by T. A. White
“Yes, if the mediator finds in the Silva’s favor we would not wish to disturb our dead any more than we already have.” Tala looked up from the hole to address Jost and Elijah.
“How can you ask us to cover this place up and forget?” Elijah asked. “This is the find of a lifetime. The people responsible for this discovery will be able to write their future. Their names will be in all of the history books. Our descendants will speak of us with pride.”
Elijah seemed genuinely flummoxed with the others desire not to explore.
“Do you think he realizes your name will be the one remembered since you’re technically the discoverer?” Dewdrop asked in a soft voice that only she and Gabriella could hear.
“Doubt it,” Gabriella said, not bothering to keep her voice soft. “These sorts aren’t good at sharing the credit. He’ll probably give his backers some song and dance about how he pointed his assistant on the right path.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Dewdrop muttered, seemingly disgusted at the thought.
Tate shrugged at him. She had no desire to see her name in the history books and the idea of having anything resembling her children and their descendants was completely foreign to her.
“You’re not interested in exploring down there?” Tate asked Gabriella.
The Silva woman looked at the hole with a longing expression before shrugging. “I will do as my doyenne feels is best.”
Tate sighed. That wasn’t what she’d asked but she’d let it go.
“And our ancestors will be dishonored because we’ve disturbed their final resting place,” Tala said in a sharp voice.
Elijah threw up his hands. “Again with this ridiculous assertion that your ancestors had anything to do with this place. Do you see any bodies?” He gestured wildly at the room around them. “Because I don’t. Not a single bone, piece of flesh or strand of hair to tell us that your ancestors were anywhere within a hundred miles of this place.”
Tala’s eyes were frosty as she stared down her nose at him. “You didn’t report this site for weeks. You would have had plenty of time to get rid of any bodies before allowing anyone to know what you had found.”
Uninterested in the conversation as it dissolved into a shouting match about paranoia and moral bankruptcy, Tate walked close to the hole and looked down into it. It was less a hole and more of a shaft with rungs carved into the stone. The bottom was cast in shadow and impossible to see. Whether it was leagues away or simply right beyond the light was impossible to say.
There was a smell to it. Dry and musty with the faintest odor of decay.
“Do you smell that?” Tate asked.
The smell was noticeable since the rest of the tunnels had none. At least none that stood out and made the owners of said noses cringe.
Tala’s other guard took a step forward and inhaled deeply, the sound much like the one Night made when he was parsing information. It was curious and made Tate wonder just how sensitive a Silva’s nose was.
“She’s right,” he said looking back at his lady. “There is the smell of death.”
Tate leaned back. That was a lot different than what she was picking up. Though admittedly her nose probably wasn’t nearly as sensitive as his.
“There’s no way you could smell that,” Elijah scoffed. “If there is anything dead down there, it would have been dead for centuries. In the climate controlled conditions of the tunnels the body would have mummified leaving no smell behind.”
“I withdraw my earlier objection,” Tala said. “I think it imperative for these discussions that we see what is down there for ourselves.”
The expression on Elijah’s face puzzled Tate since he was getting what he wanted, but now he looked almost like he wanted to object. Like he’d just thought of something.
“I now find myself most curious as well,” the Shodon said with a slight smile.
Elijah’s face hardened into stone.
Tate eyed the Shodon, not trusting that cryptic expression. The old man had something up his sleeve.
“There’s too many people. The room could be booby trapped,” Elijah said.
Jost and Tate shared a look. Neither trusted Elijah’s abrupt about face. At the same time, he brought up a valid point. Tate knew little about these places but more than one person had alluded to the possibility of traps.
She wanted to know what was down there, but she didn’t want to die doing it.
“I can go first,” Josef volunteered. “I’ve dealt with these traps before. I just need one other person to come with me as an extra set of eyes.” Josef looked thrilled at the prospect of going down there. As if his possible death by grisly means hadn’t even occurred to him.
“That isn’t a good idea. We have proper procedures that should be observed when a new room is discovered so that we don’t accidentally damage any prospective finds,” Elijah said, his eyes drilling holes in his assistant.
That assistant seemed blissfully unaware of the glare he was receiving. “Don’t worry. I’ve done this many times. I’ll be careful.”
“I can act as your second set of eyes,” Gabriella volunteered, looking at Tala for permission first.
After a long moment where Tala studied her guard, she inclined her head in a graceful nod. Gabriella’s face split with a smile, transforming it into a thing of beauty lit from within.
“No, we can’t let someone unfamiliar with this type of work down there. She could get herself and Josef killed. Worse, she could damage the room.”
Tate rolled her eyes. Yeah, because the room was the important piece in all this.
Tala’s voice had the bite of an arctic winter as she said, “My Ayer has extensive experience on these sorts of discoveries. She received instruction from the Ravin Academy in Sylvain.”
Elijah scoffed. “That place is full of frauds and incompetents who cut corners. I wouldn’t trust anyone who claims to have studied there.”
“Careful, that’s an insult to my people.”
Elijah sneered. “They’d have to understand what knowledge is to be insulted.”
