The Hammer - Cor Series Book I

Chapter 36

The commotion from the rebels faded away as Corvan raced toward the half-dead tree. He figured he could get his bearings from where the statues stood, but he couldn't find them. His ability to see in the dark was waning. He ran to the other side of the tree and found what looked like the right pathway back to Morgan's crypt. It looked like the same place and the same large sloppy crypt, but there was no one to be seen. Jorad must still be finding his way in the darkness. Corvan sat against the wall of another low crypt to catch his breath.

The creak of rusty metal turned his head as a faint green line appeared along the lid of the larger crypt next to him. Corvan shrank back. The light grew brighter, and a hand pushed the lid higher. A face rose in the ghostly green light. It was Jorad.

Corvan jumped to his feet, startling Jorad so badly he dropped the lid and knocked himself back into the closed tomb. Corvan quickly pushed the heavy lid up and out of the way on its creaky hinges.

Jorad was rubbing his head and sprawled on top of Morgan's body, while Kate lay curled up at their feet, pale and still. Her chest rose only a fraction of an inch with each breath. Corvan leaned in and put a hand on her cheek.

"Kate, can you hear me?" She didn't respond, but the green glow increased.

Resting in her limp fingers was the source of the green light; the disk she had taken from Tsarek. It was smaller than he expected and obviously not the match to a gavel like he had imagined, but its markings were clear and bright: a star-shaped medallion with multiple star points around the outer edges.

Jorad sat up and groaned. "Next time, warn me before you jump out of the darkness," he said in a low voice.

"Is Kate all right?"

"We barely made it in here before she collapsed." Jorad moved in close to Corvan and pointed to the glow. "We were fortunate she had that light along. There's not a speck of lumien light tonight." Jorad looked at him closely. "How did you find your way here in the dark?"

Corvan shrugged. He did not want to mention the hammer and how it had affected his sight.

Jorad peered into the darkness. "Their leader will send his men out to find us. He believes that he is the promised Cor-Van and that he only he needs a counterpart to make his insane dreams come true. He won't stop until he finds one. We need to get Kate out of here."

Corvan reached into the crypt and touched Kate's hand. It was cool and clammy. "Kate, it's me, Corvan. Wake up." He lifted her hand and grimaced as the black band slipped down her arm and revealed a ring of crusty red blisters around her wrist.

"We'll have to carry her, Kalian," Jorad said quietly. "Let's lift her out, and I will get Morgan's litter out for us to put her on."

They gently extracted Kate from the crypt and laid her limp body on the rocky ground. She had lost a lot of weight since leaving home, her cheeks sunken and pale. He hoped the bag of cookies wasn't all she'd had to eat since then. Kneeling beside her, he squeezed her hand and felt a faint squeeze in return. He let himself breathe again.

Jorad was back inside the crypt and muttering to himself as he worked at wrestling the litter out from under Morgan's body.

Shielding Kate from Jorad with his body, Corvan reach under his cloak, released the hammer from the holster, and brought it down on the black band, just as Kate had done for Tsarek on the Castle Rock. "Release her," he whispered but nothing happened. He gripped it tighter and looked at the base of the handle. "Please, I ... I love her. Please don't let her die."

The hammer grew warmer, but there was no glow. Corvan pressed his face next to Kate's. "Let it go, Kate. You need to leave that bracelet behind." Her head shook ever so slightly, her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids, and a faint sigh escaped her cracked lips.