Her world seemed suddenly far away and she was therefore grateful to see Slowhand and Jakub Freel silhouetted in the entrance, descending together on one of the archer's whizzlines. The pair climbed over the debris to join her.
"Quite the entrance," Freel commented.
"That?" Slowhand countered. "You should have seen how she got into the Hoard of the Har'An'Di."
"The lost artefacts of the forgotten tribe? I'm sorry I missed that."
"Don't be," Kali said. "They collected thimbles."
They fell silent as the dust settled. A vaulted corridor stretched away into the distance, as high and as broad as the massive door itself, and lined with carved representations of those in whose honour it had been built — statues as high as a house.
"The Ur'Raney, I take it," Freel said.
"The Ur'Raney," Kali repeated.
Freel nodded. "Nice."
In every case, the statues depicted the Ur'Raney inflicting some kind of torture or pain on helpless victims, ranging from dwarves to ogur, humans to fish-like creatures. The carved victims were shown as far smaller than their torturers. Freel slowly unwound his chain whip, keeping it at the ready, as they moved on through the avenue of horrors. He had a point, Kali and Slowhand realised, and unsheathed their own weapons, gutting knife and Suresight alike.
The silence that had met them at the entrance gave way to an unsettling chanting in the distance, that sounded as if it were coming from human mouths yet did not chant human words, and a chorus of agonised and desperate cries that could only be coming from the Chapel of Screams — the same tormented sounds that Slowhand and Freel had heard on the necropolis's roof, here amplified by its stone corridors until the whole place seemed to be suffering.
As they moved along the corridor no horde of soul-stripped came to meet them. Bastian Redigor did not stand threateningly in their way. The business now occupying him, it seemed, was being conducted deeper within. Their only company the leering statues, they came at last to an ornate double door and Kali halted them.
"Trapped?" Slowhand wondered.
"Can't see anything," Kali said, scanning the door and its frame.
"Maybe Redigor put all his faith in the slab back there," Freel guessed.
Kali nodded. Tentatively, she pushed the massive golden door with her fingers and it opened with ease.
The path became a bridge beyond the door, crossing a vertiginous chamber carved wholly out of some substance that looked disturbingly like bone. From the floor of the chamber to the ceiling on either side — and it was a long way up and a long, long way down — the frontages of countless tombs could be seen, each of them inscribed, in elven script, with the name of its occupant. Kali tried to count them but gave up after the third ledge of tombs, but there were thousands here. These were Bastian Redigor's people. This was the final resting place of the Ur'Raney.
But there was something wrong with the whole picture. Kali couldn't immediately put her finger on it but something was very wrong. Straining to read the script on the tombs, for the most part ignoring the names, her eyes flicked from one to the other until what was nagging at her clicked into place.
It was the dates accompanying the names. They were all the same.
"Yantissa 367, Interlude Third," she whispered to herself.
"Something wrong, Miss Hooper?" Freel queried.
"Yantissa 367, Interlude Third," Kali repeated more forcefully. "It's elven chronology. According to these tombs, all of these elves, thousands of them, died on the same day."
"So?" Slowhand said. "I thought it was generally accepted that the Old Races were wiped out in one go. Maybe that's when it happened?"
Kali pondered. "If it was, I'd be ecstatic, believe me, because we'd be able to pinpoint the end day exactly. But I don't think this date has anything to do with that."
"Why?"
"Think, Liam. If that was the day the Old Races were wiped out…"
"Who buried them?" Jakub Freel finished.
Slowhand looked from one to the other. "Redigor?"
"One man, all this?" Kali mused. "Even with an eternity to play with, I don't think so."
"Okaaay," Slowhand said. "So maybe Yantissa 367, Interlude Third isn't a day. I mean, I know your elven history is better than mine but as you admit yourself, you've still a lot to learn. Maybe Yantissa 367, Interlude Third refers to a period of time, and maybe it took the Ur'Raney a while to die out?"
Kali stared at the archer. "You know, Slowhand, that's not bad. Not bad at all."
"Hey, I'm not just a pretty face…"
"Completely wrong, mind. Because it still doesn't make sense." She indicated the tombs and structure around them. "Think about it. If the world was falling apart around you, would you take the time to build this?"
"I wouldn't," Freel said. "But if it wasn't the end day that killed them all, what did?"
The question was momentarily forgotten as Slowhand pointed. "Hooper, Freel, look."
Above and below the bridge they were standing on, obscured in the shadows of the huge chamber, other, smaller bridges crossed the bone chasm. Each of these bridges led to one of the ledges of tombs, and each was filled with slowly filing figures. The soul-stripped who had been phased through the Sardenne, all chanting that strange, elven chant, were making their way to the fronts of the tombs and, one after the other, taking up positions before each of them, simply standing there, staring blankly ahead.
"It's as if they know which tomb to go to," Freel whispered, for fear that his words might alert the soul-stripped to their presence.
"Redigor knows," Kali said.
"And it strikes me," Slowhand offered, "that he's the only one who can tell us what happened on Yantissa 367, Interlude Third."
The party crossed the bridge, casting wary glances about them as they did, and the wailing, haunting, tortured cries that had been audible since they first entered the necropolis grew louder with every step, reaching a deafening pitch as they reached the door at the far end. A door which could only lead to the Chapel of Screams.
Again, Kali scanned it for traps and pushed it open. Before them was the tableau Slowhand and Freel had caught glimpses of from the roof, only the Chapel seemed much bigger, stretching away before them, the figures barely discernible at the far end. Behind them — silhouetting and warping their outlines with its churning, chaotic energy — was the base of the pillar of souls. It was, of course, from here that the screams were emanating and, again, as Slowhand and Freel had seen on the roof, souls captured within struck and writhed at the surface, giving the occasional close-up glimpse of a struggling form or tortured face, even the odd hand outstretched in pleading to be pulled from the turmoil. The proximity of the pillar of souls — its sheer size and power — seemed to be of no concern to the two figures, however, presumably because one was the Pale Lord himself, the master of all he had conjured, and the other, under his control, was Katherine Makennon.
They walked down the central aisle of the Chapel of Screams, Makennon's fellow abductees lining the Chapel on either side of them like a guard of honour. The tombs were far more ornate than the masses they had passed on the bridge. The eleven men and women had been stripped of their own clothing and garbed in uniform, flowing robes, making them look like sacrificial victims — which for all intents and purposes, of course, they were. There was little doubt that those who lay in the tombs behind them were the individuals for whom they had been hand-picked to become hosts — Bastian Redigor's Ur'Raney High Council. As they passed between them Kali recognised the faces of Kantris Mallah, the mayor of Gargas, Thilna Pope, Volonne's Ambassador to Vos, and Belf Utcher, Thane of Miramas, among others — though, of course, none of them recognised her in return. Redigor, it seemed, had not soul-stripped the hosts for his most important returnees as he had the masses outside, but it was clear from their haunted, staring eyes that neither had he left them entirely intact. The expression in their eyes begged her for release from bodies that had become prisons.