Through Stone and Sea - By Barb Hendee & J. C. Hendee Page 0,157

and their secrets . . .

Of white-clad, false elven sages . . . and their secrets . . .

Of beings of the sea and a prince believed dead.

There were moments he wished none of this had begun. It would have been so much better to slip into the guild library for the brief part of any night with Wynn, even if he spent his days hiding in some hovel. But what he had seen could not be ignored, even as he felt himself drifting at the dark edge of dormancy.

A dead prince of this foreign land appeared to have spoken to people of the sea that Chane could never have imagined. Among other puzzles, that one lingered upon him now. What did it mean? It seemed a very desperate secret, dangerous enough that the duchess might yet kill for it.

Chane found himself standing among the guild library’s shelves.

He tried to pick a first book to pull out. He knew there was one he needed to find, but could not think of what it was. When he turned to ask Wynn’s advice, he was looking at the pool through the bars of the sea tunnel’s last gate. Face-to-face, he stared at a man soaked to the skin, who reached through those bars.

A dream . . . and even within it, he wondered why.

Dormancy held no dreams for the dead. But a few times before, they had come to him.

He heard something that made him turn, waist-deep in the tunnel’s freezing water. But Wynn was not there, nor was Shade. The long darkness behind him, filling the tunnel to its round walls, seemed to twist . . . like black coils with soft glints of light.

Crushing cold . . . suffocation . . . pure darkness that brought utter silence . . .

Wynn felt stone’s chill over her whole body and couldn’t move. The pressure threatened to grind her into nothing as the heat in her flesh rapidly leached out.

She was buried alive.

In terror, she tried to scream, but her mouth couldn’t open. Even her jaw and lips wouldn’t move. Her lungs began to burn, wanting to expel used-up air.

“It will pass quickly,” someone said.

That sudden voice in the silence made her flinch in panic, and she collapsed. Her left arm felt instantly strained, but the darkness began to lighten.

“Breathe,” someone ordered in a gravelly voice. “Open your mouth and breathe, fool!”

Wynn did so, in one tearing, heaving gasp. She grew faint, but something held her up by her left wrist and wouldn’t let go.

“Do not succumb to what you feel, or it will linger!”

Wynn opened her eyes.

In the dimly lit dark, Cinder-Shard was watching her. Her left shoulder ached, and she finally realized he held her up by her wrist. The few items she’d brought lay on a damp floor of dark stone below her buckled legs. She struggled to regain her feet.

“Let go of me,” she said, but it came out hoarse and broken.

“Not until you can stand,” he answered.

Ore-Locks stepped into view, blocking off more of the surroundings.

“The first time is the worst,” he said, “though few have ever traveled this way.”

Wynn wheezed and coughed, and Ore-Locks glanced at Cinder-Shard, as if in concern. She finally planted her feet firmly on stone.

“She will recover,” Cinder-Shard said.

When he released her wrist, her arm flopped numbly against her side.

“Come for me when she is finished,” he added, stepping around her.

Wynn slowly wobbled around, still shivering, but all she saw behind her was the cave’s rough wall. Cinder-Shard was gone, and she was alone with Ore-Locks.

“Why did he . . . bother coming,” she got out between breaths, “if you’re staying?”

“I cannot yet take another with me . . . as he can.”

Wynn began to breathe normally and turned back, trying to make out her surroundings.

She found herself inside a large, slanted pocket of rough stone. The ceiling was low, but she could stand upright. And half blocked by Ore- Locks’s bulk was a pool near the cave’s left side.

There were no other openings besides the pool in the floor, its water likely held down by air pressure of the pocket itself. She had no indication of where or how far she might have come—only that she was still under the earth and near the ocean, by the smell of the water.

She froze upon seeing what waited at the cave’s far end.

Three small chests were stored in a space below a set of short stone tiers. Something very familiar lay on the