PART I Chapter 11

Lingqui indicated with his hand that Ashanta and Sharra should let him investigate what was behind the door first, and they stepped aside to let him in. He opened the door slightly and peered into the darkened room, listening intently for any noises that might alert him to some presence within. Putting his head inside, he inhaled deeply, checking whether the air was safe to breathe, and whether there was the smell of some animal. Finally he beckoned to the women, and put out his hand for the lantern. "I think that it is safe to enter," he told them, "but we had best stick together. And be quiet," he emphasized, "I cannot sense any living being behind the door, but that does not mean there is none, and we do ourselves no favors if we startle it."

Ashanta nodded, "You will lead," she announced, "and then I will follow. Sharra must be our rear guard should something attack from behind."

"We don't even know that there is something more than a room here," protested Sharra. "All of the other doors led to cells, why do you think that this one is any different?"

Lingqui held up a hand to stop her protestations. "We do not know," he admitted, "but this door was locked. All of the others were unlocked, if not open. So this door is already different than the others. Why then should what is behind it not be different as well? There is this as well: the door before us stands directly opposite the entry to this chamber. On either side of the large chamber are the cells, and beyond those one finds, marked on the maps of the cellars and dungeons, the other, currently used, cells of the dungeon to our right, and the kitchen storage and coal cellar to our left. Any exit from the other cells would need to dig down yet further, or be very narrow to fit between the rear of the cells and the used area behind it. This door, then is the most likely to have a simple tunnel leading from it to the outside of the castle."

Sharra looked chastened, "I will do as requested," she murmured, "but perhaps I might have a stick or at least a light to keep anything that might attack us at bay?"

Lingqui reached into his pack and removed three unlit torches. Lighting them from the lantern that he carried he handed two of them to Sharra and the third to Ashanta. "It may be that anything that lives down here fears the light," he said, "and if not, perhaps at least a burn will frighten them off." Pulling the door the rest of the way open he strode through it, with Sharra and Ashanta close behind him.

It was immediately clear that what they had entered was not another dungeon cell. The walls and floors of the room were perfectly smooth, and overlaid with tiles laid out to form pictures and letters. Lingqui held his lantern high as he walked over to look closely at the nearest one. "Look," he exclaimed excitedly, "the mosaic seems to be telling us something. There is a man here, with a crown on his head. Probably it represents the king. He is speaking with some other men, I think."

Sharra walked over to the next picture, "Here we see the same man, with the crown, but he is alone, and he is in a room with many doors. They seem to be similar to the doors in the chamber that we just passed through, but I cannot say for certain."

Ashanta was standing in front of the third picture by now, and she looked at it and spoke: "There is still a man with a crown in this picture, but he looks strange. His body seems to be clad in bronze, and it is far to large for his head. His robes seem to be very long, and the train of them goes on for many paces."

Lingqui and Sharra hurried over to stand next to her, "Do you think," Sharra said, awestruck, "that the picture that we are looking at depicts the transformation of the Dragon King into the dragon?"

"Or, more likely, an artist's rendition of what the transformation might have looked like," replied Lingqui. "We have no evidence that anyone else was with him during the time of transformation."

"We had no evidence until a month ago that the Dragon King was real, and not just legend," pointed out Ashanta, "save for the stones in the burial chamber, and as you pointed out yourself they proved only that there was a king who was called the Dragon King. Not that there was a king who had transformed into a dragon. In any case, let us continue with our investigation of the mosaics in the room."

Together they walked to the fourth picture. In it they saw what was quite clearly a dragon, still wearing the crown of the king, and standing within the large chamber with the many doors once more. In front of him a man was kneeling, wearing robes of purple, and seemingly awaiting something. The fifth picture showed the dragon using his forelimbs to place the crown on the head of the kneeling man. "That man must be Prince Shembo," whispered Sharra, "being crowned by his father as the successor king." The others nodded.

"This room is fantastic." Ashanta spoke quietly, not wanting to alert anyone, or anything, of their presence. "I wonder why it was sealed off like this?"

"Perhaps we will find out if we continue to follow the story laid out in the mosaics," suggested Sharra. "Shall we move to the next one?"

They did so. The sixth mosaic showed the dragon, now without a crown, standing before a wall in what was clearly the room they were standing in. Above the picture there were characters, but not any characters that any of the three of them had seen before. "Can you interpret those markings?" Ashanta whispered to Lingqui.

He shook his head. "I have not seen markings like these before. Perhaps they are an incantation. I know not, but I will make a copy of them on a piece of parchment before we leave this chamber that I might study them and hopefully figure out what it is that they mean. First though, let us consider the final two pictures in this chamber."

Ashanta stood before the seventh mosaic. "I see a door opening in the wall," she said, "though it seemed that there was none there before. The room seems to be this one, though without the mosaics on the walls."

Sharra leaned forward for a closer look. "Yes, and I believe that it is the wall with the sixth picture on it now." She walked to the eighth and final picture and continued, "I see here a dragon emerging from a cave covered by vines and screened by bushes. Perhaps it shows the end of a tunnel that can be accessed from this room."


