“Drigildarg. The city of the dead,” Everard said. “And here comes our guide.”
A faint yellow glow appeared in the darkness. A few moments and a guard emerged carrying a torch. She waited for us to approach and went back into the mountain.
We followed the guard into the gloom.
The tunnel was long and dark, swirling with a draft from deep within the mountain. The torch sputtered, casting chaotic highlights onto the walls. The sound of our steps sent echoes bouncing through the tunnel.
The air grew colder.
A strange feeling gripped me. I was walking through the tunnel next to Everard and I was also back on the table, with the Butcher leaning over me, cutting into my body over and over. The two realities overlapped, both tangible and illusory at the same time.
I killed him. I’d been powerless on that table, but I had taken my power back when I turned his face into mush. I’d reclaimed my sanity and my life. I would not let him haunt me.
Demons were meant to be confronted. I would face mine.
The tunnel ended, opening into a vast cavern steeped in gloom. A stone floor of big square tiles, uneven and worn down by countless feet, stretched in front of us. Here and there, tall stone pillars soared into the darkness above, some crowned by glowing lanterns. The light of the lanterns slid over the pitted stone, playing on the ancient carvings on the cavern walls. In the distance, deeper darkness tinting the twilight offered hints of passageways, framed with stone arches and guarded by fearsome statues.
Kair Toren was only an hour away, but it might as well have been across the ocean. This space felt like its own world, sacred and terrifying. Being in it filled me with a vague dread. I had a distinct feeling that it was better not to look at it too closely, because I might find something I couldn’t deal with.
“Do you need to rest?” Everard asked.
“No.” My legs still hurt like hell, despite the huge dose of bitter powder I’d taken before I left, but it didn’t matter. I needed to get this done.
We came to a fork. In front of us three stone gateways led deeper into the cave, on the left, on the right, and straight ahead. The passageways on the right and straight ahead were lit by lanterns.
Our guide stopped. Everard turned left and I walked with him.
The stone arch defining the left passage was so old, it had been worn nearly smooth. The darkness within it shivered like a living thing. Something was watching us from that deep gloom. I couldn’t see it or hear it, but I felt someone there.
We approached the archway. Everard held out a silver noma.
A man congealed from the darkness. He was wrapped in a tattered cloak, dark haired, with dark brown skin, and when the light of the lantern caught his face, his eyes were completely white and opaque, like the silver coin he’d just taken.
The man held out a rope. The other end of it disappeared into his garments. Everard took the rope with his left hand and offered me his right.
None of this was in the books. We were going to the Shears’ Larder, the hidden cave within the morgue where Solentine stashed bodies he wanted to keep on ice, but the text never described how to actually reach it.
I put my hand into Everard’s. His warm fingers closed around mine. It felt like someone had tied a lifeline to my waist in the middle of a storm.
The man turned without a word and disappeared into the passageway. Everard followed him and I let him lead me into the underground night. It wasn’t just dark, it was pitch-black, the gloom so thick, I couldn’t see anything in front of my face.
We kept going. There was no sense of progress or direction. It felt like we were walking in circles. The air was freezing now. I shivered within my cloak.
Ahead an eerie greenish glow fought through the darkness. We passed through a narrow doorway into a cavern. It must’ve been a meeting hall or some sort of formal chamber in its previous life—the walls still bore hints of carved reliefs and here and there columns jutted from the ground, holding up the arched ceiling. But the war between man and nature was long over and nature had clearly won. The human presence was a distant echo. Fungi had claimed the chamber. Huge, shaped like corals, they climbed up the walls and filled the floor, glowing with green. Around them grum mushrooms sprouted, the same type that now grew in our cellar back home, keeping our food from spoiling.
Between the fungi, a dozen stone slabs rose like altars. Most were empty, but the three in the front each held something.
The blind guide led us to the nearest slab and stepped aside, revealing an unmistakably human shape under a shroud of pale cloth. A corpse.
I let go of Everard, marched to the slab, and pulled back the fabric. The Butcher’s body rested on the stone, his clothes splattered with blood. He looked exactly as I remembered. Everard was right. He didn’t have a face anymore.
The blind guide withdrew, back into the darkness of the passageway.
I stared at the Butcher. Here he was, dead. Dead as a doornail. Permanently unalived.
Everard pulled out a dagger and pressed it into my hand. I almost jumped.
He nodded at the corpse. “Stab him.”
