“It smelled like stagnant water. Almost like … groundwater.” My necklace warms on my chest. There’s something here. I scan the room, pivoting in place. My boots slide fluidly on the sandy floor. The stone walls are darker on the window side of the room than they are on the opposite side, almost like they’ve been replaced. A large tapestry hangs level with the towering door frames. The colors of the fabric are similar to watercolors. The image woven onto it is of a small pond with several swans. A large willow tree sits on the water’s edge, its branches blowing in an invisible wind.
But the longer I stare at it, the more it looks like it is moving.
“Is that tapestry moving?”
Lachlan leaves his post by the door and strides over to the tapestry, his boots leaving prints behind in the sand. He lifts a corner of it up, peering behind it.
“Good catch.” He grins, pride radiating from his eyes.
With one powerful tug, he rips the tapestry off the wall, revealing a person-sized hole roughly carved into the stone.
Mina stands on my left, while Mathilda takes up the position on my right.
“We’re not going to go down there—are we?” Mina asks, staring at the crudely cut hole. Her skin blanches, the freckles standing out vividly against her rapidly paling skin.
“Of course we are.” Mathilda grins, rubbing her palms together.
“I’ll grab Evander and Tane, and some torches,” Lachlan says,but he holds his hands palms out to us in a pleading gesture. “Dinna move!”
He rushes out the door, throwing a final wary glance in my direction.
Mathilda slings a thumb towards the bathroom. “There are candles in there.”
Mina grimaces, her shoulders a hairsbreadth away from touching her ears as I dip my chin. “Let’s go.”
Armed with two small candles, we squeeze our way through the jagged stone passageway. The stench of the room clings to us, and something musky begins to assault my senses with each step we take. It’s like stagnant pond water, but sharper. The stone scratches my cheek and arms as I shimmy my way down the path, holding the candle out in front of me. My fear of small spaces is pushed aside as the looming possibility of finding answers tugs me along. There has to be something here.
Mathilda has to work even harder than I do to fit her much taller frame through the opening and grumbles behind me. Mina’s light footsteps ahead of us are a stark but hilarious contrast as she easily breezes through. The crevice begins to widen, and my breathing evens out as I follow behind Mina’s flickering candle-light and into a large stone cavern.
“Whoa,” Mina whispers. “They built their own cave?”
Mathilda lurches through the tight opening and stumbles into the larger space. Her cheek is red from where she also must’ve scraped it along the stone. I turn in place, looking around the cave. It doesn’t appear manmade at all. Stalagmites rise up like treacherous spears from the uneven ground. While stalactites hang precariously from the ceiling. Water drips from their sharp ends, like blades hanging above our heads. The air is damp but crisp, like when it comes down from the mountains.
“This isn’t manmade. There must be another way in andout.” My words echo around us before they’re swallowed up in the darkness outside of our meager candlelight.
A torch blazes to life as Mathilda holds her tiny candle flame to the end of it. The stronger light casts eerie shadows on the surrounding rock, like the jaws of an enormous beast about to swallow us whole.
“Look, there’s a table here,” her voice cuts across the cavern.
Sure enough, a long wooden table sits against the wall, covered with books, clear decanters, and several large rocks. I walk with slow, measured steps towards the table, careful of the slick floor and treacherously bladed rocks sticking up from the ground.
“Is it some kind of altar?” I ask, eyeing the random selection of oddities.
“I don’t think so … ” Mina’s voice whispers from beside me. I flinch. She moved so quietly beside me, I hadn’t even realized she was there.
Mathilda switches the torch to her other hand to pick up a book. “I think they were doing experiments.”
“Experiments? What makes you think that?” My nose scrunches in confusion.
“Well, this book is about magical properties,” she sets down the first book to grab another, “this one is about crystals, and those are beakers.” She points to the glass bottles in various shapes. I take a step closer to the table and stub my toe on another book.
“Whoops.” I bend down to pick it up and nearly scream when the light reflects off the cover. An artist’s rendition of an asphidra. “Gods,” I mutter, holding the book out with two fingers.
“It looks like this is where they stashed all the useful books,” Mina grumbles. She nudges a stack of books in front of her, and a thick one with gold letters titled ‘Prophecies’ falls to the floor.
Rocks skitter down the passageway that we entered through.Lachlan’s voice bounces through the opening. “Ye canna wait one damn second!”
My footsteps echo our giggles as I walk closer to the entrance. “We found something!” I shout back.
