CHAPTER 16
ZEPHYR
One month ago
A SHUDDER RAN THROUGH THE ENTIRE CHAMBER.
The swinging blades slowed with a deafening groan, then stopped altogether.
There was one final screech, then blessed silence.
My eyes tracked Davina Lachlan across the vast, suddenly quiet space, and the sight of the fierce determination on her face as she let go of that lever had something in my gut tightening.
She’d saved us, I realized. I was almost spent, and wasn’t sure I’d have been able to make it to the end, if I was being honest. She’d stopped the blades just in time.
And I hated that.
Hated relying on people in general, let alone a Widesightian centurion I couldn’t seem to figure out.
I’d stopped that arrow mid-flight earlier. Didn’t know what had taken over me, it’d been instinct to do so. So we were even, I supposed.
Even though she hadn’t really needed my intervention, it was intention that counted. Or so I told myself.
Once we were all on the pedestal, Centurion Bleuombre walked to the metal sheet covering the door, placed both hands on it, and tensed. The shiny surface rippled like it was liquid under his touch, folding outwards and reshaping itself into a doorway.
It was a neat trick, even if I’d never admit it out loud. I barely tolerated the jokester.
He glanced over his shoulder at Davina. “Please,” he said, and I took pleasure in hearing the breathlessness in his voice. Not so easy, then. “Tell me it was worth the trip?”
The corner of Davina’s mouth ticked up and the sight tugged at my chest. “Wait and see.”
The crypt was a long, rectangular chamber with ceilings that arched so high they vanished into shadow.
Thin shafts of light filtered in through hairline cracks in the stone along one wall, streaking the dust-choked air with hazy beams. I took a deep breath, and it tasted stale and ancient at the back of my throat.
Kwabena and I moved to opposite sides of the room and lit torches already perched in rusted sconces.
Light bloomed, pushing back the darkness.
One side wall was bare, another covered by a massive canvas tied to the sides by long, thick ropes, while the other was covered in cluttered shelves.
Books and papyrus and strangely shaped items crowded them without any order.
A large desk rested against the side of the room, next to the strange bust, with some more tomes left in messy piles.
My fingers twitched with the need to straighten them.
With no time to lose, we got to work. Davina took the far end of the shelves as Kwabena started with the ones closest to the door. I took the central bit while Armand drifted toward the desk.
No one spoke as we searched.
My hands moved fast but my mind lagged behind. The weight of what was at stake pressed down onto my shoulders relentlessly. The possibilities of what could be found here . . .
Don’t think about it.
The first few texts I came across touched on themes that didn’t seem like they’d be of interest for the Widesightian doctor—minority groups, and the persecuted across Kobrant’s long, blood-rich history.
Records of outcasts, communities that clung to the famous Kobrant polytheistic faiths, even at times when doing so meant open defiance of the crown’s singular worship.
These days, the crown’s grip on society was so firm that faith had been deemed irrelevant, and many had fallen back to the Old Gods for spiritual comfort.
My chest tightened as I flipped through a collection of brittle pages chronicling entire lineages who had hidden in these pyramids, generation after generation, in an attempt to escape oppression and slaughter.
A rough, hand-drawn map caught my eye, its lines jagged, the words scribbled around its edges so smudged that they were indecipherable.
I was turning the page when Centurion Bleuombre broke the silence.
“All these tomes and papers,” he said, “they focus on Kobrant cities. Shifts in location, power centers . . . but the timelines that don’t seem to match official records.”
From farther down the room, Kwabena hummed. “Far more interesting than this, then. It’s mostly architecture. Some texts date back two millennia, before even the pyramids stood here.” His fingers trailed over the most intact bindings. “Others are just a few hundred years old.”
When Davina didn’t comment, I glanced over my shoulder. She stood frozen near the far end of the room, seemingly lost in thought as she stared at the white canvas covering the far wall. Her posture had alarms going off in my head.
“What is it, Lachlan?”
Her head snapped up, as if breaking from a trance.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his visits to the pyramids weren’t listed in any of our reports about Sircelen.
” A note in her voice demanded that I pay attention.
“He went out of his way to hide this, and he did it well.” Leaving the book in her hands behind, she stepped closer to the wall, her delicate fingers caressing the white fabric softly.
“I don’t think the real clue is going to be among the shelves. ”
I started to walk towards her.
Davina offered no warning before closing her fist on the fabric, then tearing it down with a mighty pull.
“No!”
But my call came far too late. Had there been a trap, she’d have succumbed to it by the time I was close enough. To protect, stop, or strangle her, I didn’t know.
I guess some instinctual part of me did, blood roaring in my ears as I reached her side and pushed a shoulder in front of her. My whole body shook as the white fabric fell in slow motion, folding and wrapping as it gathered on the dusty ground.
Nothing happened.
My mouth parted, pure fire running through my veins as I turned to face her.
But she wasn’t even looking at me. Her focus was set on the uncovered wall.
A wall I had assumed was bare—but far from it.
The entirety of the stone was marred by etched lines.
Lines that weren’t smooth, clearly carved with intent.
I ignored the heat of Davina’s shallow breaths on my arm as I followed one deep curve upward.
It met another, both twisting and merging before vanishing into a triangular shape beyond my reach.
Then I saw the others.
Three more triangles, carved side by side in a perfect square. Each one with its own wild pattern of branching lines that extended downward like roots, intricate and chaotic, but far from meaningless.
Four triangles.
Like the four pyramids that had given this cursed city its name.
“It’s a map,” Davina breathed, awed. “The lines are a goddamn diagram.”
“I think you might be right.” Kwabena’s voice sounded somewhere behind us.
My heart thudded as I stepped back, taking in the full wall.
The grooves and swirls and spirals. The diagram of the pyramids and the labyrinth beneath.
A hollow circle on the bottom right. A wide central rectangle that could be this very room, or the hall with swinging blades.
Spirals scattered across the wall, each encircled by branching paths and chambers.
But it went further than that. It depicted other places. Places that now that I had understood, could not be unseen.
A woosh drowned the voices of the others. Davina Lachlan hadn’t just uncovered a potential clue to Sircelen’s stash.
But the blueprint of everything he’d hidden.