“ Who made this place?” someone muttered.
She walked behind Bocrest, second in a queue of thirty men. A handful of marines had stayed in the base camp while Agarik and a couple others scouted ahead.
“ Ancient people,” someone answered.
“ How?”
“ Magic.”
No telling tingle stirred the hairs on Tikaya’s neck. “I don’t think so.”
“ Magic,” another said, his tone brooking no argument. Others murmured assent. “Evil magic made this place, just like the rocket and the thing in Wolfhump.”
“ No talking,” Bocrest snapped over his shoulder, saving Tikaya from launching into a lecture that would doubtlessly not be well received.
Rias must have a lot more patience than she to have commanded such men all his life. It must have been lonely for him with so few peers. She shook the thoughts from her head. It was none of her concern. Even if she could forgive him for his lie of omission, Admiral Starcrest was nobody she could have a life with, not without betraying her people, her family, and everyone she loved. Especially those fallen during the war. She could want him found and safe, but she could not want him. Not any more.
She swallowed a lump and fished the journal out of her pocket. A challenge. Her mind needed a challenge, and she needed to learn as much as she could before her services were needed. If ever there was a place she could walk and study at the same time, it ought to be these flat, terrain-free tunnels. The worst thing that could happen is she would trip. An animal screeched in the distance.
Well, maybe not the worst thing.
Rias had mentioned strange predators in the tunnels. Predators that would probably find a single man an appealing target. Best not to dwell on that. Tikaya turned her attention back to the journal.
A mile or two passed with no side rooms or cross corridors forcing decisions. With her mind and her eyes locked on the pages, she failed to notice Bocrest stopping, and she crashed into his back. The journal slipped from her fingers as he spun and scowled.
“ Didn’t you see the sign?”
“ Sign?” Tikaya blinked and glanced about. They had come to a six-way intersection, where the scouts had stopped to wait. Large symbols in groupings of threes glowed a soft red above eye level at each corner. “Oh, yes, signs. I just read about those.”
Bocrest sighed noisily, while she picked up the journal.
“ Not those signs, the hand signal.” He demonstrated by raising his hand, fingers spread. “That means ‘squad halt,’ not ‘librarian run into the captain’s back.’ You need to pay attention in here.”
“ Do you want me to pay attention or do you want me to be able to translate the writing on the walls?” she asked.
Bocrest folded his arms. “Yes.”
She snorted but pointed to each sign as she relayed them: “Biology labs, alchemy labs, physics, animal experiments, labs for something Lancecrest didn’t recognize, and living quarters.”
“ What is that?” A marine pointed to a calf-high scat pile in the middle of one of the corridors.
“ Sorry,” Tikaya said, “I don’t translate poo.”
“ Koffert.” Bocrest gestured for the tracker.
The man knelt to examine the pile. He rubbed some between his fingers and sniffed it. “Predator, unknown. Large. Passed this way less than an hour back.” He stood, wiping his hand on his trousers, and Tikaya made a note not to share meals with the man.
Bocrest faced the scouts. “Any sign of Starcrest?”
“ No, sir,” Agarik said. He met Tikaya’s eyes, and they shared a grimace.
Bocrest grunted and waved toward the symbols. “Komitopis, which way?”
“ Which way do I think Rias would go if he was wondering which way I would go?”
Agarik smiled faintly. Bocrest did not.
“ Alchemy?” she guessed.
“ Fine. Someone mark the wall.” Bocrest waved the scouts forward. “Go. You boys in the back, stay alert. Watch for monsters creeping up on our asses.”
As the squad headed the new direction, Tikaya cast a longing gaze at the corridor that led to the living quarters. If any personal affects remained after all this time, she could learn much about the people from studying them. After they found Rias, perhaps they could go back.
Soon, doors marked the passage, taller and wider than normal, and without knobs or latches. Symbols denoting laboratories adorned some while others remained plain.
Someone walking closer to the wall than the center of the tunnel triggered a door to slide upward of its own accord. The man cursed and lurched back into line. Tikaya glimpsed a landing overlooking what she guessed to be lab stations-all the furnishings were oversized by human standards. A hand on her back encouraged her to hustle forward and catch up with Bocrest.
“ Should we check some of these?” she asked.
“ I’m not exploring anything until we catch up with our lovelorn guide,” Bocrest said.
Up ahead, the scouts stopped before a closed door. Agarik and another knelt to check something on the floor while the third man stood guard. After a moment, Agarik jogged back to the group.
“ What is it?” Bocrest asked.
“ Blood.” Agarik glanced at Tikaya. “A lot of blood.”
Her hands tightened around the journal. If Rias was hurt-or worse-because he had charged in here to look for her, it would be her fault.
When they reached the spot, the size of the dark puddle only increased her dread.
“ Human blood,” the tracker said after a taste. “Plantigrade print over there, but definitely not human.”
He pointed to a second puddle halfway under the door. A bloody print more than twice the size of Tikaya’s foot lay beside it. Dots at the end of the toes suggested claws.
“ Bear?” Bocrest asked.
Tikaya, remembering Rias’s tale of the tunnels, said, “I doubt it.”
A man screamed somewhere beyond the door. Rias? She lunged for the door, triggering the opening mechanism, but Bocrest caught her before she crossed the threshold.
“ We’ll get him,” he said. “You wait here.”
He waved two fingers, and the scouts slipped in first, fanning out on a landing with their rifles raised, ready to fire. Tikaya shifted her weight from foot to foot and eyed a bow stave and quiver attached to a rucksack. The man carried a rifle and pistol too; surely, he could spare the weapon so she could-
“ Clear on the landing,” Agarik said.
“ Sergeant Karsus.” Bocrest nodded for the man to take over the lead.
Without words, and faster than Tikaya expected, the marines shucked their rucksacks and split into two teams. They filed down stairs on opposite ends of the landing and disappeared from her sight. Only Bocrest remained with Tikaya.
Ignoring his hiss of annoyance, she twisted free of his grip and stepped inside. The landing overlooked a cavernous room that stretched a hundred meters or more. Thick thirty-foot-high columns supported the unadorned black ceiling. Empty floor dominated the front third of the room, and she could only guess at the furnishings beyond. She decided to think of them as lab stations and storage cabinets, though even the lowest counter rose taller than the approaching marines. The height and arrangement blocked much of the floor view as the stations created a maze of sinuous yet symmetrical aisles, some wide, some surprisingly narrow. As with the tunnel, light from an indiscernible source illuminated everything.
A cry of agony echoed from the center, and she glimpsed a blur of black before it disappeared behind a row of twenty-foot-tall cabinets.
“ Sprites-licked idiot,” she cursed, whirling to look for a bow amongst the discarded gear. She was not sure whether she meant Rias or herself. If, after all he had lived through, he died to some random animal attack…
Tikaya spotted the bow stave she eyed earlier. The marine had left it in favor of the rifle. She stuffed the journal into her rucksack, then untied the bow with fingers too irritated to fumble with fear. She yanked the quiver
