Secrets of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 3) (19 page)

"Our lanterns from where?"
Linee sounded miserably confused. "Who's Loria?"

Cam groaned. "Eloria! You
know . . . Nightside."

"It's called Eloria?"

With a groan, Cam lowered his
pack off his shoulders, rummaged blindly, and found his oil lantern
and tinderbox. He worked by sense of touch, seeing nothing. He could
have stepped back outside the ziggurat to work in the daylight, but
somehow, entering the ziggurat had felt like a great accomplishment,
one he dared not undo. If this place was truly cursed and he stepped
outside, who knew if he'd find his way in again?

Within a moment or two, he had
filled his lantern with oil and lit the wick. Light flickered to
life, falling upon a craggy hallway and a shivering Linee. He lit her
lantern for her; it trembled in her hand.

"Do you think there are
more monsters in here?" The light only illuminated several feet
of the hallway. Beyond lay darkness. "I'm frightened."

With his finger, Cam drew a
half-sun upon the dusty wall—the symbol of Idarism, same as the
amulet he wore around his neck. Seeing the rune soothed him, and
perhaps it would bless the building.

"That was a trap, not a
monster, and there might be more, yes." He took a step forward.
"So let's walk carefully and be ready to leap back from any
springing knives."

They walked down the corridor.
The bricks were craggy and sandy at first, but the farther they
walked, the smoother they became; less sand and wind had pummeled
them over the millennia. After walking for about a hundred yards, Cam
frowned. From outside, the top of the ziggurat—a square of stone
rising above the triangular base—was not much larger than his
cottage back home. They should have reached the opposite wall by now,
but the corridor kept stretching forward.

"This doesn't make sense.
We should be . . . by Idar, we should be outside the ziggurat and
hovering in the air."

Linee shrugged and stamped her
feet. "Well, this feels like real stone to me. And
look—stairs!"

After walking a few more steps,
they indeed reached a stairway that plunged down into a chasm. When
Cam stood upon its edge, he looked down and gasped. Dozens of
stairways rose, fell, and crisscrossed in the shadows below.
Firelight illuminated the dizzying scene, its source hidden. Cam
could see no logic to the architecture. The stairways, all carved of
the same craggy rock, stretched out in a bundle like a pile of
discarded sticks. They plunged down for what seemed like miles into
the pit.

"Is the clock hand down
there?" Linee peered down the stairs.

Cam thought back to the painting
in the tavern. "It's the arm of a mechanical man. If he's not up
here, we'll search for him."

He stepped onto the first flight
of stairs—the one connecting to the corridor—and began to descend.
Linee walked at his side, holding her lantern. Other stairways rose
and fell beside, above, and below them, emerging and disappearing
from shadows. Aside from jumping across the chasm, Cam saw no way of
reaching them. Linee and he kept descending their stairway. Soon they
had descended hundreds of steps and still could see no end.

"We must be under the sand
by now," Cam said. The thought chilled him. Who knew how far
underground the stairway would take them?

His pack bounced across his back
and his sword swung at his side. Finally—it must have been a
thousand steps down—the staircase ended, connecting with another
corridor. Cam shivered to think how far underground he must be,
buried deep below the sand. Linee close behind, he walked down the
corridor . . . and found himself facing a sunlit archway.

"The archway we entered
through!" Linee said and pointed. "Look."

"Nonsense." Cam shook
his head. "We've been climbing downstairs for hundreds of steps.
How could we be back where we started?"

"It's
the
same
archway." Linee mewled. "Look, I can even see bits of the
smashed trap."

Cam grunted. He stomped farther
down the corridor, heading toward the sunlit archway. He found his
old footprints on the floor, droplets of spilled lantern oil, and the
little half-sun he had drawn onto the dusty wall.

"Impossible," he
whispered.

Linee stamped her feet and
crossed her arms. "I told you it's the archway we entered
through! How did we get back here?"

"Some . . . some illusion
of the stairs." Unnerved, he turned back toward the darkness and
marched along the corridor. "The stairs must have turned
somehow, leading us back up. Let's try again."

When
he stepped back onto the staircase—the one he had just climbed
down
for a thousand steps—he found it stretching
further
down into darkness. He blinked, confused, but began to descend.

