Page 13 of Fateless

“Beneath the city,” he replied, taking a lantern from beneath his cloak. He lit it and held it up, casting a weak orange glow over the tunnel around us. “We’ll be taking the sewers most of the way. Stay close—it’s easy to get lost down here.”

“Most of the way to where?”

He didn’t answer, but I hadn’t expected him to.

The narrow tunnel quickly led us into the sewers, which, in a city like Kovass, were a marvel unto themselves. Sewers required water, and aboveground, at least, water was nearly nonexistent. But eons and eons ago—so long ago that no one really knew exactly when—there had been a terrible cataclysm. Mountains crumbled, the earth split apart, and the ocean disappeared, draining into the cracks and sinking deep below the sands. For many years, it sat there, silent and untouched, as the world above withered and died beneath the merciless glare of the twins.

Obviously, life cannot exist without water, and necessity is the mother of invention. The underground sea was eventually discovered, and the ancient builders and architects of Kovass designed a vast network of copper pipes to pump the water from underground and distribute it across the city. It was stored in reservoirs and public fountains, where the citizens lined up each morning to fill their daily buckets and jugs. That water was used for cooking, bathing, drinking, and washing waste down the drains into the sewers below.

The sewers I found myself in now.

Vahn and I didn’t speak as we continued through the mazeof tunnels, pipes, and narrow corridors. Unsurprisingly, it stank down there, and there was a chill in the air that I suspected wasn’t present when the suns were up. Vahn moved quickly, giving me little time to look around, but I tried to memorize all the twists and turns in case I needed to find my way back alone. The sewers were sprawling and ancient, but for some reason, few in the Thieves Guild used them. Entrances were difficult to find and harder to access, and the sewer itself was confusing and not laid out well, according to some. I had a good memory when it came to remembering my surroundings, but I would have to concentrate if I ever had to navigate my way down here.

As Vahn and I continued on, I had the impression that we were moving downward, deeper into the undercity, into the belly of Kovass. We walked down a flight of stairs and descended a rusty ladder, and then, abruptly, the narrow tunnels opened up and I found myself staring at a large cavern. The chamber was man-made, its smooth walls and ceiling indicating this was not natural stone. The temperature had dropped sharply, probably because the cavern floor was filled with dark water, throwing off waves of cold as we stepped into the room. A narrow walkway cut straight through the middle of the cavern to a door on the other side.

“What is this place?” I asked Vahn, my voice echoing into the vastness above.

“An abandoned cistern,” he replied. “Before the pipes and pumping stations were constructed throughout Kovass, water from the underground sea was stored here. Few come down here anymore. Fewer still remember that this place exists.”

We passed through the chamber, the dark water lapping at the edges of the walkway and sloshing over the path. Icy droplets fell from the blackness overhead, hitting my skin with tiny stabs of cold. I stared out over the opaque water and felt the hairs along the back of my neck start to rise. It was probably my imagination, but I could almost feel something watching me from beneath the dark, chilly surface. Something old and terrible that could reach out of the water and drag me down into the darkness with it. I stayed to the middle of the walkway as much as I could, and was relieved when the chamber finally came to an end.

“Sparrow.”

At the door, Vahn turned to me once again, his face a mask of stone.

“I know,” I said before he could say anything. “Whatever I see, whatever is waiting for us beyond that door, tell no one what transpires here. This never happened.”

His lips thinned, but he gave a short nod and turned away. I followed him through the doorframe and down another narrow, shadowy tunnel, and finally, into the last chamber.

Even though I had been bracing myself for what could lie down here, forgotten by the world, I still felt my stomach drop with amazement. The room we found ourselves in was dim, vast, and circular. A wide ledge surrounding the perimeter dropped down to a second level perhaps five or six feet below, a single set of roughhewn stairs leading to the lower floor. Stone columns, broken and crumbling, ringed the edge, and torchlight flickered from braziers surrounding the circle.

In the very center, standing around a large stone altar, fivedark-robed figures turned to watch us come in. A quiver slid up my spine and lodged in my stomach. Their cowls were drawn up, but peering out from the darkness of the hoods were the bleached, hollow faces of skulls. After a moment, I realized that they were masks, that it wasn’t really a group of living dead staring at us. Still, it was eerie and unsettling, and I suddenly wanted to find the nearest clump of shadow and disappear into it.

Vahn gave me no chance to back out. I felt his firm hand on my shoulder as he stepped forward, and I reluctantly let myself be escorted into the chamber. Down the steps, and before what had to be the infamous Circle, who stared at me with flat, hollow eyes behind their masks of bone. My heart pounded, and I dropped my gaze, staring at the altar. Almost immediately, I wished I hadn’t. Suspicious brown stains covered the flat surface, and though it was hard to tell exactly what they were in the flickering torchlight, the implications made my skin crawl.

“Guildmember Sparrow.”

I swallowed hard, raising my head to meet the cold gaze of the figure who had spoken. The eyes behind the skull mask were human, but the ruthless contempt they held made me bristle and cringe at the same time. I wasn’t a person to this figure, I was an asset. “Long have we waited for this moment,” it rasped. “Long have we searched for the one who steps outside the Weave. Now you are here. Now it is time to truly prove your worth.”

Steps outside the Weave?What did that mean? Did it have anything to do with stealing the Tapestry of the World? And if that had just been a test, what supposedly impossible task did they have in store for me now?

“Guildmember Sparrow,” another voice broke in, female, though no less eerie. “The Circle has called you here to give you a momentously important task. You have proved your talent by retrieving the Tapestry of the World from the Temple of Fate. Now it is time to undergo the mission you were born for.”

“And what is that?” I asked in a quiet voice. I was no longer intrigued. I no longer wanted to impress the Circle. I just wanted to leave this chilling place as soon as possible.

“Are you aware of the city that lies beneath Kovass?” the first voice whispered.

I nodded. Kovass had its sewer system, and below the sewers lay the vast, sunken ocean. But there were even darker secrets lurking below everyone’s feet, unknown and unexplored. According to Vahn, there had been a city before Kovass. A sprawling metropolis that towered into the sky and made Kovass look like a poor hamlet compared to its glory. It was gone now, of course. The same cataclysm that had drained the sea had also swallowed the mighty city, burying it beneath the sands. Kovass had been built on the bones of an ancient metropolis, and everyone had conveniently forgotten that below their feet, an entire dead civilization slumbered in the darkness.

“The First Kingdom,” the voice went on as if I hadn’t replied. “The time of the Deathless Kings. And it’s most glorious city, the most beautiful in the world, now lies destroyed and forgotten beneath the sands.”

“But not by all,” whispered the female voice. “We remember. We hold the memories of the First Kingdom close. We have made it our mission to never let its glory fade into nothingness. Butnow we need your help, Guildmember Sparrow.”

The Deathless Kings again.I snuck a furtive glance at Vahn and saw him staring straight ahead, his eyes hard and his face giving nothing away. I wished he’d given me a bit more instruction on what to do when meeting the most powerful, dangerous members of the guild. I didn’t know if I should speak up or just continue waiting in silence. Fortunately, the members of the Circle did not seem to expect me to answer, and after a heartbeat, the male voice spoke again.

“There is a vault,” the Circle member rasped, “that lies deep within the sunken city. Within the vault is a small stone, no bigger than your finger, marked with runes.”

I swallowed. This seemed like a dangerous mission to undertake for a single item the size of my finger. I suspected curiosity was not encouraged here, but I summoned the courage to ask, “And what is this stone?”

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