The tunnel was so broad, four could ride abreast without crowding the horses. At intervals, other passageways intersected. Then Camhóinhann, who was leading the way, would raise his torch high and examine the walls. Each time he seemed to find markings no one else could see and chose his direction accordingly.
The granite of the tunnels had been chiseled and smoothed until floors, walls, and ceilings were like dressed stone without any joins. Sometimes there were archways sealed by stone blocks, which Winloki took to be the tombs. But these were so very plain, without inscriptions or other carvings, that she had difficulty reconciling them with the diamond doors. Where she had expected mansions and palaces of the dead, she found only these dank and humble dwellings.
Though most of the passages were level, occasionally they followed one that ascended or descended, and every time Camhóinhann took them deeper Winloki’s heart misgave her. Ever since the doors had closed behind her, she had remained silent, building a wall of resentment around her to keep the others out. But at last, the question that was pressing most heavily on her mind demanded an answer. “How long will we be here?”
“When we came here before we spent an entire fortnight exploring these tunnels,” said Morquant. “But if memory serves me, it will be a journey of four or five days to the Doors of Corundum on the far side of the mountain.”
Then Winloki wished she had not asked. The very idea of four or five days moving through this dead weight of air was simply intolerable. Sometimes she thought she caught a whiff of corruption coming from the vaults. Even the stillness was unnerving: a silence as vast as the mountain itself, it made nothing of their little disturbance clattering through on horseback.
Sometimes the ceiling soared high overhead; sometimes the passage dipped so low, the torches left trails of smoke on the roof. Once they entered what must have been a natural cavern, where a river flowed through in a deep channel spanned by a narrow bridge.
“Do not touch the water,” said Camhóinhann. “There are many things here that have strange properties; the water may be one of them.”
At last they came into a series of passages where stonecutters had lavished their art in friezes of intricate pattern: pictures of gardens and flowering vines chiseled in high relief, so real she was half convinced she could breathe the heady scent of the flowers. Veins of silver and gold ore ran through the floor. These, then, were the mansions of the dead that Winloki had been expecting all along. Yet there was a subtle wrongness, as of something hidden: faces in the foliage she could not quite see, figures of men and women whose proportions hovered on the edges of deformity.
An archway rich with carvings led into a chamber filled with stone tables laid out in exact rows. “Effigies,” said Efflam in a low voice, for on every table rested a marble image, lying with arms crossed and eyes closed, dreaming the centuries away in imperishable serenity.
“No,” said Rivanon, “not effigies, not statues. These are the dead themselves. By some ancient process of alchemy unknown today they were able to transmute the matter of living things into stone.”
And when Winloki leaned down to take a closer look, she saw that it was so. No statues had ever been so perfectly modeled, complete down to the tiny lines on an upturned palm, the eyelashes resting on an alabaster cheek, or the intricate embroidery on the edge of a sleeve. Yet all was of the same milky whiteness: hair, skin, gowns, sandals. Nausea clawed at her stomach.
“Only royal burials were preserved in this way,” Morquant explained in a dry whisper. “This is the first room of the queens. In chambers to either side lie the lesser wives and concubines. The kings rest farther in.”
From that hall they passed through many like it, where they saw hundreds more of the petrified bodies. In the women Winloki saw a cold perfection of feature she had never encountered in the flesh; the men, too, looked noble and splendid. Yet for all their beauty her revulsion grew. There was a subversion here of the natural order of things; and in the delicate veining of marble faces and marble limbs, she discovered a horror like leprosy. By comparison, the three priests seemed vivid with life: the bleached skin and colorless hair of the Furiádhin revealed a warmer tint, like ivory beside snow, or linen next to salt. Winloki was glad when they passed beyond the last burial chambers, even though it meant a return to the stifling passageways.
After a wearisome journey of unknown duration, Camhóinhann ordered a halt to set up camp in one of the tunnels. And there everyone settled down, on bedrolls and folded cloaks, to sleep for what she could only assume was the night, all hours being the same under the mountain.
The next interval began with a meal of dried meat and dried fruit, with water passed around in a leather bottle, before they all mounted up for another torchlit journey.
To Winloki’s relief, it seemed they had seen the last of the stone figures. But in a corridor lined with the unmarked tombs, they began encountering vaults that had been disturbed, the blocks that had sealed them violently cast down—as if some tremendous force on the inside had hurled them outward. At the first, second, and third, Camhóinhann hesitated a moment before riding on. Not a word did he speak, but each time he pushed the pace a little harder, so that a grim sense of urgency began to infect everyone who followed after him.
And all that day, if day it was, Winloki experienced a growing claustrophobia. Walled about with earth, above, below, on every side, she felt her craving for sunlight and pure air grow more and more insistent. It was then that she felt the true horror of deep places, became giddy when she thought of the vast number of underground passages spreading out still ahead of her, of the remaining hours and days of this dark journey.
Most of all, the incalculable weight of the mountain, the tremendous mass of it, preyed on her mind. She felt crushed and suffocated, wondering how it was that the roof of the passage did not come crashing down under so much weight, so much pressure. And if, by any mischance, she were to be separated from the others, unable to find her way out…
These dreadful thoughts so occupied her that she had no warning of anything amiss until she happened to hear Adfhail, the youngest acolyte, speaking with the guard Kerion. They were leading the horses down a descending corridor more precipitous than any they had encountered so far, and because they were a little ahead of her she caught only fragments of the conversation.
“—a shuffling sound and a dull rattle. I did hear it. And there was something I could smell, colder and staler than the air, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand—”
“Your imagination—it must have been. Nothing could live inside these tunnels. And do you think those things we saw could rise up and walk in their marble?”
