080 – Steven Goes Exploring 3

There were rows and columns of biers arranged across the room with a body on each one. The occasional pillar broke the pattern. There were also alcoves in the walls with slots with bodies in them. Several looked royal, but none looked kingly. The majority were men, many of them in armor. Many were women, a number of them were in armor. The difference of the armored figures was discernible by the breastplates, and how the skirt was arranged. But none were who he was looking for. He continued his clockwise pattern, starting at the relative 6 o’clock, and found some stairs in the relative 9 o’clock. Steven felt to follow these now.

These stairs descended and curved around clockwise into another hall directly below the warrior’s hall he had just passed through. The pattern of the biers was identical, all feet to the dawn, about two feet between columns and four feet between rows.

This was hall less than half full, but had more bodies in it, being a larger hall. Steven stopped as something clicked in his mind. He went back to the stairs. On either side were two guards that looked to be from the party out by the front doors. They appeared to have died here, rather than having been dragged here.

This puzzled Steven.

He abandoned his search to check on something. He went back to the upper hall. Steven then went around the room and found a clear passage at the relative 12 o’clock position for his search of this room. After leaving the hall, this passage came to another set of stairs going up. By this point Steven was sufficiently comfortable that he put his sword away. He continued to light torches as they presented themselves. Steven climbed these stairs. The passage traveled a short way, then turned from carved stone to masonry, and then was closed by large doors, barred on the other side. Steven suspected this was the way in to the tombs from the fortress, probably through the church. But why were the bodies by the front doors instead of here?

He went back to the statue, and down the right hand passage. This one swiftly dropped down a long flight of stairs and turned clockwise, coming into a larger columned chamber. On either side were individual alcoves; each with a large central bier, with two bodies, and several guards standing in recesses. Several had other bodies on other biers behind the front one. The lone bodies looked to be female, probably concubines. Steven moved through the alcoves looking for the most recent one. He continued to light torches as he went, and was vaguely wondering how much fresh air was really beginning to circulate, and what it would do for the tomb, and bodies. He found the last occupied one, but this one was arranged slightly different.

The man was laid carefully down, but the women looked like she had climbed up herself and lay down to go to sleep. The guards were not standing as the other guards in the place were. They were collapsed under their own weight. Steven stopped, and knelt to pay some respects. Then he moved in to find the sword.

He checked around the body, but had no need to search hard. There was no sword here. Steven checked the coat of arms, but it was carved, not suspended. The sword was not here.

Steven looked closely at the coat of arms. It only had one sword on it, and Steven guessed that it probably was what he was looking for. The sword had probably been passed to someone. So where would that person be? And who?

Steven turned, and looked at the guards and queen. Something else was odd. They were not dressed for duty or burial. Rather thy looked to be dressed for a funeral.

The bodies at the doors.

Could they have been a funeral procession that had been killed there, somehow?

Steven checked things over once more. Then he went back to the front doors. There was a noticeable low level inward breeze, and higher level outward one. Steven looked the bodies over more thoroughly. It was possible that they were a procession. But why here rather than elsewhere? What happened to these people, Steven thought.

He then remembered the guards in the lower hall. He picked up his torch, and went to the statue, turned left, down the stairs, left across the hall and down the next stairs. There were the four crumpled bodies. All dressed as the ones by The King and Queen, and the front doors. None wore functional swords.

Steven had to find why these guards were here. What was there to guard, or who?

He went into the room. There had to be enough spots to bury a brigade in just this one room. But was the sword here? Steven stopped.

Why was he spending so much time checking this place? Because he had already checked the fortress, and had not found anything there. Steven sat on the edge of a bier, and pulled out his water tube. He took a pull from it, and let the water wash his mouth, than spat it on the floor. He took another pull, and let the tube fall back to where it normally sat. He then pulled out some jerky and chewed a piece of this, as he thought.

The guard’s dream seemed somehow the key. The King had been dying. He had found The Kings body, so he had died. That meant that The Prince would be the next King. But The Prince was not with his parents in the other hall, and neither was the sword. The elves said the sword was here. He was not sure what this sword mattered, but they were adamant that he have this one. The Queen had got on the bier under her own power. There were four collapsed guards with her. There were four collapsed guards here. So The Prince/King was probably here. So which one was he? The one that got on a bier himself?

