried chamber, as though the stone remembered hearing it spoken with more ceremony.
Hexen examined the nearest carving.
"He was real."
Fendor glanced at him.
"That is generally a requirement for having a tomb."
"You know what I mean."
Hexen moved farther down the stairs.
"I've read about him. Hero of the old realm. Very old."
"How heroic?"
Hexen considered the legends.
"Depending on which account you believe, he killed a dragon with one blow."
Fendor raised an eyebrow.
"One?"
"Apparently."
Kaylor looked toward the dragon carving.
"Good hit."
"Other stories say he defeated armies."
"By himself?"
"Probably."
Nethnarel smiled faintly.
"Stories improve with age."
Hexen looked back at the others.
That observation landed differently now.
Songs already exaggerated their own deeds.
They had heard versions of Scourge Firebreath's death in which Kaylor stood alone beneath the dragon while lightning split the mountain and Fendor fired an arrow through the creature's heart from half a mile away.
Neither event had happened.
Not exactly.
Give the story another thousand years and perhaps the five of them would have killed Scourge with a single sword stroke too.
"He was considered good," Hexen said. "Not a tyrant. Not some warlord people later decided to call heroic. The old accounts treat him as a protector."
Kaylor examined the stone figure.
"That usually means someone hated him."
"Probably."
"But they buried him like this."
"Yes."
"And planted an extinct tree over him."
"Not extinct then."
"You know what I meant."
Hexen smiled.
They descended.
The first chamber widened into a burial hall.
Recesses opened to the left and right, vault-like spaces set behind thick stone framing. Some held carved stone tables. Others contained sealed compartments. The floor sloped gently toward another set of steps deeper within.
Nothing moved.
That did not reassure anyone.
Fendor remained near the center.
"We should clear the sides."
Kaylor nodded.
"Agreed."
They had made that mistake before—walking past unexplored doors because something ahead looked more interesting.
Experience occasionally survived curiosity.
Kaylor and Hexen moved toward one side while Isamu, Nethnarel and Fendor took the other.
They remained within sight.
For approximately ten seconds.
Kaylor stepped across a seam in the floor.
Stone thundered.
The slab fell between them.
It came from above with terrifying speed, an enormous barrier slamming into the passage hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.
Kaylor spun.
"Fendor!"
His voice struck stone and returned.
On the other side, Fendor stared at the wall.
"Of course."
Nethnarel placed a hand against it.
Solid.
Isamu was already searching the edges.
"No seam wide enough."
"There is always a seam."
"Not useful enough."
Fendor looked back toward the chamber behind them.
The floor trembled.
He stopped.
"That seems worse."
On Kaylor's side, Hexen felt it too.
A low vibration moved through the soles of his boots.
Something shifted beneath the stone.
Kaylor raised Peacemaker.
"Wall first or ground?"
"Ground."
"Why?"
"The wall isn't moving."
The floor behind them rumbled.
Hexen turned.
One of the stone coffins opened.
Not slowly.
The lid burst outward and struck the floor.
A wrapped figure rose.
Old cloth covered most of it. Metal gleamed beneath burial wrappings. The face had been preserved into something that retained enough humanity to make death uncomfortable.
Kaylor stared.
"Undead."
The corpse moved far too quickly.
It came out of the coffin with one arm already swinging.
Kaylor's displaced image shifted away from him as the fist crossed where his head appeared to be.
The mummy struck nothing.
Kaylor answered with Peacemaker.
Black steel crashed through ancient armor.
The creature staggered.
It did not fall.
Hexen heard stone grinding behind him.
Another burial place opened.
"There's more."
"Naturally."
On the other side of the wall, Nethnarel watched the ground move.
Something beneath it was coming upward.
"Back."
Isamu moved.
Fendor did not need to be told twice.
Nethnarel pointed toward the shifting stone and released a compact streak of flame.
The spell struck the floor.
Stone cracked.
Something screamed beneath it.
Then the ground erupted.
The creature that emerged resembled a beetle only because language lacked a separate word for an insect large enough to hunt people.
