Morgaine gave me a mirthless smile. “We head into the dark.”
I wiped my fingers, took a swig of water, and stood. “Okay then, we don’t really have a lot of time to waste. Let’s get moving.”
And with that, we fell into our battle order and headed into the narrow passage in the newly revealed rock wall.
* * *
Unlike the outer passage, this one led down into the depths of the mountain. It was narrow and low, which didn’t lend well to my dislike of small enclosed spaces. Maybe we’d fought one too many battles in the dark, or maybe I just didn’t like feeling hemmed in—either way, the descent into the tunnel was anything but fun. At least the walls were lit with the same sort of jutting crystals that had lined the walls of the cavern.
“I wish this was more like Underground Seattle,” Delilah said.
“I was thinking just about the same thing. At least there the passages are wide enough to feel like you’re actually walking in what used to be a city street. This . . . all I can say is watch for viro-mortis slimes along the wall. This would be the perfect place for them to hang out.”
It was Delilah’s turn to let out a muttered “ick.” She hated the oozing jellies that mimicked the Blob, right down to trying to absorb the hosts they latched on to. They might be prettier than Steve McQueen’s black amorphous menace, but they were no less deadly, if a little slower on the uptake.
“Yeah, and we don’t have Smoky or Iris here to freeze them, either.” Delilah’s words echoed against the rock and she flinched and lowered her voice again. “Sorry.”
“It’s loud, isn’t it? Do you hear that dripping noise?” I could hear a faint plink plink plink, as if a faucet were dripping somewhere in the distance.
Morgaine, still leading the way, answered. “I hear it, yes. I’m not sure of what it is but do you notice how damp the air is getting?”
I sniffed. Sure enough, the air was laden with moisture. It was cold and damp, and I realized that I was getting a chill. There was nothing I could do about it unless I wanted to pull out my blanket and drape it over my shoulders, and I didn’t want it getting shredded if we ended up in another fight.
“Do you think we’re nearing an underground stream or something?”
“I don’t know, but . . . hold on.” She held up a hand and I stopped, motioning for the others behind me to follow suit. A moment later, she turned. “I sense . . . I can feel an energy that I haven’t encountered for a very long time.” She turned back to the tunnel and began to hurry forward.
Hoping she wasn’t possessed or under a spell—she was almost running down the descending corridor—I followed at a good pace. Not twenty more yards and the floor began to level out as up ahead the tunnel ended, leading to an entrance into . . . well . . . I didn’t know what. But it definitely opened into something else. Selfishly, I hoped it wasn’t just another passageway. I was getting tired of being underground.
As I reached Morgaine, who was anxiously waiting by the archway, she turned to me, an excited look on her face. I’d never seen her expression so animated. “We’re here. I think we’re here.”
“Where? Do you mean we’ve found the Merlin?”
She was practically vibrating. “I think . . . we have. And I think we’ve also found a door into one of the byways that leads to Avalon.” With that, she turned to plunge through the arch, and vanished from sight in a flash of light.
“Oh fuck! What the hell? Where did she go?” My first impulse was to rush forward, but I stopped myself, tentatively sticking the end of my staff through the arch. It crackled, and the energy raced up the staff to tingle through my fingers. But it didn’t feel dangerous. Instead, it felt inviting and warm.
I turned to look at Morio. “What should we do? I have no clue where she went other than through that doorway.”
Tanne pushed his way to the front. “Let me go find out. Tie a rope around me so you can pull me back if need be.”
But at that moment, Morgaine’s head popped back through, seeming almost disembodied. “It’s a hidden entrance. Veiled, but not dangerous. Come on.” She vanished again.
Still not trusting what I saw, I looked at Tanne. “You willing to go through?”
He nodded. “I’ll tell you what, hold on to me and I’ll poke my head through. If . . . well . . . if something happens, contact my family.”
