be technically dead,’ Terez said. ‘We might be spirits now.’
‘That’s a possibility,’ Lileem conceded. ‘Strange. I’m not that bothered.’
‘I wonder what Mima and the others are thinking,’ Terez said. ‘Will they have guessed what happened?’
‘I think so,’ Lileem replied. ‘Mima will guess. I said a few things to her recently.’
Terez wrinkled up his nose: an unrestrained childish expression. ‘You know, I’ve never felt this good in my skin before. Nothing is uncomfortable and my mind is just – hell, how do I describe it? – just peaceful.’
‘Perhaps we are dead, then.’
Terez nodded. ‘Yeah.’ He smiled. ‘What a way to go!’
They did not feel a change of temperature on their skins, but they knew that night was falling, because the light faded in the cavern. Terez led the way back outside and as before the brilliant sky enacted its otherworld carnival overhead. Most importantly, they could now see they had wandered into an area where, even if creatures no longer inhabited it, at one time they had created buildings. An enormous structure of obsidian rose from the sand at the end of the valley. It was roughly pyramidal in shape, and many turrets, towers and open air walkways clustered all over it. The structure was not just an edifice; it was a mountain, carved from the glassy black rock. Beyond it, lay the ocean: a vast expanse of metallic water that shimmered with the reflections of stars.
The gates to the building, or perhaps city, were dwarfed by the size of the structure above them, but when Lileem and Terez reached them, they found the entrance was at least fifty feet high. Doors of obsidian stood open and sand had blown onto the floor beyond.
Inside was a vast chamber, with many dark entrances leading off it. It was empty but for a seated black statue, so huge it was impossible to see its face from below. Each of its feet was the size of a modest nayati. Was this a king or a god? It reminded Lileem of her vision of the Tigron. To walk around it would take a long time. Lileem touched the stone of the dais: it towered a good ten feet above her head. ‘This is not what we’re looking for,’ she said. ‘We need to find the entrance to the underground place.’
‘Maybe it’s beneath here,’ Terez said. ‘We should look.’
‘It’ll take us a hundred years to explore all those passages,’ Lileem said.
‘The way I feel, that won’t be a problem.’
‘Time might not exist here, not in the same way we know it.’
‘Exactly.’
It felt strange not to eat and drink, because those little rituals provided much of what anchored you to reality, to mundane life, to progression of the hours. Neither did Lileem or Terez feel the need to sleep. They explored the building for what seemed like days, and the sun did not rise again. There was no furniture, no other decoration or carvings, no indication of who had built the place or why: just endless chambers and corridors that would sometimes lead them out onto a balcony that overlooked the endless ocean. There were lots of stairways leading up, but none leading down. If there was a netherworld to this strange building, it was difficult to find.
Eventually, they found their way back to the main chamber and went outside. A strange purple hue was cast over the land, and the stars were dimmer, which perhaps indicated the sun was about to rise again.
‘How long have we been here?’ Lileem wondered aloud. ‘Weeks, months?’
These were questions that did not require an answer. In their own realm, more time might have passed, or none at all. ‘We should investigate around the edge of the building,’ Terez said.
Not once had either of them suggested to the other that they should try to return to their own reality. They were consumed by the desire to find what they’d come to find. Beneath the ground lay a secret that was waiting for them to discover it. Sometimes they could hear it whispering to them in wordless songs.
The sun, when it rose, was not the same one they’d seen before. It was far dimmer: a violet globe surrounded by a crimson nimbus. It dyed the sky a magnificent imperial colour and at the edge of its influence, the jewels of the heavens still shone. It was this sun that revealed the entrance to the hidden place that Terez and Lileem were seeking.
In the light of this new sun, the world appeared different.