Tomb of Ancients

by Madeleine Roux

  “Ah, so it is Dalton after all who is the rascal. No matter. Yes and no, Louisa, there is an entrance at Lake Tuz, but there are many, many entrances. I know of one much closer, in fact. You could be there by morning if you left now on horseback.”

  I nodded and frowned, feigning puzzlement. Yet what he said made sense. When I’d met the Binder at Cadwallader’s, it had been in a space that was nowhere, and perhaps this place where Henry wanted us to go was similar, a destination between worlds, hiding somewhere in the shadows.

  “He also told me there were riddles,” I continued. “As part of our arrangement, I want you to give me the answers.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Morningside said. “Dear Louisa, there’s no need to look so cunning. It’s my greatest desire that you should enter the Tomb of Ancients safely and fulfill our bargain.”

  At that, I could not hide my interest. I set down my teacup and leaned slightly toward him across the table while he nonchalantly buttered his scone again.

  “So you’ve been inside,” I said, repeating his name for the place. “The Tomb of Ancients.”

  “Inside? No. No, I’m afraid there are certain limitations that prevent me from entering,” he said. The sigh of frustration that followed seemed genuine, but then, he was a very talented actor. “You, however, should have no trouble infiltrating, so long as you follow my instructions and use your wits. I can only help you so far, Louisa, for I do not know what awaits you inside.”

  “But the books can be destroyed there?”

  Beside me, Mother winced. I was now a book, having Father’s knowledge of ours buried in my head, and that meant I, too, could be destroyed there.

  “Yes, it is where the books are created, I know that to be true,” Henry said, and I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. He flecked a bit of crumb off his jacket and fixed me with one of his wide, charming smiles. A curl of black hair fell roguishly in front of his yellow eyes. “But we must not discuss it aloud in too much detail—it is a protected place, and I am not eager to call out its guardians. I will write down your instructions, the better to avoid detection.”

  I shuddered at the thought of anyone getting cut in half by an angry scorpion creature.

  “If you insist.”

  Mr. Morningside studied me over his cup, perhaps divining that I knew more than I let on. But he said no more on the subject and drank his too-sweet tea. “Then it’s settled.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. How do I know you will uphold your end of the deal? I am risking my life to destroy that book. You could simply refuse to help me once I return. No, I think you should remove Father’s spirit from me now, before I fix your problems.” I sat back in the comfortable chair, enjoying his brief but visible discomfort.

  He tugged at the bottom of his jacket and looked at me askance. “We will put it down in writing, of course, Louisa, and I always honor my contracts.”

  “That doesn’t satisfy me.” I dug my finger into the tablecloth, holding his gaze. “If I return from the Tomb of Ancients and you do not remove Father’s influence over me, there must be some penalty.”

  “Such as?” He leaned down toward the floor, then produced quill and ink from a leather satchel. Having arrived in the sitting room after him, I had no idea he had brought his tools along, waiting for just this moment.

  “Such as . . .” I paused, but the answer occurred to me quite readily. “Such as the deed to Coldthistle House and all within it. The Black Elbion included.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snorted, smoothing out the parchment next to his breakfast. “That’s hardly fair, Louisa. Be reasonable.”

  “Reasonable? A book for a book, it’s the definition of fair, and the house is for my life, the one I might easily lose in the tomb. Those are my terms, Morningside, you are free to refuse me and find another way to unmake the white book.”

  I hated the feeling of his eyes burning into mine, and that I wanted constantly to turn away. This was a test, and I was determined to pass. He had, of course, slanted the terms of the deal to his advantage, but if this was a game, then I would not be easily played. At last, he sat back, wetting the pen and putting it to paper.

  “Exactly as I said it,” I added. “I won’t have you worming out of this. If you do not remove Father’s spirit from me when I return, having destroyed the white book, then the deed to Coldthistle House and the Black Elbion are mine. And I warn you, I will check that contract over a dozen times if I must.”

  “You’re learning,” he muttered. “I’m not sure if I should be relieved or annoyed.”

