Empire of Bones (38 page)

From here, it was all new—very old—territory. He dropped onto the stairs, counting every quick step with a tongue-tip whisper inside his teeth. From here, he had to track his direction like Rupert had shown him.

The stairs were longer than he had expected. The dropping floor had simply bridged him down to solid permanent stairs that bent and curled and twisted instead of keeping a consistent spiral. His legs tightened and grew heavy. His whispered count slurred into one prolonged but punchy hiss.

The air was suddenly cooler on his face and in his lungs. It thickened so much, he felt like he was splashing through it.

And his feet hit the bottom. He stopped, breathing
hard. Heavy dust, undisturbed for centuries, swirled away from him.

There was no choice of paths. A single arched corridor stretched away from the stairs, disappearing in nothingness beyond Patricia’s glow.

He waited. He listened. Something hidden dripped. Something invisible scratched. The corridor was creepy enough to send any sane person right back up the stairs. But Cyrus had lived in the Polygon, bathing in icy drips, sleeping just out of reach of thousands of scratching feet. And he was here in search of one of the sleeping never-dead because his brother had shown him dreams.

“Eighty-four, up,” he whispered. He extended Patricia left and right. No doorways, no keyholes.

“Tigs!” He threw his voice back over his shoulder. A second later, grinding stone echoed above him. The floor vibrated beneath his feet.

“Wow, that was close!” Antigone’s voice rattled down around him and the grinding banged to a stop. He could hear her incredibly slow footsteps, like she was stopping to tie her shoes on each step.

“Cyrus? Cy? Could you turn Patricia on, please? It’s so dark, I feel dizzy.”

Cyrus raced back up the steps, three at a time, burning his legs and his lungs all over again by the time he reached his sister.

Antigone handed him the keys as he caught his breath.
A dozen steps above her, the stairs simply stopped. The floor had closed. The ceiling was solid above them and well out of reach.

“Great.” Cyrus dropped the keys into his pocket. “One light, one set of keys, we stay together now. And we have to hurry.”

At the bottom, Cyrus didn’t stop to let Antigone take in the corridor. He settled into a jog, whispering his step count as he did, sweeping Patricia back and forth, trying to watch the walls.

The corridor began to slope down, and at the same time, it bent slowly to the right.

“Cy!”

Cyrus stopped before his forty-second step. A large single slab of stone was built into the left-hand side. It was peaked and slightly smaller than a door, though bigger than the epitaph stone that had sealed the Captain’s underwater chamber.

Cyrus extended his snake hand toward it, and Antigone ran her hands over the stone’s uneven surface. A tiny trickle of water from the ceiling had marred the stone over centuries, striping it with bulging mineral deposits that looked like vertical sinews. Right in the center, there was a small inscription and a single silver chain-link inset around a keyhole.

“It’s in Latin,” Antigone said.

“This is why I brought you,” said Cyrus. “What does
it say? The nasty female we’re looking for is called Babd Cathy.”

“Pietru Cax-something,” Antigone said. “The name isn’t Latin. It’s Greekish, and it’s definitely not Babd or female.” She looked back at her brother. “It’s like an epitaph, but it’s mostly hidden now. Do we open it to check?”

Cyrus shook his head. “No time. Come on.”

He picked up his count at forty-three, but the next stone was only ten steps farther on. And it belonged to someone named Ambrosius. Antigone skimmed the epitaph.

“Something about being a father of witches,” she said. They moved on, but only ten more steps.

“Horsa,” Antigone said. “Never heard of him. Or her, I guess. Might be a feminine ending.” The inscription was badly obstructed. “Invader, blood drinker, brother to someone, so definitely a guy.”

Ten more quick steps around the curve and Cyrus slowed before he even saw the stone.

Slab number four. Another silver link around a keyhole. There had been seven links in the floor of the entry room, and Cyrus was starting to think he knew why.

This slab was already different. The stone was gray, but veined with green smokelike swirls. And when Cyrus wasn’t looking directly at it, the green veins seemed to be moving. The wet mineral deposits from the ceiling
parted around this stone, leaving it clean. There wasn’t even any dust.

The inscription was in the sharp chopped lines of Sanskrit or something like it.

Antigone touched the stone and jerked her hand back. The surface had depressed under her fingers like mud. While Cyrus watched, his sister’s finger dents disappeared. The Sanskrit disappeared. With a low, wet sucking sound, another inscription formed.

In English.

Smoky green veins writhed through it. The silver link sprouted silver branches and tiny silver leaves.

“Okay …,” Cyrus said. He turned to move on.

“The touch of life,” Antigone said. “I’ve heard of him. He wanted to be Buried, but Brendan had him make two living statues first.”

Cyrus looked at his sister. He looked back at the stone that should have been stone but was acting like clay—if clay could rewrite things, and if it could swirl colors like water.

“The Brothers Below?” Cyrus asked. “Those living statues? This guy made them?”

“That’s what Lemon said,” Antigone answered. “A Druid with the touch of life.”