"But how do we get to this tunnel?" Ashanta cried in frustration. "The walls of this room are perfectly smooth, and we searched everywhere is in this chamber! Has the tunnel entrance been covered up or hidden? Do we open it by some sort of magic? How are we supposed to find it?" She was nearly shouting now, which, she suddenly realized, was a highly non-royal thing to do. "Do you think that the key lies in the characters scratched above the 6th picture?" she asked Lingqui in a more sedate voice.

He shook his head. "I do not know, but it seems likely that the markings are there for a reason. I will copy them as best I can, and make a search of the library for something similar. They are not written in any script that I know, but perhaps they are from a language far older than the language of the Shauvrin. I can but look." He pulled a sheet of parchment from his pack, smoothed it out on the stone floor of the chamber, and picked up a pen. Carefully he copied the markings from above the mosaic, taking care to note down every flourish and curlicue, and to make certain that the spaces between the markings were true to the original. When at last he had finished, he held the parchment up for Ashanta and Sharra to approve, then rolled it carefully and returned it to his pack.

"Now," he said, "I think that we had best return to our rooms. Time passes strangely here, under the castle, but I fear that it must be near to dawn, if not even later. If we are lucky, the guards outside of Highness's chamber slumber on. Else, we must find some other way for her to reach her room, for it must not be known that she left in the night."

They left the mosaic room, for that was how they thought of it, carefully pulling the door shut behind them. It was a pity that they could not lock it once more, but there was nothing that could be done about that now. At least no one else was likely to come into this room, Ashanta thought to herself. They walked carefully across the chamber and slipped through the hole in the wall of the new dungeons. It occurred to Ashanta to wonder why it was that the entrance to that older dungeon was so oddly formed. Perhaps there had been a cave in? She would have to ask Lingqui later. Now, with morning near, they must be very quiet in attempting to regain their rooms without alerting anyone.

At the base of the stairs to the tower Lingqui stopped and turned to Ashanta. "You must ascend her," he told her, "and hope that your guards have not woken. Sharra and I will exit through the doors near the kitchen, for that is where Firth let us into the dungeons earlier tonight. Be careful and quiet. May the gods be with you."

Ashanta walked up the stairs as quickly as she could without tripping. Already she could see through the windows that the sky outside was no longer completely black but a sort of dark navy, with hints of gold on the horizon. Even with the drugs in their wine, the guardsmen outside her door would be waking soon, she suspected, and even if they had not, she knew that the guards changed at dawn. She hoped that dawn was a bit later in the day than this, but she could not be sure. On she climbed, up dozens of steps, one after the other, until her legs ached and her breath caught in her throat. Why was it, she thought, that the royal apartments must be in so high a place within the castle? Surely they would be just as well situated on the first floor, and she would not have to climb so many stairs.

After what seemed like an hour Ashanta reached the top of the steps and, pushing the door ajar, stepped cautiously out into the corridor. She froze and listened for a moment, but heard nothing to indicate that anyone was stirring on this floor. Keeping close to the walls, she tiptoed as quickly as she could toward her chamber, stopping now and again to listen for noises. Each time she stopped there was absolute silence. Close by to her room was a statue, behind which was a niche into which she pressed herself, listening again and then looking for any indication that the guards had awakened. One of the guards slept on, she could see that, but she did not know about the other, for she could not see him from her hiding place. Daring to step outside of the niche, she saw that there was but one guard outside of her chamber now, and that he was sound asleep. But where, she wondered, was the other guard? Should she assume that he had waked and gone down to the kitchens for a cup of coffee, or perhaps that he had been awakened by the call of nature and gone outside to relieve himself? Or, had he perhaps awakened with a fierce headache and become suspicious and searched her room for signs of her and found her missing. In that case he would surely have gone to find Firth and the castle would have been alerted to her absence. What should she do?

Ashanta's heart was thumping so loudly inside her chest that she was certain that the guard asleep in the hall would soon be awakened by it. It seemed that she could hardly breath. Should she stay where she was? Sneak back down the corridor? And do what, she asked herself sternly. Go back down into the dungeons? If you haven't emerged from your room by noon they will surely knock at the door, and when you do not respond, they will send Thara in to check on you. When she finds that you are gone, then they will search the castle for you, and it will look ill for you if you are found in the dungeons. Already you carry in your womb a child who is not the child of your husband. No, she told herself sternly, you must go to your room and try to enter without disturbing the guard who lies sleeping there. If you awaken him, you must pretend to be leaving the room rather than entering it, and give some pretense for being about so early in the morning. As she thought she was slipping silently along the wall of the corridor, up to the door of the chamber and, carefully taking the handle, she pulled it open, only enough to allow her to slip through the entry. Beside her the guard muttered something in his sleep and rolled over, but did not wake. With a sigh of relief, Ashanta pulled the door shut and dropped into place the latch that held it so. She would sleep now, she thought, for a little while, since she had not slept yet that night.

HERE ENDS PART I OF THE BOOK