Page 223 of Empire of Shadows

“We should follow the wall,” he said. Ellie could feel the vibration of his voice through his skin. “We’ll take it slowly.”

“Yes,” Ellie agreed distantly.

She pushed herself back and straightened.

Adam led them awkwardly across the shifting, treacherous ground until his hand brushed stone. They followed the curve of the cavern through the darkness, shuffling their way carefully through the lesser tumble of the outer edge of the bone pile.

“We’re here,” he announced.

He lit another match. Ellie gazed up at a long, sloping tunnel, the floor of which had been neatly cut into stairs.

“Looks like we’re getting close to something,” Adam concluded.

Leaving the mountain of the dead behind her, Ellie tiredly climbed.

?

Sound began to whisper down at her from the darkness ahead. At first, Ellie took it for the murmur of more water, but after a few steps, it resolved itself into the distant echo of voices.

She gave Adam’s arm a warning squeeze.

“I heard it,” he murmured back to her.

There was a soft scrape as he took his machete from the sheath.

The voices rose as they continued upward… and then Ellie realized that she could see.

There was just enough light for her to pick out the general line of Adam’s shoulders, but the soft glow grew as they moved until more distinct gleams of it painted the walls of their tunnel.

Adam slowed. Glancing back at her, he put a finger to his lips. Ellie gave a silent nod in acknowledgment.

The tones grew more distinct. Words took shape—and Ellie heard a voice that she recognized.

“…size it properly. And don’t touch anything!”

It was Dawson.

The sound made her skin crawl. It also banished the lingering tendrils of grief and horror from the pit of bones below, burning them up in a quick wave of outrage.

One thing was certain—whatever lay above them, Dawson wouldn’t be there alone.

Adam kept the machete in his hand as they reached the top of the stairs and edged into a dim, narrow room.

The chamber had been deliberately carved from the cave into a regular shape. Its walls were covered in art.

The painted murals depicted images of richness and beauty. A king emerged from the earth, surrounded by well-wishers who anointed his body with oils and painted it with flashes of bright color. A jaguar skin was set over his shoulders, while his long black hair was elaborately braided and dressed.

She and Adam must have stumbled into some sort of antechamber where those who had just undertaken the journey of initiation through the caves were made ready for what came next.

Ellie’s eyes halted on an image that showed the king standing in a shallow basin as he was ritually washed by his servants. In the painting, blue water spilled over him from an opening in the wall.

Her gaze shifted up to where a truncated copper tube emerged from the stone just above her head.

Another piece of metal protruded from the base of it, looking remarkably like a handle.

Adam had moved to the farther end of the room, where he pressed himself to the wall as he carefully peered out.

Ellie’s hand itched.

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