the two planes made a wedge of space, nearly impenetrable by the light of the torch, as though the ground were being eaten by shadows at the back edge. Above those shadows was a patch of writing.
“Maud.”
The Young Dread moved silently across the rough floor into the pool of light. Small figures had been carved on the back wall. No, not carved, John saw, melted. The edges of the figures were smooth and rounded, and streams of molten sandstone had dripped from the wall to pool on the floor, where they’d hardened into glassy puddles. The inscription read:
91
30
57
22
PSDS
“What is PSDS?” John asked.
The Young Dread shook her head, telling him she didn’t know and also brushing his question aside. “There’s something there,” she said quietly.
She pointed to the low, dark place where the sloping wall met the ground. Her eyes were much better than his at seeing in the dark, and John could discern nothing in the shadows at first. But when he knelt down and held the flame closer, the light revealed two human figures, wedged as far as they could be wedged against the back wall.
“Oh God,” he whispered.
One was a woman, judging by the hair, though she’d been dead so long and was so decayed that she was little more than bones and the dusty remains of dried flesh among dark clothing and cape. His first thought was of his mother. Catherine had been kept alive by machinery in a barn on the estate for years after she’d been disrupted. At the end, with her sunken eyes and transparent skin, she hadn’t looked much better than this corpse. The sight of it brought memories of the helplessness he’d felt when he’d seen her that way.
John steadied his mind. He was not helpless now.
He ducked low and crawled closer to study the bodies in the flickering light. There was no smell of death; the corpses were dry. The second figure was smaller, and perhaps had been dead longer, though it was difficult to tell. The clothing on the smaller one was more like a pile of dirty rags.
“Was that one a child, do you think?” John asked when Maud had crawled up beside him.
“It’s hard to say,” the Young Dread answered.
John didn’t want to touch the remains, but Maud had no such qualms. She reached out and picked up the withered left arm of the woman and pushed up the crumbling sleeve of the corpse’s shirt.
“Look,” she said quietly.
John leaned closer with the torch. There was a discoloration on the leathery skin of the wrist. It was a brand in the shape of an athame. The Young repeated the procedure on the other arm, and John saw a different brand on the woman’s right wrist, this one in the shape of a bear.
“Seekers used to brand themselves a second time with the sign of their house,” Maud told him. “That tradition seems to have died out in recent years.”
John could guess why Seekers like Briac Kincaid hadn’t branded themselves with their house insignia. They lived with stolen athames, and it might look strange to have a different emblem on your arm than the one on the athame you were using.
He looked at the female body again.
“The journal said the athame was last known to be here, with a Seeker called Delyth Priddy and possibly a companion. Is this Delyth? And is that her companion?”
They turned their attention to the smaller corpse. The hair had been short and dark, the clothes gray and rough. Maud peeled up shreds of cloth to examine the body’s wrists. The skin was more decayed than the other corpse’s skin had been, and there were no brands.
“Not a Seeker, then,” John said. He was trying not to think too much about the withering skin with the bones poking through, so much like his own mother’s collarbone and jaw the last time he’d seen her.
Maud had turned the small body’s leathery skull toward the light, revealing dirty, scratched teeth inside a dead grimace.
“Not a Seeker,” she agreed, leaning away from the bodies. “This one is…more like those boys we saw on the Scottish estate. Their teeth were dirty like this.”
This conclusion appeared to affect her deeply. She sat back on her heels and stared at the smaller corpse for some time.
“How long do you think they’ve been dead?” John asked.
The Young Dread shook her head slowly. “That is hard to say. Dry desert air, away from the elements. They died years ago, but I cannot say