I found myself tensing, too, when it was finally our turn to pass beneath the archway. The stone of the arch was marked with strange symbols, and though I had no idea what they meant, the back of my scalp prickled as we walked beneath them.
Alittleshiverraced down my spine, too—clearly, there was enough essence in this place for me to feel even with the pearls still secured to my wrist.
“Wards,” Octavian rumbled to me. “Very, very old ones.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find beneath the Hill—something dark and damp and cave-like, probably. And yes, the large room in front of us was truly cavernous, but no one would ever confuse it with a dark, damp cave. It was lit from above by what I assumed were hundreds of lamps, giving off the illusion that we were moving beneath sparkling fairylight. The cavern below was filled with more colorful vendor stalls—another one of the town’s markets, obviously—and from what I could see of the edges of the room, dozens of tunnels led off this main cavern in every direction.
I couldn’t help marveling. “It’s beautiful.”
Octavian squeezed my side. “The Hill Market is considered one of the great wonders of Therador. There are legends about this place.”
There wasn’t time to ask him to elaborate on that, since our guide was already leading us past the first row of market stalls and to the path that wound around the edge of the cavern, along the tunnels going elsewhere. Each passage boasted a different, brightly painted symbol on the stone above its arched entryway.
We must have passed a dozen tunnels before she finally turned and stepped beneath an archway marked by two teal, braided spirals. She glanced back once to make sure we still followed her, then led the way into the tunnel beyond.
But the wordtunnelsuggested something dim and confining, and this passageway was anything but. True, the walls were clearly carved right out of the stone of the earth, and sure, there were no windows to offer natural light, but the passage was well-lit, sparkling with the same golden lanternlight as the cavern behind us. And though some stretches of wall were left plain, with nothing but veins of minerals to add interest, others were painted with murals depicting all sorts of strange and beautiful scenes—pastoral landscapes, or flowering meadows full of fairy-like creatures, or glittering lakes dotted with ultramarine nymphs.
One particularly vivid scene featured a terrible, majestic creature crouching on a craggy silver mountaintop—the beast had the body and head of a lion, but a pair of dark, feathered wings rose from its back, and its tail was barbed and scaled.
An odd, tinglyfamiliaritypricked at the base of my skull. The beast was beautiful and frightening at the same time, and I must have paused as I stared at it, because Octavian’s fingers squeezed my side, urging me onward.
There were doorways and additional corridors leading off our passage, and occasionally the young woman would turn us down one of those side-routes.
This place is a complete maze.Despite the distinctive murals and the bright symbols painted over every passage and doorway, I was shocked that anyone could find their way around without becoming hopelessly lost.Hopefully we won’t have to make some mad escape from this labyrinth.
The further we moved from the large cavern, the fewer people there were around us, until the girl turned us down a passage marked by a red bird and we found ourselves alone.
Octavian’s grip tightened again, and I knew his other hand was wrapped around his sword hilt once more. Was this girl leading us into some sort of ambush?
But if she sensed his tension, she ignored it, glancing back with one of her smiles. “It’s not far now.”
We passed a couple of doorways marked with more red birds, though each one had the creature in a slightly different pose—this one with its wings outstretched, that one fanning out its tail—and then the passage ended.
The only thing here was a knee-high grate built into the wall, presumably for drainage of some sort.
The young woman dropped to her knees, fiddling with the edge of the grate until she could pull it open.
“Follow me,” she said, then crawled through without waiting for an answer from either of us.
Octavian released me, then crouched down, peering through the opening.
“There’s another passage on the other side,” he told me.
“Do you think it’s a trap?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
The young woman apparently heard me anyway.
“Not a trap, I promise.” She poked her head through to our side again. “It’s not the most convenient, I know, but Talon likes his privacy. And I figure the Mighty Oak does, too, these days.”
Octavian paused a moment, considering, then nodded.
“Follow close behind,” he rumbled to me, then dropped to his hands and knees and followed our guide to the other side. He was so big that his broad shoulders barely fit through the opening.
With a sigh, I bent down and followed.
He was right—the other side looked much like the passage we’d just left, only with no murals and less light. Octavian helped me to my feet, holding my hands longer than necessary as the girl closed the grate behind us.
She beckoned us forward. “We’re almost there, I promise.”
