Page 2 of The Eyes of Tamburah
Treasure hunters were always a problem. Despite the Water Prince’s proclamation that all historical items found within Zirdai’s official boundaries became the property of the crown, the richer citizens collected antiquities through a thriving black market—the rarer the find, the more lucrative. And The Eyes of Tamburah were legendary. Rumored to give their owner magical powers, the gemstones had a long and bloody history. No wonder they were stolen by some greedy hunter. They would fetch a staggering sum in any city in Koraha, assuming the thief lived long enough to leave Zirdai.
“Sorry to hear that,” Shyla said. “The Water Prince must be—”
“No words can describe his anger.” Banqui clutched her shoulders. “Which is why you must hide.”
She jerked from his grasp in surprise. “Me? Why?”
“He thinks you are the thief.”
It took her a moment to sort through his words. Did he really say… “Why would he believe that?” Fear coiled around her heart and squeezed.
Banqui’s broad face creased with anguish, flaring the nostrils of his flat nose. “Because I told him you were the only other person in all of Zirdai who knew where The Eyes were located.”
Scorching hells. Shyla stepped back. Perhaps calling him a friend was being rather generous. “But your diggers—”
“None of them were part of the extraction. Only me. I trusted no one with the information.”
But someone had to know. Unless… “Surely you don’t think that I—”
“Of course not, Shyla! You could have kept the location to yourself and retrieved them without anyone the wiser, which is what Itriedto explain to the prince, but he wouldn’t listen. I suspect a spy in my crew, but I need time to figure it out and I don’t wish you harmed.”
How nice, but she didn’t voice her sarcastic response. Instead her mind whirled with the possibilities. The heat in the room baked the sweat off her skin, another warning that they needed to go below. “I can go talk to him. Explain—”
“No. He will not listen. You’ll be tortured until he’s satisfied you’ve told the truth and then, if you’re lucky, you’ll be locked in the black cells. And if you’re not, you’ll be staked to the sand and cooked.”
Gee, what a prince. The fear tightened.
“You need to hide until I can find the culprit. Perhaps the monks will hide you?”
“No,” she said.
“But they raised you.”
“Doesn’t matter. I will not run and hide, Banqui.” She had lived in the monastery for eighteen circuits and refused to run back to them at the first sign of trouble.
“But—”
“I’m going to help you.”
He shook his head sadly. “You don’t have any contacts among the people.” Banqui gestured to the piles around them. “Your expertise is with translating these historical tablets, sifting the facts from the fables.”
True, but she did have other clients. “What about the spy? Do you know who he or she is working for? I can talk to the other archeologists.” And treasure hunters, but Banqui didn’t need to know she’d worked for them as well. His lecture would last an entire sun jump.
His full lips thinned into a scowl. “At first I suspected the Heliacal Priestess.”
She grunted. “If that’s the case, you’ll never get them back.”
The sun neared the kill zone. The mirror pipe blazed with light as the air in her room seared their throats, creeping toward sixty degrees Celsius. Time to go. Shyla grabbed her pack and without a word, they exited to the empty tunnel—everyone else had abandoned this level angles ago. Sliding the door in place, she locked it and they bolted for the closest stairway. It spiraled down into the gloom.
Druk lanterns hanging on the sandstone walls glowed with a warm yellow light. As they descended, the air cooled fifteen degrees for each level. By the time they reached the safe zone at level six, it was thirty degrees.
At level eight, Banqui grabbed one of the lanterns. “This way.” He headed down a side tunnel.
The temperature on this level reached ten degrees. Shyla shivered and pulled her wrap from her pack. At least it wouldn’t get any cooler unless they traveled past level eighty where the dry air turned damp.
In Zirdai, the popular routes were all well marked with lanterns and symbols etched into the sandstone walls—the others were left in darkness. Druk lanterns were cheap to produce and plentiful. People frequently carried them and left them at various places for others to use. At least one or two druks lit every room.
The special substance inside the druk changed its tint with depth. At the very bottom of their world—level ninety-seven—it shone with a violet hue. The distinctive colors came in handy for those who were easily lost, unlike Shyla, who’d been exploring the underground city since the monks kicked her out about two circuits ago. Actually it had been exactly eight hundred and twenty-five sun jumps ago—there were three hundred and sixty sun jumps in one circuit. Not that she was counting.
