Jendara glanced back over her shoulder at the Milady, sitting quietly beside the bone pier. The last of the afternoon sunlight cast a soft glow behind the ship, the colors already shifting toward the oranges and golds of sunset. Jendara could just make out Sarni and Kran, who still stood at the railing beside the gangplank. Sarni put her arm around the boy and raised her other in a silent goodbye.
“Why Sarni?” Vorrin murmured in her ear. “Kran knows Boruc better, and as annoying as Sarni is, she can be surprisingly useful.”
Jendara waved back at the pair at the railing and then led Vorrin away. The others had already entered the dark stairwell.
“Sarni’s got too strong a personal connection to the ulat-kini.” She paused to lower the flame on his lantern. “If we run into any, I want all of us at our sharpest.”
“What if they find the ship?”
“I’m keeping my fingers crossed.” Jendara urged Vorrin to go ahead of her on the stairs. “Besides, once it gets dark, the cave will blend in pretty well with the cliffs around it. I’m hoping it’s safer than wandering around the bowels of the island.”
They climbed the rest of the stairs in silence. The whistle of the wind, unpleasantly loud in the sea cave, faded as they moved upward. A mustiness replaced the smell of the sea.
The others waited for them at the top of the stairs. In this late hour, the boulevard was full of shadows. The sun still pierced the windows, but the purple skylights had gone dark, the light’s angle too low to reach them. Somewhere in the distance, an occasional water droplet plinked.
Vorrin pointed toward a street-sized tunnel leading east off the boulevard. “That’s the tunnel I checked out earlier, the one with the other staircase.”
“Let me note that on my map,” Boruc said, drawing out his notebook. His charcoal shushed across the page as they entered the new tunnel. Their lanterns were the only light in this space, and it felt much smaller than its actual size. Jendara didn’t suffer from claustrophobia, but the dank and the dark pressed in uncomfortably around her.
Even by the lights of their small lanterns, it was obvious the city’s creators had taken fewer pains decorating this corridor than the boulevard behind them: there were no signs of glitter, and only a small mural at the conjunction of the two tunnels. Most of the doors lining the hallway hung off their hinges or had been ripped away, presumably by the outrush of water during the island’s return to the surface. The empty doorways looked like hollow eye sockets in a battered skull.
“Look.” Boruc tucked his charcoal behind his ear and knelt down beside one doorway, where a pale stick had been trapped in the rubble. He gave a little grunt as he tugged it free. He studied it a second and then held it out to Jendara.
She held her lantern over it and frowned. It was no stick, but a long finger bone, much longer than a human’s, and very slender. An ornate ring had fused to the bone, salts and other mineral deposits crusting the two into one inseparable whole. The creatures who had built this city had been human enough to enjoy decorating themselves, as well as their environment.
Jendara felt herself inadvertently spinning the thick gold band of her wedding ring with the tip of her thumb. “Think it’s worth anything?”
He shrugged and stuck it in his belt pouch.
“Here’s the staircase,” Zuna said in a soft voice. She played her lamp over the mouth of the stairway, built very much in the fashion of the staircase leading to the beach. She pointed out a sconcelike structure built into the wall. The crumbling figure of some human-shaped being held the shelf of the sconce on its shoulders, and the shelf itself was carved in the shape of seven-pointed sea star. “Was there anything like this on the stairs leading into the cave?”
“I’m not sure,” Vorrin admitted. “But these steps look more worn than the ones back there. Must have gotten a lot of traffic.”
“I hope it’ll take us underneath the purple boulevard,” Tam said. “I’m ready to get our treasure and get out.” He took the lead on the stairs, Zuna falling in behind him. The staircase curved a little, obscuring their figures in only a few steps.
“Careful as you go,” Jendara called softly. “There could still be water down there.”
They went quiet, everyone moving slowly. Jendara had a hunch she wasn’t the only one thinking back to the way Boruc had slipped on the staircase leading up to the surface. If someone fell here, well—she touched the handle of her handaxe. There could be anything at the bottom of these stairs.
Then she rounded the curve and saw Zuna and Tam stepping down onto level ground.