Its shell scraped against the surrounding stone as it pulled itself free. Thick mandibles opened beneath clustered eyes. Segmented legs found purchase and lifted a body heavier than a warhorse.
Fendor drew.
"Ipreferred the swamp."
The beetle opened its mouth.
Isamu saw the glands along its jaw swell.
"Move."
Acid sprayed across the chamber.
Fendor threw himself sideways.
Nethnarel raised one arm across her face and turned from the worst of it.
Isamu nearly cleared the stream.
Nearly was not enough.
Liquid struck stone and smoked.
The air filled with a sharp chemical stink.
Isamu looked at the places where his clothing had begun to dissolve.
"I dislike it."
Fendor fired.
"That makes three of us."
The arrow entered a joint beneath the creature's shell.
It shrieked.
The floor moved again.
Nethnarel looked down.
"No."
Another beetle tore its way upward.
On the opposite side, Hexen drove the end of his staff into a mummy's chest and forced it back toward its coffin.
His magic reached for life and found none.
That absence always felt wrong when his power expected something living.
The corpse seized the staff.
Hexen released it before the mummy could use the weapon to pull him close.
Another wrapped figure came from the side.
Kaylor intercepted.
Whatever oath he had broken years before, one truth remained untouched beneath the ruins of faith.
He hated undead things that refused the order of death.
He marked the nearest mummy as his enemy.
Not through prayer to the Sanctum.
Not through obedience.
Through choice.
Peacemaker came down.
Power followed.
The ancient corpse struck the floor hard enough to crack stone beneath it.
Hexen recovered his staff.
"Still alive?"
Kaylor glanced at the mummy.
"No."
"You know what I meant."
"I know."
The second creature lunged.
Kaylor met it.
Across the wall, Isamu reached the first beetle.
The Swarm Gloves tightened over his fists.
He struck beneath the shell.
Once.
Twice.
The insect recoiled.
A segmented limb raked across his side.
Isamu stayed inside its reach.
That was the safest place.
Most large creatures wanted distance enough to use their size. Isamu denied it, moving beneath the beetle's forelimbs and hammering blows into the vulnerable places where armor joined.
Fendor exploited every opening.
Arrows entered after Isamu's strikes.
Nethnarel attacked from behind them.
The second beetle charged.
Fendor turned.
Its jaws opened.
Nethnarel reached into her equipment.
Her fingers found the pouch.
The Bag of Beans had survived far longer than anything called a bag of beans deserved to survive.
She withdrew one.
Fendor saw it.
"What are you doing?"
"Testing something."
"That phrase has killed people."
The beetle lunged.
Nethnarel threw.
The bean vanished into its open mouth.
For half a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then reality developed a sense of humor.
Stone appeared.
Not a pebble.
Not rubble.
A statue.
A vast granite likeness of Nethnarel erupted inside the beetle's jaws.
The insect stopped.
Completely.
Its mouth had been open wide enough to swallow a man.
It had not been open wide enough to contain an enormous stone sorceress.
The statue jammed between its mandibles and the floor, forcing the creature's head downward beneath impossible weight.
Its legs clawed frantically against stone.
It could not move.
Fendor lowered his bow.
He looked at the statue.
Then at Nethnarel.
Then back at the statue.
"Why?"
Nethnarel stared at the oversized stone image of herself.
"I don't know."
"It looks like you."
"I noticed."
Isamu hit the other beetle again.
Fendor raised the bow.
"We'll discuss it later."
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"Because you keep doing things."
The immobilized beetle tried to rake them with its claws.
That was all it could do.
The statue held.
Fendor's next arrow struck its exposed side.
Nethnarel connected a line of crackling magic to it and kept the power there, feeding more energy down the arc whenever the creature struggled.
Isamu turned from the first beetle and moved toward the pinned one.
The advantage was brutal.
They used it.
On the other side of the wall, brutality had become necessary for a different reason.
The mummies were not powerful enough to overwhelm Kaylor and Hexen quickly.
They did not need to be.
One blow changed the fight.
The corpse's hand closed around Hexen's arm.
Cold traveled through him.
Not temperature.
Something older.
Dry.
