Murder in Cormyr - Chet Williamson [44]
"Perhaps the killer wore gloves," said Lindavar, and I thought it highly likely.
We straightened up and looked around the small chamber. Except for the now-extinguished torch that Darvik had mentioned, there was nothing of note save for the layers of stone. As I casually looked at the roll of years that they represented, I thought that one layer gleamed more than the others in the lantern light. Greater porosity, I fancied, and wondered how many years it had taken for that inch-wide layer to be deposited, and what creatures had walked Faerыn in that bygone age.
I was about to touch it, as though the contact would make me see in my mind's eye the behemoths of that long-ago eon, when suddenly Captain Flim appeared from around a dark corner, startling me.
"I think you should see this," he said, beckoning with his blazing torch. His face looked somber, almost pale.
We followed him down a twenty-foot tunnel that had long ago been cut by water, for its sides were smooth, with no trace of a stonemason's tools. We had to crouch as we walked, and it was with relief that we came into a chamber larger than the first, so large in fact that Captain Flim's torch and our lanterns only partially illuminated it.
There seemed to be a dais of some kind at the far end, and we walked slowly toward it, the only sound the scrape of our shoes and the dripping of water from the roof of the vault onto the stone floor. I gasped as I saw what sat on that dais, in a massive chair of rotting wood and rusted iron, whose cushions and cloths had long ago moldered away.
The skeleton of a giant seemed to look down at us from empty eye sockets. It was clad in rusted armor, bony forearms still resting on the arms of its rotting throne, fingers curled clawlike over the ends. Its jaw hung down onto the yellow shaft of its neck, and a helm sat lopsided on the bare dome of its skull. On its feet were what was left of its boots, leather strips through which the ivory toe bones peeked. The smell of death had long since vanished. Only dampness and the chill of the grave remained.
Runes were carved on the wall above the seated skeleton, two lines and then a single word. I started to speak to Lindavar but had to clear my throat before the words would come. "Do you… can you read it?"
The wizard nodded, and when he spoke, I heard awe in his tone. "The runes say, 'Bought with blood. Paid for with blood.' And then the name.
" 'Fastred,' " Lindavar read. "This is Fastred's tomb."
21
"Fastred?" said Captain Flim. "The ancient brigand? The ghost?"
"None other," said Lindavar, still gazing as if hypnotized at the seated relic.
"Gods save us," muttered Flim. "Maybe Mayor Tobald was right. Maybe the ghost did it-did for both of them."
"Why hasn't he done for us then?" I said, glad that my voice didn't break. In truth, I was scared. I expected to see the skeleton leap up any second, run down the passageway for his axe, and behead all of us tomb despoilers. "He looks like he hasn't gone anywhere for, oh, at least five hundred years. Give or take a decade," I added Ughtly to try to keep my fear at bay.
"That is true," said Lindavar. "We're dealing with some physical body here. Among the undead, a ghost might madden its victim or age him ten years; a lich might paralyze his victim; and I have never heard of a wight using a weapon. So wherever this one's spirit now dwells, I greatly doubt that it lies within anything that swings an axe, in spite of its habits in life."
That made me think of something. "Lindavar," I said, "why wouldn't Fastred's axe be with him? Wasn't it the custom in the old times for warriors to be put to rest with their weapons in hand for the next world?"
"So one might think," said Lindavar. He stepped toward the dais then and stopped a foot away, examining the skeleton's hands. "But that appears not to be the case with this burial. I see no sign that any axe has ever rested here."
"I've got another question," said Captain Flim. "What I want to know is, there's supposed to be a treasure here, and what those runes said makes me think that