“The air smells... wrong,” said Fioni.
“It was the same in Greywynne Fortress,” said Owen. “After we unsealed the catacombs, the air stank of rot and mildew. Modwyn warned of foul vapors, said they were dangerous.”
“Modwyn was a liar and a traitor,” said Lady Danika. “There’s no such thing as foul vapors. He was only trying to trick you into covering your faces with his poisoned cloth.”
“Perhaps,” said Fioni. “But the air does stink. And this feels wrong. I don’t think whatever is down there is meant for our eyes.”
“Fioni’s right. We should go back to the ship,” said Erik.
“No,” said Lady Danika. “Sight-Bringer’s magic somehow opened this portal for a reason. We need to go down there—even if we only take a quick look. You Fenyir are always speaking of destiny. What else could this be?” She looked to Owen, her eyes pleading.
“We don’t know that,” insisted Erik.
“She has a point, Erik,” said Fioni. “Think about it. Just when we need shelter, we find this atoll. Then we find these ruins. And Sight-Bringer not only kills the undead, but is also a magical key? Tell me you don’t see the hand of the gods in all this. If this isn’t fate, then I don’t know what is.”
Erik shook his head. “It’s not the hand of the gods I’m worried about, Fioni. It’s one god in particular. This may be a trap of the Dark Shark.”
“I’ll go down there, my lady,” said Owen. “You wait here. I’ll only take a quick look.”
The noblewoman shook her head. “I’m going as well.”
“Are you addlepated?” asked Erik. “This is an unholy place. I can feel it. We need to leave!”
“No,” said Fioni. “She’s right. This is fate. I’m going as well.”
“Fioni,” said Erik, a tremor in his voice, his eyes pleading.
She reached out and gripped the back of his neck, pulling his forehead in to rest against hers. “I have to, Erik. You must see that? I want you to wait here. If something happens, bring Kora and the others. Okay?”
Erik moved away, shaking his head as he sat upon a fallen block of stone. He stared at his hands and mumbled something beneath his breath.
Owen stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at the dark passage below. “Let me go first, and follow once I’ve reached the bottom.” Owen stepped onto the stairs. Despite looking like glass, the surface of the steps was surprisingly firm, not at all slick. He took another step and then another, dropping below the triangular opening. He hesitated, his breathing wild, his face drenched in sudden sweat. He disliked the underground and always had. If the portal closed again…
“Are you all right, Owen?” Lady Danika asked.
He wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes. “I’m fine, my lady. I’m fine.”
He forced himself to keep going, the fingers of one hand trailing along the wall as he descended. Conscious of the ground seemingly closing in around him, Owen reached the base of the steps and the large passageway. The tunnel was hexagonal, six-sided, and lined with a type of stonework he had never seen before. Metal pipes ran along the tunnel’s ceiling, at least twelve feet high. Why build a tunnel so high? It extended before him, at least a hundred feet or more. The light was coming from a series of glowing runes that ran the length of the tunnel, although only every second or third rune glowed; the others remained dark. His breath caught in his throat as he stared at the light. Magic! Lady Danika was right. These must be Illthori ruins. Only they could create such wonders.
Little was known of the long-dead Illthori race. Their civilization had vanished long before the rise of men, and all that now remained were the rare magic relics they had left behind, such as Sight-Bringer and Serl’s Raven-Eye. Not only do we now have two Illthori relics, but also we’ve somehow stumbled upon an Illthori ruin—the first I’ve ever heard of. Lady Danika and Fioni are right. This has to be fate.
At the sound of descending footsteps, he glanced up to see Lady Danika slowly descending the stairs. Fioni followed closely behind, holding the crossbow Erik had brought with him. When the two women reached him, they both stared in wonder.
“I know,” he said softly. “I know.”
“We should come back with torches,” said Fioni. “Just in case the lights…”
“We’ll just take a quick look,” said Lady Danika. She turned, looking up the dark steps. “Even if the lights die, we’ll still see daylight through the opening.”