Tate lifted an eyebrow. She supposed she shouldn’t have been too surprised at the blatant disrespect in his tone. He’d been dancing toward this since the dinner party.
“Enough, both of you.” Jost’s voice cracked through the space. “The Doyenne’s guard may accompany Elijah’s assistant down. If anything happens, you will both accept full responsibility.”
His tone was not the sort that you argued with. Both looked vaguely disgruntled at his command.
Josef raised a hand. “Excuse me, I’m the head researcher, not an assistant.” Jost glared at him, and his mouth slammed shut at Jost’s expression.
Tate sniggered, happy to not be on the receiving end for once. She tapped Josef on the shoulder and bent down. “You sure you can handle this?”
He nodded, his face looking determined. “I’ve studied every single room and the patterns that indicate a trap. I’m confident I can do this.”
“Wait, does this mean you’ve never been in the field like this before?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, busying himself with readying a few items that he pulled out of a pack.
“Josef?”
Gabriella slapped her on the back in reassurance. “Its fine, Tate. I’ve been on several of these expeditions before. It’s not my first time even if it happens to be his.”
Somehow Tate wasn’t reassured.
The two disappeared into the shaft, moving slowly and carefully, with Josef testing each rung before trusting his weight to it. Tate bent over the shaft to watch them. She had the odd feeling that she should have gone with them. She was unused to sitting on the sidelines.
Dewdrop crouched next to her.
On the other hand, if she’d gone, Dewdrop would have insisted on going. Risks she was willing to take with her own life weren’t as easy to take with his.
“See anything,” Tate asked when the sound of movement stopped.
“No
t much. We’re in a chamber,” Josef called back. “It’s big but very dark. Our lamps aren’t having much effect. I’m going to light a second one before we go any further.”
“This is not a good idea,” Elijah said, pacing on the other side of the opening while biting one nail. He was a lot more nervous than Tate would have credited someone with extensive experience with these expeditions as being.
“You’ve had your say and were outvoted,” Tala said without looking at them. By the way her guard was eyeing Elijah, it was clear the Silva didn’t have much respect for the man. Respected scholar or not.
Jost joined Tate where she crouched by the edge. He was no happier at having to remain up top than she was, used, as he was, to being in the thick of things. He, like her, had had to bow to another’s expertise and extensive experience. It still burned though.
And was surprisingly boring.
“Anything yet?” Tate wanted to get down there. Her curiosity was eating her alive. Even Ilith was a crouching presence in the back of her mind, interested in what secrets that room held. Ilith had been more alert ever since entering the octagonal space and Tate’s skin had been tingling since touching those tiles. It was a feeling she was beginning to associate to the moments leading up to a change.
She scratched at the skin. The feeling could also be a sign of danger.
“What is that?” Gabriella asked, her voice showing her stress. Her shout echoed up the shaft. “What is that?”
“What’s going on?” Jost asked.
“I don’t know.” Josef sounded panicked.
A growl echoed from below.
Chapter Fourteen
Tate shot forward, beating Jost to the ladder rungs by moments. Dewdrop leaned over, tucking a dagger into her belt loop before she was out of reach.
Tate placed her boots on the wall beside the ladder-like grooves, braced her back against the opposite wall, and then let herself slide down. Jost followed her lead. She caught herself at the last moment to keep from falling when the wall at her back disappeared.
She landed in a crouch, the dagger finding its way into her hand by habit.
Josef cowered against the wall as Gabriella loomed over him and roared. She struck the wall on either side of him, raking her claws down stone and leaving deep scratches.
“Gabriella, what are you doing?” Tate shouted, running forward and yanking Gabriella back without listening to Jost’s warning to stop.
There was a soft thud as Dewdrop landed behind them.
The woman swiped at Tate, her face twisted with rage and her lips pulled back, exposing a set of fangs worthy of putting Ilith’s mouthful to shame. Tate dodged the first swipe and blocked the second with her forearm, kicking forward with her other leg to try to interrupt the other woman’s stance.
Gabriella leapt nimbly out of the way before lunging at Tate, her momentum carrying Tate’s smaller frame to the ground. Tate landed on her back with the snarling, growling Silva on top.
Tate managed to keep Gabriella’s claws from raking across her face. A bright spot of pain opened up from shoulder to elbow, as her arm wasn’t so lucky. Tate punched Gabriella in the face.
She threw her weight up, forcing Gabriella to roll onto her back. Josef and Jost yelled something, but Tate was too busy protecting her eyes from Gabriella’s claws to pay attention.
Tate landed two blows to Gabriella’s kidneys before the woman bucked her off. Tate leapt back. Dewdrop came to her side and let out a piercing scream, startling those in the room.
Everyone, including Gabriella and Tate, covered their ears at the painful sound. Dewdrop was a banshee, a descendant of some ancestor who’d crawled out of Aurelia’s tunnels after waking up from a long sleep. The Creators were probably responsible for his abilities. His scream could literally rupture eardrums, and if he really wanted to, he could cause internal bleeding and liquefy organs.
His scream had the intended effect—forcing Gabriella to pause long enough to consider her actions.
