Page 104 of Elven Throne

The strident, piercing echo of his voice rolling around the hall and bouncing off the walls almost made Rebecca grimace. This didnotfeel like the kind of place where flippant comments were so easily overlooked.

The woman at the far end of the hall, however, still hadn’t moved beyond her slow rocking in the chair and the occasional poke at the hearth beside her with a stick.

But as her small group approached, Rebecca had enough time to take in more of their surroundings.

There was nothing here. Just the long stretch of cold stone hallway stretching ahead of them and the twin streaks of magical fire burning across the stone walls on either side. Whether the darkness was simply too thick or the ceiling was abnormally high, she couldn’t see any part of it.

No other furnishings. No scraps of fabric or bits of broken things lost and forgotten. No personal items. No food.

No proof at all that anyone had spent any significant amount of time down here, in this place.

And yet, the old woman at the end of the hall looked particularly settled beside her built-in underground hearth.

As far as Rebecca could see, no other door revealed itself along either wall or at the far end of the hall behind the old woman in her chair. There was only one way into or out of this room, and they’d all just walked through it.

Putting the only door at her back, so far behind her if they needed to make a hasty retreat, did not make her feel any better about this place.

And she was certain the only door out of the antechamber behind them was up the stairs and out the side of a giant metal dragon statue off I-70.

A surge of cautious alarm and prickling discomfort from Maxwell told her he’d just reviewed all their disastrously limited options as well.

For however long they were down here, they werestuckdown here. And if the old woman in the chair or any other entity in this hall wanted tokeepthem here, it would be only too easy.

As the foursome continued down the hall that seemed to stretch even longer in front of them than it had first seemed, Rebecca noticed the streams of flame along both walls brightening with them as they moved. She glanced over her shoulder once and could have sworn the flames behind them were dimmer, somehow. Duller.

As if these twin streams kept lit across the stone by magic—and what else?—were there to illuminate the long, harrowing walk for their visitors, bit by bit, with every step.

Or to keep them blinded to whatever else might have loomed around them in the comparative darkness.

When they finally neared the end of the hall and the old woman’s cozy setup, Rowan walked a bit farther than everyone else but still stopped at a respectful distance from the Peddler.

That had to be who this old woman was, despite her surroundings strikingly empty but for her rocking chair, her own private fireplace off to the side, and a small, square table sitting low to the ground in front of her.

On the other side of that table, directly in front of Rowan, rested a single wooden chair also facing the table, its frame crooked and skewed by age or neglect or the combined weight of every traveler who’d sat there to do business with the Peddler beneath the dragon.

The setup was surprisingly casual and unassuming, as if this woman hosted one-on-ones with visiting inquirers all day long.

Whatever she used to sustain herself down here, though, it wasn’t food. Not in the normal sense. Nothing but the scent of dust and age and emptiness filled the air.

Rebecca’s curiosity had brought that odd new mystery to her attention, but she had no desire to find out what that darker sustenance was or where it came from.

Or if it had any connection to the decomposed corpses in the antechamber.

With Maxwell at her side and Maleine only a few feet in front of them now that she’d stepped up alongside Rowan, Rebecca waited as silently as the others, eyeing the back of Rowan’s head, then the old woman’s shadowed face beneath all the rags as she stooped over her lap and rocked.

The woman’s gnarled fingers moved in one smooth, endless rhythm over something in her lap that could have been…knitting?

When she finally looked up from her project, Rebecca’s gaze was forced toward her face, as if the power in this hall had seized her eyes and wrenched them upward.

The Peddler fixed them all with a warm, gentle smile that certainly looked friendly.

It didn’tfeelfriendly at all.

Given her stooped posture and her current living conditions, the woman seemed relatively young at first glance. No older than seventy, at least on the outside. Her cheeks maintained a healthy glow, though that could have been from the fire beside her. Bright white hair pulled away from her face on top while thick curls tumbled around her shoulders.

Most striking of all were her eyes—open, lively, but colored with the milky white film of blindness.

She rocked back and forth, back and forth, fingers working nimbly on the knitting in her lap—or whatever it was.

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