Page 53 of Tomb of Ancients
Dalton flared gold behind him, wielding a staff with blades flashing on both ends. He blazed like fire, and through the flames I could see the shepherd advancing toward us, the kindness of his face wiped clean by rage. As Khent turned away from me I saw the first ripples of tension beneath his arms, a spray of gray fur clustering at his nape as he took his power from the moon and came to our defense. Malatriss was almost at the door. It was time to go, time to carry the weight of the book down the ramp and into the tomb beyond.
Even with Mother there, my skin prickled with cold. We were entering a tomb, after all, and a whispering voice of dread reminded me that only the dead belonged in such places. Willing hearts. Wise hearts.Immortalhearts.
God help me, I did not feel so immortal anymore.
Amazed, relieved, I stepped through the door and into my dream. No, not a dream this time, but the place itself. Another realm. I had seen the realm of one Binder, but this was somethingelse completely, not just a void of nothingness and impenetrable shadows. An incredible vision, so otherworldly that no simple mortal could be meant to see it, and I stopped short, gazing up at the endless glass hall of stars and night, standing in a tunnel with no walls but infinite constellations rotating slowly around it. Yet I was there. Not a simple mortal, perhaps, but a reluctant god bearer that still felt like a serving maid.
“I’ve... I’ve been here before,” I whispered.
Malatriss continued through the corridor at her unwaveringly languid pace. “Many dream of the Hall of Gods and Glass. Few ever see it with true eyes.”
“How many have come before?” I murmured. We at last seemed to have found something that amazed Mother. She, too, cast her eyes in every direction, reaching out for a walled boundary that was not there. Yet her fingers touched something solid, even if it could not be seen.
“Akantha the Seeking, Romulus the Founder, Miigwan, Hereward, Valens, Nochtli the Thorned, Ying Yue, Owain...” Malatriss had tucked her second and third pair of arms back behind her shoulders again and gestured to us with her right hand. The snake around her neck appeared to be sleeping. “Now your names will be added to that list.”
“And how many of them escaped the tomb alive?” I asked. The corridor was endless, but Malatriss led us forward, more constellations sparking to life above and below.
“Oh,” she replied lightly. “None.”
We followed Malatriss five paces behind, and already I felt weary from carrying the white book. It was heavier than I could have imagined, and my back ached. Mother glided along beside me, her veil long since removed, and she touched my shoulder.
“Shall I carry it?” she asked.
“No, I think I should be the one to do it. This is my wretched mess,” I said. “Do you think this is what Mr. Morningside wanted? To trap us in here forever?”
She considered that with pursed lips, then glanced ahead to Malatriss.
“It certainly would make life easier for him, wouldn’t it? If we destroy the book, then that’s the shepherd sorted, and if we never leave this place then he has all of England to himself.” I thought of the instructions, the wordscorpionstanding out in my mind as if it had been written in fire. “He gave me the wrong answer to one of the riddles, Mother. I don’t think he really knew what he was sending us into. He must have suspected this might be where we meet our end.”
My heart sank. I had never really trusted him, but I had hoped at least that my terms were fair enough to tempt him into decency. But even that was beyond him. I had helped him against the shepherd, against Father, and for what? Now he had trapped us in the Tomb of Ancients, a place nobody had survived. Could he have known that, too?
“We have to get out of here,” I murmured. “If only to throw it in his horrid face.”
“The Dark One has shown kindness to you before, yes? Perhaps there is more here that we cannot see.”
Her optimism deepened my despair. Mother was ancient and wise, but I had known Mr. Morningside long enough to understand that his motives were always selfish. He had led Dalton and Mrs. Haylam to the tomb’s entrance once, content enough to put them in the worst kind of danger for his own plot. If that was how he treated friends, what would he be willing to do to me?
The hall stretched on and on, but I could not concentrate on its beauty. Panic rose in my chest. I looked behind us, but there was no door. Courage. There were trials to come, and the promise of death to face, but I needed to find a way to take that knotted ball of panic and transform it into determination. I was a Changeling, after all, such a feat ought to be possible. Above all, I wanted to see Mary, Khent, Chijioke, Lee, and Poppy again. And I wanted answers, real ones, from Mr. Morningside. I would get the answers I sought, no matter what I needed to endure.
How very like Mr. Morningside himself.
I noted a gradual slope to the floor now, a descent that grew steeper as we went. The Hall of Gods and Glass was conspicuously absent of scent. Not even dust touched this place.
“Where are we?” I asked Malatriss as we went. “Certainly not Yorkshire.”
I heard the amusement in her voice as we went deeper anddeeper into the tomb. “We are nowhere, suspended in time. There is no description I could offer that would tell youwherewe are. We simply are here.”
“But it is possible to return?” I pressed. “If we pass your tests, I mean.”
“It is possible. Difficult. But possible.”
The corridor turned and twisted, still leading us down. Above, below, and all around us, the constellations began to fade, the tunnel becoming solid black and then, brick by brick, embossed yellow brick. A carpet spread out under our feet, narrow and blue, running along a floor of that same embellished brickwork. This placedidsmell. I knew the odor well and drank deep of it, the comforting scent of parchment, old ink, and leather reminding me at once of Cadwallader’s. Books. Of course. We had entered a library of sorts, though it had no end. Instead of books in shelves lining the walls, there stood innumerable cases made of glass.
I slowed and veered to the right, approaching one of the cases. No, not a case, a sarcophagus. A body was suspended within, eyes closed, floating, seemingly asleep. It was a beautiful dark-skinned woman with long hair and feathery wings for arms. The next case held a man so wide and muscular he seemed almost to burst from the sparkling glass confines.
My hand smoothed across the glass, but the figure within did not wake.
“What are they?” I breathed. Mother stared at my hand andthen at the man entombed beyond it, her eight eyes filling with tears.
