darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,107

the lords of judgment. But then, I have known for a very long time that my next life will be one of suffering. Perhaps my next several lives—I have much to answer for.

Kelos led us onward to the city then, taking hidden paths that he had scouted out long ago, and bringing us undetected to his carefully concealed fallback. He was Kelos, and his plans had revolved around the Son of Heaven for more years than I had lived, so the location and preparation were perfect.

Rather than co-opt a space in some structure made by man, and have to deal with the potential hazards of unexpected renovation or other chance exposing a hidey-hole he intended to use for decades, he had bored a deep cave in the bluffs above the city. There he had hidden the entrance beneath an overhanging shelf of rock and built a counterweighted stone door. The mechanism allowed it to pivot outward only when two of Namara’s swords were shoved full length into crevices in the stone and levered just so in the same moment that a Shade slipped into the depths and tripped a complex catch.

“I hadn’t planned on having to house so many for any length of time,” he whispered, as he strained to move the block—it was designed so that even with the counterweights, it would take someone as strong as Kelos to move it from the outside. “We’ll run short of supplies if we stay more than a few weeks, though we should have room enough and more.” He sheathed his swords. “Now, move smartly, the door closes by itself after a few seconds.”

Suiting action to words, he extended his arms in front of him and slid face-first into the black gullet of the cave. At my wave, Roric went next, followed by Maryam, and the others, with me playing the part of the last duckling. The door was already slowly closing when I launched myself into the opening. The space beyond was narrow, and low, barely larger than a crawlway. The floor had been polished to a fine degree and it angled steeply downward to make something that was much more of a chute than a tunnel. I quickly found myself picking up speed as I slid along.

It reminded me unpleasantly of a trip the Durkoth had sent me on just a few short months before, during the matter of the Smoldering Flame. Then, too, I had been sliding through stone and darkness on a trip to someplace unknown, though this one turned out much shorter—perhaps seventy feet in all—and the darkness didn’t last. Right before its end, the angle of the chute shallowed and then reversed itself, so that I came to a stop a few feet short of the opening. From there it was a short scramble up into the main cave.

Someone had opened a bright magelantern by that time, and I used the light to examine the structure of the chute. Hand and footholds were carved into deep channels along the sides, making a ladder to climb back up without ruining the slide effect coming in. I hadn’t noticed them on my way down because of a raised lip similar to what you would find on a children’s slide between the sliding surface and the handholds.

The hideaway was enormous, a barrel-vaulted space perhaps fifteen feet across by fifty long, with the floor entrance near the middle of one side. With only the one magelight to provide illumination at the moment, the ends of the vault were in deep shadow. It reminded me of the sort of cellar you might find under the palace at Dan Eyre, or one of the main channels in the sewers of Tien, not a one-man fallback. Even stranger, I couldn’t see the mark of a single tool. Every surface looked as smooth and polished as the flat of a finely wrought sword. Where there were edges, like around the lip of the slide by which we had entered, they were carefully rounded and almost organic looking.

“This is Durkoth work,” I said. “The stone was persuaded rather than mined.” I ran a hand along the wall and couldn’t feel the slightest irregularity. “It wasn’t done by one of their lesser craftspeople, either. I’ve never seen stone shaped so neatly. And this place is huge!”

Kelos nodded. “I once salvaged the honor of an Uthudor. The details aren’t important, but the result is that he owed me a very serious debt. This was how he repaid