“They would want it to be find-able by the right person. The Prince would look like The Queen, here on his own and not placed.”

Steven got up and looked at the bodies. Which looked out of place? Where was the last one? That way. Steven went deeper into the room. He most likely would not be on the side. And the bodies would be laid out in order, with The Prince at the end. Steven could see the pattern and moved to find the end of it. Then he saw what he guessed was The Prince.

There were two bodies on the last used bier with several empty beyond it in the row. The bodies were sharing a moment that would last forever.

A woman’s dress was spread across the bier, with more clothes piled on the floor. These dead had nothing on for coverings, and the bodies were completely dried out, and shrunk to little more than skin, bones and hair. Steven guessed that the woman was on bottom, but was not interested in a detailed examination to find out for sure. Chuckling he turned to the stuff on the floor. There was a sword under the piled clothes.

Steven pulled it from the pile, careful not to stir up too much dust. The leather scabbard was stiff, and brittle. Steven pushed the scabbard off. It broke as it hit the ground. The sword was fine looking, though this light was not enough to really judge by. It was light for its size, and well balanced. The cross bar and hilt were bronze or gold, the grip a tight wrap of some kind of wire that provided a good grip. It was plain, with no ornamentation at all. The blade was long enough by local standards to be a hand and a half sword. Double edged and slim, it was purely functional. Heavier swords might give it a bit of trouble, but only for force, not for durability. The edge was well kept, the nicks having been smoothed and sharpened. It might need polishing.

Steven waved it around experimentally, and then the world changed around him.

He stood by the side of his father’s bed, in the King’s apartment. His senile father had lost strength through the previous night and morning. And the city was dying as fast as he was. He would be dead by nightfall.

The old king stirred. He recognized his surroundings. These were his last moments, and as his body shut down, his ghost inside had its faculties set free and at full power. The King looked at The Prince, and told him he loved him and to do his best. He then handed him the scepter in the symbol of passing the title.

The King turned to The Queen. The Prince turned away and left. He had some desperate business to conduct. His father, The King, died while he was away.

The Prince surveyed the situation. A win was hopeless. So he signaled the ceasing of the fighting by lowering the flags on the rampart. Word soon came back. The fighting would be stopped by nightfall; The King would have to surrender in the morning, and had until then to prepare for abdication.

The Prince sent back word that The King was dead, and would be buried in the morning. Then succession could happen, peacefully.

The scene shifted.

He was in the funeral line. A few priests led the way. He wished his brothers were here to help him carry the bier. But The Queen had secreted them out of the siege, unknown to The King. As it was, the heads of the personal guard were carrying The King, followed by a few more guards, The Queen and her guards, himself, and his wife, and their guards. The concubine/nurse and some courtiers, and a last set of guards followed the family. They had a brief service in the chapel, then entered the catacombs and from there the tombs. They crossed the hall and up the stairs, proceeded down the passage past the statue, and down to the Hall of Kings. They went to the last alcove, and the prepared bier. The body was set and covered. Seven previous generations of kings lay here, with their wives, honor guards, and a few concubines. A second brief service was held, and the priests retreated. The rest stayed and paid final respects.

The party reassembled, and proceeded out the way they had come. They went up to the main level, past the statue, down and across the Warrior’s Hall, into the passage to the catacombs. At the entrance to the catacombs, the doors were closed. They were barred from the other side. Nobody liked this. The party broke ranks and went back to the statue, and turned to go to the ground level entrance. The inner doors here were also closed and barred. They were trapped.

Then solid blackness seeped through the frame of the door. It snuffed out the torches, and went fast enough to grab all standing right at the doors. The royals and personal guards were at the back, and saw the Black Death spread. They knew now that escape was impossible. But they were not about to die here. The Queen, the Prince and his wife and eight guards turned and went back to the statue. Here they said their farewells and embraced. The Queen and the four oldest guards then turned and went down into The Kings Hall. The Prince, his wife and the other four guards went back to the catacomb doors, hoping to find them open.

A vain hope.

So they went back to the Warrior’s Hall. The Black Death had not filled to here yet. But it was at the top of the stairs. So they went down, and into the lower Hall. The guards took up position at the bottom of the stairs. The Prince took his wife’s arm and led her farther into the hall, to the next empty bier.

“What shall we do, My Husband?”

“We shall die in each others arms, My Queen.”

He reached for the tie of her dress at her neck.