“I said we need you to move, Jon,” Tam was saying, standing beside Jon.  Jon obeyed uncertainly, still staring at the mark on his hand.  Tam and Djaren pulled as hard as they could on the lid of the coffin.  It slid slowly.  Inside the stone coffin was a painted clay sarcophagus.  Djaren and Tam hauled the stone lid across the floor, and with Kara and Anna’s help began to wedge it against the door.

            Jon flexed his hand.  It felt normal, except for a slight tingle in his palm and in his fingertips.  “Tam,” he said uncertainly.  “I touched something.  I think I shouldn’t have.”

            “Father will understand if we break some things,” Djaren said, trying to lift the heavy slab to lean on the door.

            “You just stay there safe,” Tam added, helping with the other end of the slab.

            There was a loud noise from the opposite side of the door, and the door shuddered.  It began slowly to scrape open.  Anna shouted.  The children tried to push the door back, to hold it motionless, but despite everything it scraped further and further open. 

            A robed arm reached through the widening crack.  Kara stabbed it.  There was a yell, but the door was shoved open faster now, and there was room for the men to enter.  Kara sprang to one side of the door, and Tam, grabbing his swords, ran to the other.  Tam hit the next man to come through square over the head, and he fell over.

            Kara nodded at Tam with grudging respect, and jabbed at the next man’s foot.

            The next thing to come through the door was a thrown cloud of dust and debris, which took Kara and Tam by surprise.  They stumbled back, coughing and rubbing their eyes, and before they had recovered, the rotting man had come through the door, with more of his men immediately behind.  The rotting man took one look around the room, and his clouded, corpse-like eyes settled on the lid of the coffin.  He looked from it to Jon, and his face twisted.  Jon took a step back.

            “You picked something up, didn’t you?” the rotting man hissed.  “Something not meant for children.  Give it to me.”

            “I can’t,” Jon said, stepping back. He found himself with his back to the stone coffin.

            “I will take it from you.  Stand still and do not resist me,” the rotting man said, reaching a withered hand toward Jon. The hand had only three fingernails on it, and they were yellow and cracked.  One was falling off.  Jon shrank away.

            “No!” Ellea yelled, suddenly between them.  She glared hard at the rotting man, and then looked surprised.  She glared at him again, uncertain, and then looked scared.

            “So very much promise.  But you still have so much to learn,” the rotting man said, and stepped toward her.

            Djaren leaped across the room and pushed Ellea out of the way.  “Leave them all alone!  I won’t let you hurt them.  You want me, fine, but you’ll never hurt them.  I’ll stop you.”  He stood before the rotting man, bronze sword in hand.

            The rotting man laughed, and reached out a decaying hand for Djaren’s throat.

            Kara stabbed the man then, from behind, with a wordless cry.  He wheeled around and grabbed her with both hands before she could get away.

            “No!” Djaren screamed, stabbing the man with the bronze sword.  The rotting man ignored him.  He did not even seem to notice.  He lifted Kara by the throat, a gruesome smile on his cracked gray lips.  Slick blackness oozed from his rotting fingertips onto Kara’s skin.  She struggled wildly.  The rotting man’s expression changed suddenly.  The blackness was not spreading.  There were no green veins, and Kara’s skin did not change color under the rotting hands.

            “You?” the man gasped, “Can it be?  Are you the child?”  His hood fell back, taking with it slimy clumps of dark hair, revealing a mottled scalp with peeling layers of skin and maybe even skull.  “I have been searching for you, the one I lost.”  His voice had changed.  It was still rasping and unhealthy sounding, but the tones were soft and gentle.  It was more disturbing that his shouts had been.  “Beloved.”

            Kara’s eyes were wide and horrified.  Djaren’s repeated stabs into the rotting man’s back were having no effect. 

            With a strength Jon had never seen his brother wield, Tam brought the stone coffin lid down with a sickening crunch on the rotting man’s head.  He fell, dropping Kara, and lay buried under the slab.  Green and black fluid oozed from under the stone.

            The remaining men in robes stared down at the mess, turned their backs, and left without a word.

            “Let’s get out of here,” Djaren said, grabbing Kara’s hands and helping her to her feet.  She was shaking.

            The children followed the curving tunnels back out into the light, trying not to look too closely at the forms they passed.  Kara had nothing sarcastic to say, and no one seemed to want to be the first to speak.  Ellea held tight to Djaren’s hand, and Jon stayed close to Tam.  In an uncharacteristic display of concern, Kara helped Anna over the boulders in the section with the fallen ceiling. 

            They emerged silent into the young night, to find themselves in the north corridor, beside the open door.

©2007 Ruth Lampi