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“Indeed, but there is a difference to what she did and I’m doing.”
“She worked for the Gods; you work for the museum.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He slid sideways past a large outcrop of rock before continuing. “She had responsibilities that I don’t. She should never have risked her life in the service of the gods while you were little.”
“I wasn’t little when she died.”
“No, but that’s a moot point.”
I sucked in a breath and did my best to squeeze past the outcrop without scraping my chest. “She might not have had any choice. Old gods and goddesses have never taken no for an answer, and they’re not above threatening the people or things that you love to get their way. You’ve said that multiple times about Beira.”
“At the very least, she should have informed someone where she was headed,” he growled. “If she had, she might still be alive today.”
“And have us—or Sgott—possibly stepping into a dangerous situation? There’s no way she’d have ever risked that, Lugh.”
He glanced briefly over his shoulder, almost blinding me with the headlamp. “Another instance of ‘like mother like daughter,’ I’m thinking.”
I half smiled. “Have I not been keeping you updated on my movements lately?”
“Yes, but please keep it up. You’re the only family I have left, and life wouldn’t be the same without your nagging and sometimes annoying presence in it.”
“Ditto, brother.”
We walked on in silence for what seemed like forever. The descent got steeper, the ground wetter and more dangerous, and the air thick and stale, making it increasingly harder to breathe. I knew enough about old caves and fouled air from the various things Lugh had said over the years to understand that, while there was no immediate danger, the longer we stayed, the more carbon dioxide would collect in our bodies, and the greater the chance of aftereffects.
Hopefully we’d find the forge before we had to worry about getting disorientated and dead.
Eventually, the path evened out and we stopped heading down. The tunnel walls switched from limestone to a faceted mirror black that didn’t appear in any way natural. Our lights danced across its surface like hundreds of tiny stars, making it appear we were walking high in the sky rather than deep underground.
Though the air remained still and foul, there was now an odd sense of... weightiness... coming from up ahead. It was as if whatever lay hidden by darkness had been there so long it was unable to support expectation or hope.
Then the darkness swamped us, and the starlight died. The headlamps weren’t having much luck penetrating the unnatural thick curtain, so Lugh got out his flashlight again and turned it on. It had no more luck than the headlamps did.
He raised a hand and cautiously stepped forward, feeling for a wall that was obviously there even if we couldn’t yet see it. His fingers were briefly swallowed by black ink and then rejected.
“It appears we have a magical barrier rather than a physical one,” he said. “You feeling anything?”
I shook my head. “The knives aren’t reacting, so if itismagic, it’s not the dark kind.”
He nodded and kept pressing his fingers against the wall, exploring its dimensions. As expected, it covered the entire passage, preventing us from going any further.
“If the gods’ forge does lie behind this thing, then maybe it’s not human touch that will raise the barrier. Maybe it needs to be godly.”
“I can’t imagine the old gods would have ever used such a narrow and dangerous damn tunnel.”
My voice was wry, and his smile flashed briefly. “Well, no, but it’s also unlikely they’d have forged the Claws and all the other artifacts themselves, either. They would have had human help.”
And making the help traipse through deadly tunnels on a daily basis would be right up their alley.
“If that’s true, then this barrier was probably raisedafterthe Claws and whatever other artifacts had been made here were finished,” I said. “Presuming, of course, it is the forge on the other side and not a cave troll or something.”
“Cave trolls only exist in fiction.”
I snorted. “I assure you they don’t. Just look at the current crop of parliamentarians.”
He laughed, a sound that was weirdly muffled in the thick atmosphere. “There has to be a way past it. You wouldn’t have been shown the forge if it was impossible to access it.”
“Except I didn’t actually ask if itcouldbe accessed. I just asked where it was.”