“It’s not flooded,” Zuna announced, looking back over her shoulder at them. “But it looks like the water level’s only recently fallen.” She pointed to a damp line a few inches above the floor. Puddles still filled depressions in the floor, and the space smelled less like mildew and more like seaweed and fish slime. Dying barnacles and shellfish clung to the walls, and shriveled ribbons of weed hung from every surface like strands of dark hair.
Jendara moved to examine the nearest wall. She scraped a few of the barnacles away, revealing the stone below. The same gray as the stone making up the grotto, it looked plain and undecorated. She moved to brush away a long rope of weed.
Her hand passed right through. Jendara held up her lamp. “It looks like there’s another hallway connecting right here.” She ripped away a handful of the seaweed. “I’d say it runs roughly the same direction as the big boulevard, but it’s hard to tell.”
“Let’s take it,” Tam urged. He pushed back the weed and led them into the north-south corridor. “Looks like there’s another tunnel coming up that goes east. This place is like a maze.”
“It must have been spectacular when it was inhabited,” Glayn breathed. “Even if the city only occupied the surface and these two levels, it would have been bigger than Halgrim.”
Jendara grinned. “If they were still on our trading route, we’d be rich.” Her smile faded as she remembered the bone in Boruc’s belt pouch. Perhaps it was ill-advised to joke around when she stood in what was essentially a giant graveyard. She remembered her trip to the Forest of Souls on the Isle of Ancestors, just last autumn. Sometimes the dead remained near their remains.
She didn’t much like ghosts, even those of her ancestors. Ghosts with no relation to her had to be even less pleasant.
“Ho, ho!” Boruc clapped his hands together. “Look what we’ve got here.” He was a ways up the hallway, still in sight, but farther away than Jendara liked. The group moved to join him. He put his shoulder against a partially opened door in the wall and shoved.
“We’re trying to hurry,” she reminded him.
“Just a quick look. You see this image here?” He pointed to a blob of stonework that, while not covered in shellfish, was entirely meaningless to Jendara. “It’s a chisel and hammer—this must have been a mason’s workshop.”
He set his shoulder to the door again, and with the crunch of shattering barnacles, the door ground open. Boruc stuck his head inside and immediately began pointing out delights like a kid at his first knife shop.
Glayn hurried behind him. “That’s lovely.”
Jendara stood in the doorway, her lips tight. Lantern light flickered gold across the slab of marble lying in the center of the room. Glayn circled the thing, brushing his fingers over the rounded shape—a whale, still just emerging from the pale stone. It was far from complete, but the smooth head and solemn eyes were remarkably true to life.
Boruc appeared from the back of the room, which was apparently built in an L-shape. “It’s a real mess back here, but I found some nice pieces.” He held up what appeared to be a jade figurine of a squid. “It’s not even missing any of the tentacles.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Jendara said. “We’ve got a load of treasure to haul, remember?”
Vorrin took the jade squid from Boruc. “This is good stuff, Dara. We should bring it, too.”
“There are some fallen shelves over there that might have something good mixed in with the debris,” Boruc said. “Give me a hand.”
He and Vorrin went into the back of the room where it rounded a corner. Jendara scowled.
“Hey, captain’s orders,” Tam said with a shrug. “Why don’t Glayn and I check the room next door? If there’s one artist’s workshop down here, there might be more.”
“I’ll go with Tam and Glayn,” Zuna said, and then the trio headed out into the hall.
“You’ve got five minutes!” Jendara snapped at them. Then she followed after Boruc and Vorrin.
This leg of the room was longer and narrower, some kind of storage space, perhaps. Jendara’s boots splashed as she picked her way through the debris. The water hadn’t finished draining out of this enclosed space, and there were three or four inches of standing water. Boruc and Vorrin’s splashing echoed in the little storage area.
She wriggled her toes and was glad she’d treated her boots with mink oil. “You’d better have found something really valuable,” she growled.
“Oh, this is remarkable,” Boruc murmured. He was only a few feet ahead of her, but she couldn’t see anything beyond his broad shape. She raised her lantern and craned her neck.
“Where did they find such fine alabaster?” he cooed.
