Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Forty

There was a House of Bone Chilling Cold.

It lay at the bottom of a long, sloping passage, and it was full of running water. The air was frigid enough that Ellie could see the fog of her breath. Only the impact of a recent cave-in saved them from being forced to wade or swim through the freezing depths of the deep, quick-moving stream. Part of the ceiling had given way to collapse into the river. The breakdown formed a natural course of boulders around which the water churned.

The stones were submerged in places. She and Adam waded across them awkwardly. Ellie’s boots slid on the slick surface. The water didn’t rise higher than her ankles, but her feet still ached from the cold by the time they reached the far side.

Ellie thought of how much worse it might have been if they had been forced to swim.

“Ouch,” Adam said. He danced a bit in his boots as they reached the end. “Will you still like me if I’m short a few toes?

The House of Jaguars was less of a danger because all of the jaguars inside of it were dead.

They lay in dusty sprawls of bone on the floor of a vast, open cavern. A latched wooden gate on one side would have kept them contained.

The chamber itself had been deliberately emptied of all but a few columns that the engineers of Tulan had clearly deemed necessary for support. When the cats were alive, the design would have given them free rein to pin down any prey that entered.

Ellie counted the bones of eight animals visible in the flickering light of the torch. Some lay alone. Others had curled up to die together. Nothing had disturbed their remains since they had passed away. The skeletons were still perfectly arranged on the floor of the cave as though the elegant beasts might get up and walk away with a look of feline disdain.

The reason for the cats’ fate became clear when Ellie and Adam reached the far side of the vast, echoing space, where another gate blocked the way out.

“They were trapped.” Ellie’s voice shook with fury. “There are no natural sources of food or water down here. It must all have been brought from the surface. Nobody bothered to set them free.”

“Maybe they didn’t have time, Princess,” Adam said.

“They should have made the time.”

He set a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“We should keep moving,” he said and guided her on.

A smell rose to meet them in the passage beyond the gate. It was faint at first—just a noxious hint to the atmosphere—but it grew stronger and richer as they progressed.

At last, Ellie followed Adam through the mouth of the tunnel into a shadowy, high-ceilinged chamber.

Her feet promptly slid out from underneath her.

Adam had braced himself against one of the stones. He tugged Ellie upright before she could fall, and then grunted with discomfort. She realized that he had used his wounded hand.

Ellie looked down. Their torch was burning lower. She didn’t want to think about that too much yet. In the low, orange glow, the floor of the chamber appeared to be covered in thick slime.

The slime was very smelly.

Ellie took a careful step to better balance herself, and the ground crunched lightly under her boot. Glancing down, she saw small animal bones protruding from the sludge.

“What in the name of—” she began, but Adam cut her off by pressing a hand to her mouth.

Ellie started to protest, but he only shook his head. His expression was uncharacteristically serious. He put a finger to his lips, and then pointed up.

Her stomach knotted. The ceiling of the cave was covered in hanging bodies with brown fur and thick, leathery skin.

They were bats—terrifyingly large bats.

Ellie estimated that the animals were roughly four feet in length with wingspans broader than a man’s outstretched arms. They clung to the roof of the cave with massive black claws. As she watched, one of them yawned lazily, revealing an array of pale, knife-like fangs.

She could hear the animals around her. The sound was easy to overlook—just the subtle breathing and rustling of a hundred sleeping monsters.

Adam yanked her back into the tunnel. They crouched there together.

“What the hell are those?” he demanded in a whisper.

“I…” Ellie’s hands were shaking from the sight of the impossible, living nightmares. “I think they’re Camazotz.”

Adam ran a hand over his face. He was so filthy that the gesture only smeared the dirt.

“Bat Guy,” he muttered unhappily. “Bat Guy is real. Great.”

“How could they have survived down here all this time?” Ellie protested.

“They must have a way out to feed,” Adam replied.

Feed.

The horror of it swept over her. She thought of the slaughter back on the trail—the wild eyes of the dying man on the ground before her. The holes in his partner’s skull. The blood all over the leaves. The ravaged jaguar the day before.

