the Apotheosis.”
“And the more time Murat has to sail away with the Sandstorm,” said Morgant.
“That,” said Caina, “and if you cast a warding spell, at least some of the nagataaru will be able to sense it. The ward will keep them away, but they won’t let us slip past them again. They’ll surround us.”
“What about the summit of the hill?” said Annarah. “We’ve passed the corridor leading to the spiral stairs a dozen times, and we’ve seen none of the undead there.”
“That’s probably because we can’t get away from the summit,” said Caina. “It’s too steep.”
“So the nagataaru won’t follow us there,” said Annarah.
“Yes,” said Morgant. “We couldn’t possibly be that stupid, could we?”
Caina let out a sound that was either a quiet laugh or a tired sigh. She did look exhausted. The last day had been tiring, and he supposed the last time she had enjoyed a proper rest had been…oh, probably the day they had left Drynemet. Annarah looked just as tired. Of course, Morgant was tired, but he was over two hundred years old. Tired became a relative concept at that point, and whatever the djinn of the Court of the Azure Sovereign had done to extend his life meant that he didn’t need that much sleep. The two younger women needed far more rest than he did.
And they were so young, weren’t they? Caina, for all her boldness and cleverness, was only in her early twenties. Hardly more than a child, really, especially compared to Morgant. Annarah was a hundred and eighty years old, but from her perspective, a century and a half of those years had passed in a few moments.
For a moment Morgant felt something almost…paternal? Was that it?
He really must be getting old.
“Maybe we are,” said Caina. “If we pass out on the floor the nagataaru will find us quickly. Let’s go back to the summit.”
She led the way through the silent Tomb, up the spiral stairs, and back to the summit of Pyramid Isle’s central hill. The hotter, humid air of the jungle struck Morgant across the face like a wet towel as he stepped upon the bone-strewn hilltop, the ground still scorched and scarred from the colossal spells that Kharnaces and Callatas had flung at each other. The sun was going down to the west, painting the sea the color of blood. The dead jungle covered the island like a thick coat of black mold.
“When all that starts rotting,” said Morgant, “it’s going to smell foul.”
“It’s so dry,” said Annarah. “If it catches fire…” She blinked several times. “What about the Hellfire in Kharnaces’s trophy room? Perhaps we can use that against the undead warriors.”
“I’ve thought about it,” said Caina, “but I can’t see how. Those amphorae hold enough Hellfire that opening them to the air will make them explode, and the corridors of the Tomb are narrow enough to amplify the blast. We’d be caught in the explosion.”
“I suppose it would be a quick way to go,” said Morgant. “Quicker than some.” He had seen a lot of people die in a variety of ways, but he hadn’t seen that many people incinerated in a Hellfire explosion, and every single time had been with Caina.
Caina stared at him so long that Morgant wondered if she was actually considering it. Then she stepped to the side, walking past him, and he realized she was looking over the edge of the cliff. She paced the perimeter of the hilltop, staring down at the dead jungle, and then rejoined them and shook her head.
“We can’t climb down,” she said. “The slopes are too sleep. I might be able to manage it by myself if I had the right equipment, but I don’t, and one slip would be fatal.”
“But there are no nagataaru up here,” said Annarah. “At least for now.”
“No,” said Caina.
“We do have an abundance of old bones,” said Morgant. “Perhaps we could light a signal fire.”
“Murat wouldn’t care,” said Caina. “He’s not stupid enough to approach the island. He knows what kind of things live here. We have to get to the beach, and we have to get to our boat.” She stared over the jungle for a moment. “But I have no idea how.”
“Rest for a while,” said Morgant. “We still have a few days before Murat departs, and even if a burst of genius explodes inside that cracked mind of yours, we can’t blunder around the jungle in the dark.”
“Cracked mind?” said Caina, though her voice didn’t have its