  “Don’t push me.” At that, his eyes flicked up from his work. I continued, “I know why you’re making me wait, why you want Father’s influence to remain as long as possible. You need me to defend against the shepherd.”

  “An astute observation.” But he was teasing, and rolled his eyes, writing out the remainder of the contract. I could see him tacking on a clause for Dalton’s part in it, and I would be studying that, too. “I know it would never occur to you that I might have somewhat-less-than-evil intentions, but my feeling is that you will want that unholy strength in you to survive the tomb. All that you have seen, all that you have survived, will be nothing like what it will demand of you.”

  Severed fingers. Severed body. Cracks in the skin that bled golden light. Madness.

  I swallowed, anxious, and turned my attention to Mother.

  “And you know nothing of this place? The Tomb of Ancients?” I asked.

  Her eyes went soft, and she tilted her head to the side. The long pink braids of her hair were undone, the long tendrils combed out over one shoulder. She pushed her hands into that tumbling mass of hair and idly began making a plait. “My heart says I know it, long for it, like a child fresh from the womb longs to be swaddled. I know it and yet I do not; I have no memories of it, but to hear the words spoken: Tomb of Ancients . . .” She shook her head and let go of her hair. “I never thought to study such things. I never yearned to go back to the place where we began.”

  Mr. Morningside dashed off the final line and blew on the page, then handed it across to me, taking up his tea again. His eyes were distant. Cold. “I pray you never see it, never go near it—”

  The lines I cared most about had been copied down correctly, and I put down my signature next to his, unaware that he had trailed off midthought. Then I heard Chijioke crash through the door, gasping for breath.

  “They’re here,” he shouted, his hand pressed over his heart. “The Upworlders. They’ve come.”

  “What incredible timing they have,” Mr. Morningside groused, standing. He took the contract and rolled it up tightly, then placed it in his leather satchel. “We will need all your fury, Louisa. Give them your worst. We must draw them here in great numbers and give Dalton time to recover the white book. And then? Then it will be your time to see the Tomb of Ancients.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  1247, West of Cappadocia

  There was nothing for it—I was never going to sleep. We burned Faraday’s body far off the road, then returned to our initial camp to collect the horses and ride out. None of us were keen to sleep so close to where the demon had met his doom. Nobody spoke, though I could feel Ara working her way up to a lecture, her mouth a tight line as we galloped through the night.

  We stopped leagues from our destination, in the last vestige of hills before the land descended into a shallow valley and the salt lake began. I crawled out of my bedroll and found a place to relieve myself, then noticed I was not alone in my sleeplessness. Henry stood at the edge of our little camp, arms crossed, his eyes inscrutable as he stared out at the white valley below. The salt. I know he does not share my fear of the place, but I can think of nothing but Faraday’s warnings. And that creature . . . It was not one of ours, and it apparently wasn’t one of Henry’s demonic friends, either.

  “I’m going to say it again,” I whispered. He didn’t move. “I think we should pack it in and go home. This has become so
mething else, Henry. It’s more than an obsession, it’s more than dangerous. It’s . . .”

  “All perfectly reasonable, I assure you,” he finished. He ran a hand through his wild black hair and inched toward me, then laid his head on my shoulder and blew out a breath. “Do you ever think about it? Eternity?”

  “Occasionally.” Leave it to Henry to distract me with philosophy.

  “I think about it all the time,” he said. “I don’t want to be old. How long will it take to be old? I already feel ancient, and by our standards I’m a child. It’s ghastly.”

  “Oh hush, you will never look old,” I chuckled.

  “Not on the outside. But on the inside? I feel it already on the inside. Like I’m breathing coffin dust. Like I’m already entombed. But it just goes on for us. I don’t know if I can bear it. What will I do? Take up needlepoint?”

  No answer would suit him, but I had to try. He was inconsolable when he descended into one of his melancholic moods. I wrapped my arm around his waist and held him close and hoped that touch would bring him back to himself. “You’ll be wise and powerful. You can . . . I don’t know, live up a mountaintop and dispense wisdom to any who dare make the climb.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no jellied lamb up a mountain.”

