mage replied. “I cannot therefore answer your question. Trust your instincts here.”
Her instincts told her to turn around and head back up the stairs, leaving the god-born and the Kings’ Swords to their exploration.
“These stairs are old,” Meralonne continued, as she forced herself to ignore his advice. “I would have said, if asked, that they predate the Empire of the Twin Kings.”
“And the Blood Barons?”
“Even so. I do not think they now lead to dungeons.”
“Did they, once, in your opinion?”
He was silent.
She continued down the stairs. “If it were Summer,” she asked, “would it be so damn cold all of the time?”
To her surprise, he laughed. His laughter bounced off bare stone to either side; Shadow’s growl deepened. She understood why; there was something in Meralonne’s laughter that felt diametrically opposed to mirth or amusement.
* * *
To her surprise, and to her great relief, the stairs came to an end. The flat, smooth gray of descending stone gave way to a floor that was not much different; the walls continued to either side. Magelights in ornate brass claws were spaced evenly three quarters of the way up the walls; the ceilings were high, but flat. Jewel placed a hand on Shadow’s head and left it there because the cat was warm. He radiated heat.
The Kings’ Swords could now be seen in the distance, and Jewel, mindful of dignity, closed the gap between them as quickly as she could. If the stairs had been long, and the descent deep, the hall was shorter. It ended in an arch that was a carved relief protruding from otherwise featureless stone. No runes, in any language, graced it.
To the right and left of this arch, two similar arches stood; they, however, opened into something other than gray stone. The Kings’ Swords separated, standing with their backs to either side of the hall, facing outward. Jewel, Shadow, and Sigurne passed between them, followed by the rest of the Terafin party.
Only when she stood between the two open arches did Jewel stop. She glanced to the left and right, and saw that the Kings and the Exalted currently occupied the room on the left. She wanted to ask Sigurne how drastic the changes in these rooms were, because the answer might tell her how the rooms had once been used. Instead, she passed beneath the arch of the leftmost room, entering it.
It was illuminated from within, and the light was bright and even; there were no obvious magestones along the walls, none embedded, as was the current spare style, in the ceiling. The ceiling itself was high, but unlike the one that capped the hall, it wasn’t flat. The Kings stood in what Jewel assumed, upon entry, was the center of the room; the Exalted were not far behind. They were silent as they watched her enter.
The walls were not flat, bare stone; they were, like the back wall of the Hall of Wise Counsel, intricately carved. Unlike the wall in the Hall of Wise Counsel, none of the reliefs in this room shed the ambient glow that spoke of enchantment. Like the Hall, these walls were adorned by figures who seemed to be emerging from the wall itself. Some were faint, a hint of clothing or armor, a slight protrusion of hand; their faces were delineated by nose, chin, eyelids. But others were carved so completely they almost appeared to be standing statues set as close to the wall as possible. Were it not for the continuity of the relief, they might appear to be entirely separate from it.
The Crowns watched as Jewel passed them and began to walk around the room’s perimeter, the great cat by her side. Avandar followed behind, his eye on the panorama of figures that had been carved here by—it appeared—the hands of the earth itself. Teller chose to stand beside Sigurne in silence. He wasn’t watching her; his gaze was absorbed, whole, by the room itself, and judging from his expression, was likely to remain that way unless the room suddenly disgorged a demon—or worse.
The floor was of stone, but it wasn’t gray; it was a dull copper color. It was flat and smooth, except where runes had been engraved across its seamless surface. She glanced at the partial figures as she walked, and stopped once: she recognized the woman carved in stone. Almost without thought, she lifted her hand, her fingers stopping a hair’s breadth from the hands of the figure itself.
“Ariane,” she said, the word rising slightly,