Salió de la noche.

It had come out of the night.

The creatures responsible for that violence were sleeping in legions over her head.

Padre Kuyoc hadn’t been lying back in Santa Dolores when he’d warned Adam about monsters. They were here, and they were real enough that Ellie could have reached out and touched them—if the very notion of it didn’t make her blood run cold with terror.

She took a breath. Going faint from panic wasn’t going to help their situation. She had to think.

“How did those twins of yours get past these guys?” Adam demanded.

“I am… not strictly certain that they did,” Ellie admitted uncomfortably.

“Fantastic,” Adam grumbled. He eyed the entrance to the cavern with obvious reluctance. “How about we try for ‘very damned quietly?’”

They crept back out into the sighing, rustling horror of the cavern. Ellie’s boots crunched over small bones in the thick slime of guano that covered the floor.

Sometimes the bones were larger.

She winced against every crackle, exquisitely aware of the mass of horrible brown bodies suspended over her head. Adam’s low-burning torch seemed painfully bright, but moving in the utter darkness they would face without the torch was even more terrifying.

Ellie let her eyes adjust as the light worked its way into the farther reaches of the room.

The cavern was easily the largest that they had encountered so far. Rock formations dotted the floor and ceiling, though they were closer and less profuse here than they had been in the House of Razors.

To her right, the cavern’s expanse was broken by a shelf of stone that rose to within fifteen or so feet of the ceiling. It looked like part of some other cavern that had partially collapsed long ago to merge with this one. The edge of the platform broke off just beneath a ragged hole in the roof that opened to a glimpse of wind-tossed trees and dark sky.

That had to be the way the bats were getting out. The notion made her stomach lurch.

Silently and carefully, Ellie picked her way through the space, following in Adam’s track. He muttered a curse as he adjusted his grip on the torch to avoid getting burned. The flame was inching lower. She wondered what they were going to do when it ran out.

There were piles of guano on the floor. Ellie pressed her remaining sleeve to her nose against the smell and glanced up.

“Bates,” Ellie whispered. She caught Adam’s arm and pointed through the sleeping bodies. “Are those ropes?”

Adam looked up with a frown.

Thick, dark cords wove through the roost. They disappeared behind the remaining columns of stone, slipping out of the torchlight.

“Looks like it,” Adam agreed.

“But what on earth are they for?” Ellie pressed.

“Why don’t we hope we don’t have to find out?” he countered and led them carefully onward.

A ripple of lightning flashed above, sending an eerie purple light through the cavern. Ellie spotted something in the brief flicker of illumination.

She gently tugged Adam toward it, and then bit back a curse as her boots slipped once more against the slick floor.

As they moved closer, the object she sought shifted into the range of the torchlight.

It was a column that rose from the floor of the chamber to the ceiling. It would have been of roughly the same thickness from top to bottom—if a chunk hadn’t been neatly cut out of the center of it.

The lower portion was roughly the height of Ellie’s waist. It ended in a flat, round platform. Three feet above it, the pillar continued to the ceiling.

The platform was more or less free of guano—one of the only surfaces in the cave that could boast as much. In the center of it sat a knife. The weapon was made of metal that had oxidized to a pale green.

Another flicker of lightning revealed that the pillar had been positioned to aptly catch the light through the opening in the ceiling.

Thunder rumbled distantly through the cavern. The bats above her stirred.

Ellie’s nerves jangled.

“What do you think it’s for?” she said, dropping her voice to the lowest whisper.

“I’d guess it’s for fighting them,” Adam whispered back as his gaze flashed to the dark shapes that hung overhead.

Ellie considered the blade. Its shape was odd. The artifact was roughly the size of Adam’s machete, but the metal jigged and jagged in a way that was oddly familiar to her.

“It looks like a key,” she blurted under her breath as the realization clicked into place.

Adam frowned, and then looked past the pillar to the far wall of the cavern. He moved toward it, with Ellie following.

