‘Well, that’s just delightful. I’m sure if he wasn’t already dead, he’d be thrilled to hear it.’
Another voice: grating, simpering, unpleasant. She frowned immediately, her eyelids flittering open. The face she recognised: angular and narrow, like a rat’s, except more obnoxious. His wasn’t entirely concerned, his frown not particularly sympathetic.
‘Denaos,’ she hissed. Her voice was a croak on dry lips.
‘Oh, good. You remember my name. Everything else upstairs working?’ He tapped her temple with a finger. ‘Nothing feel loose? Leaking?’ He waved a hand in front of her. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’
‘However many as will fit up your nose if you don’t get away from me,’ she snarled, slapping at his appendage. She rose from the stones beneath her, head pounding with the blood that rushed to it. ‘What happened?’
‘So, you are whole in the mind, right? That question was just your natural stupidity?’ He sneered and gestured down a dark, drowned hall. ‘Just listen, nit.’
She didn’t have to strain her ears; even weakened as they were, the distant furore sounded violently close. There was the sound of weapons clattering to the floor, harsh and croaking war cries mingling. Mostly, there was the screaming: loud and sporadic, flowing into a continuous river of agony that flooded into her ears and filled her mind like a bubbling pot.
She winced, folded her ears over themselves. They ached terribly; why did they hurt so bad? With a pained expression, she reached up and rubbed them gently. Her horror only grew at the flecks of dried crimson that crumbled out into her palms.
‘Ah, yes,’ she muttered, remembering. ‘Screaming.’
‘Plenty of it,’ Denaos confirmed. ‘So, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to do this nice and quietly.’
‘Do . . . what?’
Denaos rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘I’d like to get out of here without having anything stuffed inside me that I didn’t put there.’ He eyed her warily. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? Because I’m starting to think this might be easier if you were dead.’
‘Get out of here?’
Kataria looked over her shoulder. The great stone slab loomed at the end of the hall, the cracks in its grey face made haughty, shadowy grins against the emerald torchlight. It was mocking her, she realised, as she recalled what had happened. As she recalled who lay beyond it.
‘We aren’t going anywhere,’ she muttered, rising to her feet. Her bones groaned in protest. She ignored them, as she did the throbbing of her ears, the agony of her body. ‘Not without Lenk.’
‘I’m sure he appreciates the sentiment.’ Denaos crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. ‘However, given the fact that he’s behind Silf knows how much solid stone and we’re out here and . . . you know, alive, he probably wouldn’t hold it against us.’
She ignored him, collected her bow and quiver from puddles of salt and slung them over her shoulder. With equal contempt for the limp she walked with, she trudged to the stone and ran her fingers down it.
‘It’s rather large, if you hadn’t noticed,’ Denaos muttered. ‘And thick. I checked.’
She looked over her shoulder at him with an even stare.
‘Admittedly, with not much care.’ He sighed. ‘There was the issue of the half-dead shict to attend to.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘But you’re up. You’re moving about. Whatever else is down here is distracted, thus leaving us a fairly good opportunity to do that activity I enjoy so much where I don’t get my head chewed off.’
‘You could have run already,’ she replied, turning back to the stone.
‘I stand a better chance with you watching my back.’
‘And we’ll stand an even better chance with Lenk watching both our backs. Help me look for it.’
‘For what?’
‘A switch . . . a lever . . . something that moves this thing, I don’t know. You’re supposed to be good with these things, aren’t you?’
‘With hopeless situations?’ He shook his head. ‘Only by virtue of experience. If there was anything that could move that thing, I’d have found it. The only chance you have at this point is to bash it down with your ugly face.’ He sneered. ‘Granted, while it seems tempting . . .’
His voice faded into another babbling tangent, easily ignored as she pressed her ear against the rock. The noises were faint: scuffling, splashing, something loud and violent. Through it, though, there was a familiar, if fleeting, sound.
He’s alive.
At least, he sounded alive to her. It was difficult to tell; what she