not lying.”
Crow stood up and drew his sword. “And you’re not telling us the truth either! So which is it?”
Adelais’ eyebrows knitted. “How can it be eight days? The eclipse is four days from now. That doesn’t add up.”
“The eclipse is tomorrow,” Tancho stated flatly. “A few hours from now.”
They each shook their heads. “It can’t be . . .” Aelfflaed mumbled. She became teary again and put her dirty hand to her forehead. “Nothing makes sense. Time is not as it should be.”
“Time cannot change,” Crow snapped. “It cannot be altered as if a toy on a string—”
He stopped cold, realisation washing over him like a flurry of ice. He sat back down, woodenly, his mind trying to make sense of what was somehow the truth.
“But it can,” Tancho murmured. “Time can change.”
He reached over and slid his hand over Crow’s, as if proving a point, and everything around them all but stopped. “The more we try to understand,” Tancho murmured. “The less it makes sense.”
“The days are wrong,” Crow whispered. “How can the days be wrong?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s not the days so much as it is this line of the sun and the moons and the stars.” Tancho studied Crow’s face, finally settling on his eyes. “But I don’t think they’re lying. I think they believe what they’ve been through. They understand it no more than we do, and we’re not lying.”
Crow sighed again and glowered at Tancho for good measure. “You can stop coming at me with reason and common sense.”
Tancho almost smiled. “That’s not going to happen.” He squeezed Crow’s hand before letting it go.
“How can time change?” Adelais asked, not privy to Crow and Tancho’s private conversation.
“Time has not been exactly true for us this last week,” Crow replied. “We’ve not lost days though. The eclipse is tomorrow.”
They sat back, slumping almost, with exhaustion and disbelief. “Then we need to act now,” Gabel mumbled. “We can’t delay.”
“What do you know of the eclipse?” Tancho asked. “And the lacuna? Maghdlm called it by that name but gave nothing but riddles after that.”
“I heard her say that,” Adelais said. “A lacuna is the space between, or a gap between. How that relates to you and your birthmarks, I do not know. When the marks at your wrist reacted at the initiation ceremony, it was the first we knew of it. It was unexpected to say the very least.”
“Unexpected to everyone but Maghdlm,” Tancho replied.
Crow turned to Tancho. “She said the space between us is no space at all. That’s what she said. Before she ran off.”
“What do you think she meant?” Tancho asked.
“I have no idea. But I’d really like to go up to the ground level, find her, and . . . ask.”
Tancho smiled, a little sinister, a lot handsome. “Same.”
Samiel cocked her head with a frown. “If this is the old grand hall and compass down here, what is the new one in the new grand hall for? Does that compass work as the others do?”
That was a really good question. Everyone looked to Adelais, given she was the leader of all the elders.
“We don’t know,” she answered apologetically. “We weren’t aware the compass could even be a doorway. And we haven’t been to ground level since . . . since . . .”
“I think it’s safe to assume whatever its purpose isn’t for our benefit,” Crow said.
“Then let us go,” Samiel said, getting to her feet. “The answers we seek are above us.”
“Agreed,” Elmwood added as he stood. “Let’s see this done.”
They turned to face their rows of soldiers waiting patiently for their orders. The long hall was pitch black where light couldn’t reach, and Crow didn’t like that. The sooner they were above ground, the better.
“What is that way?” Tancho asked, pointing to the back of the hall.
“There was an exit but it was sealed a long time ago. Hundreds of years ago, to be sure,” Adelais said.
“Where does Aequi Kentron source its water?” Tancho pressed.
The three elders were clearly taken aback by the question. Random, perhaps, but Tancho was from the Westlands, a kingdom built around water.
“I, uh . . .” Adelais said, “I believe there is a well.”
“You believe?” Tancho asked, his head tilted just so.
“There have been maintenance teams who take care of such things,” she replied.
Tancho went to his knee and put his palm to the stone ground. He closed his eyes and inhaled, and Crow found himself standing closer, protecting him while he made himself vulnerable.
“There