Iris, Caleb, Nell, and Trill all peered down at us from above, waiting to get the all clear for Nell to apparate them in.
I created my own mage light, keeping it weak. Anyan claimed his own tiny light, and together we started reconnoitering. But not before we set one last weak light by the rope for us to follow if we got lost.
“Let’s see what we have here,” Anyan said, pacing forward. I followed him, about a step behind, guarding our backs but also giving my sight a chance to adjust to the darkness. I guess my underwater-strong eyesight was better than Anyan’s because after a few moments I could see just about everything the little cave offered. And when I did, I gasped.
“What?” Anyan asked sharply, no doubt afraid I’d hurt myself or had heard something dangerous.
“The room, it’s… it’s…” I peered around carefully, making sure that I was really seeing what I thought. “It’s beautiful,” I said, going ahead and beefing up my mage lights as I lit a few more to float over my head.
Light spilled through the cavern, reflecting on the multitude of crystals stuck in the earth walls. That light bounced, reflected, and refracted, creating a chaotic rainbow that danced along the floors, ceiling, walls, and our own flesh.
“Whoa,” Anyan breathed, stepping next to me and taking my hand. It felt good to see this with him, both of us enjoying the beauty. And the feel of his big hand clasping mine just made it that much better.
“I think we can tell the others to come down now,” I said. He only nodded, so I went ahead and walked back to our rope, regretting that I’d had to let go of the barghest’s hand to do so.
“It’s safe!” I called up, and a few seconds later I heard various poofs as my friends were apparated nearby. Then I heard an almost simultaneous gasp as each of them took in the beauty of the room.
“So pretty,” Iris breathed, walking toward a wall to touch one of the crystals. Caleb and I followed her. As her fingertips met the crystal, it sang a sweet song, causing the both of us to jump toward her.
But the note faded, and no harm was done to anyone. I heard us all let out the breaths we’d been holding, as one.
“Do they all do that?” Iris asked, reaching for another crystal. And it sang, as well, at the touch of her fingers, although this note was lower.
“How curious,” Caleb said, reaching his own hand out. As his fingertips brushed against a patch of crystals cropping up from the floor to about waist height, they all sang for him, each a different note.
We all stepped toward a wall and began touching. The room buzzed with sound. We laughed, together, until Anyan shouted.
“Wait!” he said, pointing to the middle of the room as it went quiet but for a faint echo of dying notes. “Look.”
Smack dab in the center of the cavern, right near where our rope still dangled, it looked like something was trying to come up from the soft dirt of the cave floor.
“It’s kind of like the base of a pedestal or something,” Trill said, her oil-slick voice nervous as she tiptoed toward the disturbed floor.
“It’s gotta be the lock,” I said. “Or the crystals are the lock. Something is a lock for sure.”
“Where did it come from?” Iris asked.
“You were touching the crystals and it just… started to come out,” intoned Caleb.
“Like a red rocket?” I conjectured. Anyan gave me the stink eye. He was obviously sensitive about the red rocket issue, being part dog and all.
“Was it the noise that made it come out?” Nell wondered, strumming her hand along a row of crystals. As if to prove her wrong, the small outcropping in the floor retreated back to wherever it had sprung from.
“How bizarre,” I said. Then I had a thought. “Okay, this is totally Goonies, but what if we have to play the right notes?”
“Right notes?” asked Nell. “Like a song?”
“Probably not. Unless you guys see any sheet music anywhere. I’m thinking a resonance… either a scale or a group of one note together.”
Anyan was facing me, but his eyes were closed and his head tilted. It was like he was listening or remembering… or both.
“Yes,” he interrupted. “Right as the ground moved you’d all played a same note… It was sort of like…” And then the barghest sang out a clear, beautiful tone. I had no idea he could sing, leaving me floored.
“Now we have to figure out which crystal plays what,” Iris said, already touching the crystals around her. I was still watching Anyan, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the man could sing, too, when he nodded sharply.
