We continue our search for clues. Distant sounds startle us a few times. Rocks crumbling or floorboards screeching—the final breaths of a dying house. Something wiggles in the back of my mind. A melancholic melody the bards at the inn play when it is close to daylight, and they want to send the last patrons home. It finds its way to my lips, and I hum it while sifting through the trash.
Gale leaps toward me, eyes wide.
“Is this the ballad of the Sun Queen, Talysse?”
I nod. One of the last Seelie Queens made her way through unimaginable dangers to the Holy City to beg the Elders for forgiveness. Nobody has ever seen her again, so legends and fairy tales waived different stories about her end. I remember a street spectacle with fireworks and confetti, where she found happiness with a mortal man and withdrew with him in some secret place, living her happily ever after.
Then it hits me.
The Ballad is old. As old as the walls of Teír Mekheret. And the lyrics haven’t changed for centuries.
In moon’s embrace, the wolf’s keen cry,
In dawn’s first light, the eagle flies.
Step on the wolf to find your way,
Eagle’s mark reveals the day.
The queen had to carefully choose her steps on the traitorous mountain pass leading to the Holy City. Is it possible that the scribbles on the wall refer to the song?
The floor tiles—
Before Gale can ask, I run up the crumbling marble staircase to the balcony, overviewing the hall. I jump over the rusty chandelier chain and the piles of rotting books, their sheets scattered around like the wings of countless dead birds. Leaning on the filigree railing, I can see the whole hall beneath my feet.
“What got into you?” Gale looks up at me, brow raised in confusion.
And there, beneath the heavy bronze chandelier, darkened by time, lies the answer to the riddle. Black and white tiles, each one depicting an animal or a plant, stretch down into the corridors.
Two wolves—one on a black tile and one on a stained white one.
“In moon’s embrace, the wolf’s keen cry, Gale! This should be the wolf on the black tile. Black as the night, do you see?” He follows my hand, frantically pointing at the tile. His full lips slowly stretch into an understanding smile.
“It’s the tiles, Talysse!” He heads to the spot I’m pointing at, and for a moment, everything seems to be going to plan.
And then Seuta pulls her damned threads again.
Thunder shakes the old building. The sound of collapsing walls echoes down the passageways and probably awakens things better left undisturbed. The sound came from the entrance. Silence settles in when the last rock rolls down an unseen slope. The minutes into eternities, yet nothing happens.
“Gale,” I call hoarsely, and he whips his curly head up to me, “step onto the black plate with the wolf!”
He whips his head left and right, peering into the dark corridors, then heads to the tile. We have to recover this artifact, and this place is as dangerous as any in this city.
He steps on the black tile depicting a fearsome wolf with bristled fur, and some unseen mechanisms in the depths of the house are set in motion.
“Pressure plates! Step on the eagle tile—there!” He points with the leg chair to the far corner of the room. “It’ll open something!”
Yet the doubt remains—is it wise to open a door that has been closed for centuries? Did all the dead treasure hunters who left their bones here try to do the same?
No time to think about it and succumb to fear. I swiftly make my way down to the tile Gale is pointing at and leap on it. Heavy chains rattle and move in the depths of the mansion, and screeching indicates that an ancient mechanism has just been activated. A tiny move in the side of my vision draws my attention. There stands an old altar of Seuta, still covered with dried flower wreaths, while the floor before it shifts.
A large trap door appears as the tiles nearly soundlessly slide to the side. White stairs descend into the inky darkness below.
“There!” Gale exclaims. “We need a torch or a candle; help me search. We need to save our magic.” We start looking around when we hear it.
Something massive is heading our way. Something big enough to push its way through piles of furniture and rubble in the passageway opposite the entrance.
The stench gets unbearable, and then it arrives.
