Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

"The tellings say that there were always dead, but only this place to put them within the city walls. The people didn't want their loved ones to be far from them, far from what they considered the sacred place for their ancestors, so they made passages where they could find resting places for them."

Shota's words echoed around in his memory.

You must find the place of the bones in the Deep Nothing.

What you seek is long buried.

"Show me this place," he told Jillian. "Take me back there."

It was more difficult to reach than he had expected it would be. There was a labyrinth of passages and rooms back through the building. Some of it went between walls that were open to the stars, only to reenter the dark depths of the building.

"This is the way of the dead," Jillian explained. "The deceased were brought in through here. It is said that it was made this way in the hopes that the souls of the dead would be confused by the passages and these new spirits would not be able to wander back out. Instead, confined in this place and unable to come back among the living, they would then go on to be where they belonged in the spirit world."

They at last came back out into the night. The crescent moon was rising above the ancient city of Caska. Lokey circled above and called down to his friend. She waved back. The graveyard spread out before him was good sized, but seemed inadequate for a city.

Richard walked with Jillian on the path through the crowded graves. Gnarled trees stood in places. In the moonlight it was a peaceful place, with wild flowers spread across the rising and falling contour of the land.

"Where are the passages you spoke of?" he asked her.

"I'm sorry, Richard, but I don't know. The tellings speak of them, but do not say how to find them."

Richard searched the graveyard, Jillian at his side, as the moon rose higher in the sky, and he could not find any evidence of passages. It all looked like any graveyard he had ever seen. Some of the ground was mounded with a number of markers. The stones for each grave were crowded close. Some yet stood, while others had long since fallen to lie flat on the ground, or be grown over.

Richard was running out of time. He couldn't stay down in Caska, forever listening to the cicadas sing. This was getting him nowhere. He needed to look for answers where he was apt to find them. This ancient place did not appear to be the place.

At the People's Palace in D'Hara there would be valuable books that Jagang had not yet been able to loot. It was more likely that he would find useful information there than in an empty graveyard.

He sat down on the side of a small hillock beneath an olive tree to consider what he might do.

"Do you know of any other place where there would be these passages that were mentioned in the tellings?"

Jillian's mouth twisted as she considered. "I'm sorry, but no. When it is safe, we can go down and talk to my grandfather. He knows many things-much more than me."

Richard didn't know how much time he had to devote to listening to her grandfather's stories, either. Lokey fluttered down to the ground nearby to feast on the newly emerging cicadas. After the seventeen years they'd lived underground, more of them were emerging-only to be pecked up by the raven.

Richard recalled the prophecy Nathan had read to him. It had mentioned the cicadas. He wondered why. It had said something about when the cicadas awakened, the final and deciding battle was upon them. The world, it said, was at the brink of darkness.

Brink of darkness. Richard glanced down at the cicadas as they emerged. He watched them coming up out of the ground.

As he watched, he realized that they were all coming up through a space in a gravestone laying facedown against the rise of ground. Lokey had noticed, too, and stood eating them.

"That's odd," he said to himself.

"What's odd?"

"Well, look there. The cicadas aren't coming up through the dirt, they're coming up from under that stone."

Richard knelt down and pushed his fingers down into the space. It seemed hollow underneath. Lokey cocked his head as he watched. Richard lifted, grunting with the effort. The stone began to lift. As it came up, he realized that it was hinged on the left. It finally gave way and opened.

Richard stared down into the darkness. It wasn't a grave marker. It had been a stone cap to a passageway. He immediately pulled the glass sphere out of his pack. As it began to glow, he held it down in the dark maw.

Jillian gasped. "It's a stairway!"

"Come on, but be careful."

The stairs were stone, irregular, and narrow. The leading edge of each was swaybacked and rounded from countless feet making the journey. The passage was lined with blocks of stone, making a clear path down deep into the ground. The steps came to a landing and turned right. After another long run, they turned left and went deeper.

When they finally reached the bottom, the passage opened into wider corridors that were carved from the solid but soft rock of the ground itself.