To Best the Boys(61)

I shiver again and tighten my hold on Sam as Lute and I duck him through into the next room, which is not a room at all but a passage of steep stairs inside a stone tunnel. Sam’s pained breathing bounces off the ceiling and makes the already-stifling air feel thicker. Staler.

It smells of sulfur.

We hobble him step-by-step to the bottom, where we are pushed through another doorway and into another room with a new set of lanterns that flicker on.

Seleni’s gasp is as loud as Germaine’s curse.

Stone coffins line both sides of the low-ceilinged space. They’re pressed into the walls like boxed sentries in perfect measurements of five paces apart, above a floor that slopes sharply downward. And on their front-facing lids is carved the knight’s seal of Caldon.

“It’s like an army of dead,” Vincent mutters.

“At least the coffins are closed,” Beryll whispers.

“At least they’re actually dead,” Rubin says.

I keep my mouth shut and don’t say anything. Because I’m not so sure they are dead.

Lute eyes me as if he knows what I’m thinking, because he’s thinking it too—and nods toward the ground that is sloping away from us. I peer down, and after a moment I see what he’s indicating.

The passage is taking us farther underground.

I swallow and try to hoist Sam higher to keep his leg from hitting the ground so heavily, even as everything inside me screams that the very atmosphere in here is made of death. And there’s no way out but to keep heading down.

“Where’s the other kid?” Beryll hisses. “The one who was with you running from the forest?”

Germaine doesn’t turn around. Just keeps going as he says, “Oops. Must’ve locked him outside.”

Beryll looks to Seleni, and a flicker of fear crosses his broken, swollen face. Only his expression is not for himself. He’s afraid for her.

I don’t blame him. I’m scared for all of us.

“You all are talking too loud,” Vincent says.

“Hey, we’re not the ones carrying a moaning beached siren,” Rubin scoffs. “Besides, what’s there to fear? Ghouls only come out at night.” But he trims his tone and tries to walk softer.

Vincent ignores Rubin to hurry forward toward what appears to be a corner up ahead. “It looks like we follow this path.” Except when we reach it, it’s nothing more than a deep-set alcove with more coffins. Older coffins. Some of the lids have cracked and crumbled, and scraps of shroud and bones peek out.

He turns and scowls. “Dead end.” As if we couldn’t tell. Because there’s nothing. No other doors. No windows. No way out but to follow the long, sulfur-saturated tunnel in front of us that seems to meld from one passage opening to the next.

The rank scent grows stronger the farther in we go. It pricks my nose and burns my eyes, and even I try not to stare at the endless walls of sarcophagi too long. There’s something eerie about them—even for someone who’s used to dealing with dead things.

When we reach the tenth opening, leading to the tenth long passageway, the sulfuric smell flares and the atmosphere thickens. The flickering lights are dimmer here, and whether that’s from the strange layer of grey haze or simply because there’s less air, they sputter slower and cast shadows to reveal older, yellower stone walls marked with a series of carvings missing from the previous passages. I wonder who’s buried here and for how long. And how many other contestants have shuffled past them through the years.

A splash of wet hits my nose and splatters on my cheek. I peer up into the shadows as, beside me, Sam shudders too. By my estimation we’re under the deepest part of the lake surrounding the island.

Sam suddenly stumbles, and when I glance over, his eyes have glazed and his head has dropped into a faint. I look at Lute. “He needs to rest,” I mouth.

Lute firms his chin because we both know that’s not going to happen in here. So we keep walking.

Twenty more minutes eke by as we tread more corridors exactly like the ones we’ve just left, and by the time we hit what is by my count the nineteenth coffin-lined passageway, the moisture is dripping down like misty rain, and the air’s so coiled with the smell of rotting eggs that Rubin and Beryll keep gagging. Until Seleni smartly tears two pieces of fabric from her pant legs and has them wrap it around their faces—Beryll’s rather delicately.

I push Lute and Sam ahead, then step through the nineteenth doorway, only to freeze in my tracks.

Beryll, Seleni, Vincent, and the others fumble into us, and I move aside enough to let them in, and then they are gasping and motionless too.

The room we’ve just stepped into is a shorter length than the others, with a doorway at the far end. It’s also taller—at least three stories high, with giant, graceful columns spanning floor to ceiling, where stone chandeliers hang from stone chains to suspend lifelessly over long tables that look eerily like cadaver slabs.

Whatever this used to be, it wasn’t originally built as a tomb. It was made for a king, and this space is some type of banquet room.

Or maybe it was built as both.

Rubin coughs into his makeshift scarf. “What the?”

Lute leans over to slap a hand over his mouth so fast, Rubin doesn’t even have time to react before Vincent also smacks the back of his head. “Shh, you dolt.” Vincent lifts a finger to his lips and tips his chin to the walls.