Through Stone and Sea - By Barb Hendee & J. C. Hendee Page 0,178
In turn, she placed it over the gate’s white metal oval.
Chane heard grating as the bolt slid open. When the duchess removed the comb, he saw a small pellet of white metal on its underside. She had barely begun to open the gate when . . .
“Valhachkasej’â!” Wynn cursed under her breath.
Chane glanced at her. She was staring in fury at the white metal lock.
Wynn closed her eyes and shook her head. She stepped forward and jerked the gate open, muttering angrily under her breath.
Chane had no idea what she had said, though her tone was full of venom. Whatever bothered her, it could wait.
Shade was about to jump off the ledge and swim across, but Chane held her back with a raised hand. He and she had to take the rear for when the wraith finally followed. And it would.
Chane motioned the duchess and captain into the tunnel after Wynn.
Sau’ilahk lingered in the outer passage, three strides from the chamber’s door. Then noise echoed up the passage from behind him. He quickly sank into the passage’s wall.
He had fed only a little, not nearly enough. Killing so quickly did not allow for a proper meal. But the suddenness of his tactics, the helplessness fostered in Wynn and her companions, was a gain in the balance. He would give them a little longer to wonder, let uncertainty feed their fears. Not knowing when and where he would reappear would consume them. And a body lying dead among them was more fuel for that fire.
Bit by bit, he would break Wynn before he even touched her. A grip on her, or even the duchess, and the staff would come next. No one would risk either life if he demanded it in exchange. Once the crystal was shattered, he could drag off his hostage, and slip into hiding. He would learn where the texts lay before he fed more properly.
And his prey had nowhere to run.
A brief glimpse into the adjoining chamber had shown no other exit. The gate beyond the pool was shut, an oval of white metal in place of its lock. As with the portal above the shaft into the underworld, at a guess, only the Stonewalkers could open either. Otherwise those trapped within the chamber would have already fled.
But night was slipping away too quickly, and he had to finish this.
Sau’ilahk blinked, materializing before the opening to the second chamber—the last place he had appeared, and so the last place they would be watching for him.
The pool chamber was empty.
He rushed into the adjoining room, and on through a rear opening he had not seen the first time. It was only a bedroom with no other way out. He flew straight through the wall, back to the pool’s side.
The chamber was still empty—and he looked toward the shut gate at the pool’s back.
Sau’ilahk sank halfway through the floor as he angled down into the pool and approached the iron bars. Distant footfalls echoed up the tunnel.
How could they have opened the way?
Wynn had eluded him yet again—and she was running for the dawn.
Wynn slogged down the tunnel, seawater sloshing inside her boots. Once they’d waded beyond the pool’s outer reservoir, the tunnel floor was clear for as far as her cold lamp crystal’s light could reach. Fortunately the tide was either falling or hadn’t fully risen. But amid fear, she was fuming inside at what she’d seen the duchess do.
Reine’s comb had a small white metal nub on its back that tripped the gate’s lock.
All the struggles that she, Chane, and Shade had gone through to get in hadn’t been necessary. She’d had a key all along. The tip of her elven quill, gifted by Gleann in the lands of the an’Croan, was made of Chein’âs metal.
All she would’ve had to do, it seemed, was touch it to any white metal oval in a gate.
Wynn cursed under her breath again. Once they were far enough down the tunnel, she handed the cold lamp crystal to Tristan. The duchess took the lead with the captain behind her, holding the crystal high so its light spread ahead and behind. Wynn fell back with Chane and Shade.
She felt like a coward.
Others had stayed behind to face the wraith instead of her. There was no telling what had happened to Chuillyon. Much as she disliked him, suspected him, it worried her that he’d never made it to the prince’s chamber—nor had Cinder-Shard or the other Stonewalkers.