The escaped slave spent ten minutes trying to open the lock using the dagger. Nothing seemed to work and besides her day lichen was starting to fade as it dried out. As the darkness reclaimed the cave, enveloping her and the tomb, she carefully stowed the blade in the hole and checked her palm. It wasn’t as deep as she had originally thought and she packed the shallow wound with some antiseptic herbs that she had collected. She didn’t have any spare cloth, her own clothing being so minimal, so instead of binding the wound she clutched her hand shut tightly and pressed it to her chest.
The moon only had another two hours of dominion over the sky so the slave lay down and closed her eyes, hoping to get more rest. Maybe with dawn’s light she could see into the tomb better and find a way to open the chest.
She drifted quickly and this time what woke her was the sunlight hitting the cave and a loud metallic scrape as the lock clicked open.
She sat up, her body casting a shadow over the chest. She watched as the lock snapped shut in her shade. Frowning, she leaned to the side to let the dawn’s rays fall on the lock. It opened. Quickly, she reached down and took the lock off the chest and set it down in the sand beside her. It snapped shut as it was removed from the sunshine.
She shook her head and looked at the chest. The thick chain still bound it but without the lock it was just a matter of unwinding the heavy links. She hesitated. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to hide this tomb and its contents. She was two hundred feet up a sheer rock face and someone had gotten the body, the heavy chain and the huge chest up to the cave. Someone didn’t want this chest opened.
She looked at her hand again. It had reopened and was weeping, blood pooling and slowly dribbling down her wrist. Maybe there would be cloth or other useful things inside. Maybe it wasn’t really grave robbing if you were in a life of death situation.
She reached out and quickly unbound the chest. She was an escaped slave. She was dead if caught and part of her escape plan had relied on her being able to climb to the top of the plateau to wait out the search parties. The climb was impossible with her hand untreated. She took a deep breath and threw open the chest, bracing herself for something.
The box was full, the top covered in a tan rough spun cloth, likely laid on top to protect whatever lay beneath. The cloth itself was exactly what she needed to bind her hand. She gingerly lifted the edge of the cloth and peered deeper into the chest. In the shadowy hole, with her own form blocking the morning sun behind her, it was hard to see anything but something sparkled. She had no desire to re-enact her mistake from before and she grabbed the bone stylus to poke around in the chest as she moved herself to allow more light into the tomb.
The bone tool scraped and scratched on the things in the box but it was just too dark to see what she was dealing with. She shoved the last of her day lichen in her mouth and chewed angrily. As she wiped the wet mass along the top of the chest and the inside of the tomb she swore, annoyed that her plans could be derailed in such unexpected ways. The day lichen developed its bioluminescent glow and she wiped her uninjured hand on her grimy tunic. She leaned back in and looked again.
The illuminated chest was much easier to see into but it didn’t help her decipher what it was she was seeing. A large glass jar lay in the bottom along with several small stoppered vials and tubes. Small paper packets were tucked along one side of the chest forming a neat, orderly row. She reached in and took one of the packets out and carefully opened it. It held a small amount of some dried plant matter. She turned the packet over and saw that it was labelled in a spidery, thin hand. She was holding a tiny packet of poison.
Afraid that she was going to accidentally do herself more harm than good, she replaced the packet and took out the large glass jar. It was very heavy and appeared to be filled with small pebbles, all the same size and shape but varying in colour. She turned the jar around to read the label pasted on the side. It was a jar full of uncut gemstones.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Frowning, she replaced the jar and took out a small cloth bundle. She unrolled it and discovered it was a very thin cloak. The material shimmered slightly in the blue light of the day lichen and felt like cool liquid running over her skin when she pulled her fingers through it. She held it up and couldn’t see through it. It was spidersilk, a weave from the far west and extremely valuable. She dropped her hands, still clutching the sumptuous garment and stared blankly for a minute, her mind whirling and confused.
She had stumbled upon a very valuable tomb. She knew it was not right to take any of these things, morally speaking, but her life depended on her being able to get as far away from the slavers and their camp as possible. And to do that quickly would be so much easier with a cloak that could keep her warm and protected and a dagger that would help her defend herself. She wasn’t even thinking of the vast wealth she could potentially have on her hand with the jar of gems nor of the wicked potential of the paper packets. She shoved aside her respect for the dead and continued to rifle through the chest.
In the end, she found a very useful sewing kit, a tiny mortar and pestle, a length of thin rope, a small satchel also made of spidersilk which contained a scribe’s tools, and the best and most useful treasure: a water-tight canister that contained everything she would need to start a fire. With a feeling of overwhelming hope, she let tears fill her eyes as she piled the goods on the floor of her hideout and put the bones carefully in the tomb along the sides of the chest. Choosing what to leave and what to take was the hardest task. She couldn't take it all, that was obvious, but what would be most useful?
She emptied the satchel, leaving behind the vellum, ink and quill. She also left the drying sand and the small ladle to melt the wax in for sealing letters. She kept the pen knife and wax, though, hoping they might come in handy or prove useful in the immediate future. She replaced those in the satchel and turned next to the rest of the paper packets and small vials.
In only a short time she had deduced that she was looking at the chest of a very accomplished witch of some high rank. Most of the wax sealed vials held deadly poison, powdered and ready for use. The ones that weren’t wax sealed held the ingredients to make the poisons.
The paper sachets didn’t hold much interest for her as she had no wish to accidentally poison herself. She did take a chunk of rock salt roughly the size of her fist and a couple packets that she discovered held tea and other herbs that would be either useful or comforting. As they weighed very little, she didn’t hesitate to put them into her satchel. The small bag was nearly full when she had finished and sat back on her heels.
She used the dagger to shear a small strip of the rough spun cloth and then bound her palm, making sure to brush any debris out of the still-oozing cut. She used the rest of the heavier cloth to wrap the blade of the dagger and made a pack out of the thin cloak. She tucked the blade and the jar of gems into the pack and tied it across her back with the rope. Then she slung the thin satchel across her body and nodded, satisfied.
Her stomach grumbled and she looked out the entrance of the cave. The sun wasn’t visible to her any longer as it had trailed up further into the sky. If she had to guess, it was likely close to noon. The search parties would have been out looking for her for several hours at this point and she had not heard anything, likely thanks to her well laid plans to send them toward the river. In just a couple more hours, she would finish the climb to the top of the plateau and reassess her position. The drive to climb up was an obsessive pull now.
When she had been planning her escape she had always aimed to climb to the top of the plateau. She had not stopped to question why she would attempt to scale it, nor what she would do there once she had achieved that goal. She just knew that part of her escape must include the daring climb of the rocky face. It was as though something called to her from atop the reddish outcropping. Something whispered her name, promising her a chance at freedom and also a chance to get her life back. The wind had held a whiff of the promise, swirling around in the cavern, making her hair tickle her neck in an uncomfortable way.
Climb. The wind called. Climb, Alira.