Dragon Treasure by SJ Sanders
Chapter 6
Tania nearly choked on the dried bit of meat in her mouth when the ground just outside of the monastery pitched with the fierce tremble of an earthquake. Some of the bells inside must have struck fairly hard because a dull, deep vibration seemed to still be echoing. She wiggled her smallest finger inside of her ear and winced. Her ears were probably going to be ringing for a while yet.
Glancing around warily, she held her breath, expecting a burst of activity to appear on the streets, but when everything remained dark and quiet, Tania allowed herself a small sigh of relief. She didn’t understand how anyone could sleep through all of that when she considered herself lucky just for managing to hold onto her bladder, but she figured earthquakes had to be frequent on the mountain.
Just one more reason to get the job done and get out of there. Tania had no interest in wintering in a place that might actively try to toss her ass down the side of the mountain. In fact, every hour she spent there made her balmy island retreat sound better and better.
If that was how she wanted to spend the winter, she needed that treasure. The last few months had been slow on income, which meant that she hadn’t squirreled enough away to even make transport, much less provide funds to last her through the bitter cold months. Truthfully, if she’d had at least the passage, she likely would have turned around the moment she encountered snow and fucked off back south. But there was no helping her current financial problems without getting a move on.
Rolling her shoulders, Tania dropped down from her perch where she had been surveilling the monastery for the better part of the hour, the soft leather of her boots scuffing the stone courtyard. The holy fires extinguished with the dropping of the sun beyond on the mountain’s edge, everything was suspended in a dark silence. Only the soft babble of a running fountain and the hollow sound of the wind blowing between stones lent an audible atmosphere.
If she were the superstitious sort, she might have described the placing as having a haunted feel to it, but as she was not superstitious and just impatient, she strode silently through the courtyard, keeping to the deepest shadows. The temple guard stood vigilantly in front of the temple, their spears held at rest at their sides as their eyes shifted over the road in front of them.
There was another pair of guards making rounds of the perimeter. While they were absent Tania had a very narrow opening of time to gain entrance before the patrol came around the side of the building and spotted her. The pair at the entrance, she was less concerned about. They might have been a barrier if it weren’t for the fact that she had noted a high service window in the monastery’s bell tower earlier that day.
She wasn’t going to attempt to go through the front doors—but up!
Ducking down, Tania darted to the nearest wall, her heart hammering in her ears the entire way. Her blood roared loudly in her head when she held her breath in silent prayer that neither guard looked her way, nor heard her approach.
She was good, but there were never any guarantees.
Without letting herself slow or hesitate once she hit the wall, Tania took advantage of her forward momentum to scale the stone wall. Spending a good portion of the day studying her target paid off. She was able to quickly find the necessary handholds and drop onto the lower roof just as the heavy footsteps of the patrol rounded the corner.
Peering over the side of the roof while she took a moment to catch her breath, she watched the guards hail each other and exchange pleasantries. Their manner was relaxed and almost casual as they spoke. Eventually the pairs traded off, and the other guards moved on to make their own rounds as if nothing were amiss.
Tania’s grinned down at them, unseen, for a heartbeat before she turned her attention upward again and began to quickly ascend, sacrificing speed for caution when necessary.
Although the slope of the domed roofs was a little challenging to navigate, they compared little to the tower that jutted up from behind the central dome at a height that made her mildly nauseated just looking up at it.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of heights. She nearly scoffed at the idea itself and her own reaction as she dusted off her hands and squinted up at her destination. No thief worth their salt could be afraid of heights. She just had an extreme allergy to the potential of falling to her death. Because of that she just suffered from a bit of nausea and tension until the climb was finished. No big deal.
It was just unfortunate that her misery was amplified by the frigid gusts of air that blasted around her at that height.
Shivering down into her coat even as she tightened it more snugly around her, she took her time ascending the bell tower, meticulously placing each hand as she pulled herself up. She had a bad moment when her coat suddenly loosened, and the long ends caught on the wind and flapped around her body with such strength that she was worried of being pulled right off the side of the tower.
Gritting her teeth, she refused to be cowed. She moved up resolutely from handhold to handhold, foothold to foothold. She didn’t know how long she did this until, when moving up to another set of holds, a strong wind struck her from the side. Certain that the goddess was out to kill her, Tania barely prevented herself from crying out in fear when her foot slipped, and her body dropped so that all of her weight dangled precariously from her arms.
For a heart-stopping moment, she could do nothing more than merely hold on before she was able to force herself to move enough to swing her legs up against the tower wall and find the nearest footholds once more. Tania panted in terror, her fingers digging against the stone. She heard the crack of a nail breaking, but it barely registered against the pain biting into her fingertips as she gripped the handholds with all of her strength.
She clung to the side of the wall for what seemed like an eternity, certain that the next gust would be the one to tear her grip from the stones. She had never considered herself religious, but at that moment, she found a newfound devotion to the gods as she whispered hasty prayers to every deity whose name she could recall, and especially to Tarachna. The irony didn’t escape her that she was praying to the same goddess as to whom the monastery she was breaking into belonged, but with her new religiosity, she considered it worth a shot. It wasn’t like she was stealing from the goddess. Just a small amount of trespassing. From where she stood, the goddess had no reason to be angry at her.
Whether the goddess was sympathetic or not, or if it was another divine denizen who heard her, she didn’t know for certain. What she did know was that, as if her prayers were heard, the wind mercifully died.