Dozens of staircases again
crisscrossed above, below, and to their sides. It felt like walking
upon a single branch in a great tree. Cam barely knew what direction
he was walking, not even up or down.

"Let's try those stairs
instead," he said, pointing to a staircase which ran below
theirs.

He steadied himself, took a deep
breath, and dived off the stairs he'd been descending. He thumped
down onto the new staircase, raising dust. He reached up and helped
Linee switch staircases too.

They
kept walking downstairs until, after about three hundred steps, they
reached the ziggurat's ceiling. Cam spun around and realized that he
had
climbed
the whole way; the staircases all spread beneath him, endless layers
delving into the darkness.

Linee tilted her head. "How—?
What—?"

"It's another trap."
Cam grumbled. "It's more complex than the trap of knives. It's
some damn maze."

He
began racing downstairs. Linee ran at his side. They descended three
steps at a time. But suddenly only Cam was descending, and Linee was
racing
up
a staircase a dozen feet to his left. They froze and stared at each
other across a chasm.

"How did you get there?"
Cam said.

She
tilted her head. "I was just going downstairs. How did
you
get
there
?
Now come back here."

Cam shivered. "Wait. Just .
. . keep climbing. The ceiling's above you. I'll meet you there."

She nodded and climbed her
staircase. He turned around and climbed his.

"Camlin!" Her voice
rose somewhere beneath him. "Camlin, where are you?"

"I'm here! Where are you?"

Fear filler her voice. "I
think I'm lost. Camlin, can you hear me? You sound like you're below
me."

Cam's
knees were beginning to shake. "It sounds like
you're
below
me
."
He stopped climbing and leaned over, seeking her on a lower
staircase. Her head appeared from beneath the stairs he was climbing;
she seemed to be clinging to the bottom of the staircase.

"Camlin!" she said.
"What are you doing down there?"

"I'm
up here!" He rubbed his eyes. "What are you doing
under
the stairs?"

She squeaked, her head vanished,
and he heard her footfalls. Suddenly she came rushing up a staircase
across the chasm, maybe a dozen yards away from him—only she was
upside down, walking beneath the stairs. She paused and turned toward
him, her feet clinging to the bottom of the staircase, her head
hanging over the darkness.

"You're upside down,"
she said, pointing at him.

"You're the upside down
one."

She hugged herself. "What's
going on? I'm scared. How do we get back onto the same staircase?"

"Let's just both climb
upstairs. Forget about going down into the ziggurat. Try to reach the
ceiling again somehow." He tried to remain calm, but he heard
the tremor in his voice. "All right?"

"I see stairs up there,"
she said. "I'm going to try to jump up."

She made to leap off her
staircase.

"Linee, wait!" From
where Cam was standing, it seemed that Linee would plunge down to her
death in the chasm . . . only suddenly he no longer knew up from
down, left from right. Suddenly he thought he was upside down, that
Linee would jump up, fall up and up until she hit the ceiling.

"I'm jumping!" she
said.

"Wait. Don't—"

Before he could complete his
sentence, Linee closed her eyes, held her nose as if diving into
water, and jumped off the staircase.

She fell, plunging downward into
the chasm below. Her scream trailed for what seemed like miles until
it faded into the darkness.

Cam fell to his knees, shaking.
"Linee!" He leaned over the stairs, staring into the chasm,
and his breath shook. "Oh Idar . . . Linee!"

For a long moment—silence.

Then—with a beauty that brought
tears to his eyes—Linee cried out to him. "Camlin, I found the
floor! I found the bottom. Jump down and join me!"

Cam grimaced and shouted down
toward her. "You sound like you're a mile deep. I'd smash every
bone in my body."

"Trust
me!" rose her voice from the pit. "Just jump. The ancients
carved this labyrinth for the brave. So be brave like me and
jump
."

Cam
looked away. This was madness. Madness! Linee had found a way down,
but she had jumped from another staircase. From where he stood, he
would surely die. He climbed a few more steps, found himself walking
down
stairs,
and turned around. He kept moving. There had to be another way, had
to—

He froze.

