PART V The Catacombs

The cliffs above Llwddawanden were honeycombed with caves, and, with the limited land available for crops and grazing, it made sense to use these catacombs for interments. The lower and more accessible crevices—some of them no more than knee-high and just deep enough to accommodate an average-size body—served as graves for the departed villagers, while the elite dead were entombed in the spacious priestly burial chambers lying at the far end of an extensive labyrinth of tunnels and caverns that began at a deceptively narrow opening halfway up the western ridge.

As Herrwn led the line of priests up the steep and winding path to the ledge that formed the front stoop to the cavern’s entrance, his sense of detachment diminished, and it left him entirely as he ducked his head and stepped into the cool, enveloping darkness. Without thinking about it, he joined hands with Olyrrwd on one side of him and Ossiam on the other, as he would have if this were the annual fall equinox ritual and they were about to begin chanting and dancing their way through the labyrinth of tunnels that led to The Hall of Distant Voices, where that highest of autumn rituals was conducted.

The Hall, as it was called for short, was a vast, domed cavern where the rustle of drafts overhead and the murmuring of unseen streams joined in a whispered conversation carried on in the ancient language of the earth itself. It was located just before the tunnel leading to the burial chamber for the highest of their priests and priestesses. As with birth, attendance to final rites of death was held to be a matter reserved for women, and even the highest ranked of the priesthood were expected to wait in The Hall while those rituals, secret even from them, were carried out. Chafing at this exclusion was one of the few things that Olyrrwd and Ossiam had in common, but Herrwn had always been glad to leave the death rites to the priestesses and simply experience The Hall’s vastness, listening to the sounds around him.