Cyrus wanted to forget Babd. If this guy had made the Brothers, then maybe he could change the Brothers. He might be able to tell Cyrus where to find them. He could definitely tell him how to wake them, and how to keep them from killing absolutely everything. Maybe.

Cyrus tallied his step count in his head. This was not what he was supposed to be looking for … not if he believed Dan. And he did. He had to. But the maker of the Brothers?

He needed to stay on task. Cyrus nodded at Antigone, sheathed his knife, and jogged on, dragging his fingers down the wall as he went, no longer counting his steps.

The next three slabs in the curving corridor turned up an Italian name, a French name, and more Latin. But no Babds and no Cathas. Not even a Cathy.

And no other stairs. No other doors or corridors. Nothing.

Cyrus kicked the dead end. He kicked it until his foot screamed, and then he kicked it one more time. Breathing hard, he turned around, put his hands on his knees, and leaned against the wall. The cool stone pulled the heat from his back but not from his frustration. Somewhere up above him, people who died were fighting people who didn’t. They needed him to get this done
and get up there. He had to be faster. He had to find the Burial of a feather-haired war goddess with a skeleton face and stop a human sacrifice so that the real versions of every statue in Dan’s black dream water wouldn’t rise up around them and destroy the real world. And now he couldn’t even stay focused on that.

QUICK. With the touch of life …

He breathed slowly, trying to clear his head. Dream Dan had told him that Antigone would die if he didn’t find Babd Catha and prevent her from rising. In which case, he should be sprinting back up those long stairs already, trying to find a way out of this place, and a way into the next dank suite of Burials.

Cyrus wiped his forehead on the back of his wrist.

“Cy?” Antigone asked. “What are we doing?”

Cyrus slid down into a crouch. He had to make a decision now.

“Quick,” he said. “We find out about this touch of life.”

Oliver Laughlin yawned and stretched his Reborn but still adolescent body. He crossed his feet at the ankles and folded his hands around the Dragon’s Tooth, letting them rest on his stomach. The plane was absurdly loud and absurdly cold, but collecting as many aircraft as he
had over the last few weeks had required the remainder of his wealth and a great deal of theft. Pickiness would have been foolish. And he could, after all, silence the noise inside his skull; he could push warmth through his body. The flip-down stretcher he had claimed for himself was uncomfortable enough that it must have been intended for use by the dead. But that could be altered within his mind as well. Complaining nerves were tamed and his mind focused on the broader game at hand.

Phoenix was striking for the throat.

Radu was testing the trap. He had firebombed Ashtown and sent in a team of at least nine transmortals. Somehow, Rupert Greeves was on-site, but he wouldn’t be for long.

Radu Bey would enter Ashtown. The Burials would be opened, and Phoenix and two hundred of his sons would be in place, ready to constrict.

The old powers would be offered a choice.

Mortality: true, complete, and final death.

Immortality: but only in blood-bound allegiance to Phoenix.

Phoenix knew that some would fight. But his Reborn would be firing darts full of tooth potion already tested and proven in that skirmish in the cigar factory. If the darts could stun Gilgamesh, a sufficient number could temporarily drop any of the transmortals. Phoenix had
even sent Radu a little sample along with the ritual tokens to help him enter Ashtown—a threat to accompany his gift.

In the end, Phoenix expected to execute many with the tooth that tipped his cane—perhaps even rebestowing transmortality on a few of his most-trusted Reborn sons. But surely most of the dragons would kneel. They were lovers of power, unused to fear. They would feel terror and awe, and they would be bound to him.

And then he would govern the storm.

Oliver yawned and felt the pleasure of young lungs inside a taut chest, undecayed by age. The human authorities were scurrying. A plane had crashed in the lake. The smoke rising up from Ashtown would be visible for miles. Some fools were sure to investigate.

Oliver closed his eyes and smiled at the thought of what those people would be walking into.

The living stone was warm beneath Cyrus’s palm. It felt like mud, but it was dry, and as dense and heavy as stone. Because it
was
stone. If he punched it, his knuckles would break. But when he pressed on it lightly, it depressed beneath his fingers. If he had time to experiment, he could probably stab his knife right through the slab, one slow centimeter at a time.

“Cy, are you sure about this?” Antigone chewed her lower lip while she watched.

“Of course not,” Cyrus said. “I’m unsure about everything right now.”

The silver Solomon Key rippled and morphed into a long, jagged leaf as he slid it into the hole and turned.

The slab bent inward slowly in the center, and then swung open.

The room inside was on fire with sunlight. Cyrus staggered back across the hall, blinking. Antigone threw an arm up over her eyes.

Warm air swirled out into the corridor. The floor of the chamber was covered with vines and grass and bright flowers that looked like they were made of pottery or porcelain, but all of it was moving, bending slightly in a breeze. The chamber was deep, the vaulted ceiling high, and the far wall held the white fiery orb of a false sun. It was setting, inching down toward the floor. Every pillar had sprouted branches, and they were heavy with fruit and blossoms. Huge clusters of grapes hung down from the ceiling.