Wynn’s boot toe caught on something in the dark.
As she toppled sidelong, her shoulder struck another broad outcrop. When she recoiled, finally regaining her footing, she squinted at the dark shape. For an instant, it looked too much like a rough mockery of a Lhärgnæ’s false tomb.
Wynn’s jaw locked, and the closer she looked, the more every muscle tensed. There was a resemblance.
At the top of the wide protrusion, it narrowed over rounded “shoulders” to the bulk of a “head” melding into the tip of a descending stalactite. Wynn shoved her hand into her pocket, digging for her crystal.
“No!” Ore- Locks said—and his thick fingers closed on her wrist.
Wynn spun toward him and lurched back, bumping straight into the calcified dark form.
“Get your hand off me!”
Ore-Locks’s grip remained, and she hadn’t managed to grasp her cold lamp crystal. Cinder-Shard loomed into sight beside her.
“Do not bring light in here!”
Wynn barely made out his scowl in the dark. Ore-Locks slowly released his grip and held up both open hands.
“Do not disturb their rest,” he added.
Wynn glanced frantically between them and then into the dark forest of glistening columns. She spotted at least six more protrusions nearby but couldn’t see farther, not even back to the path they’d left. Her gaze fell on one hulk half-hidden beyond a stalagmite’s upward spike.
Pale phosphorescence illuminated its features.
The female’s eyes were perhaps open, though there was no way to be certain. Even her clothing was nothing more than ripples of calcification. She gripped something in her hands, long, narrow, and slightly slanted. Beneath clumped mineral deposits coating its whole length, it could have been a thick staff. The buildup had turned her hands into lumps where they held it.
Wynn saw other dark shapes about the cavern’s silent stillness. Comprehension lessened her tension but didn’t bring ease.
She was standing among the dead.
Was this what it meant to be taken into stone? No coffins or even tombs, the Hassäg’kreigi entombed their honored dead in stone itself. Left here for years, decades, perhaps more, they would become one with the earth and stone their people cherished. But the number of them was disturbing at a guess.
In the rush when she was locked away in the Chamber of the Fallen, she’d passed too quickly through at least two other such places. Wynn turned all the way around, a wild notion rising in her thoughts.
“Is Feather-Tongue here?” she breathed, about to backtrack and search.
Ore-Locks blocked her way.
“Bedzâ’kenge is in his temple,” he answered. “As are all Bäynæ who live on among us.”
Wynn’s eyes narrowed. That was impossible, though she now knew she wouldn’t find Feather-Tongue’s remains here, Dhredze was the only known seatt still in existence, but likely not as old as the mythical war. By the tales of Feather-Tongue’s life, he’d lived at a time when there were others, perhaps back beyond the war and into the Forgotten History. This left her wondering about the great statues of the Bäynæ in their temples.
Did those statues truly hold the bones of the Thänæ who’d become the dwarves’ Eternals? Or was Ore- Locks’s claim just a spiritual metaphor?
Wynn looked once more among the honored dead slowly turning to stone through the ages. She wished she hadn’t sworn to keep all of this to herself.
Cinder-Shard pulled her onward, and then stopped before the cavern’s back wall. It was so dark that she couldn’t be certain, but there didn’t appear to be any door or opening. Was it hidden, like the one the duchess had used to come here?
Cinder-Shard turned to her. “You have audacity. Do you also have courage?”
She didn’t know what he meant, but she answered, “Yes.”
Cinder-Shard held out his hand. “Take it.”
Wynn did so with slight hesitation—then panicked as she realized what would happen. She had seen Cinder-Shard force the wraith into the wall, perhaps trying to entomb it in stone. He knew what had called to Ore- Locks and had still taken the man in. And she had blindly gone alone with both of them.
It would be so easy to be rid of her. No one would ever know what became of her.
Cinder-Shard’s face sank into the damp wall.
Wynn stopped breathing as the texture of glittering rock spread down his hair and across his back. She tried to jerk free but was dragged toward the wall. A sharp voice rose behind her.
“Do not breathe!” Ore- Locks warned. “Not until you hear him speak to you!”
Wynn sucked in a breath and her world went black and cold.
Chane hung near the