Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Thirty-Seven

Absolute darkness pressed down upon Ellie as she held her breath and followed blindly in Adam’s wake.

Her hands caught against the smooth sides of the tunnel. She could feel the pulse of Adam’s movements through the water ahead of her. His proximity was the only thing that kept a pure, instinctive panic from closing up her throat.

Ellie kicked against the stone floor as she pulled herself along. The tunnel was just wide enough to swim through. The current was a gentle push against her as she moved.

Fear crept deeper as her lungs began to ache. How much farther did they have to go? What if they had missed the air pocket Adam had described?

They could run out of breath in this dark, cold silence.

Ellie shoved the terror back. She was a scholar. Scholars were rational. She would not succumb to hysteria.

The tunnel could go on forever. She could drown in this dark, forgotten space…

Warm hands caught her and pulled her up. Ellie surfaced with a gasp and dragged in a desperate gulp of air.

Only Adam’s hold on her kept Ellie from striking her head against the low ceiling of the little pocket in which they floated.

“That was the longest stretch,” he said.

His voice came from close by. The sensation was disorienting, as the world around her was pitch black. Ellie could only feel his hands gripping her arms.

She reached out through the darkness. Her hand found his face and slid to his stubbled cheek. She felt him smile, and the mad pulse of her heart settled a bit.

“You okay?” he asked.

Ellie nodded, and then realized that he wouldn’t be able to see it.

“Yes,” she replied aloud.

“Deep breath,” Adam ordered. “One… two…”

He slipped from her touch as he dropped back into the water. His hand tugged her forward.

Ellie filled her lungs with air and plunged after him.

She pushed herself down the dark, narrow passage, fighting against the water—and then the walls of the tunnel fell away.

Adam’s hand grasped her shirt and hauled her up once more. Ellie surfaced with another gasp. The noise echoed hollowly, revealing the space around them to be high and vast.

“We’re here?” she asked.

Her voice sounded strange as it floated around her in the total darkness.

“Yup,” Adam replied from nearby. “Whatever ‘here’ is.”

His hand still gripped her shirt as though he was afraid she would disappear if he wasn’t touching her. He led her forward in the water until her toes brushed up against solid ground.

The slope shallowed until she stood thigh-deep in the pool. She could already tell that it was substantially broader than the cenote had been.

“Do you still have your match tin?” Ellie asked.

“Uh huh,” Adam replied through the darkness.

“Perhaps now would be a good time to orient ourselves,” she suggested.

She was relieved to hear that her voice sounded steady.

Adam released his hold on her. Ellie heard him patting at his body. There was a scratch and a flare of light.

The orange glow danced over his bare skin, his bandaged arm, and the two pairs of boots still slung around his shoulder. The lines of his face were tight with concern as he gazed past her shoulder.

Beyond him, Ellie caught a glimpse of a low, broad cavern dripping with limestone fingers. Water extended around them, flat and still.

The fire reached Adam’s fingers. He dropped the match with a curse.

A thicker and more oppressive darkness closed around them. Ellie could sense the pillars of stone that loomed above her.

Something slipped into her fingers. Ellie felt the round shape of the match tin, which was still warm from Adam’s touch.

“Light another,” he ordered, and then sloshed away from her.

“But where are you—”

“Just light it, Princess!” he called back.

Ellie shook the container. It rattled back at her. The sound was only moderately reassuring. The tin was far from full. If they could only navigate by match light, then they would not be getting very far.

She unscrewed the top and pulled out another match. She fumbled her way to the scratch plate inside the lid, and the lucifer flared to life.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Adam said distantly.

His voice came from somewhere behind her. Ellie whirled toward him. The match snuffed out.

“Drat!” she cursed.

“Hold on a second,” Adam called out.

Ellie heard a scratching rustle. The sound struck her as oddly out of place in a cave.

“Say something,” he ordered.

“Like what?” Ellie demanded.

“Just make noise, Princess.”

Ellie let the first thing that popped into her head fall from her lips.

“Excito,” she blurted. “Excitas, excitat.”

“Are you… conjugating the Latin verb for arouse?” Adam warmly demanded from a short distance away.

“Awake,” Ellie cut back shortly. “The Latin verb for awake.”

“Pretty sure it also means arouse.”

Adam sounded closer, as did the soft splash of his movements, but Ellie couldn’t be sure. Sounds echoed strangely through the breadth of the cave.

“Keep doing it,” he said.

Ellie cleared her throat, which had gone a bit dry.

“Excitámus. Excitátis. Excitant,” she recited.

“How about the imperative?” he suggested.

He was very near to her.

