Chapter 17 #3
Sagam finished crossing the room to where the wall had been the day before, but when he lifted his lantern, it revealed only a gaping hole in the wall, a tunnel that must have been hidden behind the stone wall.
A whisper of steam came in through it, bringing with it that horrible stench.
The room heated, and soon the bodies would begin to decompose, making it almost impossible to enter.
Tallu stood in the center of the room, frowning as he looked from one side to the other.
The Dogs were arrayed around him, and one lifted his lantern, examining one of the corpses hanging from the walls by its neck.
The body lifted its head, opening its mouth and reaching with an arm.
The Dog reacted instantaneously, drawing his blade and slicing through the joint, using the same motion to bring his blade up and chop off the corpse’s head.
The body dropped to the floor, the head continuing to move for a few moments before it fell still.
“Maki was here,” I said. It was the only thing that made sense. Unless the Shadow King had acquired more electro mages, Maki and his men were the only ones in Krustau who knew the technique of bringing these bodies back to life.
At the door, someone gasped. I turned, but they had a lantern, so I raised my hand, shielding my eyes.
She dropped the lantern down slightly, and I saw who it was.
“Topi,” I said. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“They didn’t tell me when you returned, and now they say you’re going back. Does he have my sister?” Her question was panicked, and I saw a servant behind her grasp her shoulder. “I’m going to go with you—”
“You will not.” Tallu’s words were final. “Lady Topi, perhaps you bear the misunderstanding that you are more than a prisoner here. You are not coming with us.”
She raised her lantern again, her expression fierce. “Your Imperial Majesty—”
“Take her away,” Tallu ordered, raising his hand to gesture at one of the Dogs.
The Dog moved to where Topi stood, and Tallu turned away, not bothering to watch his order being followed, proceeding for our audience with an emperor’s supreme assurance that everything happened as he willed it.
“We must follow the tunnel,” Tallu said.
“They will expect us to come,” the Kennelmaster pointed out. “They will know that we have seen this madness—” He interrupted himself, raising his blade and decapitating a nearby body that had begun to twitch. “They will be expecting us.”
“Then let us give them what they are asking for, a fight worthy of the emperor and his Dogs.” Tallu raised his eyebrows.
As they faced off, I walked forward, frowning as I examined the wall. I ran my fingers up it, considering. The rock was over two feet thick.
Another breath of warm air flowed down the passageway.
“Bring the lantern here,” I said.
The nearest Dog lifted their light, holding it just inside the mouth of the tunnel. Lerolian stepped forward, following the light, and he shouted back, “There are bodies here.”
“There are your Dogs.” I could just see the outline of a fallen body, slightly darker than the stone around it. “Are you saying that we should let the Shadow King have his way?”
“I am saying I have lost four men already,” the Kennelmaster said. “We only have five left.”
“And you would let them have died for nothing?” Tallu challenged.
The Kennelmaster spun on him, his voice fierce. “They did not die for nothing. They died for you. And if you cannot see the value in that, then you are not the man I think you are.”
I leaned forward, tilting my head. I could hear something in the darkness, a chittering sound that was all too familiar. Revulsion crawled up my spine.
Slowly, I stepped into the tunnel, drawing my blade. On my shoulder, Na? shifted, her long tail trailing down my back as her claws dug in.
I had to lean slightly to account for her weight, but I couldn’t complain.
Tallu’s footsteps crossed the room and then were muffled on the earthen floor of the tunnel. Two Dogs moved around us, stepping in front. The blood monks moved even further ahead, a scouting party for us.
“Leave two men here, guarding the door,” Tallu said. “If there is something terrible at the end of this, I would not release it on the servants who have already suffered the death of one emperor.”
The Kennelmaster shook his head once, murmuring, “This is a fool’s mission.”
Still, he gestured two men to the door, leaving us with just Asahi and Sagam. The Kennelmaster brought up the rear, and the five of us walked into the tunnel.
The first body was where I had seen it, a Dog curled on his side, his sticky blood absorbed into the dark earth.
There was no sign of what had killed him, but ahead, we found evidence of what he’d been fighting.
He’d managed to cut off a limb: a thickly muscled leg ending in a furred foot with protruding claws. The black fur was matted with blood.
Another Dog was just beyond that, his body curled on top of a monster like the one we had fought the night before. The Dog’s blade was buried in its back, and he had clearly used his weight to drive it deep but had not had the strength to crawl back to the door.
None of us made a sound, and if Asahi and Sagam had any feeling about seeing their comrades’ dead bodies, they kept it to themselves.
We continued further down the tunnel, finding what was left of the remaining two Dogs as well as another one of the monsters.
“Good, good, come deeper, come into the darkness,” Asahi singsonged. I didn’t even need to look to know that he hadn’t actually said the words. Tallu didn’t turn to look at him. Neither Sagam nor the Kennelmaster twitched at the delight in his tone.
We had been walking for more than an hour in silence, the quiet broken only when one of us trod on a loose clump of dirt. I began to wonder if that had been the Shadow King’s only plan: send two of the monsters down this tunnel and wait to see if they slaughtered the entire palace.
The blood monks kept calling back that there was nothing, and their voices startled me every time.
The air grew humid, and I wasn’t sure how deep or how far we had walked. Sweat collected under my braid, and I raised my hand to wipe at it, nearly dislodging Na?.
“Do you hear that?” she asked. “We are under the lake. We are headed for the mountains. I do not like the idea of that much earth sitting on top of us.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Asahi’s voice was a constant buzz in my ear, and finally, I turned to look at him. He held the lantern steady, matching pace with Sagam, but then he froze, turning to me.
“You can hear it, can’t you?” His question so closely mimicked Na?’s that at first I thought he was talking about the lake above, the massive body of water that had commanded her attention.
Asahi moved so fast that I blinked and he was already behind us, his blade buried in the Kennelmaster’s side.