Lacuna - N.R. Walker Page 0,103

could see an insignia carved into it. Not just any insignia, but his.

A crow.

Crow couldn’t believe his eyes. “What in the blue skies . . . ?”

“Here’s another,” Tancho said, picking one more up from the dirt. “This one has a tree.”

They were old, so old, in fact . . . “Do you think these are from the Great Wars?”

“I think, yes.” Tancho inspected the Southlands’ bone blade. “Remember how Maghdlm turned Kohaku’s blade to rusted iron?”

Crow nodded, understanding dawning. “These can’t be turned.”

Tancho slid the blade into his belt. “Let’s go back.”

They went back down the short tunnel to the main path. A path that appeared too well-trod for something that hadn’t been used in centuries. “This path has been well used,” Tancho whispered.

Crow growled. “Which means Adelais lied.”

The sound of water got louder, their footsteps echoing, and Crow was certain this would not end well. Tancho slowed as the tunnel opened up into another huge underground hall, only this time the ground met a vast pool of murky blue water. It was a subterranean lake.

Crow could see three figures were lying dead near the pool’s edge, as though they’d tried to escape but didn’t get far enough. Adelais, Gabel, and Aelfflaed had been slaughtered. Huge, razor-like talon marks slashed their throats and chests. Pools of dark red made macabre haloes around them.

The scribing carved into these walls was the same as the old grand hall, and in that tomb they’d been banished to. A rune-like language Crow had never seen before he came here.

“What is this place?” Crow whispered.

“I don’t know.” Tancho nodded to the three slain elders. “But did they die protecting us? Or hiding something from us?”

“I would guess the latter. The lamps don’t add up, their count of days don’t add up.”

“Their lamps?”

“The lamps and torches are blue. Arcane light which is Maghdlm’s work.”

Before Tancho could reply, the water began to swirl and bubble. Crow took Tancho’s torch and threw it on the ground near the mauled bodies and pushed Tancho back into the darkness of the shadows along the wall.

And out of the water came five Ascii creatures. Huge, hulking, with their boar snouts and tusks, their club fists with talon nails, blue mottled skin. They snuffled and growled, sniffing the air, and Tancho’s hold on Crow’s arm tightened.

One of the creatures stopped at the corpses, sniffing, then to Crow’s abject horror, it rummaged around through the innards of poor Gabel. It riffled through and picked up a clawful of entrails, shoving them in its mouth. The other four joined in, trawling through the other two bodies, just as Asagi had said. Like pigs at a trough.

Tancho buried his face into Crow’s back, gripping his shirt, and Crow stuffed his hand in his mouth to stop from gagging. He daren’t make a sound.

When the Ascii had had their fill, one of them bellowed that horrendous noise and they scampered up the corridor leading to the old hall. Crow took some quick breaths, loud in the silence. “They came out of the water,” Tancho whispered. “As Asagi said they did.”

“But how?” Crow couldn’t get his head around it.

Tancho’s eyes went wide in the dark. “If there are doorways on the seabed or underwater. There’s no reason to think all of those ancient compasses are on land. This is how there was more than one hundred. Once they got here, they found a way in.”

Crow shuddered. Underwater doorways? His quota for the absurd was well past reached. “We’ll deal with those later. We need to stop Maghdlm first.”

“The new grand hall,” Tancho said. “We need to get upstairs.”

Crow agreed, but it meant running through the old hall, taking that spiral staircase, running off through the stables and back through the entrance. It meant being exposed. “Oh, how I wish there was a magick doorway that took us up there. I don’t want to think about how many of those monsters we need to go through.”

“Stay beside me,” Tancho said. “We’re stronger if we fight together.”

Crow lifted Tancho’s chin and kissed him. “Don’t you dare die.”

Tancho met his gaze, serious despite the curve of his lips. “Not now, not when I have so much to live for.”

Crow kissed him one more time for good luck, and they ran back up the corridor to the old hall. They clung to the shadows, though they couldn’t see anyone or anything, it was still best to stay hidden. “None of them are down here guarding the old compass,” Tancho whispered.

“Perhaps