“Excitā,” Ellie declared awkwardly.

A hand found her arm. It slipped up to her shoulder, and then rose to caress the side of her neck in a way that sent electricity tingling down to her toes.

“Maybe later,” Adam replied.

Ellie could practically hear the wicked grin on his face.

She plucked his hand from her neck and threw it back at him.

“You are an absolute rotter,” she informed him.

“Light another match.” He sounded not the least bit ashamed of himself.

Ellie fumbled the tin, but managed to catch it. Her pulse thundered at the thought of what might have happened if she had dropped it in the water.

Her hands shook as she took out another match and lit it.

Adam stood right in front of her. He was grinning… and proudly held a dark bundle of sticks in his hand.

“What the devil!” Ellie exclaimed.

“Light it already!” Adam pressed urgently.

Ellie thrust the match forward, setting it to the sticks. In the glimmer of illumination, she could see that they were tied together with rope made of strips of bark.

The tiny flame licked at the wood, and then anchored itself there. Ellie stepped back as it blossomed into a brighter, steadier life.

“That’s a torch,” she pointed out a bit numbly.

“Yup,” Adam agreed. The soft orange glow revealed his form once again.

“But what on earth is it doing here?”

“Dunno,” he returned. “I just found it in the basket.”

“Basket?” Ellie echoed in surprise.

He pointed, and there it was.

The lake in which they stood ended at a rocky shoreline. More stalagmites sprouted from the stone, interspersed with areas of loose scree. Here and there, Ellie spotted pale, unexpected glints of bone. Most of the fragments looked like the exposed ribs of fish—some of them recent, others crusting over with mineral deposits.

The creatures living in the lake must have been left exposed when the water fell during the dry season, she thought uncomfortably.

The basket was made from reeds woven together with more bark rope. It sat on a slight platform made from a broken stalagmite.

“How is that here?” she demanded.

“Good question,” Adam replied meaningfully.

Ellie met his eyes across the glow of the torch.

“Someone else has been here,” she said.

“Sure looks like it,” Adam agreed.

He pushed the torch into Ellie’s hands. She grasped it instinctively and realized that he had another, yet unlit, in his other hand. He tucked it into the back of his belt.

“But how could anyone have carried that basket through the tunnel from the cenote?” Ellie pressed.

“Seems like a stretch, doesn’t it?” Adam flashed her a meaningful look and Ellie’s heart skipped.

“There must be another way down here,” she concluded.

“Yup,” he agreed as his eyes glinted warmly. He sloshed through the water with her until they reached the shore. “Let’s get our boots back on and see if we can find—ow!”

He jumped back, hopping awkwardly on one foot.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow…” he muttered.

“What is it?” Ellie asked.

“Something bit my toe.”

“Bit it?” she echoed in surprise.

Adam plucked the torch from her and lowered it to take a better look at the ground. He kept his toes submerged at the edge of the water.

“There!” he announced. “Ugh.”

Ellie immediately picked out what he was looking at. It was an insect—a huge one. The bug was nearly the length of her index finger, colored a mottled gray that neatly blended with the stones.

“What is that?” She edged away from it.

“It looks like an oversized assassin bug.” Adam pushed the torch back into her hands again. “Feels like it too.”

He frowned down at his foot and shook it in the water.

Ellie didn’t immediately answer. She raised the torch higher and gazed out across the cavern. The light shifted and flickered across the ground around the stalagmites.

No, she realized with a sick lurch in her stomach. That wasn’t quite right.

“Adam?” Ellie said tentatively as she took a step closer to him in the water. “I think the floor is moving.”

“Huh?” he replied as he lifted his head—and then his eyes widened.

Adam yanked Ellie back, moving them deeper into the water. He swung his boots off his shoulder and hopped awkwardly in the shallows as he yanked them on.

“Boots,” he ordered as he snatched the torch from her.

“Shouldn’t you tie them first?”

“Boots, Ellie!” he repeated. His voice snapped with urgency.

Ellie awkwardly tugged on her shoes. The leather stuck against her wet stockings.

“Are those insects dangerous?” she demanded. She wobbled unsteadily on her left foot as she tried to wrangle her laces.

“Maybe? I don’t know!” Adam returned. “They’re usually the size of a quarter, not four damned inches long.”

Ellie managed a knot and let her booted foot splash back down into the ankle-deep water. She took another look at the shoreline—and then wished she hadn’t.

The bugs were clustering more thickly now. Glittering gray bodies streamed in from every side of the cave.

Some of them even clung to the stalactites overhead. Their gray antennae waved in the air hungrily.

“Are the normal variety of assassin bugs dangerous?” she pressed.

