Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
“I don’t know if that’s better or worse,” Mereden says.
“Worse,” Lark chimes in. “Definitely worse.”
I hold the ring aloft and eye the tunnels. They look like they’re washed in blood, but there’s light, at least. “Hush,” I tell them. “It beats stumbling around in the darkness.”
“Does it?” Lark asks. “Does it really?”
I ignore her and tie the ring and its ribbon to the top of my staff and hold it aloft, letting it light up the immediate area. “Let’s keep going. Gwenna is onto something.”
Gwenna continues to shuffle ahead with slow steps, the divining rod jumping in her hands. Her eyes are still tightly closed. “I don’t want to lose the trail.” She wanders ahead, moving at a snail’s pace. “You guys are with me, right?”
“We’re right here.”
The tunnel twists and turns, then finally splits. Gwenna jerks to the right, letting the divining rod lead her, and we continue at her side, while the ruins of Old Prell spread out around us.
The rod immediately jerks in her grasp and turns once more, and Gwenna leads us down another tunnel. It abruptly opens up into a large chamber where the ceiling soars higher overhead, propped up by more of the fluting columns that the Prellians were so fond of. Ruins are collapsed along the walls, tumbling amidst the rocks, and water drips down from above. “This looks like an old temple,” Lark points out, her voice echoing. “Were we here before?”
I shake my head, because I’d remember something like this. We must be deeper into the drop than before, or we’ve gone another way.
The divining rod continues to guide us past the front of the temple, and pauses near the stairs. I swing the strange red light toward the stairs, and see what looks like a lump of fabric of some kind.
Oh no.
“Please tell me we need to go up the stairs,” Lark whispers.
“Wait here,” I tell her, and step forward, because my stomach is in knots, and I’m pretty sure that’s not a lump of fabric. Not with my luck.
“We can’t wait here,” she points out, touching my arm. “We’re roped together, remember?”
I keep forgetting. Kipp steps forward, drawing his weapon, and he seems dainty and fragile without the rounded shell of his house on his back. We creep forward as a cluster, and all the while Gwenna’s pointer continues to direct us right toward the pile of rags, which is taking on a larger, more solid shape the closer we get.
Leaning the light in as we approach, I don’t know if I’m the first one to see the guild insignia on his shoulder, but I suck in a breath, and then a moment later, the others do, too.
“That’s not good,” Gwenna says in a trembling voice. “Can I look now?”
“You might as well,” I say. “I don’t know if you’re pointing out artifacts, but you found something, all right.”
Her eyes open and she blinks rapidly, adjusting to the strange red light. “What did I find?”
“A dead guy,” Lark says. “Your second one. You sure you’re dowsing for artifacts?”
THIRTY-NINE
ASPETH
The dead man is a guild man, evident by the uniform he’s wearing that matches ours. He’s also recently dead, evident from the spreading stain of blood under his clothing. He’s face down, and no one wants to turn him over.
“I thought your aunt said no one in the guild was going to be hurt by the cave-in,” Gwenna says to Lark, panicked.
“I thought so, too!” Lark looks just as worried. “Do you think our plan got him killed?”
The thought makes me queasy. Even so, something’s not adding up. “Unless they knifed him first, he wouldn’t be bleeding like that from a cave-in. Plus there’s no fallen rocks around here.” I gesture at the dead guy. “We should turn him over and see how he died. Just in case.”
“I’m not doing it!” Lark backs away a step.
Mereden rolls her eyes. “I’m the healer. I’ll do it. Maybe he needs healing. Or something.” She rolls her shoulders and then takes a deep breath.
Then she moves forward and squats next to the dead man, the reddish light casting lurid shadows over everything.
“He’s not breathing.” She looks up. “I’m going to turn him over. If you’re squeamish, look away.”
To our credit, no one looks away. Mereden grabs him by the shoulder and hefts his weight over to the side, rolling him onto his back.
I suck in a breath as his face is revealed. Not because I know him, but because it looks like he’s been chewed on. His nose is almost gone, and the rest of him looks equally unpleasant. His uniform is torn and there’s blood on everything.
Mereden sits back on her heels, eyeing the dead man. “This wasn’t a cave-in.”
“Not unless the rocks got hungry,” Lark agrees. Kipp just shakes his head sadly.
“Ratlings, then,” I tell them. They’re the reason everyone carries weapons when excavating, but somehow it’s never occurred to me until now that we might run into them. Everything has been so quiet in the tunnels themselves, and we haven’t seen anything larger than a spider.