“Something…” Arista said dreamily.
“What was that, Arista?” Hadrian asked. She mumbled and he did not catch the last few words. He kept his hands on her shoulders, squeezing slightly, although he was not certain if by doing so he was reassuring her or himself.
“Something… I feel something—something fighting me.”
Hadrian looked up and stared out over the Grand Mar at the colony of goblins, a writhing mass of insidiously twisted bodies, with dripping teeth and brilliant claws clacking along the length of spears and swords. He spotted what he looked for beyond them, moving in a ring around the Ulurium Fountain. The small, slim figure of the oberdaza, dressed in a skirt and headdress of feathers, shaking a tulan staff and dancing his methodic steps. He spotted two more joining the first.
“We need to get in now!” Hadrian shouted.
Royce threw Myron and a lantern inside the dark hole and then shoved Magnus after him before following them inside. Gaunt, Mauvin, and Alric followed.
“We need to go,” Hadrian told Arista.
Across the span of the square, he could hear chanting as two more witch doctors joined in the dance.
“Something,” Arista muttered again. “Something taking shape, something growing.”
“That’s why we need to get moving.”
A light appeared in the center of the square. No more than a candle flame, it wavered, hovering in midair; then it began to grow. The light swirled, flared, popped, and grew to the size of an apple. The host of the Ghazel army joined in the chant of the three oberdaza as the hovering ball of fire continued to grow and take shape. Hadrian began to see what looked like limbs and a head emerging from the withering fire.
“Okay, we really have to go,” Hadrian said, and grabbed hold of the princess. The moment he did, she staggered back, looking shocked and frightened. The glow of her robe went out.
“What’s happening?” Arista asked.
He did not answer but merely grabbed her tightly by the wrist and drew her up the rubble to the opening, where he shoved her headfirst into the hole. Behind him he heard the thrum of a hundred arrows taking to the air and dove into the hole after her.
“Go! Crawl!” he shouted to Arista as he did his best to shove rocks up against the opening. She obeyed and somewhere in the darkness he heard her scream.
“Arista!” He turned and scrambled forward, only to fall.
Dropping ten feet, he landed next to her, and the two found themselves lying in a corridor illuminated by a lantern in Myron’s hand.
“You two all right?” Royce asked. “That drop is a bit of a surprise.”
“I’m sorry,” Arista was saying, rubbing her back. “I couldn’t hold them. There was something fighting me, something I’ve never felt before, another power.”
“It’s okay,” Hadrian told her. “You did great. We’re in.”
“We are?” the princess asked, looking around, surprised.
“What about getting back out?” Gaunt asked.
“I’d be more concerned about them following us right now,” Hadrian told him. “The narrow passage will slow their progress, but they’ll be coming.”
“Talk as you walk,” Royce said. “Or run if you’re up to it. Give me the lantern, Myron. I don’t want to fall into any more holes.”
“Maybe we should stay behind and kill them as they come down,” Mauvin said to Hadrian.
“You’ll run out of strength before they run out of goblins,” Hadrian told him. “And then there’s that—that thing the oberdaza were making.”
“Thing?” Arista asked.
They jogged down the corridor with Royce out front holding the lantern high. To either side were white marble walls, and beneath them, a dark polished floor of beautiful mosaic design.
“I don’t suppose you saw a map of this place,” Royce said to Myron.
“Actually, yes, but it was very old, and parts were missing.”
“Better than nothing. Any idea where we are?”
“Not yet.”
At first Hadrian thought they stumbled into a room—a great hall, by the size of it—but soon it became clear that it was a corridor, but far larger than any Hadrian had ever before seen. Suits of armor, each similar to the one he had found in Jerish’s room, stood on either side. The walls were sculptured relief images of men, scenes of battles, scenes of remembrance; they flashed, frame by frame, as the party raced past.