The depressions and matching relics surrounding the statue’s base looked like a classic puzzle with a clear solution to Booth. But he didn’t want to be the one to push the button and find out what blew up.
Again with the puzzles. I’m still not good at them.
“They’ve already brought the other relics here,” Booth said. “I wonder who those were stolen from.”
“You mean, I assume, that you wonder who stole the scythe from here to begin with, since this is obviously where it belongs?”
Lora spoke as lightly as ever, but that sharpness which was also becoming all too familiar cut at Booth. Heat and cold flowed in waves through him, instinctive anger over the suggestion that his predecessors in Traton were thieves who’d looted a religious site followed by the pure, inarguable logic of the evidence before him.
That’s exactly what happened. Someone stole the relic from here and took it to Traton.
You cannot recall a time when the scythe was not in Traton’s shrine to Voshell. Quite likely, it has been there for longer than anyone currently residing in the town has been alive.
That his predecessors were fictional and he’d had no control over their actions anyway should have been enough to shrink the instinctive defensiveness Booth felt. Guilt grappled for control of his emotional state, just the same. And yet, defying any logic, so did anger.
Maybe they had a good reason. Maybe they just didn’t know any better.
“Should we see what happens?” Lora spoke more gently as she stepped forward to join Karon and Booth at the statue’s base. “If you place your relic with the others?”
“Happen?” Nildeyr ceased his wandering and drifted over to peer between Booth’s and Karon’s shoulders at the collection of relics at the statue’s base. “You think something will happen?”
“I think that the Scourge intended to do something with it. They did refer to it as a key.”
Karon huffed quietly. “Perhaps we should think twice about doing something that the Scourge wanted done.”
“I imagine that what they were actually after is whatever lies in there.” Lora reached forward, past Karon. Bracelets jangled along her forearm as she pointed at the statue’s feet.
Hidden within the folds of the figure’s stone robe sat a small chest, of one piece with the statue but showing deeper fine lines around its lid.
“Ooh.” Nildeyr’s awed exhalation brushed past Booth’s ear. Booth knew without looking that the other man’s eyes would be alight with the hope of secret treasure.
“Whatever is in there,” Booth started to say.
… belongs to Traton. But it doesn’t, does it?
“Suppose we see what it is before we pursue other discussions.” Apparently convinced by Lora’s argument, Karon stepped back from the relic slot, leaving room for Booth.
Booth brought out the bundled relic and unwrapped it. The scythe’s gold glittered in the flickering light of the braziers.
The relic nestled perfectly into the impression at the statue’s base. As Booth placed it, a cool breeze tickled upward and twined around his fingers. Pale green light gathered along the scythe’s surface.
All around the statue, the other relics lit, as well, transforming from crude plated gold into colors ranging from dark emerald to smoky gray-green to a blue-green the color of a winter pond. The incense in the braziers intensified, intoxicating in their mingled perfumes of fresh grass and earthy smoke.
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Then the lights of the relics faded. The brazier flames lowered. A soft click echoed, clearly audible against the backdrop of combined held breaths of everyone in the room.
Lora leaned past Booth—and Nildeyr, who was still right behind Booth—and placed two fingers at the lip of the stone chest. With no visible effort at all, she lifted its lid.
Satin of a green so dark it was nearly black lined a cushioned interior. Aside from that, the chest was empty. A faint impression in the fabric formed a circle, perhaps the right size for a circlet or crown. But of whatever circlet or crown that had been, there was no sign.
“Huh.” Nildeyr had leaned nearly onto Booth’s shoulder as he peered past into the chest. Now, he stepped back. “Well, that was anti-climactic.”
Empty. What the hell kind of quest ends like that?
“All that killing and dying to get the relic and to prevent us from getting down here.” Booth frowned and stepped back, glancing over his shoulder toward the door Arra and Dorri were guarding. Both of them were frowning, too. “It was for nothing.”