The air stank of chalky dust, mildew, and stone. Water slowly dripped from the rusty pipes overhead, creating stagnant pools along the tunnel’s stone floor. Glistening spiderwebs stretched entirely across the passageway. Owen inhaled deeply. “Just a short way, then.”
He began to make his way down the tunnel, his boots splashing in the puddles. He paused before the spiderwebs stretched across the tunnel, watching the spiders—some as large as his thumb—scurry away. Owen drew his longsword—Brice Awde’s longsword—and used it to pull away the spiderwebs, clearing a path for the two women.
Lady Danika placed her palm against one of the walls and then drew it back again immediately. She stared at Owen with wide eyes. “The walls—there’s something… moving behind them.”
He placed his ear against the dark stone, immediately hearing and feeling a light vibration, as if the rocks themselves were trembling. A moment later, the sensation just stopped. He met the women’s eyes and shook his head.
“Let’s just go a bit farther,” whispered Lady Danika. “To come this far…”
Owen gritted his teeth and continued to pull away the spiderwebs. Before they had gone a dozen paces, gossamer webs completely covered the steel blade all the way to the cross guard. The stale underground air reminded him of the corpse-lined catacombs beneath Greywynne Fortress.
Just ahead of them, a large portion of the ceiling and tunnel wall had fallen inward, creating a pile of rubble almost blocking the entire passageway. He turned sideways to slip past it. When he came out on the other side of the rubble pile, he saw something almost completely buried beneath the stones. At first, he thought he was looking at an old pile of rotting clothing or garbage. The light was poor at this spot. Dropping down on one knee, he sifted among the stones and began clearing them away. A chill ran down his spine when he suddenly realized what was buried beneath the rubble.
“It’s a corpse,” he said softly.
Lady Danika knelt beside him. “This is no person,” she said softly.
She was right. Covered in mummified skin looking like dried leather, the corpse was clearly not human. It lay on its back, with the entire lower torso still covered by heavy rocks. The exposed upper torso, however, was far too long, the arm bones articulated at an odd angle and twice the length of a man’s. The head was also strangely shaped, with a feline face, overextended jaw, and rows of sharp feline teeth, many now broken off and missing. The eyes were long gone, with only dark, empty pits set too closely together on either side of what had once been a muzzle of some type. Shards of dark clothing still remained but fell apart under Owen’s touch. Lady Danika stared at the corpse, her eyes wide. “Owen, I think… I think maybe this is an Illthori, the first anyone has ever seen.”
“How…”
She drew Sight-Bringer, held the white stone handle carved in the likeness of a beastlike woman in her palm. “It’s the same face, isn’t it?”
“How is that possible?” asked Fioni. “The Illthori disappeared hundreds of years ago. They should be nothing but dust now.”
“I don’t know,” said Lady Danika. “Perhaps being underground preserved the corpse somehow.”
“Look at the chest cavity,” Owen said, pointing toward a massive circular hole, the width of his fist where the heart would be. “It may have been trapped when the wall fell upon it, but someone finished it off. A spear thrust, perhaps? Did the Illthori war among themselves?”
Uncertainty flitted across Lady Danika’s face. “No one knows.”
Owen bit his lip and nod
ded, once again leading the two women down the passageway. For the first time, they passed several chambers set on either side of the tunnel. Like the corridor, the doorways were six-sided and far too high for men. While cave-ins completely blocked the first two chambers, a portion of the third remained intact—although the far wall had fallen in, knocking over a massive stone structure that reminded Owen of the vaults in the Great Crypt of Greywynne Fortress. Once, the structure had been shaped like a pyramid, easily ten feet high with a flat, narrow top; now, it lay on its side, two of its thick walls shattered. As he stared at the broken pyramid, Owen’s skin itched, as if spiders crawled over him. He backed away, rubbing his arms. “What is that?” asked Lady Danika.
“I don’t know,” Owen answered, “but I don’t even like looking at it.”
“Maybe we should head back now,” said Fioni. “I’m starting to think maybe Erik was right. Maybe this place is haunted.”
“There’s one more chamber up ahead,” Lady Danika said. “I don’t think there’s anything else.”