A corruption that carried the certainty of a sealed grave.
Hexen tore free.
The mummy fell beneath his next strike.
He took one step after it.
His balance failed.
Kaylor saw him catch the wall.
"What?"
Hexen looked at his hand.
The fingers trembled.
"I don't know."
"That answer again."
"I know."
The second mummy moved.
Hexen tried to meet it.
His body responded too slowly.
The curse had not weakened his muscles.
It had made certainty difficult.
Every movement felt as though some part of him expected failure before the action began.
The mummy attacked.
Hexen barely escaped the blow.
Kaylor stepped between them.
Peacemaker intercepted the next strike.
"Stay behind me."
Hexen frowned.
"I don't need—"
"Today you do."
Hexen disliked that.
He disliked the fact that Kaylor was correct more.
Peacemaker drove the creature backward.
Hexen attacked when the opening came.
Even diminished by whatever had entered him, the druid remained dangerous.
The mummy fell.
Nothing changed.
Hexen waited.
The weakness remained.
"The curse didn't go with it."
Kaylor looked toward the wall.
"We get out first."
Hexen nodded.
The fight on the other side ended before they found the release.
Fendor's arrows had stripped away enough of the pinned beetle's shell for Isamu to finish it at close range.
The granite Nethnarel remained lodged in its jaws.
When the corpse stopped moving, the statue did not vanish.
Nethnarel examined it.
"This might be permanent."
Fendor looked appalled.
"You've left yourself in its mouth forever?"
"Apparently."
"We are taking that with us."
Nethnarel looked at him.
"Why?"
Fendor gestured toward it as though the reason were self-evident.
"Because it is a giant statue of you stuck in a beetle."
Isamu looked toward the wall.
"Kaylor and Hexen."
That ended the discussion.
They searched.
The mechanism was well concealed.
That was appropriate for a tomb old enough to remember rituals no living person practiced.
Fendor found one carved piece that moved slightly.
Isamu found another.
Nethnarel traced the pattern between them.
Something clicked.
The massive wall shuddered.
Then rose.
Slowly.
The first thing Fendor saw was Kaylor.
The second was Hexen leaning against the wall.
Fendor's expression changed.
"What happened?"
"Undead."
Hexen straightened.
Fendor studied him.
"You're hurt."
"Not exactly."
Kaylor turned toward Hexen and placed a hand against him.
Restorative magic moved through the druid.
The effect was immediate.
Whatever invisible weight had settled into Hexen's body broke.
Breath came easier.
His balance returned.
The world once again seemed willing to behave according to cause and effect.
Hexen exhaled.
"Better."
Kaylor nodded.
"Good."
Nethnarel looked beyond them.
The mummified bodies lay among opened burial places.
Something about the scene bothered her.
Not the dead.
They had seen enough walking corpses that undeath itself no longer produced surprise.
The arrangement did.
These were not invaders buried after some forgotten battle.
They had belonged here.
Hexen felt it too.
Now that the curse had lifted, he could examine the chamber without fighting through its influence.
He approached one fallen mummy.
Metal beneath the wrappings bore a symbol.
Not Ragnap's.
Related.
A companion.
Another burial space carried matching funerary patterns.
Hexen looked toward the carved stories on the walls.
His unease deepened.
"These weren't enemies."
Kaylor cleaned Peacemaker.
"Of Ragnap?"
"No."
Hexen crouched.
"I think they fought with him."
Fendor came through the raised barrier.
"Then why did they attack?"
Hexen looked at the dead.
"I don't know."
No one laughed at the answer this time.
The implications were worse than uncertainty.
These had been honored dead.
Companions buried near a legendary hero.
Guardians, perhaps.
Friends.
People whose names had vanished even while Ragnap's survived.
They should have rested.
Something had disturbed that rest.
Or twisted the purpose for which they remained.
Kaylor looked down the passage.
"Another curse?"
"Maybe."
"The swamp?"
Hexen shook his head.
"Different."
"Sure?"
"No."
Fendor sighed.
"There it is."
Nethnarel glanced toward the entrance that no longer existed behind them.
"The spider controlled you. The swamp was poisoned. Now dead heroes are attacking people."
