“Human acting strange.” Meeka shook his head and leaped to the floor, then turned to peer up at me. “Meeka not hear voices. Meeka not see things following.” His ears twitched, then pricked in my direction. “Human eat bad food?”
Raithe stepped forward, holding out his hand. I took it and let him pull me close. “What did it say?” he asked, worry shadowing his eyes.
“It knows I’m here,” I answered, grateful that he wasn’tquestioning me. “I don’t know what it wants. If it wants anything. But something here is aware of my presence.”
Raithe nodded. “We can only press on,” he said. “If it’s aware of us, it will either try to stop us or not, but we should be careful. And be wary of anything strange.”
“Everything here strange,” Meeka said.
I had to smile at that. But then the heavy thud of hooves sounded behind us, making Raithe tense and Meeka leap to my shoulder again. We hurried away as quietly as we could, ducking into another passage.
I followed closely behind Raithe as he led us through the labyrinth. The iylvahn seemed to have an uncanny sense of direction, not to mention knowing where the Tauryss creatures were just by sound. He held up a hand, bringing us to a halt in another corridor. Ahead, the ground shook with footfalls, and the huge, decaying bull creature lumbered into view. I pressed close to Raithe, waiting for the monster to pass, and felt a chill against my back. Not the creepy sensation of something watching me, an actual coldness that made my exposed skin prickle. Again, neither Raithe nor Meeka seemed to feel it.
I turned... and came face-to-face with a ghostly figure not two feet from me, its eyes hollow black pits. Strange white threads drifted around it like spiderwebs, trailing off its body until they faded away into tendrils of mist.
Every muscle in my body seized. I couldn’t move, or I would alert the monster at the end of the corridor. On my shoulder, Meeka tensed, but it was a response to my own reaction. I staredat the figure, my breath coiling into the air in front of me, unable to look away.
The figure stared back at me... then lunged right through my body.
I jerked back with a yelp, hitting the wall of the corridor. An image blinked through my mind: an enormous tree in the center of a chamber, roots splitting solid rock as it rose into the air, branches spread to block out the open ceiling. The gnarled trunk, roots, limbs, and leaves were wrapped in hair-thin tendrils that waved and thrashed about, as if seeking to snare whatever came close. Something dark lurked in the same room, a massive presence I couldn’t see, but I sensed boiling anger and power as if they were physical things.
I blinked... and was in the corridor again with Raithe and Meeka as a terrifying bellow shook the air and the bull creature charged.
“Run,” Raithe growled, and Meeka leaped off my shoulder. We fled, charging down the passage the way we’d come, the ground trembling as the monster pursued. I glanced back once and regretted it immediately, seeing the undead creature’s entire body fill the corridor, horns lowered to ram us into the stones. If we stood and fought, that much momentum would be like trying to stop a runaway oxen cart, and there was no room in the narrow passage to dodge out of the way. So we ran, ducking around corners and into adjacent corridors, trying to break the line of sight long enough to escape.
With a roar, a second bull creature lunged out of an adjoiningpassage, smashing at us with a bony fist. Raithe ducked beneath its arm, and I dodged aside as the hand crushed the stones beneath it, shaking the floor.
“Sparrow, here!” Raithe ducked around a corner, then flattened himself to the wall. I followed his example, hearing the snorting of the monster behind me as it charged recklessly around the corner. It continued past us, brushing so close I could smell the sickly stench of decay that clung to it, see the bones and raw muscle poking through its fur. As soon as it passed, Raithe doubled back the way we’d come. I followed, listening to see if the Tauryss turned around. But its footsteps continued away from us in the maze.
“Are you all right?” Raithe’s voice was hushed. I nodded, and he stepped closer, one hand coming up to cup the side of my head. “What happened?”
“I... saw something again,” I told him. “In the passage with us. Some kind of wraith or spirit. It showed me something.”
Meeka hopped up, swiveling his ears curiously. “When see spirit? Meeka saw nothing.” He shook himself and rubbed his paws over his nose. “Felt cold, though.”
“There’s another chamber,” I went on, as the jair’oa leaped to my shoulder again. “Somewhere farther inside the temple, I think. There was... a tree. It was covered in webbing or threads or something. There was something else in the room, too, a presence, but I couldn’t see what it was.”
“A tree?” Raithe looked puzzled. But before he could say anything, the ghostly image drifted right through the wall farther down the corridor. It stared at me for a moment, then floated down another passage and out of sight.
I breathed deeply and nodded. “Okay,” I whispered. “Right. I think I know where to go.”
Once more, we ventured into the maze. I led this time, searching for ghostly shimmers as we navigated the obsidian halls. I still heard the clunks and scrapes of the Tauryss as they combed the labyrinth for us, and several times we had to pause or duck into another corridor to let the rotting creatures shamble past. Twice, I had to stop at an intersection of the maze and decide which way to go. But each time, I caught sight of the figure, shimmering into existence for just a moment, and I hurried to follow.
We turned one last corner, and the narrow, claustrophobic walls of the maze suddenly opened into a large, circular room. Shattered pillars, plinths, and statues lay scattered around the chamber, turning the room into a forest of crumbling stone and forgotten heroes. The chamber was nearly pitch-black; only a few guttering lanterns flickered in the gloom, their light a ghostly blue instead of orange. The eerie luminance cast the jagged remains of statues in an ethereal light.
“This must be the center of the labyrinth,” Raithe murmured beside me. “Is this the chamber you saw in your vision, Sparrow?”
“No,” I whispered back. “The room I saw was... full of light and much bigger than this. And there was this huge, web-covered tree in the center.”
Sitting on Raithe’s shoulder now, Meeka twitched his ears. “Meeka not like this place,” he said quietly. “Smells funny. Like bones.”
Well, that was disconcerting. But just as I was about to sayso, I caught a ghostly shimmer of white in the chamber. It could have been a lantern reflecting off the pale statues and broken pillars around the room, but I knew it was not.
“Come on,” I said. “Whatever we’re looking for, it’s somewhere in there.”
We slipped into the chamber, which was eerily silent as we made our way around statues and over dusty pillars. Even the scraping and shuffles of the Tauryss outside didn’t seem to penetrate the absolute stillness of the room.
“What are we looking for, Sparrow?” Raithe asked, his voice hushed in the eerie, almost palpable silence. I winced.