“Perhaps.” But Lora spoke in that way she had which Booth was learning indicated that she was thinking far more than she was saying. Arra and Dorri shifted their gazes toward Lora. So did Booth.
“Perhaps what?” Karon must have been learning the same thing, because he also turned a narrowed gaze on Lora.
Lora reached into the empty chest and with her fingertips traced the circular impression on the satin interior. The bangles on her wrist glittered from moving in the light. “You’ll have heard of the Crown of Sorrowed Brightness.”
Booth waited, but the narrator didn’t say anything, for the moment. Had it already told him, and he just didn’t remember?
“That had something to do with the Shields War.” Nildeyr circled further around the statue and leaned his hip against it, facing the others with his gaze trained on Lora. “And how the Drowning Grove was made. Didn’t it?”
Lora smiled and traced the circle once again. “The War for the Shields, yes. The Crown of Sorrowed Brightness was used by the Meres-folk hero Berwan Dar to end the war and send the Iraekhi fleeing back to the south.”
“The ones that survived.” Karon crossed his arms and studied Lora’s face as he spoke. “Dar also wiped out as many allies as enemies in the process. But that happened over seven hundred years ago. Neither he nor the Crown were ever seen again.”
Frustration flooded Booth.
I’m so tired of being the only one who doesn’t know shit.
As if to prove a point, the narrator piped up.
The War for the Shields occurred in the early 600s WD and was, as with the later All-War, prompted by Iraekh’s invasion of the Mindet Valley. The war was largely ended in 611 WD when a man named Berwan Dar used a relic known as the Crown of Sorrowed Brightness to catastrophic effect. The relic’s source was unknown. Dar was presumed to be its creator.
Booth worked on matching up everything Lora had said with what the narrator had added. Everyone else’s minds apparently leaped nimbly through the onslaught of facts. He felt plodding and stupid in comparison.
“That doesn’t mean the Crown never existed,” Lora insisted. “Or that it didn’t come from somewhere.”
“Wouldn’t that mean…” Nildeyr continued his lean against the statue’s edge and tapped a finger to his lips. He drew the words out and furrowed his brow with obvious exaggeration. “Whoever stole the scythe and gave it to Traton maybe had something to do with putting the Crown into Dar’s hands to begin with? Wow, Booth. You’re just learning all kinds of new things about your ancestors today, aren’t you?”
Despite Nildeyr’s chipper manner of speech—maybe because of it—Booth felt like he’d been slighted.
Nildeyr rolled on, fixing his bright-eyed gaze on Karon. “It would explain why those… whatever they were upstairs attacked us. Anyone who lived or worked here wouldn’t have just been tending the shrine. If there was something as powerful as that Crown kept here, they’d have been guarding it.”
Karon returned Nildeyr’s gaze without any overt emotional reaction. He seemed to be assessing something before speaking. “Yet someone managed to get past them.”
“Maybe that’s how they ended up like they did,” Nildeyr blithely continued. “Locked into that room. It wasn’t the Scourge. It had to be someone before them.”
Booth frowned. He felt far too slow-witted to keep up with either Nildeyr or Karon, but he had to ask. “But why would the Scourge want the Crown?”
“Why would anyone want a powerful magical object?” Nildeyr shrugged and kept talking to Karon. “The Iraekhi who invaded and started the Shields War, weren’t they led by a dragon?”
Karon’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Incited by one, anyhow. Or so it was rumored. It was also rumored that the dragon was an avatar of Batzieh, if not the Dragon-god herself.”
Nildeyr spread his hands as if he’d just proven everything. “And these assholes call themselves the Scourge of Batzieh. There has to be a connection.”
“Or maybe they were just after a powerful weapon for their own purposes. Whatever its origin.”
Nothing about the conversation offered any assurance that the Scourge would be done here and that Traton would be safe from them. But that wasn’t what nagged hardest at Booth. In spite of himself, points of understanding had begun to crystallize, like ice forming on a winter trough.