“Vayu, the wind god.That’s Hanuman’s father.He’s the Son of the Wind.”
“This is it, then!”Constance bounced with excitement.“The Waters of the Son of the Wind!This is where we’ll find the next clue!”
“But what are we looking for?”Neil asked as he studied the softly gloomy hollow of the well.His voice sounded loud against the deep silence that surrounded the still green water.
“Someplacewhere nobility of spirit is never untouchable.”
“How on earth are we supposed to know what that means?”Neil grumbled.
Constance didn’t answer.Instead, her gaze fell to Neil’s shoulders—then drifted down his chest.
Neil glanced down at his shirt and waistcoat.They didn’t appear any filthier than they had that morning.The shirt just clung to him more closely, slightly damp with the humidity.
“Is there something on my…” he began.
Constance’s eyes jerked back up.She blinked at him innocently.“Hmm?”
A bizarre theory burst into Neil’s mind.Had she just beendistractedby him?
The idea was frankly ludicrous.Why would the fiercely gorgeous, blazingly confident Constance Tyrrell have been distracted by the sight of Neil Fairfax in a slightly sweaty shirt?
“I’ll just look around,” he hurriedly suggested.
“Good idea,” Constance agreed.“Keep your eye out for any secret passages.”
“Secret passages?What on earth would those even look like?”
“You’ll know one when you see it,” Constance assured him.
Neil slowly circled the gallery.The pillars were silent sentinels keeping watch over the still water.They framed a deeply shadowed recess cut out from the stone, likely intended as a place where visitors to the well could rest and cool off on hot summer days.
Constance poked her head into an opening cut into the wall on the far side.“I think I found the stairs to the upper level.”
She ducked inside.
Neil started to follow her—and realized another doorway stood in the stone behind the Hanuman statue.He slipped around the god to peer inside, where he could barely make out a narrow alcove carved into the stone
“There’s something here too, but I can’t see it very well,” he called up.
Constance stepped onto the gallery above him.“Stuffy, you have a flaming sword.”
“Oh!Right.”
Fighting back a now-habitual sense of unease, Neil drew Dyrnwyn from the scabbard on his back.
Cool, silent flames bloomed up its length.
Neil stood in a space a little bigger than a dressing room.A stone bench along the far wall suggested it might have been a more private retiring room, perhaps for members of the local nobility.
The walls were richly decorated with bas-relief carvings.Dyrnwyn’s flames danced over a warrior fighting a pack of wolves, a crowned goddess riding a dolphin… and a couple tangled in a frankly erotic embrace.
Constance poked her head around Hanuman’s form to peer inside.“See anything interesting?”
Neil dropped the sword, plunging them into gloom.
“You were upstairs,” he blurted out desperately.
“Yes,” Constance returned with exaggerated patience.“And then you told me you’d found a secret room.”
