them had lasted for years and ran bone deep. On the precipice above, the wolf's lean haunches trembled. Excitement thrilled through the creature's thick chest. He swayed, shifting his weight from paw to paw. The bitch at his side eased forward. She held her ears flattened and tight to her head, her tail tucked between her legs. He's taught them to hunt humans, Haarn realized. The sickness in his stomach soured. Bile bubbled and burned at the back of his throat. He scanned the promontory, looking for the other wolves in the pack. The bitch got too close to the edge for the lead wolf's liking. He snapped at her, white fangs flashing, grazing flesh beneath her pelt at her shoulder. Red blood flecked on the wolf's teeth. The bitch jerked back as if scalded. More blood matted her fur as the wound continued to dribble. As she turned, Haarn saw that the bitch was heavy with unborn pups. She looked scrawny, almost used up by the coming birth. Her eyes rolled white as she continued backing away, and her muzzle dipped low to the ground. Druz cursed, and her words seemed to crash through even the storm sounds echoing throughout the forest. The rolling thunder was a natural sound in the forest, but a human voice wasn't. Haarn glanced up at the wolf. Impatient, the wolf paced on silent pads along the promontory. 'Are you coming?' Haarn glanced toward the mercenary and found her staring at him. Her accusation stood out from her body. Mud streaked her face and matted her hair. Her clothing was damp and hung heavy with sweat and soil. Above them, on the promontory, the wolf shifted. He stepped backward, all but disappearing in the brush that topped the ledge. Haarn didn't know if the wolf would run or try to stand his ground. It was evident that the wolf had understood that Druz wasn't alone. Remaining silent, Haarn stepped from concealment and crossed the ledge to join the mercenary. 'I thought you'd given up,' Druz said. 'No,' Haarn replied. He glanced up at the promontory, but the angle he was at denied him sight of the wolf. 'What are you looking at?' Haarn shook his head. Though Druz seemed incapable of seeing most things that took place in the lands around her, she read people well. Perhaps she hadn't spotted the wolf above her, but she knew that his attitude about the night and the things in it had changed. 'What?' Druz stepped in front of him, preventing him from attempting the climb she'd tried to make. 'I'm going to climb up,' Haarn said. Claws clicked against stone above, but the sound was too slight for Druz to notice. Druz's eyes held his. 'Something's up there.' Haarn held an answer back from her for only a heartbeat. 'Yes.' 'The wolf?' 'Yes.' Druz's face tightened. 'Why didn't you tell me?' 'Because I wanted to watch the wolf as he watched you.' The hard look on Druz's face softened. 'The wolf is watching me?' 'He was,' Haarn said. The mercenary looked up. 'And now?' 'I don't know. We'll have to climb up and see.' 'What if he's gone?' Haarn surveyed the muddy mountainside, seeking small places, secure places, that his hands and feet could work with. Druz was good. If they could have waited till morning, when the light was better and she was more rested, she could have made the climb. 'If he's gone, we track him some more,' the druid replied. 'One of the bitches is heavy with pups. That's why they've been traveling so slowly.' 'Slowly?' Druz shook her head. 'The pack hasn't been traveling slowly. We've only now caught up with them.' Haarn reached up and flattened himself against the mountainside. His fingers traced the hold he'd spotted-a small piece of jutting rock-and he tested it. When the rock held his weight, he pulled himself up. Mud slid along the front of his clothes. He knew the wolf could hear them coming. 'I don't think he's planning to go any farther tonight,' Haarn said. 'He's stopping?' Haarn reached above and found another hold. Now that he had the rhythm, scaling the mountainside got easier. He eased himself up, fitting his fingers and moccasins into place. 'Yes,' he said. 'Why?' 'Because they haven't eaten in the last two days.' 'How do you know that?' 'Because we've been trailing them,' Haarn replied. The muscles in his arms, legs, and back warmed against the storm's chill. 'If they'd eaten much, there would have been sign.' 'They're planning to eat us?' 'Yes,' Haarn said. 'If they weren't interested in that, they'd have been gone as soon as they'd seen you.' 'What are we going to do?' Druz asked. Haarn smiled and said, 'Try to not get eaten.' He kept climbing.
