The Silken Key

Chapter 19

If the journey back to Brenmarsh hadn't been miserable enough, sitting around in the Wazeer's parlour staring at the mysterious, heavy little box certainly was.

"You're certain that's what it says?" Detlef asked Tariq as he traced his fingers over the writing in the cement inside the box. "The Key is inside. We just can't get to it?"

"Not unless you want to go smashing the box apart." Tariq shrugged.

Tabitha sat cross-legged behind the box like a mother looking down at her sick child. She did not have the same expression she'd worn whenever Detlef had seen her trying to commune with her patron. She just looked unhappy.

"Is the Wazeer going to come and see this at some point?" Detlef asked.

"She evidently does not see the need," Tariq replied. "If the Key is encased in that cement, then it is safe from Tertullian or anyone else who would use it for evil. We have done what she asked us to do."

Maddy and Rudiger were sitting on a long purple couch playing a game of cards. Though all of them had had a chance to wash themselves and their clothes, nobody had slept since they'd arrived back at the palace that morning. It seemed that even those who had given up trying to help still felt obliged to stay awake until everyone had given up.

"Maybe the Wazeer has a point," Maddy yawned. "We came here to retrieve the Key. We came to prevent the necromancer causing a calamity. And we've done it. There's nothing stopping us from just going home."

"What about what I came here for?" Tabitha lifted her head and looked sternly at Detlef. "You made an oath to me. You said you would help me complete my journey. My journey does not end at the Key. The Key unlocks the next step. It cannot do that if it's in the middle of a big lump of concrete."

As tired as Detlef was - and as much as he wanted to agree with Maddy and Tariq that their business in Ardu al-Zalam was finished and they could go home - he remembered the words he'd said. He'd left the temple to find someone who believed something and who needed help acting on their beliefs.

That had led him to Tabitha...whether he liked it or not.

"Alright," he sighed, sitting on the red and black patterned kilim rug opposite the halfling with the box between them. "So you don't feel any sort of energy coming from the box?"

"No, nothing like that," Tabitha mumbled, rolling her eyes away.

"Fine. Tariq, what exactly does that inscription on the concrete say?"

Tariq paced slowly over to the wall and leaned against it with an impatient sigh. "It only says the Silken Key is entombed within the chest. Nothing else."

"Seems to me," Rudiger said, his eyes still squinting at the hand of cards held up in front of him. "Soghir did a lot more than we could have guessed to keep that Key safe. Maybe we underestimated her."

Maddy hummed, nodded and gesticulated with his hand to get the gnome to hurry up with his turn.

"So there's no way we can break the concrete open?" Detlef scratched his chin.

"You probably can," Tariq said from his spot near the door. "But you'll have to hit it with such force you'll likely break the key as well."

"What about your acid?" Rudiger suggested, throwing down a couple of cards. "Could you use little drops of it to dissolve the concrete until you see the Key?"

Judging from the surprise on Maddy's face, the cards Rudiger had put down constituted a win for the gnome. He coughed and gathered the cards up to reshuffle and deal them.