Taken by surprise, Tania dared not to move at first, but only for a moment. Not willing to test fate or the goodwill of the goddess, she scurried up the remaining distance beneath the window’s ledge as fast as she could manage and dragged herself inside. It was a bit more reckless than was usual for her, but she was more afraid of the wind returning. So much so that she flopped gracelessly into the bell tower, her ass hitting the wooden floor hard enough to make her squeak.
Her body shivering with the rush of endorphins as every muscle that had been tense with mortal terror relaxed in relief, Tania stood, one hand rubbing her tailbone while glancing around the room as her vision shifted and sharpened. Despite the dim light, she felt her pupils widening unnaturally as her eyes drew in every bit of the limited light, rendering her surroundings in an acute visibility that was only a fraction darker than it had been outside beneath the moon.
Not that her night vision wasn’t superior to what humans came naturally equipped with anyway. She could see outside during the night nearly as clear as she could in the day. Having her eyes surgically bespelled was well worth the small sack of coins she had paid out to the sorceress. Thanks to that process, she could see everything in the room clearly, even if there was the slightest silvery-blue cast to the edges of her vision.
Stationed just below three enormous bells, each with a pull robe and access ladder on the respective wall nearest to them, the room lacked any and all furnishing except for a set of storage cabinets at the far end that, upon quick investigation, held nothing more than cleaning supplies.
Snorting to herself, she closed the cabinet door and rolled her eyes. What had she expected? That the cleaning closet would be the entrance into the cave? Although the tower fit snugly against the side of the mountain, that would have been a little too convenient. No doubt any access into the so-called Dragon’s Keep would be deep within the heart of the monastery.
Dropping her hand, Tania strode over to the door at the opposite end of the room and opened it to a narrow, winding staircase. She wrinkled her nose at the stairs that descended into shadow and eventually total darkness once it exceeded the limits of her eyes. Surgical magic still had limits. For that reason, from her position, the stairs looked like a death trap or a descent into a torture pit. The darkness swallowed up everything except the top handful of steps.
Weather warped, rickety, and probably chewed on by rodents, all of those were all problems that likely plagued the stairs. Even though they weren’t immediately apparent, her imagination worked well enough. A little too well, actually.
Despite the cool prickle that ran up her spine, she didn’t flinch away from the sight even if she groaned aloud. Her occupation didn’t have room for a fear of enclosed dark places any more than it allowed a discomfort dangling from heights, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t bitch in privacy where no one was to witness and give her shit for it.
Not that she was necessarily afraid of the dark or anything.
She just fucking hated dark, cramped places. It didn’t scare her but merely pissed her off how vulnerable it made her.
It was the whole reason she paid a fortune and went through the pain for her eyes. Although she was mentally moaning over the darkness beyond her eyes’ capabilities, she was grateful to have the expanded night vision that she now possessed. While it wouldn’t make the stairs any safer, and had its limits, she felt more in control. The staircase, as hazardous as it looked, was only a minor obstacle. One that only just barely was able to supersede the limits of her comfort. It could have been much worse—and many times in the past had been. She could either walk away or suck it up and do what had to be done.
She sure as hell wasn’t walking away empty-handed.
At least knowing that monks traversed it several times a day without incident helped a little. If they didn’t crumble under that big bastard that she saw earlier, she doubted they would give beneath her considerably lighter weight.
Eyes narrowing to focus the light as much as possible against the gloom, she took another step and then another, her footsteps echoing faintly with her downward progress. Footsteps light and quick, she barely allowed herself to pause long enough to collect herself when gradually more stairs came into view the deeper that she went. The further from the natural light of the moon spilling into the service window, the more silver thickened her vision to outline everything in an unearthly glow.
The stone walls of the stairwell became etched with silver in every crack, and even the whorls of the wooden rail beneath her hand seemed painted. The door, however, with its heavy grain, almost appeared to her as a sheet of finely woven silver when she finally reached it. The only blemishes marring its surface were that of spiders crawling on it. Slapping them away with the hem of her coat, she finally pushed her way in, the sigh of the door gratifyingly quiet despite all expectations otherwise.
Thank the gods for vigilant priests who oil hinges. And for heat!
Stepping inside, the warmth of the monastery hit her in the face, and with it the lingering clouds of cedar incense smoke. Narrow, elegant stained-glass windows let in traces of moonlight, brightening the hall with faint blues and the slightest blushes of reds despite being covered thickly with dust. Although the hinges were well-seen to, it appeared that no one spent enough time in the hall leading to the tower to bother with the murals gracing the walls or to clean the glass windows that were in a place that couldn’t even be seen from the ground-level. Perhaps that was why they didn’t bother with them.
It was a shame, really. They were magnificent.
Tania slowed her steps, her eyes easily picking out the scenes of Tarachna’s rebirth in the world. Not all of the windows were of scenes she could make sense of. Especially not those that seemed to be places she did not recognize—perhaps within the mountain side before the city had been established.
Eyes falling on one such depiction, her pace slowed and her feet finally stopped, bringing her to a halt in front of the window that captured her attention. The peak was familiar, but around it was a pale golden reptilian sort of creature, its mouth wide open defensively from its perch and wings fanned out, spread wide as if readying to attack. Red flames did not come from its mouth, however. More like a blue fire with billows of something like icy fog rather than smoke.
Was this the dragon of Dragon’s Keep?