Morio took hold of his arm and Tanne edged his head through the archway, then a few seconds later, withdrew. “She’s right. She’s also lucky. That could have been anything, but it appears to be a veil that covers the entrance. It may well lead into a different realm, but it didn’t try to prevent my return. I think we can go through. There’s no way to explain what the hell I’m seeing on the other side. You have to see it for yourselves.”
Hesitantly, I agreed. One by one, we crossed through the portal, into the unknown.
* * *
As I stepped through, following Tanne, the scent of lilacs and wisteria descended to fill my nose. I inhaled a deep breath and cool, clear air filled my lungs, imbued with the fragrance of the flowers. The chill and the gloom vanished and I found myself facing a blazing cavern filled with brightly illuminated walls. Whether it was crystals or eye catchers or faerie fire, I wasn’t sure, but everything sparkled and glowed here.
The chamber was so vast I couldn’t see the end of it, and while there were no trees or vines in sight to account for the scent of the flowers, what I did see was a placid lake filling the center of the vast chamber.
In the center of the lake, we could see a small island. It was large enough to house a building that reminded me of a large temple.
The floor in front of us was still stone, but as we approached the lake, the stone changed to solid dirt, and then to pebbles. Albino grasses waved in a light breeze, growing by the edge of the water, along with reeds as tall as I was. A boat rocked lightly on the waves, tethered to a mooring stump anchored firmly in the rock next to the lakeshore.
The temperature had warmed by at least thirty degrees. It was still chilly, but compared to what we’d been through, it felt positively balmy. My body began to relax, the tension flowing out of my shoulders.
Slightly alarmed by my reaction, I turned to the others. “Can you sense anything? Any spells or charms in the area?”
Tanne shook his head. “I’ve already been searching, but no, I can feel no sense of danger here. That in itself may be the result of a spell. But as far as I can tell, I’m not picking up on anything untoward.”
“I almost wish you did.” Dangers that were out in the open were far easier to deal with than hidden treachery. And I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that the crystal guardians had been the only obstacles in our path.
“I suppose we just keep alert.” Delilah stared at the water. “I don’t want to go on that boat.”
Ever the cat, my sister had an innate distrust of water, which had pretty much developed into a phobia. She hardly ever relented to taking a full bath—preferring short, frequent showers. She had never voluntarily been swimming a day in her life, and she refused to even own a bathing suit.
“We have to go on it. We have to get across the water to that building.” Morgaine frowned. “That’s where the Merlin is.”
Delilah’s eyes flashed but she kept her mouth shut, for which I was grateful. We didn’t have time for personal fears to interfere. My own fears had been ever present with me during this journey but I’d managed to push them aside. After a moment, my sister just nodded, tight-lipped but acceding.
“Will we all fit? There are eight of us.” I stared at the long boat, mentally calculating the space and number of seats. Yeah, we’d fit, but it would be snug. “Can it carry all of us, weight-wise?”
“If there are eight seats, the boat will carry eight people. Unless we’re hiding a giant somewhere.” Tanne winked at me, and I laughed. “No? Didn’t think so. Who else knows how to row? There are four oars here. I can man one of them.”
Mordred spoke up. �
��I know how to man a boat.” Arturo volunteer to take a third and—to my surprise—Morgaine the fourth.
“Before we shove off, can we find out if the water’s safe to touch? And if it is, I want to wash my hands and face.” I was tired of feeling grungy and the dried blood had only added to that feeling.
Morgaine dipped her finger into the pond, held it to her nose, and waited. A moment later, nothing had happened. “I think you should be okay, but if there are any hidden dangers—any bacteria—do you really want to wash open wounds with it?”
Grumbling, I shook my head. “Never mind. Good point. At least we know it’s not battery acid, though.”
Morio and Tanne had been examining the boat and they deemed it water-worthy, so we climbed in. Delilah clutched the edge of her seat tightly, whispering a prayer to Bast that we didn’t capsize. I, myself, was praying we didn’t run into any sirens along the way. The last thing we needed was a gaggle of gorgeous women luring us out of the boat to a watery death. The boat glided smoothly over the water, though, and we landed on the shore of the island without incident.