“They hurt like a bastard,” Adam retorted.

The insects swarmed along the edge of the water with their proboscises extending… testing...

Ellie took a step back, wading a little deeper.

“How do they hunt?” she asked as she eyed the swarm uneasily.

“They stick other bugs with some kind of venom,” Adam replied. “It paralyzes them and melts their insides.”

“Melts their insides?” Ellie repeated with horror.

“Other bugs!” Adam emphasized.

“These are significantly larger, and there are a very great many of them,” Ellie protested crossly.

One of the insects entered the water.

It floated on the surface, its thick gray body keeping it buoyant. Antennae waved, legs twitched… and it began to swim.

“Aww hell,” Adam cursed.

More of the bugs bobbed into the lake. They weren’t exceptionally good swimmers.

Ellie wasn’t sure they needed to be. There were a lot of them—and there was nowhere for her and Adam to go.

She sloshed back with him until the water lapped at her knees.

“I think they’re following us,” she pointed out with remarkable calm.

“Sure looks like it,” Adam agreed grimly.

“How are they following us?” Ellie demanded. “These are cave dwelling insects. They shouldn’t be able to see.”

“How should I know?” He splashed at the water, making a little wave that pushed back the vanguard of the approaching fleet of bugs. “Get!”

Ellie’s mind raced through the possibilities.

“Could it be the vibrations?” she mused urgently. “Possibly, but then the insects would have been coming for us from the minute we entered the cavern. Echolocation? No, that’s not it. We were speaking as well. It’s right here,” she said, tapping the side of her head angrily. “I can feel it…”

Her gaze locked on the torch in Adam’s hand.

“Give me that,” she said and snatched it from him.

She waded a few steps away, keeping her eyes on the insects swimming toward them. She focused on their antennae.

Ellie swung the torch out to the right, and then back again… and watched the antennae move.

“Thermoreception!” she burst out.

“What?” Adam shot back, splashing more of the bugs away as he moved deeper.

Ellie hurried over to him through the thigh-deep water.

“Do you see a way out of this cavern?” she demanded.

“I’m not sure,” Adam admitted. “It’s still too dark at the outskirts of the chamber to make things out.”

Ellie looked to the reed basket, which was still stuffed with more pitchwood bundles where it stood on the shore. Skipping around the nearest wave of insects, she moved as close to it as she dared—and then chucked her flaming torch through the air.

It soared in an elegant arc… and missed.

The torch landed at the base of the broken stalagmite on which the basket stood, burning merrily there.

“What the hell did you just do?” Adam exclaimed.

“I am trying to save us!” Ellie shot back.

“By throwing away our light?”

“They are drawn to the heat!” she retorted.

The nearest insects had turned toward the flames of the fallen torch. They began to skitter closer to it.

Adam’s eyes widened.

“Huh,” he said with understanding, and then shot her a wry look. “Except your aim was off.”

“Only by a foot,” Ellie noted.

He sighed and started sloshing forward.

“I’ll fix it,” he declared.

Ellie grabbed him by the belt and hauled him back.

“Are you mad? You’ll be right in the middle of the swarm,” she hissed.

“I’ll be quick,” Adam assured her.

Ellie stared at him.

“Exactly how quick do you think you are?” she pressed.

Over by the torch, the nearest insects reached the flames… and kept going. They climbed into the low, flickering light. Their bodies crackled, crisping and blackening as they added themselves to the fire.

“Pretty damned quick,” Adam retorted defensively.

Ellie reached for the dry torch in his belt.

“I’ll try again,” she said.

Adam shifted his hips away from her.

“Uh-uh! That’s our only torch,” he protested.

“We can’t go anywhere if there’s an army of venomous insects in our way!” Ellie snapped.

“You think it’s a better idea to navigate through a cave in the dark?”

“That is exactly what we were going to do before you found the torches,” she pointed out, seething.

“Yeah, well. Now I found them, which is a lot better than falling into a hole in the ground!”

More of the insects joined the crackling pile by the torch—and more. They crawled over each other to reach the heat of the fire. Their roasting carapaces emitted a low, hissing squeal.

The squeal shifted into a whoosh as the pile of flaming bug corpses extended to the side of the reed basket and the old, dry wood ignited.

Flames swirled up the side of the basket, reached the pitch-soaked torches inside… and burst into an inferno.

A black column of smoke poured toward the ceiling. The cave was blazingly illuminated.

The entire colony of assassin bugs wheeled toward the fire, racing to join it.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Adam said.

The light revealed another tunnel mouth on the far side of the dry ground. More stalactites framed the black hollow with teeth-like daggers.

