Chapter 10
“Atorch would be lovely right now,” I remarked, because the sound of my own voice was better than silence as I followed the short corridor beyond the arched exit from the Chamber of Truths.
It led to a steep set of stairs that vanished into blackness and, judging by the way my life was going, the pits of the gods’ embrace.
“A nice, fiery stick. A candle. An oil lamp, I’m not picky. ”
I reached for Baby, trying to coax him out of my ring, but I got the faint impression of him grumbling and going back to sleep. No blue glow to help me see the worn stone steps, then.
No problem, I could find my own way.
“Kier’s gonna kill me if I snap my neck doing something stupid,” I muttered, tracing the old stones of the wall to my right as I descended.
It wasn’t just boredom making me act; an instinct tugged me this way, prodding me onward in my descent.
There was something at the bottom of these stairs, and I didn’t know how I knew that, maybe psychic information transference through the mate bond.
Something told me I’d find a little more than a wine cellar.
Not that I’d complain if I came face to face with a rack of nice, fruity red.
Something truly insane occurred to me, and I needed Aerona here to deliver an eyeroll so big only a teenager could summon it, or maybe Ryvan could drop a snarky remark about me losing my marbles.
Which I definitely was, because I had to wonder if Gaia herself led me down here, to a secret hidden beneath the castle.
I knew the castle had been here hundreds of years, that Lazankh was once the king’s home before the capital was built, and that my home harboured secrets that no one alive remembered. So was it really so insane that a goddess as old as the Mother might lead me to one of those secrets?
“If you’re trying to send me subliminals, Gaia,” I said as I very carefully made my way lower, “I have to warn you, I’m not very smart. It’s really better to just spell it out rather than hint at it.”
My foot slipped on the next step and I screeched, visions flashing behind my eyes of everything I would lose if I died here today.
Mostly visions of Kier fucking me senseless as promised, with the odd appearance of my friends.
Not during the fucking; I was a greedy, possessive bitch, and I didn’t share.
I was one second from dying with that as my last thought, but I regained my balance by swinging my leg and digging my fingers into the gap between bricks in the wall. The mortar was so old it crumbled, granting me a firmer grip, and I saved myself from a very stupid death.
For long moments I stood there, panting, waiting for my head to stop spinning, appreciating being alive. Have you ever noticed how great it is to be alive? I love being alive.
“Okay, Letta, no more distractions,” I coached myself, taking the next step exceptionally carefully.
It wasn’t totally pitch black down here, but it was damn close.
Dark enough that when the shadows lightened to charcoal grey, then a nice smoke colour, it was obvious.
A furrow bunched my brow. Where the hell was my instinct leading me?
Or was I really deluding myself, and there was no instinct or divine intervention behind this little field trip?
Once I could make out the dip in the steps below me where many feet had treaded over the years, I knew I was close. To what, I had no idea, but I was close.
“Please don’t be something gross and disappointing,” I pleaded with the universe, with the dragon goddess whose statue I’d been hanging out with all day. “Like an abattoir or a sewer.”
Although surely I’d be able to smell it by now. Instead, all I smelled was the old, musty weight of air that had been belowground for centuries. It sat heavily in my lungs, bringing with it a distinct taste of dust, mildew, and water trickling down a nearby wall.
(I wasn’t a scent prodigy, able to pick out notes in the air like a sommelier. I knew there were notes of trickling water because it slid over my hand like a cold slug as I guided myself down the last few steps. I wiped my hand on my trousers, my nose wrinkled.)
I debated calling out hello, but something told me to keep quiet.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs and walked through a low doorway into a huge cavern older and far more rustic than my new home above, I realised what kept me silent.
This place had a reverence to it, a hushed importance like a church.
Okay, I was definitely going mad, but I entertained even more thoughts about the Mother and her stone dragons. There was no way she’d actually guided me here, right? But what if no one had been here in decades? What if she wanted this place to be found?
I took a few tentative steps into the space, the sound of trickling water growing louder.
There were no whorls and spirals carved in the ground here, but there was a channel hewn from the stone to allow the water to flow beyond the chamber, presumably to a waterfall or maybe over the mountains behind Lazankh.
“Gaia?” I whispered, moving deeper into the vast chamber, searching for another statue.
I tipped my head back, and gasped. The ceiling was etched with stars, thousands of them shining silver against the dark stone.
That heady feeling of reverence returned, making me straighten.
This was a holy space, whether it had been forgotten for a thousand years or not. Or maybe because of it.
“I followed your guidance,” I breathed. “What now?”
Silence answered me. Great, I was talking to an empty room.
Definitely one for the Letta’s-Going-Mad column.
I evened it out by not asking my next question, and instead crossing the uneven stone floor, jumping across the water to search for clues.
Why was I brought here? I couldn’t deny there was a presence in the room, but was I making more of what was really just ancient stars and a heavy atmosphere?
“There must be something,” I murmured, grabbing an apple from my bag and biting into it as I contemplated the space. One should never decide if one’s going absolutely bonkers on an empty stomach. Decisions tend to be skewed. “I bet Cherish would spot it instantly, the clever bitch.”
I ignored the throb in my chest, and let my eyes trail over the ceiling, mapping the stars, searching for familiar constellations among the gleaming silver.
But I still wasn’t well-versed in goblin stars, and I spotted no human constellations, just twinkling carvings that liberally covered the ceiling before scattering down the far wall.
“Ah.” I stared at where the stars seemed to fall to one specific spot.
