At the bottom sits a large, moss-stained door with a grinning skull knocker in the center. The ring bites into my flesh again.
“It’s behind here. It has to be,” I say, trembling with excitement. Who needs Duke Áine and his useless clue? His weak-minded court? His bullying knights? I have found the fragment all on my own. With a bit of help from the novillum, I suppose.
Lachlan wears a skeptical scowl as he examines the skull. “What if it’s a trap?”
My excitement deflates. I hadn’t thought of that. I press my ear against the door, but other than a faint whistling, like wind rushing through a crack, there’s nothing.
There’s a phrase curving over the skull knocker, written in the fae script. Before I can open my mouth to ask what it says, Lachlan translates. “Beyond the door lie our honored dead. May Danu offer them peace on their journey to the Afterlands.”
“So, it’s a kind of tomb as well.” I study the carved phrase. “That’s a good sign.”
“Tomb? Or a catacomb?”
“The difference being …”
Lachlan frowns. “A few thousand bodies, I’d say.”
I shudder, pulling back. “Do you think it’s locked?”
The grinning skull clatters to life, and Lachlan and I rear back, nearly colliding with the stairs.
I’m clutching my chest while Lachlan clutches me, and the skull giggles eerily through chattering teeth.
“Ask me a question, ring-bearer.”
“What on earth?” I mutter.
“Ask me a question, ring-bearer,” it says again in response.
I glance back at Lachlan, who shrugs, then leans over me to push on the door. A circle of shimmering gold sparks fizzle out from the center, but the door does not open.
“How does one open this door?” I ask.
“Ask me a question, ring-bearer.”
Worth a try.
“Who are you?”
“Ask me a question, ring-bearer.”
I’m guessing the correct question will open the door, Lachlan says.
Oh, do you think so?How in the name of your gods could you have possibly deduced that?
I spew a barrage of queries at the skull—“Who can tell me the question? What kind of information are you looking for? Which gods watch over this church? How long have you been here? What’s behind the door?”—but none lead to anything other than sing-song giggles and a toothy rattle.
It seems I have two options.
One, spend days upon days upon days beneath this church asking the skull every question I can possibly think of.
Or two, hear Duke Áine’s clue.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Before we return to Tír na Lune, Lachlan has a stop to make. He begs my pardon, says it could take a while, but as neither the crypt attacker nor the báshound liberator have been identified, he’s not keen on sending me back alone.