The light bloomed over the stones and revealed the distinct shape of another carved doorway. This one was blocked by a wooden door.

A ring hung from the center. Adam gave it a tug.

“Locked,” he announced.

The wall of the cave was angled rather than strictly vertical. It made the door seem more like a cellar hatch.

The ring was bolted into a metal disk embedded in the old, thick boards. There was a narrow slot cut into the center of it.

“Keyhole,” Ellie declared.

They glanced back toward the cut pillar together.

“And that’s the key?” Adam suggested.

“It seems a reasonable hypothesis,” Ellie agreed.

More thunder boomed softly as they returned to the column. The bats shuffled and creaked above them. One of the monsters extended its wings in a stretch. Ellie froze, feeling desperately exposed on the open floor of the cave.

The knife was a dull green shape in the light of the torch as they gazed down at it.

“Why do I feel like there’s no way it could be this easy?” Adam muttered lowly.

Ellie grimaced as she looked at the artifact.

“Probably because it’s not,” she admitted in a whisper. “Perhaps we should…”

“Eh, might as well find out,” Adam cut in and picked the relic up.

The top of the pillar jolted up by two inches.

Ellie realized that the surface wasn’t stone at all. It was wood, disguised with plaster and dust. The pillar appeared to be hollow. More counterweights, she thought with a little burst of excitement.

Her wonder quickly shifted to unease at the creak of something turning under the false platform.

The ropes above her began to move.

Adam whirled with the torch, and the light picked out a row of weights bound with more rope, which were descending the wall of the cavern.

“Ellie…” he began uneasily.

The rest of his words were cut off as a cacophony of oddly resonant, out-of-tune bells shattered through the silence. Swinging clusters of clubs and hammers slammed into the surfaces of the stalactites. The stones rang out in dissonant tones.

With a rustling crash, a barrier dropped into place over the hole in the ceiling, blocking it.

“Drat,” Ellie blurted.

The cave exploded into a maelstrom of flying, screeching fangs.

Adam yanked Ellie across the guano-slick floor and tackled her into a nook sheltered by an overhanging rock.

Monsters wheeled through the cave in hungry panic.

“We’re supposed to fight our way out of this with that?” Ellie shouted over the racket as she waved at the copper knife in Adam’s hand.

“Maybe there are more of them than there used to be,” he shouted back.

A pair of the enormous beasts swooped closer and crashed against their hiding place. Thick talons swung toward Ellie’s face. She lurched back to press herself against the wall.

The bat flopped away, screeching, and Ellie queasily remembered the injuries on the men in the woods.

Of course, she thought with distant horror. Those holes in the man’s skull made perfect sense. That was how carnivorous bats immobilized their prey.

Fear flashed up her spine, turning her sweat cold.

Their way out lay across thirty yards of cave swarmed with panicked flying mammals. Even if she and Adam dropped the torch, there was no way they could clear that distance without being attacked. Bats didn’t need to see in order to find dinner.

“We need to get a better look at our options,” Adam determined grimly.

He started to move out of their nook. Ellie hauled him back.

“Are you crazy?” she burst out.

“This isn’t a great hiding place, if you hadn’t noticed,” he retorted.

He pressed her back as another bat slammed against the stones. It let out an ear-piercing scream.

“If you go out there, you’re going to get yourself killed!” Ellie exclaimed.

“That’s not exactly the plan…” Adam began.

Ellie grabbed him by the arms and gave him a shake—though not much of one. It was like trying to budge a tree.

“I will not lose you to an army of monstrous bats!” she shouted over the racket.

Adam grinned back at her. His face was streaked with filth in the torchlight.

“Careful, Princess,” he said happily. “I might start to think you like me.”

Ellie let out a growl of frustration.

“Of all the infuriating—” she started.

He cut her off by yanking her in and kissing her.

Fireworks exploded across her nerves. Her hands slipped against the guano on his shoulders as she held onto him.

He broke the embrace and slapped the copper knife into her hand.