Relieved, I scrambled out, but I couldn’t beat Delilah in her desire to get her land legs under her again. Mordred tied the boat securely against the mooring pole so it couldn’t drift away. The island was small, pretty much big enough to hold the building and not much else but the small swath of land around it. It truly did look like a temple, single story—at least aboveground—and was about the size of a large gymnasium. The walls were white marble veined with gray, and the structure was covered with a ghostly web of albino ivy. Columns buttressed the sides, evenly spaced and carved with intricate Celtic knotwork. A wide door in front was the only visible entrance.
The island itself was covered with a plush layer of moss, pale and luminous. A narrow walkway led through the moss from the mooring to the door of the building. Morgaine paused at the edge of the path, her caution getting the better of her excitement. She stared at the building, then turned back to me.
“Whatever wards there are, they’ll be at the door or beyond. Do you see?”
“See what?” I squinted, trying to get a better vantage point.
“By the door—on the ground. Look closer, child.” She pointed to the left of the door.
I tried to focus—the light wasn’t very bright here and I wasn’t sure at first what I was looking at but then I saw. Skeletons. Several of them, piled by the foot of the door. They were bleached, weathered, indicating they’d been here some time. Whether age or animals had picked them dry, it was hard to tell.
It could have been anything—gas or poison, magic . . . there were no signs anywhere of guards hiding, but then again, they might come out from the inside of the building and we weren’t close enough yet to get a better look. I tried to gauge how the skeletons were arranged, which might give us an idea of how they’d died, but we were too far away for me to make out much.
“The trap is by the door, then.”
“Not so fast.” Tanne squinted, then shook his head. “Something seems off. Look how neat the path is—the moss hasn’t overgrown it at all, and moss takes over. You know how invasive it is.”
He was right. Whether above- or belowground, moss spreads and spreads quickly. It could take over a lawn within a few months, if let go, and that included sidewalks and decks and anything else just hanging around. In fact, a good share of the lawns in and around Seattle were quite happily covered with moss. It cut down on mowing, for one thing.
“The path looks like dirt—not stone. But even if it were stone, the moss should have covered it by now.” I studied the winding trail. It was untouched. “Notice something else? The path is also clear of any other type of foliage. It looks meticulously groomed.”
Bran went up to the edge of the trail, without setting foot on it. He leaned down, and cocked his head to the side as he examined it. Then, he got down on his hands and knees and leaned forward, sniffing the dirt. A moment later he reared back, a startled look on his face.
“There’s something on that dirt. I don’t know what it is, but it’s dangerous. If I was mortal, I might be unconscious now.” He leaned out and touched his finger to the dirt, yanking it back. He held out his hand to show us the blistering that spread across his fingertip.
“That tells us one thing—the path is poisoned.” He pulled a leather pouch out of his backpack and, fitting it over his hand, touched it to the soil. Another moment and he removed it.
“I didn’t feel anything on my palm, but look.” He turned the pouch inside out. An oily stain spread across it. We waited for another moment and it soaked through the top layer. “You can walk along the path if you have shoes on and not feel it. But by the time you reach the door, it will have saturated the soles of your shoes. My guess is that by then, it will not only be eating into your feet, but infecting the blood. And if you can die, you will.”
I knelt beside him, eyeing the leather. “All of the skeletons are by the door. That means it must be quick acting but not instantaneous. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to reach the temple. Okay, so we stay off the path. What about the moss? Surely somebody else figured this out before us? Or, are those the only four who have ever made it down here?”
“We’ll never know, but it really doesn’t matter.” Morio frowned. “Bran, I hate to presume on you, but you’re the one that can’t be affected by the poison. Can you check out the moss?”
Bran moved over to the pale mulch that covered the rest of the island. He took his other hand and placed it on the moss, then after a moment lifted it. “Nothing. I’ll try the leather.” Again, he repeated the experiment with the bag. And again, nothing.