“Come on!” Ellie ordered as she grabbed Adam’s arm and tugged him forward.

Adam quickly took the lead. He steered her toward the edge of the cavern, where the stream of insects had already thinned out. As they passed, he kicked a stray few of the bugs out of the way with the toe of his boot.

He seemed to enjoy it a bit more than he strictly should have.

They passed some of the stripped, fleshless bones as they ran—and Ellie realized that she had a fairly good idea how they had gotten there.

Venom that paralyzes them and melts their insides.

She repressed a shudder and hurried after Adam.

Their exit was a wide, dark mouth. The tunnel it framed descended steeply down.

Adam glanced back at the wriggling, insect-fueled bonfire by the burning torch basket.

“We might not want to risk the light until we’ve got more distance between ourselves and the swarm,” he suggested.

“That seems prudent,” Ellie agreed.

He offered a hand. Ellie looked at it for a moment in surprise, and then reached over and clasped it.

“Here we go…” he said and led them into the dark.

The light of the bug-fueled inferno flickered softly on the walls of the tunnel for a while as they walked. As it faded, their pace slowed—and then the light was gone, plunging them into an impenetrable night once more.

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” Adam said. “Feel the ground in front of you before you put your weight down. We could stumble into another crevice or sinkhole at any point down here.”

“Indeed,” Ellie agreed tightly.

Adam’s grip on her hand was a warm anchor. Ellie latched on to it.

They were wandering through an unknown cave system. That was a risky prospect, even under the best circumstances. Doing it in the dark without any of the proper equipment was frankly madness.

Not that they had an alternative.

This was not just any cave system, Ellie reminded herself with a sense of wonder. Someone had left those torches. Even the way the opening of the cenote had been framed by the ball court was clearly intentional.

There had to be some ritual purpose behind it all. The thought touched Ellie with a little chill of excitement. She was walking through the secrets of a lost world.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t kill her.

Adam’s voice broke the silence that had shrouded them since they’d left the light behind.

“Tunnel’s turning,” he reported.

“How do you know?” Ellie replied.

“I’ve got a hand on the wall,” he said.

“Should we risk another torch?”

“Would’ve been nice if we’d had that damned bone,” Adam grumbled.

“What bone?” Ellie asked.

“The one Dawson used to light up the temple,” he replied. “The firebird bone.”

Ellie stopped walking.

“A firebird,” she repeated carefully. “As in the mythical glowing creature from Slavic folklore.”

“You’d know better than I do,” Adam countered easily.

“But in the stories, it’s the feathers of the firebird that are supposed to glow.” She frowned. “And they are always illuminated unless kept concealed.”

“Maybe that’s why Dawson had to jiggle it,” Adam mused.

“He did what?”

“Shook it like a martini,” Adam cheerfully returned. “And then the damned thing lit up like a rocket on the Fourth of July. Jacobs used it again in the cenote.”

Ellie thought of the wild, impossible light that had glared brilliantly at her through the surface of the water.

“But the firebird is a myth,” she protested numbly.

“Yeah.” Adam’s tone was more serious.

“It’s just a story!”

“I know, Princess,” he returned quietly.

“And you’re quite certain that you… saw that correctly?” she asked, choosing the words carefully.

There was a silence in response. If Ellie had possessed a firebird bone, she was fairly certain that she would have seen Adam cocking a skeptical eyebrow at her.

“Never mind,” she sighed. She pressed her fingers to her temple, where the beginning of a headache was coming on. “You saw it.”

“I saw it,” Adam confirmed.

“Even though it’s… impossible,” Ellie added.

“Guess not.”

She felt him shrug.

“This is…” Ellie let go of Adam’s hand. Taking a chance, she reached out and found the wall of the cave. She pressed her back to the stone of the tunnel wall.

She needed to feel something solid. Her whole world was shifting. That was challenging enough, even when one wasn’t also swathed in impenetrable darkness.

“This…” she began.

“…makes it look an awful lot like there’s probably other stuff like that out there,” Adam filled in flatly. “That’s what Dawson said.”

“Mythological objects,” Ellie said awkwardly. “Mythological objects that actually do the things they were said to do. But that’s…”

She shook her head. Her mind spun as the implication washed over her.

“There are countless stories of powerful objects scattered through the historical and mythological record,” she rattled a little wildly. “The Chi Guo Tian Wang—the Eastern King in Chinese Buddhist folklore—possessed a musical instrument that could control the weather. And then there’s the Astras of the Mahabharata—weapons of unimaginable power crafted by the gods themselves. The herbs of Asclepius could purportedly raise the dead. The Golden Fleece. The Lance of Longinus… For the love of God, in Iceland there’s even a mythical pair of undergarments that produce an endless supply of money. If… If even a fraction of those stories are based on some semblance of the truth…”

“It’d sure explain why Dawson and Jacobs are willing to go to such extremes to get their hands on that Smoking Mirror of yours,” Adam finished flatly.

