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I nodded, but Ben made sure to walk by my side as we slipped down the hall which I indicated. The chill air grew stronger and stronger as the tunnel meandered its way beneath the desert. The corridor seemed to stretch on forever and the ‘scent’ didn’t travel in a straight line so that we were forced to zigzag through the excavation.
The voices grew louder and the torches more numerous. We slowed our steps which was fine by me because the cold in my bones made me stiff. The path opened ahead and we pressed close to the wall as we neared the opening.
We were presented with a huge room that had once been a city square. Broken bits of pillars littered the ground, kept where they had fallen due to the sheer size and weight of the pieces. Ruined walls of elegant houses and shops lined the exterior, and in the very center were the remains of a fountain. A statue had once stood atop the three levels, but the figure now lay on the cracked flagstones. The lifeless eyes of the female figure stared in our direction as if accusing us of intruding on its eternal slumber.
We weren’t the only ones. Dozens of people were positioned along the walls chipping away at stone and sand. Piles of sand behind them revealed the amount of their labor.
Diana Cobb stood in the very center of the work with an ancient map in her hands. She studied the map and the layout around her, and her pursed lips told me she wasn’t happy. Amin came up to her covered in dirt and sweat. “There is no sign of the temple.”
A low growl escaped her as she flung down the map on the table in front of her. “Damn it! It can’t be too far from here!”
“Unless the map is wrong,” Amin suggested.
Diana slammed her palms against the table and glared at him. “Then that priestess will be meeting her god sooner than she thinks.” Her shoulders slumped and she ran a hand down her face. “Stuck with nothing more than an old map and a prayer. What a fool I am to trust that snake.”
Ben drew us back away from the opening and his troubled expression told me all I needed to know. “It seems Maram is doing more than just supplying magic to the Thaqiba.”
I didn’t dare reply, but I could do something else. The chill air had led us this far, but that wasn’t the direction it came from. I tugged on Ben and nodded at a passage to our left that seemed to pass along the southern half of the courtyard and lead deeper into the sands.
He lifted an eyebrow, but I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered before I pointed down the corridor. His eyes widened and he swept a hand in that direction. “Lead on.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
The path had evidently been neglectedas the torches stopped long before the end of the corridor. Ben plucked a torch from one of the holders and took the lead. Sand covered most of the floor and the supports were mostly posts with a few crossbeams over our heads. We crossed over the interior of houses and a wide street. The remains of ruined marble statues dotted the area. There and there were the hands and feet, and I glimpsed a portion of a head.
My sleeve got caught on something sharp and I looked down to find myself staring at a skeleton hand. I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle my scream, though a little noise came out.
Ben spun around as I struggled to free myself from the clutches of the dead. He grabbed the bones and crushed them in his grip. The fingers turned to powder and fell in bits to the floor when he opened his hand.
I shut my eyes and placed my hand over my quickly beating heart. Ben sidled up to me, keeping one eye on me and another in the direction we’d come. “Are you alright?” I couldn’t find enough strength to speak, but I nodded. He turned his attention to the parts of my captor that remained in the wall. A wrist bone stuck out just slightly from the jagged surface. “A victim of the flood.”
A shudder ran through me. Ben set a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. I took a big, shaky breath and opened my eyes. The torch played off Ben’s face and revealed his concern. I managed a small smile and swept my arms in the direction ahead of us. He didn’t look quite convinced by my false bravado, but he took the lead and we continued on our way.
The narrower the tunnel, the colder the air became until I was constantly shivering. My arms brushed against both walls and Ben had been forced to turn sideways. He held aloft the torch in his right hand over my head so I could avoid stumbling over the rubble that littered the ground. His own bright red eyes stared ahead always searching for danger.
Finally, the tunnel ended and the torch revealed a wall of collapsed stone. Ben pursed his lips as he studied the blockage before he turned to me. “Can you still feel the cold air?”
I, with my arms wrapped tightly around me, squeezed past him where I held out my hand out in front of me. The coldest wind I had ever felt brushed across my palm and past me, giving me a chilling kiss on the cheek. I looked up at Ben and nodded.
He handed me the torch. “Get back.”
I scurried back with my light and watched him step up to the blockage. He flexed his hands and they stretched into thick claws. His entire body, too, seemed to increase in size so that he could barely fit sideways in the tunnel. He grabbed a hold of one of the lead boulders between his hands and pressed them together. The might of his strength was such that the rock shattered between his hands. He brushed away the remnants and took up another rock near where I had placed my hand.
One after another, the stones fell before his might. After the tenth broken rock, a deeper darkness appeared in the wall. I held the torch closer and the light shone into an empty void. Ben grabbed hold of either side of the small hole and used his strength to widen it, as easy as tearing open an envelope.
The rocks crumbled or rolled out of the way, revealing the start of a large open space. Ben shrank into his human form, even doing away with his billowing black attire, before he climbed through the hole. He disappeared and a moment later popped his head back out where he held out his hand. I handed off the torch and by the flickering light I eased myself through the gap.
Ben helped me finish the climb and I stumbled onto my feet. He held aloft the torch and revealed a huge cavern. The whole space stretched for a hundred yards ahead of us and fifty on either side. Small broken buildings occupied the areas to our left and right, but before us was a huge platform accessed via a set of wide stone steps. The steps led up to the top where lay the ruins of dozens of marble columns.
“The statues Dakin mentioned weren’t from the palace,” Ben mused as he plucked something from off the floor. The torchlight illuminated the head of a statue that had once formed the features of a hideous serpent, but the face was cracked and missing much of the right half. “They were from here.”
“But whereishere?” I asked him as I swept my eyes over the eerie silent cavern.
“I’m not sure,” Ben mused as he set the statue back down. “But let’s find out.”
He led the way to the stairs and onto the platform but stopped at the top. I couldn’t blame him. A half-foot-deep square hole greeted us.
Ben knelt and brushed his hand over the hole in the floor. “There was something quite large here.”