  “But you will be wise,” I said. “You could be wise now and listen to us. Ara agrees—this is a fool’s errand. I have no idea what you will be like when you’re old, but by God, I should like to see it.”

  He kissed my chin and then turned away, unwinding himself from my grasp. “I love you, you spicy imp, but you’re wrong. I know what I’m doing. I know . . . what I can look forward to. I think I know what eternity looks like.” Only a few steps from me, he stopped and then turned, hurling one more question my way. “Honestly, Dal, can you live with what we did to them? We all but snuffed out a flame, simply because it dared to burn before us. Will you promise me something?”

  “Yes,” I replied, meaning it. “Anything.”

  “Promise me you’ll come with me when I find the Binders. If I can find where the books are made, promise me you’ll come see the place.”

  Something itched at the back of my mind, but stupidly, I agreed.

  “I promise,” I said. “I’ll come with you.”

  In the morning, Henry woke us at an ungodly hour. The horses had already been saddled, the packs readied, and Bartholomew fed. A traveler’s breakfast of hard biscuits, nuts, and stewed greens had been prepared, and Henry paced impatiently while I bolted down my share. Then we were riding, all of it happening so fast that neither Ara nor myself had time to stop him. That was the idea, of course, because he knew we were tired of playing along.

  “Look there,” he called as we descended toward the plains. A few nomads dotted the edge of the lake. “They won’t go near the center. We must be close.”

  “Henry—”

  Ara and I had called out to him in unison, but he raced ahead, spurring his horse with flashing heels, the brown-and-black-spotted beast dashing down the embankment. I had spent plenty of hours in the saddle, but Henry was the vastly superior horseman. We gave chase, and now Ara did not appear angry but concerned. Her brows were permanently knit, her lower lip trembling.

  “We’ll stop him,” I yelled to her over the whip of the wind.

  “I don’t know that we can.” Ara’s hood fell back, her iron-gray and black hair flying free of its ribbon, streaming behind her like a pennant as we pursued Henry down to the salt.

  Tuz Gölü. The sea of crystalline white stretching out before us made my breath catch and my heart throb—it was a beautiful place, unearthly, a flat glistening dish of diamonds so vast its edges could not be seen once we descended. The sky seemed bluer here, the horizon just a suggestion, almost as if we had stumbled upon the edge of the world. And there was Henry, riding right into it, the top crust of salt breaking, water splashing the knobby knees of his horse.

  The nomads scattered at his approach, and by the time Ara and I caught up to him, we three and Bartholomew were alone. The place was emptiness itself, the salt and water making tricks of the light, rainbows cascading across the ground, rippling at the slightest touch.

  Henry swore and jumped down from his mount, letting it go. He wandered forward into the desert of eerie white, pressing his hand to his forehead against the sun.

  “Where is it?” he whispered. “This is the salt. It has to be here.”

  Ara and I watched as he cut a line through the center of the salt flat, shallow water sloshing around his sandals. He trudged on, impervious to the sun and glare, determined to make his pilgrimage.

  “What do we do?” I twisted in the saddle, holding Bartholomew, my hands shaking with powerlessness.

  “Nothing will stop him. We can only protect him now.”

  Ara dismounted, grunting under the weight of the book and the pack. I joined her, and together we trailed behind, retracing Henry’s path through the salt. When we reached him, his face glowed red with fury.

  “If that idiot demon lied to me . . .”

  “There,” Ara said, pointing. “Old tracks. They lead deeper into the salt.”

  Henry hurried in that direction, the shallow water deepening as we traveled toward the center of the salt flat, his tracks swallowed up. His robes were soaked to his knees, but he ignored it, fixated on the unbroken crust and the strange imprints that were too delicate to have cracked it. He stopped a hand’s breadth from the intact salt and reached out, running his fingers lightly over the shapes. As I neared, I saw that they looked remarkably like giant paws.

  “I’m willing,” he muttered, almost feverish. “I’m willing, damn you, where are you?”