There was so long a pause, Winloki wondered if she had imagined the whole exchange. Then Adfhail spoke again. “Look to the Furiádhin. Dyonas is uneasy, and that is unlike him. Mark my words: he and Camhóinhann have seen things here they never expected.”
Winloki felt a noose of fear around her heart, drawing tighter and tighter. Was that the sound he spoke of now? But no, it was only the rattle of a harness, the clink of spurs on the cavern floor. She had been holding her breath, but now she relaxed and let it out.
Then there came a sound impossible to ignore or dismiss: a deep groaning under the earth, followed by a sound like rock shattering, and a repetitive clatter in the passages behind them. As one man, the entire company came to a halt.
“Look to the Princess,” said Camhóinhann sharply from somewhere up ahead. Swords came hissing out of their scabbards as the guards drew their weapons and moved into a tight, protective circle around Winloki.
At another order from the High Priest, everyone began to move, this time at a much swifter pace than before. At first it seemed that they would easily outdistance whatever it was that followed them, particularly when they reached a place where the passage leveled out, enabling them to mount up and ride again. But they had been riding only a short time when they were assailed by a stench so foul it wrenched at the gut and turned the knees to water.
All of the horses erupted into madness at once: squealing and bucking, bending nearly double in their efforts to savage their own riders, rising up on their hind legs and beating at the air.
Winloki was one of those thrown. Stunned by the fall, for a moment she could only lie on the cold stone wondering what had happened, why her head throbbed so, what this commotion of stamping hooves and shrilling horses swirling all around her could be. By some miracle, she was neither trampled nor crushed before she collected enough of her wits to roll over, lever herself off the floor, and scramble to her feet.
Trying to make her way out of the press she stumbled over a body—by his armor one of the guards, though his hair was matted with brains and blood, his face reduced to an unrecognizable ruin. Struggling for balance in that battering confusion, she had it, then almost lost it again, tripping over a fallen acolyte.
Those of the men still mounted fought for control of their panicking horses; those who had managed to regain their feet were engaged in a furious battle with a horde of creatures who seemed to consist mostly of bone and shriveled flesh. Armed only with broken teeth and long hooked nails, they were literally tearing their way through her guards.
It was very dark. All but a few of the torches had been extinguished and those few lay guttering on the ground. She searched for Camhóinhann or Dyonas but could not find them. She knew they had been somewhere near the head of the column when the horses went mad, but she had been so pushed and jolted and turned around ever since, she was no longer certain which way to look.
And the men around her, they were putting up a valiant fight, but even as swords swiped off bony hands, skinless arms, or heads with stringy hair and carious teeth, the separated parts went on snapping, slashing, and crawling. Bones cracked and splintered, tendons snapped, rotten flesh sloughed away, yet still the severed limbs continued to bunch and move with wormlike writhings.
An eyeless head came bouncing toward Winloki with clashing jaws. Despite her efforts at evasion, it attached itself to the hem of her gown—until one of the horses kicked it aside and sent it flying into darkness. All around her there were shrieks and groans. Two of the guards were beaten down trying to defend her. Seeing one of them move, she tried to reach him, but something or someone knocked her aside and spun her around, so that on regaining her balance she could not find him.
Someone tossed her a knife, which she snatched out of the air and used to skewer a crawling hand that was pawing at her boot. Held in place by the point of the knife, the fingers continued to squirm until the hand tore itself apart in its efforts to get loose.
Then there was a flash of crimson, a smell like lightning, and all three Furiádhin broke through the wall of bodies around her, spitting out spells, crushing severed limbs underfoot, causing the horrors to sizzle and burn.
When it was all over, those who had survived rekindled the torches and looked about them, counting up their losses.
Six men had died: two acolytes and four guards, Merrac and Lochdaen among them. In spite of everything, Winloki could not help grieving. They had been so young; they had treated her always with as much kindness as their duty allowed; she was sorry she had been angry with them. Two geldings and her beautiful cream-colored mare had been killed as well, their throats bitten or their bellies slashed. The remaining horses had retreated down the passageway, where they stood shivering and sweating.
“We dare not ride,” said Camhóinhann. “The horses are not to be trusted if the ghouls attack again. And we will leave the bodies of the men behind, for we would be foolish to encumber ourselves. Therefore, let them lie here entombed with the kings.”
No one protested; they simply gathered up weapons and gear from their fallen comrades and stripped the saddlebags from the dead horses. Yet Winloki could feel the fear radiating off every one of them as they reckoned up all the grim possibilities of their situation. They had reason to be afraid. Not only had the journey turned unexpectedly perilous, it was likely to take longer, walking, than anyone had anticipated. And every extra hour adds to our danger. We may all end up lying “entombed with the kings.”
Sometime in the hours that followed she heard two of the Furiádhin talking, their voices echoing faintly in the dark passageway.
“A mistake,” said Goezenou in that gloating voice of his. “One for which Camhóinhann is likely to pay dearly.”
“For which we are all likely to pay dearly,” Dyonas answered coldly. “Or do you really imagine you will escape your share of the blame if anything happens to the Princess?”
She heard Goezenou laugh, but this time she thought she detected a note of uncertainty. “Ironic, surely, when hers was the presence that attracted the ghouls in the first place.”
“It may be so,” said Dyonas, in the same level voice as before. “The ghouls were not here eleven years ago, or if they were they never troubled us. And that much latent power can bring about unexpected effects—especially when it is beginning to unfold.”