They moved on. Lady Danika was right—the tunnel led to a single final chamber. At its hexagonal-shaped doorway, Owen looked in upon a large chamber. As with the other chambers, portions of the ceiling and wall had also fallen in, creating piles of stone rubble. Holding his arm across the doorway to block the women, he stared up at the ceiling, where he could make out large cracks in the portion that remained intact.
“Fioni,” said Lady Danika. “Your sword…”
Wave’s Kiss, the wave-pattern-welded longsword that had once belonged to Fioni’s great-grandfather Serl, hung from Fioni’s waist. Fifty years ago, Serl had had one of the blood gems taken with the chest containing Serina’s still-beating heart embedded upon the hilt of his sword. That red stone now glowed softly, as if a candle flame burned within it. “That’s something new,” she said in a hushed whisper. Holding her crossbow against her hip with one hand, she drew the sword, holding the gem up to her eye, bathing her face in a red glow. “In his journal, Serl wrote that the blood gems in the chest… glowed.”
“In Daenipor, when I was a prisoner of Kalishni’coor, he bragged about the blood gems he gave to Serina, claiming they retained magical properties from the nell spiders from which they’re harvested.”
“What are spiders doing with gems?” Owen asked. “I would think—” He paused when he saw another red glow coming from a far corner of the chamber behind the rubble created by the fallen ceiling. “That wasn’t there a moment ago,” he said softly, feeling coldness spread through his core.
“This is otherworldly,” Fioni whispered.
Owen’s heartbeat pounded in his skull as he slowly entered the chamber, sliding among the fallen stones. The two women followed right behind him, so closely he felt their breath on his neck. As he made his way across the chamber, he kept one worried eye on the fragile ceiling above them. He edged around the fallen stones and looked down upon yet another mummified Illthori corpse. Unlike the other, this one lay completely exposed. Its legs definitively inhuman, the knees bent wrong, covered in what looked like rotted fur, and ended in split hooves. The glow they had seen came from beneath one of the corpse’s oversized, clawlike hands.
Slowly, Owen dropped down beside the corpse and lifted its dead hand, gently prying the fingers open. A single glowing red stone rolled onto the ground. Owen picked it up, holding it between thumb and forefinger. Small silver threads the length of his finger dangled from the back of the stone where they seemed to be growing from it, like hair.
Fioni bent over his shoulder. “Is that…”
“Another blood gem,” Owen answered.
“May I see that?” Lady Danika asked him.
He handed her the gem and then continued to search the immediate surroundings, shifting some of the rocks away. He stopped when dust and pebbles cascaded from the ceiling. We need to go, he thought. This structure is ready to come down.
“Owen,” said Lady Danika, “there’s something else here, buried beneath the collapsed wall.”
Owen joined her as Lady Danika dropped down on hands and knees and began to shift several of the rocks. Dust drifted down from the ceiling. Owen’s concern spiked. “We need to go, my lady. Now!”
“There’s… ash, a huge pile of ash beneath the stones,” Lady Danika said. “And some… some… thing else.” From where he stood, he saw what looked like a narrow strip of cloth, smaller than his hand and partially buried by the rocks. Gripping it with both hands, she pulled it free. As it did, the rubble shifted. Stones and dust began to fall around them. A moment later, a loud crack resonated along the length of the ceiling, followed by a deep rumbling.
“Run!” Owen yelled, gripping Lady Danika around the waist and hauling her to her feet. As the ceiling began to fall in on them, he thrust her through the doorway and into the passageway.
“Owen!” yelled Fioni from behind.
He paused, seeing her stumbling about in the dust. He grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her about in the right direction, and shoved her after Lady Danika. “Go!” he screamed. “Get to the surface before everything collapses!”