Jendara shook her head. She couldn’t see anything, but the room smelled strange, sweet and musky somehow. Her eyes and nose itched.
“Nothing here,” she heard Zuna call on the other side of the stone wall. It couldn’t be very thick—Zuna sounded like she was practically in Jendara’s ear.
Then Boruc shrieked. His lantern flew from his hand as something yanked him forward into the darkness.
“Boruc!” Jendara leaped forward and felt a strand of something slimy slap against her hand. She whipped her hand away.
Boruc’s lantern rolled in a half-circle on a shelf just above the water, and came to a stop at the base of some kind of quivering, rustling mound of greenery. A tendril shot out at Jendara and just missed her.
“Jendara!” Vorrin shouted somewhere in the darkness.
The wall beside Jendara seemed to wriggle. The musky smell grew stronger and her head spun. “Vorrin?” She squinted into the darkness beyond the mass of rippling seaweed. “Get out of there. Run!”
“Help … me,” Boruc gasped, his face appearing between the fronds of the slimy green creature.
She lunged to grab him but the creature wriggled aside, taking Boruc with it. Jendara skidded on the slimy floor, smashing against the wall. Her lantern crunched. Debris rained down around her. She covered her head with her arms and stumbled out of the rain of rock.
“Jendara!” Zuna shouted, and helped her to her feet. The wall between the rooms must have been thin and half-eroded for it to break so easily.
“Help Boruc!” Jendara shouted, pawing grit from her eyes. “Something grabbed him!”
Vorrin suddenly ran past Jendara, his eyes wide. A trickle of smoke followed him.
“Vorrin!” she shouted. But he ran past her as if deaf. She leaped to her feet. “Come back!”
He was already out in the hallway and Jendara charged after him, shouting for him. But Vorrin kept running deeper into the darkness. Jendara’s wet boots skidded on the slick bodies of dying mollusks. She couldn’t see a thing.
“Vorrin!” she shouted, but now she couldn’t even hear his footfalls. She was alone in the dark, and she couldn’t find the walls. Panic gripped her. Jendara forced herself to stop and think.
She shook her head, clearing it a little. At least that smell was gone. Her head felt strange from the stink of it. Even this seaweed-and-decaying-fish smell was better than that perfumed stench.
“Jendara!”
That sounded like Boruc’s voice. “I’m coming!” she called back. Boruc. By the gods, she was glad he was all right. The others must have freed him from that seaweed creature’s grasp.
The glow of a lantern appeared and she hurried toward it. “Boruc, are you all right?”
He coughed hard, waving a hand. Now that she was closer, she could see the purple welts around his neck and along his cheek. That seaweed creature had nearly strangled him. “Your lantern. When it broke, the thing caught fire and let me go.”
“But why did Vorrin run away?”
A pair of lanterns appeared. “Dara?” Tam called. “You see Glayn anywhere?”
He and Zuna stopped beside Boruc. Smoke and dirt smeared both their faces.
“Something green came out of the wall just before you did, and Glayn ran after it,” Zuna explained. “He looked strange, like he was under a spell or something.”
“And Vorrin—it was like he couldn’t hear me.” Jendara looked around the group. “Do you think that thing lured them both away?”
“I’ve heard stories of this happening,” Tam said slowly. “Things out at sea luring crews to their death with songs, or some kind of perfume.”
“The smell!” Jendara jabbed her finger at Boruc’s chest. “Did you smell something back there?”
“Yes … I think.”
Jendara shook her head. “We’ve got to find them. Even if that plant thing doesn’t strangle them, they could still get hurt in this place.” She turned to face the darkness beyond. “I think Vorrin went this way. Come on.”
* * *
They went in silence. Jendara took Boruc’s lamp and led them down the corridor, cursing herself every step. She had been so sure that the island would be empty, its previous inhabitants sluiced out to sea or turning to jerky in the dry air. These underground tunnels with their pockets of trapped water defied all her expectations of an island topped by a city of gold. She should have scouted it out better before she’d ever allowed her husband or her crew to explore the place.
