Page 203 of Empire of Shadows

“I’m going to break down the wall,” he declared.

Ellie jolted with a quick panic.

“You can’t do that!” she protested.

“Why not?”

“This is a priceless piece of Mesoamerican history!”

“It’s trying to kill us, Princess!” he shouted back.

“You might smash up whatever controls our way out of here,” she retorted as she jabbed her finger at him.

Adam muttered a colorful string of curses and gave the wall a kick.

Ellie stared up at the bulging eyes of the suicide goddess. The figure was depicted with uncomfortable realism, right down to the divots in her flesh where the noose tightened around her neck.

There was something odd about the base of the statue’s throat.

She needed to get a closer look at it.

The scholar in her rebelled against the obvious solution. These statues could be thousands of years old. They might be incredibly fragile, with their painted surfaces vulnerable to chipping or marring…

Ellie swayed a bit as the blue face of the goddess doubled. Sweat streamed down her back.

They were going to die down here.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie gasped as she grabbed onto the hanged woman’s knee. “I’m so dreadfully sorry.”

She hauled herself up. Her boots slipped unsteadily on the slick surface of the wood. It had been treated with some sort of oil—likely a natural preservative to prevent insect damage and oxidation, she thought with a distant spark of scholarly interest.

Her toe skidded. Ellie latched onto the statue’s enormous arms to keep herself in place.

She pushed herself up, using a wooden arm for leverage, until she was eye-level with the goddess’s throat.

The dark spot she had seen from the ground was a hole.

Ellie scrambled her way higher, bracing an arm around the hanged woman’s unsettlingly realistic throat, and peered around the statue’s head.

A slender wooden tube protruded from the back of its throat.

No, Ellie realized. It wasn’t wood. The tube was a carefully shaped piece of hollow bone.

“Oh blast,” Ellie blurted as her inspiration crystallized into an idea.

She wondered what sort of bone it was. Probably not human, she thought with uncomfortable relief. Human bones weren’t naturally hollow…

…unless someone had hollowed one out.

Below her, Adam kicked at the throne of a giant bug god.

“I don’t see a way out of this,” he called. His voice was tight with frustration.

Ellie took a breath to steel herself, set her lips to the bone, and blew.

A clear, delicate note floated through the enclosed space of the chamber.

Adam gaped up at her.

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