Ellie raised her head as a quick, energizing fear snapped through her.

“No,” she protested. “They couldn’t possibly… That would be…” She shook her head as she tried to clear her spinning thoughts. “The Smoking Mirror is… It’s knowledge. It’s the ability to look into any place or time. The annals say that those who possessed it could see as though through the eyes of the gods.”

“Look on the bright side,” Adam offered. “It could be worse, like a flying hammer or a flaming sword or something.”

Ellie stood up.

“This is so much worse than a flaming sword,” she spluttered. “Adam, do you have any idea how terribly dangerous knowledge can be? Imagine if you could learn the secrets of every member of Cabinet. If you could see into war rooms. Steal the technology of the future. If there truly are more… more things like this out there, you could use the mirror to find them all. It could pave the road for you to achieve absolutely anything you desired. Nobody should have that much power—certainly not the sort of people who would hire a man like Jacobs to do their work for them.”

Adam didn’t answer right away. Silence settled in, thick and tense around them, accentuated by the utter darkness in which they were wrapped.

Ellie was still soaking wet from her drop into the cenote. The cave wasn’t terribly cold, but it was cooler than the humid tropical spring of the world above. She shivered.

Adam laughed—a resigned and tired chuckle.

“Aw hell,” he said at last. “We really are gonna have to find some way to stop the bastards, aren’t we?”

“The two of us. Against a small army,” Ellie said numbly as her mind continued to whirl.

“Hey, at least I got my knife back,” Adam pointed out wryly.

“And I have a magnifying lens, and a needle and thread in my pocket.” Ellie ran her hands over her face, unsure whether she wanted to break out into hysterics or simply lie down on the ground. “We are going to get ourselves killed.”

“If it’s any comfort, I’m not really sure running away would be any smarter,” he said. “It’s pretty clear those two don’t want to leave any loose ends hanging around. If they do get that mirror, then they could use it to find us no matter where we disappeared to.”

It was true, of course. If the mirror could really do all that it was purported to do—which was the risk they were now forced to consider—then Dawson or Jacobs need merely ask it where Adam and Ellie were, and it would show them, as simply as that.

Adam tugged one of Ellie’s hands up and pressed something into it. She recognized the feel of the other torch.

There was a scratch and a flare of light. Adam set a match to the pitch-soaked wood and it flickered to life, bringing his face back into view. He looked battered, muddy, and beautiful.

“Thread,” he said with a tired grin.

“And a magnifying lens,” Ellie confirmed. “I’m afraid I lost the broken pencil—but I do have a flask of some sort of illicit spirits.”

“Did you drink any?” Adam asked.

“Goodness, no!” Ellie frowned crossly. “I am sure it is vile.”

“Never know until you try it,” he pointed out.

She fixed him with an authoritative glare.

“I am saving it for an emergency,” she retorted.

“Knife, needle, thread, lens, and booze,” Adam listed. He shrugged. “Pretty sure I’ve made do with worse.”

Ellie fought the urge to giggle. “This is madness,” she pointed out.

His eyes narrowed wickedly.

“Uh-uh,” he countered. “It’s improvisation. And who knows? Maybe you’ll figure out another way to make something explode.”

Ellie’s mind began to calculate enticingly. “If I do, will you let me do it?”

Adam slipped his arm around her shoulders.

“If there was ever a time to blow something up, Princess, I’m pretty sure this is it,” he replied.

The thought was a bubble of excitement inside of her.

Ellie eyed Adam skeptically.

“You aren’t going to try to talk me into making a run for it while you attempt to do it all yourself?” she pressed.

“I think at this point, I know you a little too well to bother,” he returned with a wry look.

A smile spread irresistibly across her face as she gazed up at him. The warm glow of it pushed away the pervasive chill of the cave.

“I have become inordinately fond of you, you know,” Ellie abruptly admitted.

“Well, then, we’re gonna have to do our damnedest not to die,” Adam replied as he gazed down at her warmly—very warmly.

“While we navigate our way through a deadly cave and prevent an army of thugs from looting an immensely powerful magical artifact,” Ellie replied.

“Piece of cake,” he declared. He made a gentlemanly gesture with his arm. “Shall we?”

“Why not?” Ellie returned, and allowed him to lead her into the unknown.