A much bigger star was etched into the ground like a spotlight on a stage.
“If you brought me here for an epic performance, I should warn you. I’m less heavenly-opera than tawdry-parody.
I can’t sing you an aria,” I said, crossing the room because I was nervous as hell and very clearly about to commit a stupid mistake, but too curious to stop.
“But I can belt out a song about a lazy king or a vapid queen or a fisherwoman with six tits.” I paused.
“I never got a chance to verify if that legend was true, but can you imagine it?”
Great, now I was asking a goddess if she could imagine a six-titted fisherwoman. Another one for the Letta’s-Going-Mad column.
“If I step on this star,” I asked, “are you going to strike me down where I stand? Because honestly, I’ve been through enough this week without adding striking down to the list, and I don’t think my husband’s heart can take any more near-death events.”
It wasn’t like I expected a response, but the echo of my own voice made me shiver. That feeling like I’d been guided here intensified, almost tugging on me, urging me to make the last three steps onto the star.
“I’m only doing this because you helped me get out of the rebels’ house,” I muttered, finishing my apple. I tucked the core into my bag—because I was many things, but a litterer wasn’t among them—and then I stepped onto the silver star etched into the floor.
The vision struck like an arrow and I gasped, jumping into the wall, surprise lighting me up as suddenly as the scene that spread out around me.
I heard no voice, felt no guiding hand on my shoulder, but I knew at once that what the goddess showed me was important.
Cleodora was searching for this, scouring all the goblin lands for this place.
It was integral to her plans, her invasion of the Bluescale Court, but if I found it first, she could be stopped.
Trees towered above me, their branches gnarled and old, dark blue leaves dripping from every limb as the vision tore me through the forest at a sprint.
I felt like I rode an out of control horse, leaves whipping past, light blurring.
The forest was deep, unknowable blue and inky black, details merging into the dark.
What she wanted to show me was just beyond this forest, past the break in the trees. I didn’t know if it was Gaia, but it was certainly a feminine presence, and one with enough power that all the hairs rose on my arms both outside the vision in the chamber and here in the forest.
I felt myself wobble, dizziness making me waver into the cavern wall, basement wall, dungeon wall—whatever the fuck the place even was. Old and powerful and waiting. It had been waiting a long time for someone to wander into it.
Lucky me, I was the chosen one, led like a lamb to slaughter.
The rush of motion stopped abruptly, the forest stilling so suddenly that my heart crashed into my limbs, and I struggled to process what I was seeing. If I’d been on the back of a horse moments ago, it just threw me to the ground and stamped on my skull for good measure.
I groaned, blinking until my eyes focused, lifted my hands to hold my head on until it stopped spinning.
“Not a fan,” I heard myself mumble, but my voice was distant, a million worlds away. “Really not a fan of the mode of travel.”
Amusement seemed to ruffle the leaves of the trees behind me, but my head had settled and now all my attention shifted to what lay before me.
It was a lake, surrounded on all sides by the dark, midnight-blue forest. Lily pads and soft blue lotus flowers scattered across its pure silver surface.
The moon shone above, blindingly bright, scattering ethereal light over the shallow lake and the building that sat in its heart.
Somehow, I knew the moon always shone here, despite that being a physical impossibility.
I also knew, through whatever knowledge the goddess shared with me, that it wasn’t a building in the middle of the lake. It was a mausoleum.
“Fancy mausoleum,” I murmured, raking my stare over its water-stained surface.
It was made of silver-blue stone, but the lake had left streaks of black on the steps that rose from the water to the doorway, a huge archway like a missing tooth in the mausoleum’s ornate face.
Columns flanked either side of the door, towering all the way to the top of the building where gargoyles hunched over the edge to watch for thieves or intruders.
“Like me,” I realised unpleasantly.
The gargoyles were stained dark too, but made of a silver stone that seemed to shine from within, making them look alive.
I expected their bat-like wings to expand, expected scaled tails to whip against the roof before they pounced on me.
But that was just paranoia talking. Nothing moved at all, not the moon, not the water, and even the trees around the lake had stilled like this place was even more holy than the cellar of stars.
I eyed the open arches that punched through the mausoleum like windows every few metres, never quite able to turn off the part of my brain trained from years as a thief and assassin.
Easy access points, if I brought something to cross the water.
Nevermind that the door was a huge open archway, practically begging for someone to enter.
“I’m not a grave robber,” I sighed, because it really needed to be said. “Why do you want me to see this?”
More to the point, why did Cleodora care so much about a grave so old that it was water damaged? Beautiful and florid and clearly the resting place of a once-wealthy goblin, but a grave nonetheless.
That wild-horse sensation grabbed me again, pinching my stomach as the lake blurred. I was wrenched across the water, through darkness, and into the mausoleum.
The second the motion stopped, I knew why Cleodora wanted this place. Power laced the air like oxygen; I breathed it in and felt Baby stir. There was enough magic here that any tyrant or wannabe invader would hunger for it.
I took a step, the sensation jarring as my body moved in the cellar of stars but remained standing in the mausoleum. “Whose power is this?” I whispered, not daring to speak louder.
She never replied but knowledge hit me like a shot. I jolted back into my body in the cavern of stars beneath Lazankh’s castle, reeling from the sight of the lake, the forest, the mausoleum. Reeling from that last kernel of knowledge I’d been given.
“It’s Gaia’s grave.”
No wonder Cleodora wanted to claim it. She wouldn’t just be queen of all goblin lands like she threatened. She’d be a goddess of all.