Upon the stairs before him lay a
skeleton.

Cam grimaced and covered his
mouth.

Bits of cloth covered the
skeleton—shreds of a white cloak and tunic. Leather boots still held
its feet, and a half-sun amulet hung around its neck. Cam clutched
his own matching amulet.

"It's me," he
whispered.

No. No, that was impossible.
Wincing, he stepped around the skeleton and kept climbing the stairs,
only to find another skeleton, identically clad—or maybe the same
skeleton.

"Others
have walked here," he whispered. "They never jumped. They
kept wandering the maze until they died of thirst or hunger.
I
died here." His amulet dug into his palm and his eyes burned.
"The stairs bend time like they bend dimensions. It's my
skeleton."

Linee's voice rose from below.
"Butterfly bottoms, Camlin. Are you going to jump or not?"

Cam turned away from the
skeleton. He closed his eyes. He walked to the side of the staircase
until his toes rose above open air.

He whispered a prayer . . . and
jumped.

He fell about three feet, landed
hard, and opened his eyes.

He stood in a long, dark
corridor, the staircases gone. Linee stood at his side, hopping with
joy. She grinned and embraced him tightly. "Hullo, Camlin old
boy." She planted a kiss on his cheek. "You found your
courage."

He
closed his eyes.
I
found my bones. I found fear.
He opened his eyes and looked at Linee.
But
I found my light too.

Bouncing
and still grinning, Linee tugged his arm. "There's another
corridor. Let's go exploring and let's find that old king and his
hand."

Holding their lanterns high,
they walked into the depths of the ziggurat.

Past a bare corridor, Cam and
Linee entered a chamber of gold, jewels, and more majesty than in all
the courts of sunlight.

"Merciful Idar," Linee
whispered, eyes growing almost as large as an Elorian's. She could
barely breathe out the words. "It's . . . it's the most
beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Cam blinked, not even knowing
where to look first, how to make sense of such splendor. He wasn't
sure if he faced an imperial hall, a treasure-trove, or a cross
between them. Murals covered the walls, depicting scenes of merchants
rowing reed boats, countless birds of every kind, trees and flowers,
goddesses and serfs, soldiers and farmers, kings and queens, their
forms all lined with silver and gold. A platinum sun covered the
ceiling, glistening with jewels. Giltwood tables filled the chamber,
topped with artifacts. Cam saw a jeweled ostrich-egg cup resting upon
silver legs; a golden bust of a bearded king wearing a crown of
emeralds, amethysts, and topazes; silver statues of cranes with ruby
eyes; jugs painted with scenes of hunters returning with baskets of
fowls; ivory statuettes of goddesses, cattle, and soldiers; and four
sarcophagi shaped as a snake, a beetle, an ibis, and a shrew.

"It's like a palace."
Linee walked between the artifacts, eyes bright, hands clasped
against her cheek. "It's even lovelier than my palace back in
Kingswall. Oh, Camlin, isn't it wonderful? Maybe we can stay here."
Her eyes lit up and a grin split her face. "What do you think?
Maybe after the war, we can move here and be King and Queen of the
Ziggyroot."

"It's
ziggurat
and no." Camlin too began to walk around, staring at the
countless jugs, statuettes, busts, and urns. "Help me look.
Maybe the Cabera Hand is here somewhere. I—"

Shrieks rose, echoing in the
chamber like steel against stone.

Cam winced and covered his ears.

Linee screamed.

From behind several towering
vases emerged clanking creatures of gears, springs, and blades.

Cam scuttled back, slamming into
a table, and drew his sword. The mechanical creatures scuttled toward
him, moving like the hand-drawn toys he'd seen in the markets. There
were four of them. One was a snake formed of a many bronze rings. A
beetle the size of a small dog clattered on knitting needle legs. An
ibis sported a blade for a beak. A shrew opened its mouth to reveal
teeth of rusty nails. Glancing aside, Cam realized they were the same
four animals the stone sarcophagi represented.

Linee
gasped and pointed at the scurrying metallic shrew. "Finally! A
zigzagging rat! I
told
you, Camlin! It's cute." She leaned down to pat it. "It—
ow! It's biting me!"