Waiting.
Quinn and Seth follow as we approach the cave entrance, Seth chattering incessantly about the unfairness of a prophecy involving our family but not Seth himself, his disbelief in Ronan’s involvement, and his speculation that maybe he has a part to play in all of this after all, since he’s here.
“I wish your part could be keeping quiet and guarding us like Taran asked you to,” I say as we enter the darkened passages, the red stone of the walls closing in like the mouth of some terrible beast.
“I didn’t come becauseheasked me,” he says, indignant.
Quinn giggles. “Is that what you told him last night?”
I shake my head at both of them. “We’re here,” I say. The torch flares in Ronan’s hand as we turn a corner into a huge, open chamber with a single door at the back. Everyone goessilent at the sight of the looming, stretching shadows on the walls as they coalesce into a pair of figures.
“Holy shit,” whispers Quinn. “What is that?”
“Whois that?” asks Seth.
The sickle stirs in my satchel of its own accord. It’s the magnetic effect I felt in the dream, something pulling it to the door.
The shadows echo the pull, their distorted, massive, human-like figures moving unmistakably in the direction of the door, even as the torch flares and tilts in that direction.
“It seems like it would be rude to turn down such a strong invitation,” says Quinn. “Hell, I feel compelled to go, and I’m not even part of this.”
“We’re all part of this,” I say, pulling the sickle from the satchel with some effort to keep it from flying away.
Ronan takes my hand as we walk through the chamber. The shadows dance on the walls, forming and unforming but always leading to the door. His feelings are unsettled as we approach, and so are mine. Whatever answers we’re seeking are just behind that doorway.
But there’s something unnerving about the way theywantto be found.
The door sticks out against the roughly hewn back wall of the cavern, the large, rectangular structure clearly constructed by human hands. Around the sides and over the lintel there are carvings in the stone: primarily the same strange text as is inscribed on the handles of the torch and the sickle, but also images on either side. On the left, a pair of children at play. On the right, a pair of adults lying in a tomb.
This tomb.
“Julia and Leander,” I say. The queen and king consort who were assassinated for shadowbound heresy. They’re depicted here with the typical loving reverence displayed in the tombsof Selara’s rulers, but most of those are located in and around Faros, the capital. If Julia and Leander were killed for heresy, their tomb hidden out here in Avaris, and the details of what they had done stricken from the records, why were they commemorated with so much affection?
Ronan shines the torch around the door, looking for an opening or a handle. “I suppose we just push?”
“There’s a gap there,” I say, pointing to a spot at around waist height between the two halves of the door. It’s difficult to see until Ronan shines the light of the torch directly at it, but it’s unmistakably a groove.
“Try wedging something in there,” says Quinn. “Here.” She hands Ronan her dagger.
“Not the dagger,” I say, stepping forward. “The sickle.”
I lift the sickle to the gap, and the shadows in the room swirl around us. The sight sends a chill up my spine.
“That isn’t creepy at all,” says Quinn, shuddering.
“Look,” says Seth. “The carvings.”
With the light reflecting from the torch onto the curved surface of the sickle, the shadows set the carvings into motion. The images of the couple shift and change: the child Julia leaning over a prone Leander. The adult Leander leaning over a prone Julia and then falling beside her.
Then the text changes as well. It distorts and bends in the light until it’s legible.
It’s Selaran script, carved in such a way to only be readable with the light and the sickle.
“Here lies Queen Julia I of House Alta and her King Leander the Shadow Knight. May their sacrifice never be forgotten,” says Ronan, reading the inscription on the lintel.
“Well, it wasn’t forgotten. It was erased,” says Seth. “But why?”
“Down there,” says Quinn, pointing to a carving in the door itself.
