Page 200 of Empire of Shadows

A smile spread irresistibly across her face as she gazed up at him. The warm glow of it pushed away the pervasive chill of the cave.

“I have become inordinately fond of you, you know,” Ellie abruptly admitted.

“Well, then, we’re gonna have to do our damnedest not to die,” Adam replied as he gazed down at her warmly—verywarmly.

“While we navigate our way through a deadly cave and prevent an army of thugs from looting an immensely powerful magical artifact,” Ellie replied.

“Piece of cake,” he declared. He made a gentlemanly gesture with his arm. “Shall we?”

“Why not?” Ellie returned, and allowed him to lead her into the unknown.

?

Thirty-Eight

The tunnel narrowedas Ellie and Adam moved on. The ceiling dropped until Adam had to duck to pass under some of the lower curves. Around another turn, the flickering glow of their torch revealed the dark mouth of a perfectly squared opening.

The natural shape of the cave had been carved to form a deliberate doorway. Its three sides were lined with painted rows of Tulan’s language.

Ellie took a few steps closer. She reached out but stopped her hand just short of touching the characters. The colors still looked fresh, likely because they hadn’t been affected by weather and time like the art above ground.

“I am starting to suspect that this cave has been deliberately modified for ritual purposes,” she said carefully as she studied the painted words. “For an initiation, perhaps—some trial for new kings or religious elites. Tulan was also called the City of Seven Caves, but not just any caves. Xibalba—the underworld home of the gods of death.That’swhat is supposed to lie beneath Tulan.”

“So you’re saying we’re in Hell,” Adam filled in as he gave her a flat look.

“Er… a ritual approximation of Hell,” Ellie corrected him uncomfortably.

“Great,” Adam muttered as he took the torch back from her. “Let’s go see what Hell looks like.”

He ducked through the doorway. Ellie followed in his wake.

A short length of tunnel opened into a chamber full of monsters.

Gruesome, distorted shapes loomed over the moderate space of the cavern. Though they were merely wooden statues, their expressions seemed to grimace with lifelike horror in the flickering light of the torch.

The figures were perhaps twelve feet tall, and were arranged in a rough circle on thrones built of quarried stone that pressed up against the walls of the cave. Any irregular expanses of the cavern’s natural shape had been blocked up with mortared rubble. The changes made the space claustrophobic.

The carved shapes were detailed and vividly painted. The gleaming, faceted eyes of an insect and the jaws of a crocodile gaped at Ellie from the dancing shadows.

“Any idea what this is about?” Adam asked carefully. He stepped into the center of the chamber to give the figures a better look.

“I believe they are the Lords of Death,” Ellie replied uneasily as she looked up into the bulging eyes of a goddess with a blue face. A noose hung tightly around her neck.

“Sure,” Adam muttered unhappily. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

He explored the cavern with the torch as Ellie circled the ring of gods.

Bloodstained, canine teeth grimaced at her. Beside them glared the avian eyes of a vulture.

A woman with a skull for a face gazed down from her throne, draped in beautiful finery. Ellie paused in front of her.

“There are twelve figures,” she pointed out. “That fits with the accounts from the Popol Vuh.”

Adam finished circling the chamber. “I don’t see another way out,” he concluded.

“There must be!” Ellie replied, startled out of her study. “How else could they have brought all this down here?”

“It’s possible there was another branch tunnel we missed when we were moving through the dark.”

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