“Then we should be able to walk across the moss without a problem.” Morio was frowning, though. “It still feels too simple, but maybe I’m over-thinking matters. We don’t know how the skeletons in the cave died, but I can’t understand how this group could have gotten past the crystal scorpions—the spell hadn’t been triggered.”
“Unless somebody reset it. Another mystery we’ll never figure out.” I sighed, looking around. “Well, we can’t stand here forever.” I was getting antsy.
“I’ll go. I can cross the moss, and if there’s nothing on my shoes by the time I get over there, just follow in my footsteps. I’ll scrape through it with my sword so you can follow the path.” Bran stood up and dusted his hands on his pants. “I’m going to move fast though—there’s no sense in giving whoever built this hellhole any more of a chance to destroy us than they already have.”
He calculated the distance to the door, then moved away from the path a little more. After one more check of the moss, he took off, running through the moss, dragging his sword behind him to leave a trail that we could follow. A moment later, he stood by the door, examining the soles of his boots. Another minute and he waved for us to join him. I sucked in a deep breath and moved up to the trail he’d left.
“I’m going next. Hurry. We don’t want to be separated in case anything comes creeping out of those doors.” And, hiking my cloak and skirts so they weren’t trailing on the ground, I turned to Delilah. “Can you carry my staff for me? I’m not the best athlete and running with this is bound to get a little iffy for me.”
She laughed and nodded, taking it from me. “Be careful. Don’t fall down.”
And with that advice ringing in my ears, I took off, racing along the trail made by Bran’s sword. The distance seemed immense, even though it really was only a matter of fifty yards or so. It passed by in a blur of pale luminosity from the faint glow of the moss.
Shaking, I managed to reach the other side. Bran made me sit down and he looked at the soles of my boots. Nothing but regular dirt and a few embedded pebbles. He motioned to the others. One by one, they joined us and, one by one, we looked at their shoes. No sign of the poison.
I took my staff back from Delilah and wandered over to the skeletons, not really wanting to examine them but feeling we should. As I knelt, making sure they weren’t b
one-walkers—we didn’t need any bones-on-the-hoof attacking us—I saw that the bottoms of their feet were pitted, the bone looking terribly porous, like pahoehoe lava.
“The poison. They did come across the dirt—and whatever is in it ate through their boots and into their feet. So I guess—regardless of where they came from—they never made it inside.” I slowly reached out to run my hand over the door. A deep knell reverberated through my fingers and hit my stomach like a gong, almost keeling me over.
Morgaine whirled around. “What was that?”
“I don’t know! I just touched the door.” But something had happened—I could feel it all through my body. I’d woken something up with my touch and now . . . now we would have to face whatever it was. I just prayed I hadn’t inadvertently set Yvarr loose from his prison.
As I stood there, frozen by the energy that clamored through me, the door softly opened, crushing the bones as it swept them aside. A low murmur echoed from deep within the chamber and I thought I could hear my name on the wind that rushed out. I knew then—knew in my gut, in the depths of my soul. The Merlin was in there, sleeping. And it was time to wake him up.
Morgaine stepped up to my side. She glanced over at me. “We have to go. You know that. You can feel it.” It was a statement, not a question.
I nodded. “Yes, I feel him waiting for us.” Without pausing to decide whether it was a good idea or a stupid one, my cousin and I stepped over the threshold and into the chamber. Mordred followed us, and then the others. The moment we all entered the building, the door slammed shut behind us. We were trapped, alone in a tomb as old as the hills. And by the sound of a low rustling skirting the perimeters of whatever room we were in, we weren’t alone.
Chapter 17
“What the hell is that?” When the door slammed shut on us, the room was plunged into pitch black. I could hear the rustle of something swirling around the room, like wings brushing against fabric. But there was no sound of breath or voice or anything to give us a clue of what was locked in the room with us.
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