Underlord (Cradle #6)(34)

“What do your servants do with the natural treasures they...harvest?”

This Night Wheel Valley seemed too good to be true, like walking into a forest and finding that every tree was heavy with ripe fruit. The Akura family obviously lived here, so why didn't they make sure not a single treasure went to waste?

Mercy glanced over the cliff at the spear, which had almost returned. “A lot of it is sold or burned for soulfire,” she said, and Lindon made a quick mental note of that.

“But the rest of it is stored in a vault not too far from here until it's needed.”

“This vault,” Lindon said, “would it be open to...any members of your family?”

The spear rattled up the side of the cliff, pulled by the cable, returning to drive itself into the ground again. The cable landed in a perfect coil at the end.

Now Lindon could see what the barnacle-like objects were covering the spear's shaft: they were skulls. Tiny, black skulls, from some that would have fit on the end of his pinky to a few bigger than his whole thumb. Each of them glowed from within with a soft, unearthly green light, and they radiated a sense of fear and decay that reminded him distantly of destruction aura.

Mercy stopped, mouth open in the middle of speaking. She held up a finger, then lowered it. She scrunched up her face. “I, uh, well...it actually is, but I've been cut off from family resources. Although technically they're not allowed to help me, so they would be the ones...” Finally, she shook her head. “No, I can't. This is Aunt Charity's property. She wouldn't notice the loss, but she doesn't tolerate cheating. She only allows a break in her rules in order to keep things fair. Or if she thinks it would bring enough of a benefit to the family.”

[It sure is a good thing no one in their clan knows you left Harmony to die,] Dross said. [That's a relief, isn't it? Such a load off your mind.]

Lindon pushed that thought away and walked over to the spear. There were baskets next to each one, which he supposed was how the treasures were meant to be collected. But how to remove the skulls from the spear? Surely you weren't supposed to peel death treasures off by hand.

“There's a separate script-circle on the butt of the spear,” Mercy said. “I'd activate it at a distance if I...were...how did you do that?”

Lindon had placed his fingertips on the end of the spear, where the death aura was weakest, and activated the spear as soon as Mercy had spoken. By the time she'd suggested activating it at a distance, it was too late, and the tiny skulls were already tumbling to the ground.

The nearby basket inhaled them, presumably as the result of another circle he hadn't seen activate, and it filled itself quickly with green-and-black skulls.

He stopped with fingers halfway back from the spear, suddenly panicking. Was that even more dangerous than he'd imagined? It hadn't felt too dangerous.

“Golds can't get too close to death aura,” Mercy said, waving her hand near the basket to demonstrate. A few inches away, her arm jerked away as though it had been slapped, her fingers curling against her side. “The life aura in your body reacts automatically to protect you.” She squinted at him. “I wish I could take a closer look at you. I've never looked at your lifeline before, but it must be thick as an oak!”

That must be... Lindon began to think, and Dross finished his thought.

[That's right. Life Well,] he said. [Doing its job.]

“Ghostwater,” Lindon explained aloud.

She slapped his armored chest with the back of her hand, which had about as much impact as a leaf blown by the wind. “I'm so jealous! Getting to tour Northstrider's pocket world...it must have been incredible.”

A second later, her expression was bright again. “But the Valley has some sights worth seeing too. We should move on.”

Lindon looked back over the field of skulls. “There's so much here, though.” He wasn't familiar with the prices of natural treasures back in the Blackflame Empire, but he knew he was looking at a fortune.

“Natural treasures are sold in mixed sets,” Mercy informed him. “It's better to grab as many as you can. And there's an ancestral tree not far from here that weeps gold.”

Lindon snatched up the basket. “Lead the way,” he said. Then he deliberately opened his void key.

He left it open for a moment, making sure that she could see the savage-looking axe with the bone haft sitting within. Harmony's axe.

He was trusting her with two things, now—the existence of his void key and of Harmony's weapon. But if they were going to be gathering treasures together, she was going to learn about the void key sooner or later. He couldn't tell her to turn around every time he wanted to pack something away, and he certainly wasn't going to leave any empty space in his void storage that could be filled with valuables.

And if she didn't want him to discuss Harmony aloud, he could try to bring it up without any words.

She stopped as she saw the inside of the storage space, her stance softening. A cloud passed in front of her face.

“It's all right,” she said softly. “What's taken in battle is fairly won. If...someone...wants the weapon back, they will simply ask you for it. You won't be punished for having it.”

Lindon left the key open for a moment, waiting to put the basket inside. “Gratitude. That's good to know. But you...”