Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [24]
"I have to get out of here!" she cried aloud. She had to!
But there was no escape. She had looked everywhere, and there simply was no way out. The cavern was not large, and she had felt, beat upon, or run her hands over the floor and almost all of its walls that were within her reach. The cavern ceiling above her looked just as solid. She had looked everywhere. Suddenly her eyes fell on the black boxes in the center of the cavern.
She had not looked in the caskets.
Shandril stared at the lit one, sitting there in the cold gloom. It was huge, featureless, and silent. There were no runes or inscriptions cut into or painted on its sides or top.
It had been smoothed with great care and skill and then left unmarked. Dwarvenwork, most likely. Now that she had thought of opening it, she hardly dared do so for fear of what she might find. A fresh corpse, horribly mutilated and crawling with worms, her imagination whispered. Or worse, one of those terrible undead creatures-vampires, or ghouls, or skeletons that were dead and yet moved. Her skin crawled. She had nowhere to run if something in the casket reached for her. Why was only one lit? Would a spell be unleashed upon her if she touched or opened it? Or did something magical lair-or lie imprisoned-within?
For a long time Shandril stood staring at the caskets, trying to master her fear. Nothing stirred. No voices could be beard. She was alone and unarmed.
Trapped. At any moment she might hear the stone covering the portal begin to grate open, and then it would be too late… for anything. Shandril swallowed. Her throat seemed suddenly very dry.
She heard her own voice again, as if from far away, saying softly to the company, "I understand you need a thief."
Briefly she wondered if they were all dead now:
Delg, Burlane, and the others… then firmly she thrust such thoughts aside by concentrating on the casket. What if my friends, dead and bloody, are inside, shut in here with me? She screamed inwardly at the thought.
Then into her mind came Gorstag's kind, weathered face, smiling at her. Gorstag must have been in worse straits once or twice, and he was still around to tell the tales…
Again Shandril turned to the lit casket. Swallowing the dry lump in her throat, she strode forward and stared at the glow and at the stone within it. There was no flickering in the radiance, no change, as she laid a hand on the lid.
Nothing happened. She was not harmed. Silence reigned. Shandril took a deep, shuddering breath and pushed. Still nothing happened. The stone lid was massI’ve and old and did not move. Steeling herself, Shandril crouched beside the eerily glowing casket and put her shoulder to the lid, feeling nothing as the radiance played about her. Then, snarling with the effort, she gathered all her strength into a heave, bare feet slipping as she drove the lid sideways. It scraped and shifted, and she caught herself before her arm or head could dip into the open tomb.
She looked in. Nothing moved, nothing stirred.
Bones… yellow to brown, scattered about inside the cold, black box. A human skull, a jawbone elsewhere.
Peering carefully into the darker corners, Shandril made sure that there was nothing within but bones.
She sighed, looking at the tumbled mess of bones.
Someone had obviously ransacked this casket already; any weapons or things of value must have long ago been carried away. Why then the radiance?
Shandril stood in the cold, wondering who lay buried here-or rather, lay uncovered-bones scattered like so many rotten twigs on the forest floor.
Idly she looked for certain bones in the tangle. There, a thigh bone… he (for some reason she thought of the pour soul as a he) must have been tall… And then she noticed something odd.
There were three skeletal arms in the casket.
Just