Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Forty-One

The tunnel launched Ellie into a jumbled pile of rubble.

She bit out a curse as she landed and felt new bruises spring to life on her skin. The space around her was unimpeachably black.

Ellie struggled to stand, but the loose mess of the ground beneath her shifted. She barely managed to scramble out of the way before Adam crashed into the place where she’d been lying a moment before.

The rubble clattered in protest at his arrival. It sounded oddly hollow.

Ellie crawled toward the spot where she had heard him land.

“Ow,” Adam grunted. His hands fumbled for her through the darkness. One of them grasped an arm. The other one latched onto a shin. “Ellie?”

“It’s me,” she replied as she tried to figure out which end of him was up.

Her hand found stubble, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Awkwardly, she regained her feet, and then caught herself against Adam as the ground continued to clatter and roll under her boots.

“What the hell are we standing on?” Adam demanded.

Echoes told her that this space was smaller than the one they had just left. Water trickled through it somewhere.

Ellie reached down, waving her hand around until it brushed against part of the debris. She grasped the piece of rubble and lifted it blindly before her.

The object in her hand was too light and smooth to be stone. It was the size of a small melon.

Ellie ran her fingers over its contours. They were round as a child’s ball… until her fingers dipped into a sudden recess.

That, too, was round, as was a second recess that lay right beside it.

She shifted her fingers lower as an awful suspicion rose in her mind. They brushed across a row of distinctive ridges.

“Adam?” Ellie said carefully as her pulse jumped uncomfortably.

“What now?” he groaned.

“I believe I am holding a human skull.”

Adam’s hands brushed over hers as he explored the object that she held.

“Yeah,” he concluded as he plucked it from her hands. “That’s a skull.”

She heard the soft clatter as he set it down.

“We’re standing in a pile of bones,” Ellie said. “Aren’t we?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Adam returned tentatively.

Ellie’s weight shifted a bit. The ground rolled under her boots in protest and she dropped down another inch.

“How many bones are there?” she exclaimed.

“Er… sounds like a lot of them, Princess,” he said.

“Could they be animal bones?” Ellie pressed hopefully.

“Sure,” Adam replied a bit too quickly.

She closed her eyes as she fought a sudden burst of nausea.

“Right,” Ellie said thinly.

Closing her eyes didn’t make much difference. She couldn’t see anything with them when they were open, either.

“I think I’d better chance a match,” Adam said uneasily from beside her.

“Certainly,” Ellie agreed.

The words came out more steadily than they had any right to, given that something—a tibia, perhaps?—had just cracked under her heel.

Adam rustled in his pocket. A moment later, a tentative spark of light flared to life.

The first thing Ellie saw was his face. He was filthy.

Ellie was filthy as well. She was certain that she was the filthiest she had ever been in her life. It almost made her laugh—but then her eyes adjusted to take in more of their surroundings.

They were not standing in a pool of bones. They were at the edge of a veritable mountain of them.

The mound rose to fill most of the chamber. It peaked on the opposite side, just below a dark opening that Ellie could see in the upper corner.

The mass of the dead was easily three times Adam’s height. It spilled out to flood the edges of the floor. From the shape of the pile, Ellie could tell that the bodies to which the bones had once belonged must have been dropped through the hole in the ceiling like so much refuse.

Her gut wrenched with the horror of it.

There were animals in the pile. She picked out the skulls of deer, jaguars, birds, and lizards. There were also people… a very great number of people.

Some of them were small.

Her brain skipped and stuttered as it struggled to think of what that meant.

The match burned out, and Adam muttered a curse.

Ellie grasped for logic.

“This is…” She swallowed thickly. Her throat had gone dry. “This is extremely valuable material for understanding the culture of Tulan, which must provide us with a great deal of insight into how other Mesoamerican societies were shaped. And of course, there are indications that human sacrifice was part of the religious and political practices of the greater region, even if the accounts come primarily from the Spanish conquistadors and must therefore be taken with a healthy grain of skepticism.” Her hands were shaking. Ellie clenched them as the words kept spilling out. “Why in the Florentine Codex—”

“Princess…” Adam cut in gently as his hand found her arm.

Ellie pulled in a breath. She felt dizzy.

“There are so many of them,” she said weakly.

“Yeah,” he replied through the darkness.

“Why are they down here?” she pleaded.

“I don’t know,” he returned. He squeezed her arm. “I’m gonna light another match, and we’re both going to look for a way out of here.”

“Very sensible,” Ellie agreed.

Her voice was steady even as her insides twisted with something like grief.

The bones were an important part of the archaeological record.

They threw children down here.

