“Och cor shan arbir!”
Again, nothing. She finished the dirge, but she already knew that the doors would not open to her. Maia wrestled with feelings of hopelessness and despair as her dress and cloak swiftly became soaked with the heavy mists.
“What did I do wrong? I followed all the instructions!” She paced around the entryway, too stunned to think. Had she followed a trick path and trapped herself down here? How long would the kishion wait for her before leaving for the ship? Anxiety threatened to shake her apart and tears of panic welled behind her eyes. No, she had come too far to fail now! Water dripped down her hair and face, and she raised the cowl to cover herself. She shivered and stood still, trying to master herself again. She folded her arms tightly and breathed slowly. The roar of the waterfalls made it difficult to think.
“Come, Maia. Think!” How had these Dochte Mandar died? She bit her lip and stared at one of the robed skeletons near the door. Finding a thin sliver of courage, she approached the body and knelt beside it. She tried to sink inside herself, to banish the commotion of the water and listen for whispers from the Medium. Reaching out, she touched the frail form.
The man had died over a year ago. He was a young man from Dahomey, barely eighteen. He had thought himself strong enough with the kystrel to approach the lost abbey to find a cure for his ailing mother from the dark pool. Maia felt sick to her stomach. His provisions had only lasted a week. Tugging open his robe, she saw a kystrel fused to his chestbone.
The whispers made her light-headed, but they told her something else. This was the place she had come to find, to speak with ghosts from the past. To ask them for the information she needed to save her kingdom. The boy had not successfully invoked the summoning and had not been able to leave. The price of failure was death. She went to the next body to learn its story, dunking herself again into the froth of despair. This man was older, in his forties, when he had sought out the lost abbey. He too had failed to summon a ghost from the dead.
Maia pulled her hand back. Perhaps that was how they all had failed. Perhaps fear at seeing the failure of others had poisoned their resolve to summon the voices of the dead. There were other bodies, some decayed to the point of being smudges on the slick stone floor. As she stood, she felt the weight of the sopping cloak and the heaviness of her wet dress. Without looking back at the doors, she walked through the mist and felt it caress her cheeks. She wiped wet hair from her face. The mist thinned just enough for her to see the edge of a stone outcropping, barely wide enough for her boots. Peering off the edge, she saw a swirling whirlpool fed by three or four waterfalls. The ledge wrapped its way across the outer edge of the cavern, descending slowly. The sight of the whirlpool scudded through her senses. She bit her lip. The whorl of the kystrel—a similitude.
Inching along, she crossed the platform, hugging the wall with her body. The lip of rock was treacherous, but she calmed herself with the thought that it had been no easier to climb down the rope ladder into the dinghy several days before. Shuffle, step, shuffle, step. It felt like hours, though it did not take that long before the path widened suddenly and opened to a small landing. Strange purple lichen covered the rocks in a mesh, but as she stepped on it, the stones below the lichen glowed with green light. The landing opened at the base of the waterfalls and along the shore of the seething underground lake. A single Leering rose from the edge of the water, its features startlingly clear and burning with magic. Two entwining serpents.
Her boots crunched in the sand as she approached it. A thrill of hope clashed with a sense of doom. The whispers of the Medium confirmed her assumption as she wiped her mouth and reached for the stone.