She passed rooms glimpsed through doorless openings on both sides with little or nothing in any of them. None of those pulled at the device. At the corridor’s end were stone stairs leading downward, and she hesitated, raising the crystal high.
Its light couldn’t reveal the bottom, as if the steps descended forever into the dark.
Who had built this place and excavated so far beneath it? Where were they? They had to be here, at least one of them.
Magiere stepped through onto the first stair and descended quickly, step by step, and she noticed the walls of the stairwell were no longer straight. They curved to the right. She continued down that subtle spiral, moving faster, anxious and eager to know what awaited her at the bottom.
The crystal’s light exposed an opening below, and she slowed to a stop a half dozen steps above. Beyond the exit was a wide space of darkness. She paused again at the last step and peered into a large, plain room.
As she took in the sight of the few objects awaiting her, she became only more confused.
The first thing she saw was an orb like all the others, with its tapered spike intact, but this one rested inside a hole cut into the top of a simple, flat wooden table. With no battle and no blood spilled, she stood within sight of her final goal.
It felt wrong. Nothing here was like the last resting places of the other two orbs she’d recovered. No tripod pedestal, as if it were an object of worship. No preserved bodies of ancient dead creatures as slaves. No chasm or vast cavern with narrow bridges of stone over fire or ice in the depths.
A simple old table supported an orb in silent darkness within a bare room.
Magiere stepped in, looking left and right along the room’s front. At first there was nothing to see, but closer to the table she spotted something on the floor beyond its far side. An orb key lay with a curved sword atop faded but carefully folded cloth, perhaps clothing.
Stepping around the table’s left side, she became almost certain the decayed cloth was one if not two separate pieces of attire, perhaps robes or something similar. For as old as this place had to be, the decayed cloth wasn’t that old. And even standing so close to an orb ...
Her jaws still ached under elongated teeth, her fingernails still felt as hard as talons, and she knew her irises were still black. There was at least one undead here—somewhere—and yet her thoughts were clear.
Why had she been allowed to get this far without being attacked or even engaged?
Magiere wasn’t going to try for the orb until she found whatever was here. She realized that she needn’t worry about the device or reactivating it, so she slit its lashing with the base edge of her falchion. As the lashings fell away, she closed her hand and shoved the device into her belt. In these depths, even her eyes needed light, so she brushed the dimming crystal once down her vestment. As it brightened, something more at the room’s rear caught her eye.
A number of paintings on unframed canvases hung in a row down the far wall, and she stepped closer.
Now faded, the paintings might’ve once been brightly colored. They appeared to be a sequence, from right to left, like a story. Each one was about half her height and their bottoms were at waist level.
The first depicted a collection of small dwellings, possibly a village.
Magiere sniffed it, touched one of the dwellings, and licked her finger. In the six-towered castle of the Pock Peaks, she and Leesil had found some walls covered in words and symbols written in the fluids of an undead. The tip of her tongue tasted nothing like that.
The next painting was of a long oval in various shades of tan that showed sand blowing in the wind: the desert.
The image after that was clearly a painting of the sandstone dwelling she now stood beneath, but there were flowers and palm trees around the exterior. On the far side of this, she made out a group of small people, on their knees, bowing down.
Next came a painting of two tall pale figures, a man and a woman with long black hair, wearing muslin robes. They stood beside a small boat.
The final painting was a large blue oval with gentle waves: a sea or a great lake.
Magiere knew nothing of such things, but the paintings looked rather crude to her. And like the robes on the floor, though old and decaying, they couldn’t have lasted since whenever this place had been built. They might be old, but were far newer than the dwelling. She shifted left again to look at the image of the two pale figures.
“Baseem’a!”
Magiere twisted around with the falchion raised.
In the opening to the stairs stood a slender girl about eleven or twelve years old. Her perfect skin was dusky. Silky dark brown hair fell over the shoulders of her undyed muslin dress. Her almond-shaped eyes were wide, almost eager and longing. She did not look at the sword and only stared at Magiere.
“Na Baseem’a?”
Magiere lost some of her hunger in confusion. This girl couldn’t have survived in this place if she was alive, but she didn’t look ancient. In the long search for the orbs, Magiere had faced two of the Children, and this girl didn’t feel like one of them.
The girl didn’t charge or flee. She didn’t display elongated teeth, nor did her irises lose color and turn crystalline. There was only a longing hope in her small face where there should’ve been rage, fear, or hunger.
“Na Baseem’a,” she said, this time with a frantic edge and a shake of her head.
More of Magiere’s own burning, hunger, and fury faded. What was happening?
The girl inched closer, still not afraid. Instead, her eyes held disbelief that matched Magiere’s.
“Min’a illy?” she said.
Magiere should’ve taken off the girl’s head, but the thought somehow revolted her. She back-stepped when the girl tried to come even closer, until only the space of the table’s width remained between them.
Was this undead child all that remained here, the only one to know how this place had come to be and why the orb was still here? Those answers might hold more that could help understand the dangers of the orbs ... and the purpose they’d served.
“I don’t ...” Magiere began, only then realizing her teeth had receded to normal. “I don’t understand you.”
“Numan?” the girl asked.
Magiere wasn’t Numan, but she’d tried that language first as it was the closest other culture to this region.
“Yes,” she lied. “You ... speak it?”
The girl held her index finger and thumb parted slightly and then pointed to her ear as she nodded. Finally, she pointed to her mouth and shook her head.
“You understand,” Magiere ventured, pointing to her ear, “better than you speak it?” And she pointed to her own mouth.
“Na’am! Iy ayaw,” the girl exclaimed with a nod and a broad smile.
Magiere grew slightly ill. This felt too much like talking with an abandoned child, but this girl wasn’t living. There was only one way any undead could survive alone without feeding. Magiere glanced at the orb. It had sustained her.
“Ghazel!”
Magiere’s eyes shifted back.
“Ghazel,” she repeated softly, pointing at her chest.
“Your name is ... Ghazel?”
The girl nodded again. Magiere turned halfway and tipped the falchion’s point toward the picture.
“You?” Magiere asked. “Are those yours?”
Ghazel’s browed wrinkled, and clearly she didn’t understand. When she stepped forward, Magiere backed around the table. The girl hesitated and then continued on to the back wall. She slowly swiped her hand up and down one painting after another and then pointed to herself. At the last painting toward the far corner, she crouched to pick up a small clay jar that Magiere hadn’t noticed before.