“What is going on down here?” Jost demanded. “This is a serious breach of the agreement. I can have your entire people blacklisted from this site.”
Dewdrop pressed a scrap of cloth he’d gotten from somewhere to Tate’s arm. Hard. She cringed. Now that the adrenaline was fading, the pain was more obvious.
Her jaw felt sore and her arm had blood trickling down it. The Silva woman could fight. It was actually kind of liberating getting some of her pent-up energy out. Tate felt better for it even if she was now feeling some of her injuries. Ilith panted happily in the back of her mind, satisfied with the violence and the fact that Tate had acquitted herself well.
Ilith was already anticipating the next time they pitted themselves against the Silva. Tate ignored the mental plans Ilith was hatching. She’d have to avoid anybody who was Silva for a time after this. Otherwise, the dragon might do something drastic that could potentially end in Tate or another’s death.
“We won’t be the only ones to be thrown out of these talks,” Gabriella said in a bitter voice. She looked like someone had just come up and slapped her—angry and defensive, and wanting to respond in kind. “Look around. What these humans have done is much worse than anything I could have dreamed of doing.”
Tate looked at the rest of the room, able to take it in for the first time since she had dropped into the chamber.
She was slow to understand what had upset Gabriella at first. All she saw was a room filled with things. Things she didn’t understand. It was dim, the light of the glow lamp not doing much to illuminate a space that was easily twice the size of what was above them.
Then the scene clicked, something sliding into place in her mind. The bones strewn all over the room. Old bones, wrappings. What looked like a few skulls. The remains had not been treated carefully or kindly. Tate could tell at a glance that the bones had been thrown about in some places, mixed and discarded like inconvenient trash.
“They’re Silva,” Gabriella answered the questioning look Jost shot at her.
Tate drifted closer, crouching next to a haphazard pile. The bones weren’t from just one body but many. That was only evident because there were three femurs and four tibias in the pile.
“How do you know?” Tate asked.
“The skulls. You can see where the canines were. Also the bone density of a Silva is greater than that of a human or Kairi. We were made to be the shock troops of the creators, which meant a greater ability to withstand trauma and damage.”
“You got all that from a look?” Tate was impressed. She was so startled at the presence of bones that she hadn’t even begun to try to catalog the details. Now that Gabriella had pointed it out, she could see it was true.
“We don’t know how they got here,” Josef tried to reason, holding his hands out in a motion meant to calm. Gabriella didn’t look particularly calm. “They could have been placed here years ago. Centuries even. The history of this place is unknown.”
“I doubt that,” Tate said, rising from her crouch. “There are foot prints near this pile, and the dust looks like it was disturbed when someone threw these down here. Whoever did this, did it much more recently.”
“Same here,” Jost said, examining a pile a few feet away.
“That doesn’t mean the Academy is responsible,” Josef said, desperation in his voice. “We would never disturb ancestors in this way.”
Tate believed him. He didn’t seem like the sort who went after what he wanted at the expense of others. And, he’d been entirely too willing to come down here with Gabriella to have known what would be waiting for them.
That didn’t mean others on the expedition were as scrupulous.
After his initial excitement at the discovery of the chamber and the ladder leading down, Elijah had seemed the faintest bit unwilling to let the rest of the group down here. But that could just have been his unwillingness to let others have a piece of his find. Tate just didn’t know him well enough to be sure.
Tate ventured de
eper into the room. There were at least ten skulls down here. Ten bodies. That didn’t even take into account the possibility that pieces of each body were missing. They could have parts to who knew how many more bodies.
“If these were the bodies from the tunnels, wouldn’t they be mummified?” Tate asked, stepping over a pile of yellowish bones. The conditions down here were perfect for it.
“Not necessarily,” Josef answered after a look at Gabriella, who stared around with numb disbelief. “The pre-empire Silva society would often leave their dead exposed to the elements until the bones were stripped of all flesh, before interring them in tombs or their ancestral tunnels.”
Explained things.
“You should be careful,” Josef told Tate. “We haven’t cleared this room. It’s possible there are still traps remaining.”
Tate paused, looking around. If someone had dumped the bones down here, they would most likely have triggered any possible traps. She should be safe as long as she didn’t go too far.
“I don’t understand how whoever did this would have gotten these down here,” Dewdrop said.
He stuck close to Tate as she moved through the room. In addition to the bones, there were artifacts—things that tugged at her memories, running fingers along her mind until her brain threatened to shake itself loose.
“No one from your team has discovered this place, right?”
Josef looked relieved at Dewdrop’s observation. “That’s right. Today was the first time we had any indication there was anything under the mosaic room.”
“Could have had a different entrance,” Jost said, holding his light up and indicating a tunnel that led out of the chamber. “Might not have known this was immediately below the mosaic room.”
“No, I’ve been all through the discovered tunnels. I’ve never seen a room like this.”
“Maybe someone discovered it while you were in the city and hid the entrance.” Tate paused and looked back at them.
Josef shook his head. “No. It still doesn’t explain the presence of the bones. I’ve been on this expedition since day one. There have never been any remains in this tunnel.”