. .”
The voices faded as she left the windows behind, stepping at last into the glow of Silas’s lantern light. “You look pale,” he said.
“Just tired,” Kate said, trying to disguise her feelings.
“The dead cannot be trusted,” said Silas. “They will say anything to attract attention from those who can sense them. Ignore them, and stay in the light. This is no place to be lost on your own.”
After the disembodied voices in the tunnel, Kate found herself wanting to stay close to Silas and became worried every time he walked too far ahead. There was no way to know how long they had been underground. Other than giving her directions on how to negotiate difficult steps and corners, Silas did not speak. The silence was so complete that she could hear her pulse rushing in her ears as she walked.
“There,” Silas said at last, pointing toward a distant light. “We are close.”
Kate’s heart lifted. Artemis was somewhere nearby. She followed Silas to the very edge of the tunnel mouth, overlooking the wide gulf that was the third tomb cavern.
The tunnel emerged halfway down the side of the cavern, and the cavern itself was so deep that Kate could not see the bottom or the top. A few graverobbers clung to ladders and harnesses on the opposite side, dodging swinging oil lamps and falling rocks as they grabbed on to tiny ledges and scraped their way into the sealed tombs that had been hollowed out of its walls. Each of them looked filthy and wild, and they crept like spiders through cracked openings in the rock, stripping the tombs of everything that had been buried with the dead and sending it up in wire baskets to the top.
“This is where we climb down,” said Silas, rattling a long ladder that led deep into the bottomless gloom. “You will follow me or I will leave you here and you can try to find your way back alone. I’m sure those thieves will find your bones sooner or later.”
Silas stepped confidently onto the ladder, hooking the lantern onto his belt as he descended quickly into the dark. Kate looked out over the edge. The ladder seemed old, but given the choice between trusting it and being left there alone, she would take the ladder. Artemis must have come this way. And if he could climb down that ladder, so could she.
She swung her first foot out onto a rung, then the next. The wood felt firm under her feet, and with both hands gripping white-knuckle tight, she trusted her weight to it and followed Silas down.
Each step felt like an eternity. Kate had never been afraid of heights, but this place was different. It felt as if the depth of the cavern was making her body twice as heavy, trying to pull her down faster than she wanted to go. If she could have seen the bottom it would not have been nearly so bad. Silas took the ladder two rungs at a time, taking the light farther and farther away until Kate was hunting for rungs in the dark. She tried to catch up, gaining confidence with every step. Then her foot slipped, a rung snapped, and her feet flailed. She screamed as her hands lost their grip, her fingers slid from the wood, and she fell back, plunging straight toward the distant chasm floor.
She fell down . . . down . . . trying to snatch hold of the ladder in the dark. Silas’s lantern blinded her as she passed it, and something tugged hard on her arm. Silas looked down at her, a strong hand clasped around her wrist. Kate reached up to hold on to him with her other hand, and he held her firmly, bringing her back toward the ladder. The moment she was close enough, Kate reached for the ladder and cautiously regained her footing. She clung there for a few moments, not wanting to show any weakness, before gradually continuing her descent.
Kate took each step slowly, until at last her feet touched solid ground. She misjudged the final step and stumbled back to the floor, but she was too relieved to care. She tested her wrist where Silas had grabbed her. A bruise was blossoming around the bone, and it was difficult to move her hand.
“You were lucky,” said Silas, stepping down beside her. “An inch farther and you would have been out of my reach. There are wise ways to enter a tomb cavern.