Fendor's expression hardened at the first sentence.
"We don't know these things are connected."
"No."
Kaylor looked toward the mummy.
"The Swarm Lord?"
The words sat badly in the chamber.
Hexen's gaze snapped toward him.
"No."
"You know that?"
"No."
Fendor stared at him.
"Wonderful."
Hexen stood.
"The Temple is gone. His foothold was destroyed."
"That isn't the same thing as him being dead."
"I know."
The old temptation waited there.
Take every new horror and bind it to the last one.
Make the world simpler by deciding one enemy remained behind every door.
Craven.
The Swarm Lord.
The Hunt.
Some hidden hand responsible for every unnatural thing.
It was comforting.
It was also how people invented conspiracies where history had only provided chaos.
Hexen looked at the ancient dead.
"We don't decide what caused this until we know."
Kaylor watched him.
Then nodded.
"Fine."
Fendor glanced between them.
"I would like it noted that Hexen has become the cautious one."
Nethnarel looked toward the granite statue still embedded in the dead beetle.
"I think we've all changed."
Fendor followed her gaze.
"Some more visibly than others."
They searched the burial chambers before going deeper.
The mummies carried weapons made for war rather than ceremony, but nothing that demanded to be taken from the dead. The beetles offered even less unless someone had developed an urgent need for acid glands.
One coffin held something stranger.
Nethnarel found the bottle.
It looked ordinary enough until she held it up.
Dark glass.
Heavy stopper.
Magic nested within.
Fendor immediately became suspicious.
"What does it do?"
Nethnarel examined the enchantment.
"Smoke."
Fendor waited.
"That is the entire answer?"
"A lot of smoke."
Kaylor looked at the bottle.
"Useful."
"For what?"
Kaylor shrugged.
"Not seeing things."
Fendor considered.
"All right. Keep it."
The bottle joined the increasingly improbable collection of objects they carried from places where sensible people would have left everything untouched.
Then they found the stairs.
They occupied the center of the tomb beyond the divided burial chambers.
Broad.
Ancient.
Descending.
The light Nethnarel held reached only partway down before darkness swallowed it.
Fendor stood at the top.
"We came here because people were disappearing at a crossroads."
Kaylor nodded.
"Yes."
"We entered a swamp."
"Yes."
"We killed a giant frog."
"Yes."
"And spiders."
"Yes."
"One of which made me kill Hexen."
"In a timeline that technically no longer exists."
Fendor stared at him.
"That sentence did not improve it."
"No."
"We then found a tree extinct for thousands of years."
"Apparently."
"Which teleported us into the tomb of a legendary dragon slayer."
Kaylor looked down the stairs.
"Seems right."
"Where his dead companions attacked us."
"Yes."
Fendor lowered his head.
"We have not reached the crossroads."
Isamu stepped past him.
"No."
He began descending.
Nethnarel followed.
Fendor looked toward Hexen.
"Does this feel normal to you?"
Hexen glanced once toward the mummy lying beside its ancient coffin.
"No."
That was the problem.
Not the danger.
Danger had followed them for years.
This place felt wrong in a different way.
Ragnap the Strong had been remembered as a hero. The Linnar tree above him had been planted in honor, not warning. The people buried beside him appeared to have been companions, not prisoners.
Something had changed the meaning of the tomb.
Hexen placed one hand on Grim Harvest.
The scythe offered no answer.
Perhaps that was good.
He joined the others.
Kaylor remained at the top of the stairs for a moment longer.
Behind him stood the dead.
Ahead waited whatever a thousand-year-old hero had been buried with.
Peacemaker rested against his shoulder.
Several years of peace had taught Kaylor that not every closed door required opening.
Unfortunately, several decades of accumulated instinct had taught him something else.
When the dead began behaving contrary to their own history, closed doors rarely remained someone else's problem.
He descended.
Above them, unseen beyond ancient stone and the roots of an impossible tree, the small flower Hexen had planted moved in the returning wind.
Below, the tomb of Ragnap the Strong continued downward.
And somewhere in its depths, something waited among the honored dead.