The record…

Another match flared to life. The sight of Adam’s face was an anchor, reminding her that she wasn’t alone.

They would get out of this.

Adam’s gaze rose to the top of the charnel pile, where Ellie could see the dark mouth of the tunnel down which the dead must have been thrown.

No, she thought with quick, frantic fear. Not that way. Please not that way.

She tore her eyes away from it and dropped them to the ground.

They fell on the shape of a little leather sandal poking out from among the bones by her calf.

Ellie fought the urge to scream.

“Over there.” Adam’s voice cut through the storm raging inside of her even as the light hissed out once more.

Darkness fell over them again. His hand slipped to her cheek.

“Hey. You all right?” he asked.

Ellie took a breath.

“I am fine,” she replied. Her voice was almost entirely steady. “I am a scholar.”

“You can be other things, too,” Adam quietly replied.

There were lives piled around her boots.

Ellie let herself lean forward. The movement brought her softly up against his chest. It smelled like mud and bats.

She stayed there and drew in a deep, shuddering breath as his hand stroked across her back.

“We should follow the wall,” he said. Ellie could feel the vibration of his voice through his skin. “We’ll take it slowly.”

“Yes,” Ellie agreed distantly.

She pushed herself back and straightened.

Adam led them awkwardly across the shifting, treacherous ground until his hand brushed stone. They followed the curve of the cavern through the darkness, shuffling their way carefully through the lesser tumble of the outer edge of the bone pile.

“We’re here,” he announced.

He lit another match. Ellie gazed up at a long, sloping tunnel, the floor of which had been neatly cut into stairs.

“Looks like we’re getting close to something,” Adam concluded.

Leaving the mountain of the dead behind her, Ellie tiredly climbed.

Sound began to whisper down at her from the darkness ahead. At first, Ellie took it for the murmur of more water, but after a few steps, it resolved itself into the distant echo of voices.

She gave Adam’s arm a warning squeeze.

“I heard it,” he murmured back to her.

There was a soft scrape as he took his machete from the sheath.

The voices rose as they continued upward… and then Ellie realized that she could see.

There was just enough light for her to pick out the general line of Adam’s shoulders, but the soft glow grew as they moved until more distinct gleams of it painted the walls of their tunnel.

Adam slowed. Glancing back at her, he put a finger to his lips. Ellie gave a silent nod in acknowledgment.

The tones grew more distinct. Words took shape—and Ellie heard a voice that she recognized.

“…size it properly. And don’t touch anything!”

It was Dawson.

The sound made her skin crawl. It also banished the lingering tendrils of grief and horror from the pit of bones below, burning them up in a quick wave of outrage.

One thing was certain—whatever lay above them, Dawson wouldn’t be there alone.

Adam kept the machete in his hand as they reached the top of the stairs and edged into a dim, narrow room.

The chamber had been deliberately carved from the cave into a regular shape. Its walls were covered in art.

The painted murals depicted images of richness and beauty. A king emerged from the earth, surrounded by well-wishers who anointed his body with oils and painted it with flashes of bright color. A jaguar skin was set over his shoulders, while his long black hair was elaborately braided and dressed.

She and Adam must have stumbled into some sort of antechamber where those who had just undertaken the journey of initiation through the caves were made ready for what came next.

Ellie’s eyes halted on an image that showed the king standing in a shallow basin as he was ritually washed by his servants. In the painting, blue water spilled over him from an opening in the wall.

Her gaze shifted up to where a truncated copper tube emerged from the stone just above her head.

Another piece of metal protruded from the base of it, looking remarkably like a handle.

Adam had moved to the farther end of the room, where he pressed himself to the wall as he carefully peered out.

Ellie’s hand itched.

She couldn’t possibly be considering reaching out and twisting an artifact of a lost culture. It could be incredibly fragile.

It didn’t look very fragile.

As she watched, a small bead of water collected at the lip of the tube and then dripped down to the stones under her boots.

Ellie glanced down and saw a small stalagmite growing there.

Her eyes shot to the handle again.

What if she was very, very careful?

Glancing over at Adam as if afraid he would catch her, Ellie grasped the handle and gently, gingerly twisted it.

Something grated inside the wall, and a spill of water rushed out, splattering over the top of her head.

Ellie spluttered against it and stepped back as Adam whirled toward her from his post by the exit, frowning with alarm and disapproval.

Elie couldn’t bring herself to care. She was far too excited. The water was still coming, splashing across her boots.

“They have plumbing!” she hissed with an excited squeak.

Adam stalked over, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her to the end of the chamber.

He stopped her at the edge of it, where he turned her to face what lay outside.

“We’ve got trouble,” he muttered at her ear.