Cerril followed the flickering glow of the candle he'd taken from Hekkel down into the bowels of the secret crypt beneath the burial house. The spiral staircase had either been crooked when it had been installed, or it had shifted during the decades or perhaps hundreds of years it had been there. Cerril had to lean away from the central pole at times and against it at others.
Still, the spiral staircase was a short trip to the rooms below.
Once he gained the ground, Cerril discovered that the floor there had been hewn from bedrock then covered over with stone. Dank, bare earth walls drank down the candle's glow. In a half-dozen places, though, small streams of water trickled along the walls and ran through cracks between the stone flooring. The thick, cloying smell of damp earth and rancid water tickled his nose as he stared around the chamber.
The other boys gathered around Cerril. They stayed behind him and well within the fragile safety of the candle.
'We shouldn't be here,' one of the boys said. 'This is a bad place. I can feel it.'
'Damn,' Two-Fingers said. 'This is a cemetery. It's a bad place for anybody.'
'Grave robbers steal from them that are fresh dead,' Hekkel said. 'Only reason they don't steal from them that are old-dead is because somebody done got to them.'
Cerril raised the flickering candle and said, 'Nobody's been here since this place was sealed.'
'You don't know that,' Hekkel said.
Feeling Malar's coin warm and heavy in his hand, Cerril said, 'Yes, I do.'
He moved forward, drawn by the coin's pull. The candlelight slid across the ceiling. For a moment he thought none of the others were going to follow him, then he heard the rustle of their clothing.
The trickle of water running down the walls echoed throughout the room. Boots and bare feet slapped against the wet floor.
'It's raining outside,' Hekkel said. 'Coming harder now.'
Cerril knew that. The sound of the storm rumbled in the distance, and the sibilant rush of rain threaded through the burial house.
'Who built this place?' Two-Fingers asked.
'Eldath's priests,' Cerril answered.
Cerril followed a curving, narrow passageway from the chamber the ladder had led down into. The candlelight had no problem illuminating the height or the width of the passageway, but it didn't penetrate the depth.
'Why?' Two-Fingers asked.
'To keep people away from whatever is being kept in here,' Hekkel said. 'Any half-brained lummox could have figured that out.'
'Probably got all kinds of gold and treasures down here,' someone said. 'We'll fill up our pockets and get out of here before anyone can stop us.'
'Yeah,' another boy said. 'Alagh?n is a city filled with secrets. It could be somebody stuck a corpse down here and then forgot all about it. Whatever they left on it will be our gain.'
'I'll bet they didn't leave anything on the corpse,' Hekkel griped. 'I don't see how anything could be left as long as this thing must have been left here. Chances are that rats have been at whatever was left. I'll bet you can't even strip the clothes from the body, wash them, and sell them to a ragman.'
'We're not here for rags,' Cerril said.
He wanted the other boys to stay brave, to stay behind him.
'Then what are we here for?' Hekkel demanded.
'Something more. Otherwise Malar's coin wouldn't be pulling me.'
Cerril stepped with more care, following the downward slope of the uneven floor. He wondered if the whole underground area had somehow been wrenched out of kilter at some time in the past.
'Should have let that man keep it,' a boy farther back in the crowd muttered.
Cerril started to turn around and curse the boy, if he could find him, but his attention was riveted to the end of the passageway. The candlelight caught the walls surrounding them, twisting shadows as the flame danced, but only revealed the tilted rectangle of darkness at the passageway's end.
Blood boomed in Cerril's ears as he raised the candle to get a better look.
'There's something in there,' someone said.
'I thought I saw someone moving,' another boy said.
'That's just your imagination,' Two-Fingers growled, but a quaver of fear rang in his voice. 'Whatever's in there has been dead a long time.'
'Just because it's dead don't mean it can't hurt you.'
