The cleft opens into a perfectly square chamber. Lamplight’s golden aura washes the shadows into the corners. Mother sits in the center of the room with Cook on one side and Maraya on the other. The baby suckles at her breast. Amaya rocks back and forth, arms crossed over her belly as she groans in pain. Coriander stands guard over the oracle, who hides her face behind her hands.
“There’s no door,” says Coriander. “How do we leave?”
Ro-emnu snatches the lamp from Kalliarkos and swings it so its light falls full on one corner. “We climbed up this shaft.”
There is no shaft, just a square depression with a grate lying beside it and grooves in the stonework where the grate would fit over a hole, if there were one.
“Where did the shaft go?” Kalliarkos prods the stone. “It must have closed after we came up.”
The two men thump at the blocked depression as I walk a tour of the chamber, shining lamplight into every corner. For the life of me I cannot see another opening. It was too easy after all. Or the masons betrayed us. I sink down next to Mother. What do we do now?
“We’re going to die down here,” Amaya whimpers.
“Just shut up, Amiable. Let me think.” There has to be a way.
“Jessamy, let me look on him,” Mother whispers.
I push the linen folds away from his little face. The light gilds his perfect features. He has his father’s eyes and his mother’s coloring.
“He will not be cursed to lie alone in a tomb until he is dust.” Tears slide down her cheeks. “Poor child. His father would not have loved that face.”
“How could anyone not love such a beautiful face?” I retort, for I do not like to think that Father did not love me when he first saw me.
“Shhh. Let go of your anger, Jessamy. It will weaken you if you allow it to rule your heart.”
My lips press closed over the things I would like to say but will not trouble her with. I love Father but I know Maraya is right: he could have turned his back on ambition, and he didn’t.
Maraya walks over to the two men. “Could someone have shut the opening behind you to trap you here?”
Ro-emnu scratches at his shaved head and looks surprised when his fingers find no hair. “I don’t think so. The masons who know about this place never enter it. It is forbidden to disturb what lies beneath. They say angry spirits eat intruders but I think fear makes a man see spirits where there are none. People are just afraid of the past.”
“Maybe angry spirits shoved the stone into place to trap us so they can eat us like a fine meal,” murmurs Amaya, “leaving the delicacies for last. Which means you will be eaten first, Jes.”
“Then I’ll be spared your whines and shrieks, which will sour your flavor!”
She laughs, as I guessed she would, but I cannot join her. The exhaustion of all our hopes weighs too heavily. What if our only choice is to climb back into the tomb?
Merry probes around the rim for a latch. She hasn’t given up. “There is no need to fear malignant spirits when a better explanation would be that springs or ropes made a stone move to close the opening.”
Kalliarkos turns a slow circle, studying the blank walls. “Certainly the chambers we worked our way through to get here had pitfalls and barriers.”
“The way you climbed that one shaft blind with no assistance was cursed amazing,” says Ro-emnu.
He nods. “There was a lot of climbing to get here, wasn’t there? Many collapsed rooms too. We had to retrace our path several times. That’s why the chalk was so valuable. But if there are spirits lurking we never saw them. That this place was buried long ago is enough to make it unsafe.”
Cook clears her throat, and we all look at her stoic face. “My lord, can we get out?”
“I don’t know.”
Maraya stands. “Ro-emnu, do you think the masons might have tricked you?”
Coriander laughs bitterly. “They would never have. Don’t you know who he is?”
“No, I don’t. Is he a magician to spell us free?”
Ro-emnu shakes his head with a patience he has never shown me. “The masons do not lie, Doma. My uncle is one. This is a dangerous place and we walk here at our own risk.”
Maraya nods. “How did you identify Lord Ottonor’s tomb from underneath?”
“When the tombs were erected in the reign of Kliatemnos the First, they were built over old air shafts from the buried complex. The biers hide the shafts. The priests don’t even know about them because the Efean workers never told them. I’ve heard stories about how women were rescued from the tombs but I don’t know if they’re true. Each tomb has a mark that gives its location to the north, south, west, and east. Here, do you see it?” He goes to the cleft and shows us simple lines depicting Clan Tonor’s three-horned bull, the same mark carved into the tomb’s lintel.