“That was it. Whatever you just touched…”
Iris reached out a hand again and touched a crystal. It cried out in the glittering cavern, pure and sweet.
“So how do we find out which one to play?” Trill asked. “They’re not exactly marked.”
“It’s the size,” Caleb rumbled. “They’re different notes for different sizes. Iris’s note is… about as long as her forearm.”
We each looked around, using our own forearms, with an inch or two either added or subtracted depending on how long our arms were, until we each found a few crystals that were about right. Then we took turns strumming them, trying to find the ones with exactly the right pitch. Finally, all six of us had found our exact crystals, but we were still unsure of what to do.
“So, should we just all play them?” I asked. Everyone nodded, and we all obediently touched our crystals. They sang out, but nothing happened.
“No, it was a bigger sound than that. Everyone was going nuts right when the floor moved. Lots and lots of sound, played really furiously. We’re gonna have to do more than just touch ’em,” Anyan said.
“Are you trying to get us to stroke our crystals for you, Mr. Barghest?” Iris said, sweetly, and I rejoiced at the sight of her flirting so openly, even if it was with my own man-dog.
“I’ve been trying to get you to stroke my crystal for years, Iris,” Anyan bantered back. “Now let’s all stroke together… On three, two, one…”
And with that we all started strumming away at our crystals. We began by attempting to be decorous: either whacking at or playing the crystal like one would a tether ball or a guitar. But the sound wasn’t quite cacophonous enough, and eventually we all gave up and stood there, openly jerking our crystals in a more than vaguely masturbatory manner. Whoever had invented this lock should get credit for inspiring the Shake Weight.
As the brilliant sound of the note crashed through the cavern, the floor began to shiver exactly where it had earlier. We kept stroking, any embarrassment at our motions quashed by seeing results. So we stroked harder, faster, watching as the floor rose into the shape of a steep pyramid, about three and a half feet tall. Then all the music ceased, and our crystals were dead in our hands.
Ouch, chafing, I thought, letting go of my crystal and stretching out my hand before shaking it a bit. Everyone else was making similar motions. That much stroking is hard on a body, I thought, wondering how Alexander Portnoy had done it.
I also wondered who in the hell had created this “lock,” and whether they were totally clueless or had a great sense of humor. Knowing the often emotionless Alfar of today, unless things had changed dramatically since the ancient Alfar walked the earth, I figured it was the former.
Together, we walked toward the pyramid, stopping to form a circle a few feet away from it.
“What is it?” Iris asked. Caleb shrugged, clearly stumped. And it didn’t look like any of the rest of us had a clue.
“Let me see,” Nell said, and I felt her give the pyramid a gentle probing. As if on cue, more crystals sprang from the sides of the pyramid.
We frowned at each other, wondering what to do next, when Iris reached forward.
“Makes sense that what we did before should work now, too,” she said. Before we could stop her, she’d reached out and touched a crystal that looked the same as the one we’d just been group-fondling before.
The now familiar sound zoomed out through the room, and the previously exhausted crystals all began not only to sing with the pyramid’s crystal but to glow, faintly. We all took a step back as the glowing increased, eventually blinding us with its brightness. Shielding my eyes, I, for one, was figuring we were done for, when suddenly the light ceased, leaving the cavern in darkness again.
Blinded by the light, our eyes took a few seconds to adjust. But when they finally did, we saw that it was only our abused vision that had assumed it was entirely dark again. For floating a few inches above the tip of the central pyramid hung what looked like a mirror, its surface showing a series of sinuous shapes that changed with every second. Frowning in confusion, we all took a step forward.
“What is it?” I breathed.
Nell sighed from where she stood next to me. I hadn’t noticed the gnome’s expression, as she was so much shorter than me.
“It’s an ancient Alfar hieroglyph,” she informed us. “A sigil.”
“Great!” Iris replied. “You know what it is. Can you read it?”