“Take this. Back in a minute,” he said neatly and slipped out into the darkness.

“Blasted, reckless…” Ellie burst out as she slapped her hand against the stone with frustrated fury.

She was rewarded with a splatter of bat guano against her cheek.

“Yerrrgh!” she cried. She wiped it away with her remaining sleeve—and then jolted back as another bat slammed against her hiding place.

This one fell to the ground before the little crevice where Ellie crouched. It flopped there awkwardly… and then began to crawl.

The monster scrabbled against the stones with the small talons at the peaks of its wings, scratching and squeaking as it skittered toward her.

Ellie pressed herself back against the wall, holding the copper blade out in front of her. She wondered with a vague sense of terror if she would actually have to stab something with it.

A boot swept into the line of her vision as Adam kicked the bat soundly in the chest. The blow sent it rolling across the floor before it winged back up into the air.

“I have an idea,” he announced as he slid in beside her. “But it’s probably a pretty bad one.”

“Is it better than having holes punched in our skulls?” Ellie shouted back.

“Er... probably?” he replied.

“Then fine!”

“I got a better look at the thing that fell over the hole in the ceiling,” he said. “It’s some kind of woven mat and it’s pretty rotted out. I think the only reason the bats aren’t busting out of here is because they can’t see how weak it is.”

“Not see,” Ellie corrected him. “Hear. It probably sounds like a solid barrier to them.”

“I think we can take it down if we use that ledge to get closer,” Adam continued. “But you’re going to have to do the work while I keep the bats off of you.”

Ellie eyed the shelf of rock that filled the other half of the chamber.

The plan wasn’t great—but it was better than hiding in a crack in the wall until something dragged them out of it.

“Let’s do it,” Ellie agreed.

Adam grasped her hand and tugged her out of their hiding place. They raced across the swarming, squealing chaos of the cavern to the base of the ledge, and then threw themselves against the shelter of a stalagmite.

“I’ll give you a lift,” Adam said as he extended his hands.

Ellie quickly stepped into them. She scrambled for a grip as Adam pushed her up along the wall of the ledge. Her fingers closed around a crack in the stone, and her boots scrabbled until her toe found a hold. With a grunt of effort, she reached the top and promptly sprawled onto her back.

A vast, black shape swooped over her, close enough for her to feel the wind of it as it passed.

Ellie rolled over and skidded closer to the wall for cover.

Adam’s head popped over the side as he scaled his way up. He joined her, tucking in under a natural curve of stone.

They gazed out over their destination—the place where the ledge broke away under the blocked opening to the outside. The air around it was swarming with bats. The animals obviously remembered where their way out was supposed to be and were infuriated to find it blocked.

Ellie blanched.

“How are we supposed to do anything out there other than get ourselves mauled?” she protested.

“I told you. I’ll keep them off of you,” Adam assured her, pitching his voice to be heard over the whirlwind of outraged monsters.

“And the cover?” she pressed. “What’s your plan for that?”

Adam lifted her hand and slapped something into her palm. Ellie stared down at it.

“A rock?” she blurted.

“You have a better idea?” he shouted in return.

“I don’t even know if I can throw that far!”

“If you can’t throw that far,” he shot back, “then you’re going to have to fight the bats while I throw. Which job do you want?”

Ellie swallowed thickly.

“I’ll take the rock,” she conceded.

“Then let’s go!”

With a tug on her arm, Adam propelled her out of their hiding place and bolted onto the ledge. Ellie ran after him, and then skidded to a stop at the end of it.

She froze with shock.

Bats whirled around her, screeching with panic and hunger. Adam had dropped the torch by their feet, which freed his hands to hold both the copper knife and his machete as he stood behind her, facing the maelstrom.

This was fully, completely insane, Ellie determined numbly.

“Bit more throwing would be nice, Princess!” Adam shouted to her as he slammed the butt of his machete into a bat that swooped down at them. The blow sent it screeching off in protest.

Ellie eyed the sagging, half-rotted cover overhead. Steeling herself, she brought back her arm and launched the stone into the air.

