Page 68 of In the Ravenous Dark
“Let’s,” Japha says. “Despite our dreary outfits, I’ve actually been looking forward to this.” There’s a bright gleam in their eyes.
They march straight over to the darkened doorway and open it without further ado. Lydea and I both follow after a few cautious glances down the hall. I give her a subtle nod to let her know that my guardian isn’t paying much attention. She and Japha return the nod, not realizing that I can see both their guardians. Graecus and Damios take note of where we’re headed, but they aren’t following very closely. I only catch flickers of them in the gloom. The thought of a visit to the necropolis must not be terribly exciting for dead men.
Ivrilos himself either truly doesn’t care what I’m up to, which I doubt… or he can’t spare the energy.
The way beyond the door slopes downward, continuing in twining mosaics that look more like flowing shadows than cut pieces of stone. Torches, surrounded by alcoves filled with skulls, barely light the way. This underground passage will connect us to the necropolis, built partially into the cliffside of the plateau upon which Thanopolis sprawls. The rest of the edifice looms on top like a vulture on its perch. The massive main building has no ornament, only weather-beaten pillars like bundles of bone. I’ve never wanted to go near it, and my mother, probably because of my father, never encouraged it. Aside from this underground palace entrance, only the poorest part of the polis abuts the orderly mausoleums outsidethe necropolis. Because who wants to live near the dead, other than shadow priests?
“They have a consistent sense of style here, I’ll give them that,” Japha murmurs, before carrying on down the hall.
“Were you able to get word to Delphia that we’re visiting?” I ask Lydea, as low and as close to her as I can manage after we close the door.
She nods. “She’s not supposed to meet us during this part of her training,” she says out of the corner of her mouth. “Seeing family can make adjusting to life like the dead… difficult… so she’ll have to sneak away.” Her lovely lips cant downward. “I’m nervous for her.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, squeezing her hand discreetly under my baggy sleeve. “We’ll find her.”
I let my fingers slip away from hers quickly, and not just to avoid being seen. Lydea gives me a glance, but she’s too preoccupied by our mission to do more than that.
We wander on down the dim passageway until abruptly it’s no longer narrow. It spits us out under a deep column-lined aisle, which in turn opens onto a cavernous central chamber. Columns and arches disappear into the shadows overhead. A statue of only one aspect of the tripartite goddess, the crone, stands stooped at the far end, a staff in one hand and a raised lantern in the other. Eerie blue fire burns there, throwing a sickly glow around the room. In the light, Japha’s lips look blue—suffocated, drowned—and Lydea’s skin as pale as a corpse’s, her mouth bloodied. I pull my cowl tighter around me, as if I can keep the light from touching me.
“Hello, benighted ones.” The hissing voice from the shadows next to us nearly makes me leap out of my death shroud. A person shambles forward in an outfit matching ours, except where a cowl would cover their head, twisting bands of ropelike iron bind them. The mask leaves only their mouth exposed, lips darkened to anunhealthy black at the corners, teeth jagged and rotten. As far as I can tell, it even covers their eyes. As much as I hate the sight of it, it’s almost unfortunate it doesn’t hide everything.
“Benighted?” Japha says with ill-disguised distaste.
“Shadowed by death. Bound to darkness.” A skeletal hand flickers out from a sleeve, not taut with age but something worse, and reaches for Japha’s face. Japha takes a hasty step back. “How I envy you. No matter how close to death I come, even touching theshadows”—they say another word after that, an old word, like what I heard Ivrilos speak, and something like black smoke coils around their thin fingers—“I will never be as close as you.” The iron-strapped head tips nearer to all of us, and I can hear a raspy inhale. “I can smell it on you.”
Whatever death smells like to the shadow priest, I hope it’s not as bad as the stench they’re giving off.Glorified cult of death worshippers, Japha once called Thanopolis, and that’s never felt more apt.
I want to recoil like Japha, maybe run, but Lydea only smiles calmly. She might be the bravest person I know.
“Yes, lucky us,” she says without a hint of the sarcasm I know she feels. “Excuse me, shadow priest, but we wish to try to commune with our royal family. Pay them our respects. There is a place where other shades cannot accidentally interfere with our summons?”
“Yes, there is a place for that.” The shadow priest cocks their horrible, half-faceless head. “But your connection with your guardians may become disrupted. You see, the room has deep, dark magic in its stones. Itsbones. By blocking out the many voices of the dead, it serves as a channel to those you call.” The priest hesitates. “And just know that not all shades come when summoned.”
Probably because most of themcan’tcome, I think.Because they’ve been used as mortar in the underworld. Or worse.
“Of course,” Lydea says placidly, “but it is our devotion to the dead—and the crone that shepherds them—that makes us try.”
The priest hisses something that might be satisfaction. “The crone smiles upon you, as does her king.” They gesture behind them, trailing a ghostly sleeve from their bony arm. I squint until my eyes adjust. There, at the end of the massive central chamber, behind the statue of the goddess, I finally see it: a darker, taller statue, deeper set against the far wall. It must be the first king, Athanatos, looming in the shadows behind the goddess.
I shiver.
The priest’s head snaps in my direction. “Do you find death uncomfortable, you, whom darkness has kissed the most?”
My face blossoms with heat. Now I appreciate the sickly lighting making me look pale, because it’s not just the shadow priest who’s staring at me through the impossible iron bands of their mask. At least Lydea and Japha only appear confused.
“No, death and I are… um… pretty well acquainted,” I stammer. “My apologies. I’m just cold.” The opposite of cold, more like. My armpits prickle with sudden sweat.
The priest licks their lips with a blackened tongue, and I can barely suppress another shudder. “You should welcome the cold, because cold is the embrace of—”
“Of darkness, death, whatever, we get it,” Japha says, looping their arms through Lydea’s and mine. “If you’ll excuse us, we have respects to pay and places to be. Um, where is the room we want?”
“There is only one place we will all be, in the end… but go in peace,” the priest says with a terrifying smile. “Behind you, third door on your right, and at the end of the hall.”
“Thank you!” Japha sings, practically dragging us away between the columns.
I lean toward Japha and mutter, “Do you even remember the directions?”
They keep their eyes forward. “No, but if I had to smell thatpriest’s rancid breath one more time I was going to prove how alive I am by vomiting on their death shroud.”
