Finally, I rinsed off with the chilly well water, then wrapped a towel around me and stepped away. “I wish we had thought to take the plan with a change of clothes,” I said.
“I’ve got you there,” Liesel said. “I figured you’d forget that, so I ran down to one of my friends near the mouth of the forest and bummed old pants and shirts off of him for the men. You and Brynn can wear a couple of my dresses until we can buy you more clothing. Everything is in a spare dresser upstairs. Also, there’s a seamstress outside the forest, and she’ll sell you clothes. I have extra money if you don’t.”
“We found some assorted trinkets in the dungeon, they might be worth something,” I said.
“And the werespiders had a fair amount of gold. We should be good to go with that, in addition to what we still have.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Liesel said, distracted. She was staring at the book intently.
I sat down with her as Brynn was taking her bath. “Find anything yet?”
“I think so. There’s a necromancer—Zaran, who’s from the Mountains of Kartell. He settled in the forest here, but was driven out by a warrior named Jaral over a hundred years ago. It’s rumored he built a bunker somewhere—probably the burialchamber—and surrounded himself with all manners of foul creatures to protect himself.”
I thought about the name. It didn’t ring a bell. “I don’t think we ever made it to that part of the game,” I said.
“Well, he’s dangerous. And he’s high level—he’s Level 15.”
I gulped. We were, at best, Levels 2 or…maybe 3. “Okay. And the key?—”
“Belongs to him.” She paled. “It’s a key that unlocks a portal to a prison space, where his lost love—Devastey, the Queen of Dark Magic—is being held. He managed to steal the key from the priestess of the Summer Kingdom. She’s the one who imprisoned Devastey a long time ago for destroying an entire village. Once Zaran realizes the key’s gone, he’s going to start looking for it. You can’t let yourself be seen with that. Keep it beneath your clothes at all time.”
I stared down the key around my neck, feeling suddenly vulnerable and exposed. “How do you get it off?”
“I’m looking…Okay, it says that that the priestess was killed. She was charged with protecting the key. It was enchanted so that whoever wore it wouldn’t be able to take it off until Devastey’s dead. Zaran’s always searching for it. The key can be destroyed, but only after both Devastey and Zaran are eliminated.” Liesel looked at me. “For better or worse, you’re the new Keeper of the Key.”
CHAPTER 17: SOME MORE BAD NEWS
After we were washedand clothed, and the tub was cleaned out, we settled around the table with food. Dinner tasted better than anything I could imagine in the moment. We finished, and Liesel corralled Geoff, taking his information so she could reach out to his family. Reggie perused the books on Liesel’s shelves, looking for anything about magic that he could find. Ray and Brynn sat by the fireplace, wearily staring at the flames. And I…I sat on the front porch steps, staring out at the woods, with Thornhold beside me.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know how to answer that. There’s a Level 15 necromancer out there whose probably on the rampage right now, and I’m the one who he’s looking for. The only way this stupid key will come off my neck is for me to die, or for us to find Devastay’s portal and to destroy both her and Zaran. How am I going to do that?” I played with a rock, then chucked it across the yard.
“I don’t know,” Thornhold said. “Maybe we’ll get out of the game before it becomes an issue.”
“Maybe so, but we haven’t heard from the game-guides since…was it yesterday? It all seems like a blur.” I hung my head, feeling overwhelmed.
“You’re just tired right now. We’re all exhausted. Come on, Rey-Rey,” he said, using the nickname he always used for me in game. “Why don’t we roll out the bedrolls and get some sleep? It’s nearing dawn.” He motioned to the sky, which was awash in shifting array of rose and pale yellow as the sun began to rise.
I shrugged, but stood and followed him back inside. I felt a weariness deeper than any I could remember feeling. I wanted to believe that we’d get out of the game—I really did. But in my inner core, I was terrified that we wouldn’t.
Inside, we spread out the bedrolls.
I turned to Liesel. “We need to sleep,” I said.
She nodded. “Go on, get some rest. I’ll bring you extra blankets. I managed to salvage more than I thought I would from the fire.” She paused, noticing my expression. “Erenye, just take a deep breath. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out Zaran’s dead. After all, you said the dungeon was filled with zombies and werespiders.”
“Yeah, but that’s no guarantee. He wasn’t in his sarcophagus…which, by the way, startled me. I thought only vampires slept in them.”
“That may not be his bed,” Brynn said. “Maybe it’s where he kept the key for safekeeping.”
“Why wouldn’t he keep it around his neck?” Ray asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, grumpier than ever.
“If I didn’t want to lose something so valuable, I wouldn’t chance it falling into the wrong hands,” Reggie said. “Maybe Liesel’s right and he’s already dead.”
“I don’t have any answers. Let’s just get some sleep.” I crawled into one of the bedrolls and—grateful for the extrawarmth of the blankets Liesel gave us—fell into a deep and exhausted sleep.