It arced out before her… and then fell, missing the cover. Her missile disappeared into the whirling animals.

“I lost the rock!” Ellie shouted.

Adam swung at another bat.

“So find another!” he yelled back wildly.

Ellie dropped to her knees to scrabble through the dirt and guano. Her fingers clasped around the curves of another stone.

She lurched back to her feet and launched it at the cover.

This time, it actually reached the rotting mat… bouncing against it weakly before pinging down to the floor of the cave.

A few more bits of debris rained down around her.

“More rocks!” Adam called out from behind her as he knocked another bat aside.

Ellie scrambled for another stone.

“I found one!” she announced happily. She stood—and then let out a scream of alarm at the bat zooming toward her.

She threw herself to the ground as her hand flailed out for the torch. Grasping it, she swung the flame up.

The bat veered away with a screech of alarm and the smell of scorched fur.

Above her, Adam yelped out a curse, dodging back as another monster swooped at him with its thick, twisted talons extended.

Ellie grabbed the nearest rock and staggered to her feet. She looked down at it where it lay in her palm.

“Make the next one count, Princess!” Adam shouted behind her as he swung his machete again.

Ellie looked up at the dry, sagging timbers of the cover with its trailing tendrils of loose bark and rope.

Her gaze shifted to the torch she held in her other hand.

Ellie dropped the rock. She scrambled forward to grasp a long, thin stick that had fallen with the other debris from the hole.

Bracing the stick between her knees, Ellie jammed the end of the torch onto it. The result was something like a fiery javelin. She gave it a shake to test the construction and was satisfied.

“What are you doing?” Adam called out as he ducked another bat and flailed out with the copper blade.

“I am improvising,” Ellie snapped—and launched her makeshift spear into the air.

It arced up beautifully.

The broken stick jammed itself neatly into the tangled mat of the roof… and with a soft whoosh, the whole of it burst into flames.

Ellie let out a whoop of triumph.

Adam grabbed her around the waist and tackled her backwards as the cover collapsed.

The flaming mass rushed past them. It slammed onto the end of the ledge with a shower of sparks before tipping and plummeting to the ground below.

Bats screamed in protest. They wheeled from the flaming, falling debris, and then spilled through the hole into the gusting, storm-tossed night.

The entire colony fled, whirling into the darkness as thunder boomed hollowly through the cavern.

It began to rain.

The downpour was thick and instantaneous. Water gushed down through the opening and splattered against the guano-stained floor.

Ellie watched it all with wonder—and then a lurch of guilt.

“Did we just unleash a horde of hungry monsters on the camp?” she asked weakly.

Adam rubbed his face. “Maybe they’re not that hungry,” he offered.

He led her back down the ledge to where the remains of the cover smoldered under the perfect circle of the torrent. The embers that had scattered outside the range of the rain were the only source of light in the cave.

The cavern had been a death trap a minute before. Now it was quiet save for the soft rush of the falling rain. The water poured down in a thick, wild curtain, accented by the boom of more thunder overhead.

The last remnants of the debris sizzled as Adam and Ellie picked their way along. They had just managed to reach the door when the flames behind them guttered, dropping them once more into darkness.

Ellie put her hand to the wood and felt across the surface.

A streak of lightning from the storm above them cast a distant, purple flash through the cavern.

She set her hand to the slender gap of the keyhole.

“Give me the knife,” she said.

Adam’s fingers brushed her arm, and then followed the length of it down.

“Let me,” he said, and Ellie pulled away.

She heard the scrape of metal, and then the grate of something turning. She took a quick step back as Adam yanked the hatch up in front of her.

“I’ve got it,” Adam said from the darkness beside her. “Feel your way in. I’ll follow.”

Ellie’s fingers danced out before her to find the edges of the opening. She stepped inside—and immediately began to slip.

“Adam!” she yelped—and plummeted down a smooth, slick tunnel.

She heard his rough curse… and then the thud of the door as he plunged after her.