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His voice rises from the darkness. “You have about ten stairs, and then they end out over open air. I’m jumping down.”
That can’t be a good idea. “Wait—”
Something thuds below. “There’s a platform not five feet down. Jump, and I’ll catch you.”
I inch my way down the stairs, counting as I go. My foot hits air and I draw in a readying breath. “Don’t drop me.”
The fall through blackness lasts a heartbeat, then warm arms wrap around me. Izamal lets me down gently.
“Do you have an ikonlight?”
Something makes a clicking sound, and then a soft blue glow emanates from Izamal’s left gauntlet, lighting his face from below.
We’re on a landing about ten paces across, with another set of stairs spiraling down on the other side. An ikonlight lantern rests against the carved dark stone wall. With a turn of its ikondial, a soft white glow rises within.
I carry it aloft as I descend, Izamal on my heels. The stairs go on and on. I peer over the edge and squint, turning my ikonlight off and motioning for Izamal to do the same.
Something glows down below. It’s the color of the last light before nightfall. I take the rest of the stairs by twos, and reach another landing, this one much smaller. There’s only one way forward, but I grab Izamal before he steps through a stone archway and into the dim light.
An ikon marks the floor. It’s complex—too complex for me to figureout in full. But there’s a curve that I recognize—one for sound—and I’d wager the shirt on my back that it’s an alarm.
“What is it?”
I shush him. Grabbing a mound of dirt, I sprinkle it across three separate lines, breaking the ikon.
Holding my breath, I step through a stone archway and squeeze my eyes shut.
One, two, three heartbeats—and no alarm sounds. I open my eyes.
A massive city both rises above us and extends deep into the dark below, lit by hundreds of lights that reflect the deep purple-red of the stone surrounding us. A dead city, a corpse shaped like a cocoon, fat in the middle and tapered on both ends. It’s supported by enormous pillars of rock that begin far below and rise high above our heads, and some dozen walkways spiderweb out from the ruins and into the stone that surrounds us, connecting this dead city to ours.
A single shaft of daylight shines from above, through an opening in the rock. That must be where the fifth caved in, on the day Izamal’s sister fell.
His face is set in a mask of concentration, and he strides ahead on a walkway that curves along the stone wall and arches out over the abyss and into the city. The city isn’t well preserved. Many of the walkways end in midair, shattered by time, and the ruins of buildings and archways make for a rabbit’s warren of rubble. Dalca’s way—the path we’re on—is one of the few that still stands unobstructed.
Somewhere in the cavern, water trickles drop by drop, each drop echoing a half dozen times, the overlapping echoes sounding altogether like the ghost of rain. I shiver, remembering the rumors that Dalca’s grandfather locked him down here when Dalca was only a child.
The path doesn’t fork; there’s only one way to go. I take a quickgulp of air and turn my ikonlight back on before stepping out onto the thin bridge that leads into the city. Izamal’s foot hits a pebble that skitters over the edge of the bridge. A splash sounds. I peer down, holding the lantern aloft.
Ripples dance out, disrupting a reflection as perfect as a mirror. There’s something strange about the reflection—for a heartbeat, it seems like it’s reflecting a different city, a livelier one awash in color, lit by red lanterns.
“People could live here,” I murmur to Izamal as we hurry across the bridge. “The Storm can’t get in here.”
Izamal glances at me, eyebrow quirked. “You want to volunteer?”
The splash of water echoes, each echo overlapping, the sound rising into a ghastly choir. A chill begins in my toes and rises through the tips of my hair. “Maybe not.”
“When I was a child, Nashi told me stories of the ancient city. A city protected from the elements, as safe as a mother’s womb. A glorious city—at least until our ancestors dug too deep and opened the door to a place no living can enter.”
The shaft of daylight goes straight down, without interruption. “Your sister fell into the water? Into the...”
Izamal looks away, his voice clipped. “The land of the dead.”
Midway across the bridge is another ikon. I break it in the same way.
The bridge takes us to the other side, where there’s a path cleared through massive mounds of broken stone and the detritus of buildings. I could stand on Izamal’s shoulders and not see above the rubble. The path leads straight to the once-grand doors to a temple.
We walk inside.
