Page 19 of Fateless

I silenced my churning stomach and turned back to the doorway. Years of following my gut told me I shouldn’t ignore the instinct, but I couldn’t turn around and go home. “I’m fine,” I told Halek, ducking through the frame. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Right behind you.”

Stepping to the edge of the hole, I peered down. It plunged straight into pitch darkness, and I couldn’t see any sign of the bottom. On impulse, I dropped my torch into the hole. It fell for a long, long time, becoming a mere spark in the darkness before hitting the bottom and instantly snuffing out.

“That’s a long way down,” Halek commented. “And it’s very dark.”

“Hang on,” I muttered, reaching into my pack. “I have another torch.”

He put a hand on my arm, startling me again. He touched so easily, without thought; it was a little disconcerting, but at the same time, completely without malice, so I didn’t mind it as much as if it had been someone else. Growing up with thieves, pickpockets, and petty thugs had taught me the value of keeping my distance.

“Just a moment,” he told me. “I have something better.”

Reaching into a pouch at his belt, he withdrew something small and round on a cord. A yellowish stone, but translucent, like it was made of honey. Cupping it in his hands, he blew on it gently, and a soft orange light began radiating from the tiny stone, giving off a very lanternlike glow.

Smiling, he handed it to me. “A glowstone from the underground kingdom of the troblin,” he said as I stared at the stone in amazement. It pulsed softly in my palm like an enormous firefly. “If the light starts to fade, just breathe on it again. It’s triggered by the heat of your breath.”

“Thank you,” I murmured. How valuable was this stone? I’d never seen anything like it. I’d only heard stories of the troblin, a race of short, green-skinned people who lived in caves and tunnels so the sunlight wouldn’t hurt their eyes. “I’ll be sure to give it back,” I told him, though I was extremely tempted to keep it. Our fence would probably faint if I brought this little gem into his office.

Halek chuckled and shook his head. “I have a dozen of them,” he said easily. “Keep it. That one is yours.”

I tied the cord of the glowstone onto my belt as Halek pulled out a second one and draped it around his neck. With the lights of the little stones throwing off a comforting glow, I stepped onto the ladder and began the descent into the pitch blackness.

The shaft continued for a long time. And for a while, the only sounds were our breathing and the clunk of our boots against the metal rungs. Several were broken or missing, causing me to kick frantically in the near blackness for the next rung.

The air turned colder and began to smell of salt and brine. I took the next step down and my boot plunged into icy water that made me yelp and jerk my foot back up.

“What’s wrong?” Halek called from above me.

I peered down. The ladder ended in a pool of black water that glimmered dully in the light of the glowstones. Gazing around, I saw a stone tunnel half submerged on the opposite side of the shaft. Judging from how much of the tunnel was still visible, the water level was only a few feet deep. Still, I hadn’t expected to have to get wet today.

Gritting my teeth, I stepped off the ladder, sinking past my knees in cold, brackish-smelling water.

“Was that a splash?” Halek wondered aloud, just as he too reached the end of the ladder and dipped a foot into the water. “Oh, that’s cold! Why is there water down here? Have we hit a lake or something?”

“It must be the underground sea,” I murmured. Glancing at the tunnel, I grimaced. It looked like it slanted downward. “We’re going to get even wetter.”

“Well,” Halek said cheerfully, landing next to me with a splash, “it’s a good thing I know how to swim.”

I didn’t know how to swim. Halek aside, I didn’t know anyone who knew how to swim. There was no body of water anywhere near Kovass large enough that you would have to worry about drowning—there was only the Dust Sea, and if you fell intothat, you were doomed to suffocate and lie at the bottom until the waves of dust and sand stripped the flesh from your bones.

Halek glanced at me and smiled. “Don’t worry,” he assuredme. “If we get into trouble, I won’t let you drown.”

It was an odd feeling, walking through the tunnel. The water in the passage reached my waist and was colder than anything I had ever experienced before. Dripping echoed through the passage, and the waves from our passing sloshed against the stone wall. After several minutes of walking, my body adjusted to the temperature and wasn’t quite so cold. It did not adjust to the unsettling feeling of being underground in a narrow tunnel full of water.

“I think I see a light ahead,” Halek said at length.

Which should’ve been impossible, because nothing lived down here, but he was right. There was a faint glow in the darkness ahead of us, not orange like torchlight or candlelight; this was ghostly blue-white luminance. Warily, we kept going, pushing through the water until the tunnel abruptly opened up and we stood at the edge of something impossible.

“Oh,” Halek breathed behind me. “By the Weaver, it’s beautiful.”

We were at the edge of an enormous cavern, so huge I couldn’t see the ceiling overhead. Glowing lichen and fungi grew on the walls and floor, lighting the space with an eerie, ethereal glow. Spores drifted through the air like blue-white fireflies, showing us the marvel we had stumbled onto.

A city sprawled around us, broken, crumbled, half sunk in the lapping water. Walls leaned against each other, columns lay shattered or stood half erect, domed roofs jutted out of the water like the tops of enormous mushrooms. Buildings lay half submerged beneath the surface, chillingly frozen in time.

“The fallen city of the Deathless King,” Halek whispered, his eyes huge as he took it all in. He blinked, then turned to me with a curious look. “So what are we here for, anyway? I didn’t dare ask before, but I’m guessing we didn’t find that door by accident. Did you come down here to explore the city, or are you looking for something special?”

I shivered and pulled the map from my satchel, then unrolled it with shaking hands. In the eerie spore light and the pulse from our glowstones, I studied the scroll before me. “We must be here,” I muttered, tapping a circle drawn on the parchment in red ink. “And here”—I traced a finger north on the map to the prominently markedXat the top—“is where we have to go.”

---