wonders too, I imagine.” He extended a hand towards the unremarkable grey building Luralyn had called a Sepulchre. “Would you like to see another?”
Vaelin’s eyes lingered on the black rectangle of the Sepulchre’s entrance, knowing with certainty that if he still possessed his song, it would be very loud at this moment. “Isn’t that a holy place?” he asked. “A place where your gods reside?”
He saw Obvar stiffen at this, perhaps in indignation at some perceived blasphemy, although Vaelin suspected it owed more to his fear of Kehlbrand’s reaction. The Mestra-Skeltir, however, merely laughed.
“My people have but one god now,” he said, starting towards the Sepulchre. “The healer can stay here and tend to those scratches on Obvar’s back. Our womenfolk tend to get overexcited on nights like this.”
Vaelin stared hard at Obvar, but if the hulking champion saw any threat in it, he failed to bridle, merely shrugging with a placid smile.
“You have another needle handy, I assume?” Vaelin asked Sherin in Realm Tongue.
“Two, actually,” she said, eyeing Obvar, who had returned his attention to his flask.
“Good. Don’t hesitate should the need arise.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Kehlbrand paused at the Sepulchre entrance to strike flint to a torch propped against the outer wall. “Not long ago,” he commented, extending his arm so the torchlight illuminated the interior, “it would have been death for one not of the Hast to step within the circle, never mind approach the Sepulchre of the Unseen. One of the priests’ many stupidities. For a faith to grow, it must be open to all. I have guided exiles, outlaws and artisans here. Even southland captives wise enough to give me their allegiance and join the ranks of the Redeemed. All have left enlightened, filled with devotion to the Darkblade and his sacred mission. How will you leave, I wonder?”
He stepped inside without waiting for an answer. Vaelin followed to find himself confronted by a rectangular hole in the ground and a series of stone steps descending into the absolute gloom below. Kehlbrand started down without pause, his torch soon fading to a small yellow ball and obliging Vaelin to hurry so as not to lose his footing in the dark.
“This place once sat beneath the Great Tor,” Kehlbrand told him, voice echoing long in the slanted tunnel. “Revealed after generations of labour as we dug away ever more rock to harvest the ore it held. These stairs are not our creation, however, begging the question of how they came to be constructed under a lump of rock that must have stood here since the world’s birthing. Clearly, whoever crafted them expected it to be found one day.”
The play of the torch’s glow on the walls abruptly disappeared as the stairs came to an end, Kehlbrand leading him into a large chamber. The air was musty and unpleasant, possessing a familiar sting of decay.
“Sorry about the smell,” Kehlbrand said. “Never seems to fade. Still . . .” He paused, lowering the torch to reveal a withered corpse on the chamber floor, “this lot stank just as badly in life.”
Vaelin judged the body to be perhaps four years since death. It was not completely denuded of flesh, the skin blackened with corruption, and teeth grinning from flaked and ragged lips. The cause of his end was easy to discern in the sundered rib cage and sternum, a single stroke from a long-edged blade delivered with impressive force. Vaelin’s gaze settled on one of the bisected ribs, jagged and sharp, sharp enough to pierce flesh. Kill him and then what? he asked himself. Fight my way through tens of thousands of enraged followers with Sherin in tow?
“I had Obvar give him a quick death, finding myself impressed by his bravery at the end,” Kehlbrand said, Vaelin forcing his gaze away from the jagged rib to regard yet more corpses. They lay close to the walls of the chamber in a disordered, often dismembered state that told of a massacre. They had all plainly been left where they fell with no regard to whatever death rituals these people might observe.
“But I didn’t feel so kindly disposed to him,” Kehlbrand added, the glow of his torch falling upon a skull lying apart from the other bodies, the light drawing a gleam from a patch of revealed bone. “Behold,” he said in a tone of mock reverence, “the Mestra-Dirhmar of the Stahlhast, last priest of the Unseen.”
He crouched to touch a contemplative finger to the skull, voice becoming thoughtful. “I often