Chapter 454 — The Ancestral Vault of the Wildes
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
But just as no one had ever imagined that the honorary "perpetual pioneer right" might one day take effect again, those who knew of this roster surely never dreamed that one of the names upon it would suddenly come back to life...
Victoria Wilde gazed quietly at the metal plate in her hand. After a long while she sighed softly, laid the plate gravely upon the stone dais, and reversed the spell to seal it away once more.
That done, she stepped back from the stone platform and turned to survey the whole hall.
Many stone doors lined the walls to either side, and behind them lay corridors leading to the various burial chambers. One day she herself would lie in one of those chambers, and one of her children would stand where she now stood, looking about this same hall.
But perhaps pondering different questions.
She stood a moment in place, and then, as though suddenly resolved upon something, the duchess glanced at the sealed doors. By the faint sense of aura she knew Maggie still kept watch outside.
In truth, even without a guard, none would dare trespass upon this place.
Victoria turned back, cast one look at the stone platform, then stepped around it toward the door behind it.
That door was the most singular of all: it occupied a wall of the hall entirely on its own, and behind it there was no corridor—only a single burial chamber.
In its layout, this vault differed hardly at all from the Cecil ancestral vault.
With the creak and groan of arcane mechanisms turning, the Duchess opened the door of the special burial chamber on the deepest level, stepped inside, and lit the crystal lamps of that inner vault.
The arcane lamps illuminated the spacious hall, laying its every furnishing bare: slabs of stone inscribed with profound runes and hangings of rune-cloth lined the walls, while the open floor was strewn with bookshelves, planetary instruments, miniature mage-tower models, and the like—arranged at seemingly random positions that were in truth deliberate and orderly—and at the very center of the hall, upon a raised dais, rested a black iron coffin in silence.
"Ancestor, your descendant has come to visit you."
Victoria Wilde spoke softly, her expression solemn; then she seemed to swallow faintly and strode toward the iron coffin.
She came before the dais and saw the stone slab leaning against the coffin, carved with the last words Snor Wilde, ancestor of the Wilde family, had left to this world:
"Old friends, I outlived you all—what a bore."
To outsiders it would be hard to imagine that the Wilde Ancestor, who wore only a frostlike gravity in every official portrait, should have left behind such a line at the final hour of his life—but Victoria had long since ceased to be surprised by it.
She drew her attention from the slab and fixed her gaze on the dark iron coffin before her, a look of struggle and hesitation rising on her face.
For a full ten minutes she hesitated before she finally dared to reach out and gently rap upon the coffin lid.
The iron coffin gave no response.
Hesitating once more, she reached out again, tapped lightly on the lid, and quickly turned her head to glance around.
There was of course no one here, and so the Duchess of the Northern Marches drew a breath and leaned close to the coffin: "...Are you there?"
Three unbearable minutes of awkwardness passed; all the Duchess Victoria heard was her own breathing and heartbeat.
A layer of frost seemed to settle over the Duchess's face. She straightened swiftly, retreated two steps, and muttered to herself: "...Damn it, what foolishness am I doing..."
She left the burial chamber quickly, left the hall of the underground palace, and by the time her maid Maggie caught sight of her, the Guardian of the Northern Marches had already resumed that cold, aloof, noble, and composed bearing.
"Vicky, you were in there a long while."