If he had—if any warden had known over the centuries—he would have done anything to stop it all.
For the Houses coveted power above all else, but they kept secrets better than anyone on Maricol.
Soren stared at Vanya, wondering what was meant by that warning but knowing better than to voice his concern where the Houses could hear. He pressed his lips together as the bearers of the dead hitched the coffins they carried from waist height onto their shoulders. The high priestess tapped her golden ceremonial staff against the mosaiced floor.
“Let us pray them unto the stars,” she said.
The acolytes surrounding them became a choir, their pitch-perfect voices ringing through the air. The high priestess placed the butt of her ceremonial staff in a spot on the floor in front of the altar that depressed downward from the weight of it. She used both hands to twist the staff. The grind of clockwork gears vibrated beneath Soren’s feet, and he reflexively held Raiah tighter to him.
In the center of the temple, the intricate mosaic consisting of the six constellations surrounding a roaring lion’s head broke apart. The floor opened up in sections, revealing stairs that led below into darkness. The high priestess twisted her staff a second time, and light flickered into existence in the shadows, gas lamps coming on one after the other.
The bearers of the dead marched toward the stairs. Vanya followed after the high priestess, and Soren had no choice but to join the pared-down procession, Raiah squirming in his arms. Thevezirsof the major Houses took up the rear as everyone descended into a cold, carved-out space of earth that resolved itself into underground corridors and spaces filled with statues and coffins.
So many coffins.
The interlocking light gray stone was smooth beneath his feet and along the walls, unpainted save for within each open tomb where an external iron coffin lay. Those stone walls were painted with the emblem of whichever House had held the throne for the historical time neatly carved above. The curved ceilings were painted like the night sky, with thousands of tiny golden flecks resembling stars dotting the frescoes and catching the light from gas lamps.
While the paintings might have been beautiful, there was nothing beautiful about what they watched over.
Soren heard the scratching first as the procession passed down the halls, faint scrapes he could have passed off as scurrying rats. But he’d seen no sign of rodents, and when the faint, rasping sound started up the farther they got away from the entrance, he could no longer pretend to not know what was buried in the tombs.
Bodies of the royal dead turned into revenants, their bones and embalmed flesh trapped for eternity.
And there were hundreds of them buried in the royal crypt beneath the palace.
Soren clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached, heart beating a furious drumbeat against his ribs. This place was anathema to the rigid tradition that every country adhered to regarding the dead. Everyone who died was cremated, their deaths added to genealogies and their names to the memory walls that encircled every columbarium.
Solaria was a country born out of the Dying Times during the Great Separation beginning in 301 A.O.S., along with all the other countries. That was several thousand years of the Imperial throne being in existence. Several thousand years to collect the country’s ruling dead.
And Vanya, with his House having held the Imperial throne for the last few hundred years, must have known how the royal dead were handled. Every major House that had ever held it must have known, and the wardens had been kept in the dark about an unguarded border between the living and the dead for countless generations.
This was worse than the grave of Rixham, because at least Rixham was walled off and watched over by wardens, and would be until the spores finally faded from the last revenant. Here, the crypt was unguarded, and the key held by the high priestess was too easy to steal and duplicate. The temple above was a cover, not a lock.
What have the Houses done?
The thought tumbled through Soren’s mind as the procession continued through the winding hallways of the crypt. Solaria had broken the Poison Accords, perhaps since their very inception, and the cost of that would be a punishment no governing body liked to contemplate.
Solaria would be required to cover the tithes for every country for the equivalent number of years they’d broken the Poison Accords. That was hundreds and hundreds of people Solaria would have to tithe for decades to come. An oversight committee of wardens would need to be set up to preside over permanent laws that could not be overturned by any future governing body or monarch on how the dead were handled.
No ruler liked to be overruled, but then again, Soren could not recall at any point in history where a country had broken the Poison Accords so acutely, so dangerously.
Revenants had been a threat since the stars fell to Maricol and guided their ancestors home. For all the progress wardens had made in the poison fields, the spores had never been eradicated. The Poison Accords had been created for a reason, and that reason was to keep the living alive and make sure the dead had no chance to rise.
No wonder Vanya had told Soren not to speak while they walked through a nightmare created by Solaria’s past and present rulers.
The procession finally stopped in front of an empty tomb that held two iron coffins on a low dais. Soren stayed silent through the burial ceremony performed by the high priestess that saw the bearers of the dead lower the wooden coffins inside the larger metal ones. The heavy metal covering was lowered in place again, but Soren didn’t see any locking mechanism that would secure it.
Vanya stepped forward, the golden circlet he wore glittering against his dark hair and skin, a flash of brightness in the low-lit crypt. “VezirAmir, if you would stand as witness.”
Thevezirof the House of Vikandir stepped forward to stand beside Soren and Raiah. “Bound as my House is to the House of Sa’Liandel through blood, I can attest that all surviving members of the ruling House are present.”
The high priestess rapped her staff lightly against the stone floor. “It shall be recorded.”
Vanya raised his hands, palms up, and called forth starfire.
Soren felt the flow from the aether, the way it made the hair on his skin stand up with the buzzing power of the magic Vanya commanded. It tugged at something buried deep inside him, trying to draw it to the surface, and Soren wrenched his focus away from that terrible temptation, that biting need he wasn’t allowed to want or have.
Starfire leapt from Vanya’s hands, cascading over the edge of the iron coffin where the covering and base met. The heat of the starfire made sweat trickle down Soren’s skin despite the cool temperature of the crypt. It grew in intensity, forcing him to step back and around the opening of the tomb to shield Raiah.
