Silas raised his elderwood wand, casting its glow over the tunnel.
“Is when I found this.”
Elswyth’s heart jumped. Just before them, half-shrouded in darkness, was a gateway—an arch built entirely from human skulls.
Their dark eye sockets looked down at her, waiting, empty. Jaws lay open, hanging from withered ligaments. Fragments ofbone made mosaics around the gateway, and through the tunnel, she saw that the walls, too, were made of bones: femur and tibia, spine and skull.
Elswyth stepped forward. The skulls stared back at her with black, empty eyes. “What… what is it?”
“Catacombs. Uncovered when the crews came through digging tunnels for the underground trains.”
“Yes, but who were all these people?”
“Victims of a blight, centuries ago,” Silas said. He began walking forward, under the skull arch and deeper into the tunnels. Elswyth followed him, examining the skulls as she passed. It seemed as though they went on forever, to where the light from her elderwood wand did not reach. Thousands of skulls, stacked on top of each other to create walls. Here and there, alcoves appeared, with stone altars speckled with long-dead candles.
What made her most curious were the mushrooms. They were pale white, whiter even than the ancient bones. They sprouted from empty eye sockets and open mouths, seeming to feed off the bones themselves. In one alcove, a complete skeleton lay huddled as though sleeping, with mushrooms growing from its ribs.
“Fifth century, I believe—skeletons from a time when people believed that eldren still walked the earth.”
“Blight. The same blight that struck ten years ago?” Elswyth said. She neglected to mention her mother, or her scar.
Silas shrugged. “Doubtful. Monastic texts from the era claim that this blight made the dead walk again. Nonsense, really.”
To her right, a patch of mushrooms pushed its way through a broken skull, stretching its jaws open in an eternal scream. “Let us hope so…” Elswyth said.
Eventually they came to a circular chamber. Above their heads,a dome of earth curved, vaulted with bones and glowing roots. She realized then that it was the base of an enormous elderwood tree, seen from below. The glowing roots wove through the earthen dome above like buttresses.
Other than that, the chamber was empty—save for a single door.
It was a door of carved elderwood, although the glow had long since faded. What remained was polished and ghostly white. Shards of bone were embedded in the wood, forming geometric patterns and mosaic-swirls. At the center of the door was a lone skull, its mouth open, holding a knocker. A grim mascaron.
“And here is where I need you,” Silas said.
“What is it?”
“Some kind of floromantic lock. If I’m right—and I believe I am—this will take us where we need to go.”
Elswyth stepped toward the door. Above them, elderwood roots glowed brightly, leading toward what appeared to be a central trunk. The lighting of the elderwood roots snaking through the dome above allowed her to see the door clearly.
Elswyth put her hand on the elderwood door and pushed. It didn’t budge.
“What makes you say it’s floromantic?” she asked.
“I may not be as talented a floromancer as you, but I can still use my floromantic sense.”
Elswyth sent her awareness through her hand into the wood of the door. It came back to her, a vision in orange light. But still, just a door made from dead wood.
“I don’t sense anything unusual.”
“Here,” Silas said. He took her hand and then placed it on the knocker. The warmth of him shocked her, the feeling of his coarsepalm on hers. He stood so close that she could feel the tickle of his hair on her face.
Elswyth sent her floromantic sense through the knocker. Vitæ went outward, gratefully accepted by the ancient door. The wood of the knocker was still alive. Her vitæ disappeared into the skull and flared out, mapped in orange light. Roots spread from the knocker throughout the door and wove through the walls all around it, keeping it sealed.
“I can’t work the elderwood well enough to open the door. I figured that, perhaps, one of your talents could.”
Elswyth suppressed a smile. She never wanted to be overconfident, but she did enjoy it when her talent was recognized. The fact that it was Silas doing the complimenting, well… that didn’t mean anything. She reached in with her floromantic sense again, felt where the roots reached into the earth, and then pulled.
The mechanism of the lock began to turn as roots slithered back into the door, untethering it from the surrounding stone. Dust plumed from the hinges. By the time Elswyth released the knocker, her heart beat rapidly.
