It stank like cool stones, water, and something slippery and meaty.
“Gross,” Jean whispered.
Hogan hummed.
There was no wind, but the air was cold. Stone beneath our feet, stone over our heads. The light was wan, as if coming from a great distance, moonlight breathing through the cracked ribs of the earth.
“Which corridor are we in?” Myra asked.
“The North,” Bathin whispered back.
“We’ll be walking for two miles,” Avnas said.
“Then let’s get to it.” I grasped the sword hilt, but Bathin grabbed my wrist, stopping me from pulling it from the sheath.
“It will be noticed,” he said. “Only draw it in battle.”
I shoved it back down.
“Me first!” Xtelle pushed past me and trotted down the stone corridor. “Would it hurt them to add a little paint to the place? Pink. This should all be pink. Make it so!”
Nothing happened.
The corridor was just wide enough for Avnas to lope along at her side. “You have exited such things, my Queen. As you have exited your contract with him.”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “Contracts are easy. But this realm still bows to me. I was its queen, and there is no other.”
Avnas hesitated, which worried me, then said, “Always, my Queen.”
“Does she have influence here?” I asked Myra, who was walking on my left. Jean and Hogan were in the middle. Bathin and Rossi brought up the rear.
“She was the queen of demons for a very long time,” she said.
“So…yes?”
Myra nodded. “I don’t know how much. I don’t know how many demons or other things are still on her side, but she didn’t give up her power when she broke her contract with the king.”
“Good,” I said. “As long as she stays on our side.”
Myra grunted. “Here’s hoping.”
The first mile went by in tense silence. Even Xtelle kept her mouth shut. We were all expecting an attack. I didn’t like that the corridor had no side exits I could see, no escape hatches above or below. Our only exit plan was Bathin and his hop stones.
“A little less doubt,” Bathin said, moving sideways against the wall to come up next to me. He walked ahead of Myra and me, but behind Xtelle. “It’s just a short way ahead.”
“A mile,” Myra reminded him. “It’s another mile.”
He spun on his heel so he was walking backward, his arms out to his side, his smile wide. “Space is also startlingly malleable here. There are more exits—”
It happened so quickly, my brain couldn’t register the order of things. It took me a heartbeat, two, before the sequence of events made any sense.
Bathin’s arms were seized by rock oozing out of both sides of the tunnel, pouring over his hands, and solidifying up to his elbows.
His mouth dropped open in shock.
Light filled the tunnel, a hot orange that burned afterimages into my retinas.
A drumming beat shook the ground beneath us, sifting dirt down from the ceiling, covering us in a layer of grime that tasted of mold and stagnant water.
