Lacuna - N.R. Walker Page 0,84

cracked. “—those awful things came through.”

Crow was out of patience. “I suggest you start talking without the riddles and the tears because we are out of time. And to be blunt, I’m not sure who to trust.”

“You can trust us,” a deep voice said in the darkness. Gabel and Adelais walked into the light, and every blade, spear, arrow, and axe was now aimed at them. They raised their hands. “Only we three survived.”

“The Grand Elder, the Historian and the Truth Seer,” Crow said. “Three elders from nine?”

“Four,” Tancho corrected. “Maghdlm yet lives.”

Aelfflaed, Adelais, and Gabel all sneered. “She’s no elder. She’s a traitor,” Aelfflaed said as if the words tasted like poison. “I am a truth seer, as you say, but I saw nothing in her. She tricked me all these years. She somehow hid her truth.”

“From all of us,” Adelais said, her hand on Aelfflaed’s arm. “She hid the truth and betrayed all of us.”

Crow wasn’t sure what to make of their display, and he sure as the blue skies above didn’t know whom to trust.

Gabel gave a nervous smile. “We are very glad to see you. All of you. And from all four lands, especially. You have come to help, yes?”

“To help with what?” Crow asked. “We don’t know much of anything.”

Adelais straightened and raised her chin, her eyes defensive. “Please tell me it was you who sent through those smoke bombs.”

“Yes,” Samiel said coolly. “Though it seems they were wasted.”

“Oh no, they were very much put to good use.” Aelfflaed waved the lamp to one side, the arc of light showing several large bodies on the ground. Everyone flinched, and Crow put himself between the bodies and Tancho. “They’re not dead.”

“No, they’re not,” Samiel replied. “But they will sleep for hours. How are you three not affected?”

“We’ve been hiding in the archīvum. The entrance is that way.” Gabel pointed down toward where Aelfflaed had run from. “Six of them kept guard of this compass. They would take shifts of several hours. We don’t think the others above ground know some of their men are down.”

“How long until the next guards come down?” Crow asked.

“Four hours, maybe,” Adelais replied. “It’s hard to tell. Time has been . . . strange.”

“Strange?” Crow asked. “How so?”

“We don’t know if it’s because we have been underground all this time, but we have lost track of days.” She made a face. “We think.”

Maybe a few hours. At least they had some time. “We need light,” Crow said. “Lamps and torches. Where are they?”

“We snuffed them to stay hidden,” Adelais said, sheepishly. “These creatures, they don’t see too well in the dark.”

“Creatures?” Soko asked.

Aelfflaed nodded and walked over to where the six bodies were lying sprawled on the floor. The light was blue so it played tricks on the eyes, and Crow could see they wore scraps of leather as armour, barely covering their bulging muscles and huge hand-like claws. And the stench was putrid. They stank like a rancid butcher’s block. But their faces . . .

They had a line of ridges down their foreheads, higher and wider cheekbones, and mottled and pallid skin. It was hard to tell because of the dark, and the blue light made them appear two weeks’ dead, but the word creatures seemed an apt description.

Crow had heard Asagi’s description, but he never really believed it. Not that he doubted Asagi’s word, it just seemed too absurd to be real. But here they were . . .

“Where on earth have they come from?” Elmwood wondered out loud.

“Not this world,” Crow said.

Gabel came back with torches and, using Aelfflaed’s lamp, quickly lit them up. Light crept along the floor and walls, dissolving shadows as it went, and Crow could make out more of the huge room they were in.

It was, or had once been, a cave some two hundred feet long, perhaps eighty feet wide. The ceiling must have been a hundred feet high, the walls of dark grey stone carved by nothing but time, but there were inscriptions in an old language scratched into the rock.

The floor was stone also, but for the huge compass they stood upon. Not tiles like the other compasses Crow had seen, but these were stones, huge and worn, yet he could make out the directions. They were more runes than letters, and he had to wonder at the age of this place.

Tancho seemed to gather his wits a lot sooner than Crow and slid his katana home in its scabbard.