  There came a deep rumbling from beneath the earth. I stumbled, grabbing onto Ara as she grabbed onto me. Bartholomew whined and burrowed under my robe, hiding his muzzle under my armpit. The sun flashed off the mirror of salt, blinding me, then the brightness exploded outward, sending a hot wave across the desert. The salt under and around us softened and then sank, becoming hard and flat, until we stood on a perfect alabaster disk.

  The blast had knocked Henry to his knees, where he stayed, all of us silent and watchful as the tracks in the salt shook, then lowered, a gradual ramp cutting itself into the ground. I had seen such things in Egypt, smooth, glittering architecture cut neatly into limestone. At the very bottom, perhaps half a kilometer into the earth, a door appeared. Under my robes, I had begun to sweat badly, and I nudged Ara, who wouldn’t take her eyes from the door.

  It was too late now, I thought, to forget this madness and go home. A simultaneous loathing and curiosity rooted me to the spot, for I wondered what might emerge from that door, and what lay beyond it.

  Something moved in the darkness, a figure stepping through the square-cut door. At first I thought it was another of the scorpion creatures, but as it climbed the ramp toward us, it became clear that it was half woman, its lower half that of a lioness. That explained the paw prints. More than that, she had not two human arms but six all told, the extra two pairs folded back slightly, like wings at rest. She approached slowly, and I couldn’t help wondering if that was to give us time to change our minds and flee.

  And I longed to do just that. The sun vanished, and the desert was plunged instantly into night. Gasping, I watched the darkness light up with more stars than one sky ought to hold. Not just stars, shapes. I did not fancy myself an astronomer, but even I knew these were not ordinary constellations and that no stars in the firmament glowed so brilliantly. The moon, perfect as a pearl, hung full and fat and too close to us, nearer than I had ever seen it.

  The creature finished her journey up the ramp and observed us, her eyes catlike, her skin a buttery gold, like that of her lioness half. A blue, beaded curtain hung from her neck, chiming softly when she moved. Around her neck and shoulders lay a snake, draped there, as white as the salt, though its head held no eyes and its mouth ever opened, a toothless tube that sucked at the air.

  Henry
stared up at her, marveling, still on his knees.

  “I am Malatriss,” she said. The stars burned clearer when she spoke. “One Who Opens the Door. Who is willing?”

  “I am,” Henry jumped to his feet. “I’m willing.”

  “And these others?” she asked.

  He turned and stretched out his hands, pleading with his eyes. I had never seen Henry look so helpless before. “Please,” he mouthed.

  “I am willing, too,” Ara spoke up, taking a step forward.

  I gazed into the doorkeeper’s eyes, and what I found there frightened me. She would know if I lied. I thought of Faraday—Focalor—the demon, and of his madness, his wounds, his horrible descent. Had he been truly willing? Or had he passed that first test only to fail the next? Sometimes to protect the people we love, we have to disappoint them.

  “I’m sorry, Henry,” I said, holding Bartholomew close to my chest.

  “Dalton. Dalton. Don’t you dare do this, don’t you dare . . .” He advanced toward me, yellow eyes flaring wide. “You spineless shit. Did you come all this way just to betray me? Is this amusing to you? Did the shepherd put you up to this?”

  “I don’t need to answer that.” I stepped back. “Just listen to yourself, and you will know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “No.” Henry flung himself toward Ara, spinning her around. He tore the Black Elbion out of the bag and shook it in my face. “There must be something else. There must be a way, a way to be free. Free from this book, free from this . . . this . . .”

  Guilt.

  He wilted, hugging the book and falling again to his knees. The journey was ending—he could feel it, and so could I—but it was not the ending he’d hoped for. Not for the first time, he changed in front of my eyes, pitiful now. Unmoored.

  “You promised,” he spat. “You promised.”

  “I didn’t see it then.” I backed away, slowly, backed away from him, from it all. “I didn’t know your purpose, and I won’t help you destroy that book. Damn it, I won’t lose you.”