A moment after he stumbled through the doorway, the entire chamber fell in upon itself with a thunderous roar, sending a choking cloud of dust around them, obscuring their vision. The rest of the complex seemed to be falling in upon itself, and rocks continued to fall around them. The ground shook. Choking and coughing, barely able to see, they stumbled back down the tunnel, desperate to reach the stairs and safety. The glowing marks along the walls vanished, plunging them into complete darkness. Owen reeled off a wall and stumbled, falling face first on the floor. He climbed to his feet and once again staggered forward, praying he was still going the right way. He only made it another dozen paces before he tripped again, falling and smashing his knee on the stones. He cried out in pain, his fear almost overwhelming him, when he realized he could just make out daylight through the dust above him.
He had tripped on the stairs.
His heart pounding, he began to crawl up the glasslike steps, the walls shaking and rumbling around him. Rocks hammered into his back and shoulders, and he felt fresh blood seep into his eyes. He tried to rise and fell again.
I’m going to be buried alive.
Then hands grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. Someone was half-dragging, half-carrying him up the steps. Daylight grew stronger, and then he was out of the underground, a fresh wind on his face. He fell onto his hands and knees near the portal and then saw Lady Danika and Fioni nearby, coughing but otherwise safe. Erik knelt down next to him and stared into his face. “Will you live, Northman?”
Owen wiped the blood and dust from his eyes. “Thanks… thanks to you, Erik,” he finally managed, still coughing.
Erik went to check on the women. The ground beneath them continued to shudder and roar, and dust continued to pour from the portal. Then a final ear-shattering crack reverberated around them, and all went silent. When he trusted himself to stand once more, he stumbled over to the women. Lady Danika stared at him with concern. “You’re bleeding, Owen.”
He touched the side of his head, wincing. “I think the stitches reopened. I’ll ask Kora to tie them again. Are you all right, my lady?”
“I am. Fioni got me out.”
“What was it you found beneath the stones?”
She opened her hands up. Lying across her palms was a huge black feather, but far too large for any bird he had ever seen—even a harpy didn’t have feathers that long. “What does this mean?” she asked him.
He trailed a finger over the feather. As he touched it, it began to fall apart, to disintegrate, and drift away on the wind. Whatever it was, it couldn’t survive above ground. He shook his head, sighing softly. “I don’t know, but we’re alive. Let’s be grateful for that.”
Erik came back and handed him a waterskin and a strip of cloth to hold against his head. After a few minutes, the bleeding slowed and then mostly stopped. Erik lifted the cloth and examined the
wound. “The catgut came loose in all the excitement. That’s what you get for letting Kora Far-Sails tend your wounds. She never could tie a knot worth shit,” Erik said with a wink.
Owen snorted, thinking that maybe Erik wasn’t that bad after all.
Fioni sniffed and then stared up at the sky. The fog was drifting away, revealing black clouds from horizon to horizon. “Storm’s starting,” she said. She climbed out of the hollow created by the rubble and stood atop the fallen masonry. “I think you were right about this being a fort, Owen. With the fog drifting away, you can see for leagues now.” She turned in place, slowly scanning the horizon. “Surf’s getting rough. I hope the others have tightly lashed down the tents. Otherwise, we’ll have a miserable—”
Owen stared up at her. “Miserable what?”
“Fenya’s tits,” she said softly.
Jumping to his feet, he climbed up beside her and followed her gaze out to sea. She had been correct. With the storm pushing the fog back, he could now see for leagues in all directions. And there, on the far side of the atoll, fighting its way through the turbulent waves, was Thunder Killer, sailing straight toward them.
Chapter 25
Owen
They ran, slipping and sliding back down the hill, leaving the full waterskins where they had piled them next to the creek. Fioni said Thunder Killer had been tacking against the wind, and that they’d have some minutes before it rounded the atoll, but Fen Wolf was beached, its crew helpless. Owen’s head was bleeding again by the time the four of them staggered back onto the beach. Someone must have seen them running, because Kora and a handful of the others were waiting for them, loaded crossbows at the ready. “What’s wrong?” Kora demanded.
“Thunder Killer… is... here,” gasped Fioni, gripping Kora’s shoulder for support as she tried to catch her breath. “We get underway now!”
The Vampire Queen Saga: Books 1-3: (The Vampire Queen Saga Boxset) Page 68