Her thumb worried at the thick band of her wedding ring. Vorrin was gone, and it was her fault. If she’d followed her father’s rules, he’d still be here, but instead she’d let overconfidence and impatience get the better of her. She’d always been hotheaded. It was her worst trait.
They peered into every room they passed, but as they walked, the hallway took a slight corner and became even narrower, the doorways fewer and farther between. Most were closed, so overgrown it was nearly impossible to see them, let alone open them. The gloom and stench of dying shellfish was oppressive.
At least Sarni and Kran were back on the Milady, Jendara reminded herself. She didn’t have to worry about them.
“Hold up.” Tam caught her by the elbow and pointed up ahead. “There’s something shiny over there.” The usually cheerful man’s voice was tense.
Jendara moved closer. “It’s a lantern.” She picked it up and quickly lit it. “One of them must have dropped theirs.” She passed the spare back to Zuna.
“Oh no,” Zuna said, raising the lantern higher. “That looks bad.”
Just a few yards ahead, a neat square of darkness nearly filled the floor of the tunnel. A flagstone remained on either side of the pit, offering something like a safe path. It was as if the flagstones in the tunnel’s center had simply been removed.
A faint cry sounded from far below.
Jendara rushed forward, dropping onto her belly beside the pit. “Vorrin?”
She could feel cold strands of seaweed beneath her, and bits of the stuff dangled over the edge of the pit. Her arm hairs rose up in prickles. The smooth edges of the hole; the camouflaging weed. This wasn’t the work of time and water; someone had built this.
The voice and a flurry of splashing echoed in the darkness. Tam dropped to his hands and knees beside her. “Is it them?”
“I can’t tell.” She held out her lantern. Far below, the gold moon of its reflection played over a rippling pool.
“Dara!” Glayn’s voice sounded very faint.
“Let’s lower a torch,” Zuna suggested. “Get a better look down there.” She was already digging in her pack for supplies.
It was a good idea. Jendara smiled at the navigator. Maybe she had the stuff of an adventurer in her after all.
Jendara moved as close to the edge as she dared. “Are you all right? Is Vorrin down there?”
“We’re fine. We found a rock to climb up on.”
Jendara let out a breath. This far north, the water’s chill could kill, even in summer.
“There.” Zuna tied the last scrap of fabric around a bundle of candles and secured it to the line of rope she’d stashed in her pack. Then she tossed the makeshift torch over the side of the pit. It swung in a huge arc, its flickering flames lighting damp stone walls and, far below, a broad expanse of water. She lowered it slowly.
Jendara’s stomach gave a lurch. She had no idea how Vorrin or Glayn had survived that fall. The water below had to be nearly forty feet down. She didn’t like Vorrin’s silence, either.
“Is Vorrin okay?”
Glayn didn’t answer right away.
“Is Vorrin okay?”
“He’s knocked out,” Glayn admitted. “I can’t tell how bad it is.”
Jendara sat back on her heels, heart pounding, mind racing. “We’ve got to get them out of there.”
Boruc knelt down beside her. “We don’t have enough rope.” He kept his voice low. “We’ll need to make some kind of harness for Vorrin—he won’t be able to climb.”
“He’s right,” Zuna whispered. “We’re going to have to go back for supplies.”
Jendara stared at them for a long second. “All right. You go ahead, I’ll stay here with them.”
Glayn heard that. “No!”
“Hey, we’re the rescue team,” she called. “You don’t get a say.”
“No,” he shouted again. “There are things up there. You can’t split up. We’ll be fine. You just hurry!”
“Things? What kind of things?” she asked, but no one answered. No one could.
Jendara scrubbed her palms over her face. The burst of energy she’d felt just moments ago was fading. The thought of leaving Vorrin and Glayn alone down there made her sick, but Glayn had a point. She had to protect her team if she was going to get Vorrin and Glayn out alive.
“We’ll be back soon,” she called. “We’ll leave the torch, okay?”
“Okay,” Glayn said. “Tam?”
“I’m here.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. Now shut up and stay alive so I can rescue you.”
Jendara picked up her lantern, biting her lip. Vorrin would be fine. It would only take a few minutes to get to the ship and back now that they knew the way.
Vorrin would be fine.