“Kull?” I called. My shout sounded more like a whisper in the mist. “Are you there?”
I strained to hear an answer but heard none, as if he’d disappeared.
I took a cautious step forward. “Kull?” I called again, my voice echoing this time. Once again, the darkness enveloped me.
Completely blind, I felt along the wall while debating whether or not to use a spell for light, but down here, using magic seemed like a horribly flawed idea—even for me.
“Kull—” My toe snagged on something, and I almost hit the ground. A human form broke my fall. My elbows landed on his chest. In the mist, I only saw a little of the beard and forehead. Kull. He lay on the ground with his eyes closed, completely motionless. The still-sputtering torch lay next to him, and I grabbed it.
I knelt beside Kull to search for signs of life. Shallow breaths exhaled from his mouth. His chest rose and fell at a rapid pace. What had happened to him? I hadn’t heard him fall. He hadn’t called for help. I hadn’t seen him. It was as if he’d disappeared.
I searched his face and saw his eyelids twitching.
They’d had their eyes cut out.
Cold chills broke out over my skin. Footsteps came from behind me. I rounded, and my heart stopped.
Red eyes peered from a black, shapeless form.
I am here, it whispered in my head.
The mist coiled and swirled in eddies around the phantasm. It licked at my exposed hands with a bone-numbing frostiness.
Kull stirred beside me.
The mist suddenly retreated. I stared into the empty passageway, my heart beating so frantically I feared it might break through my chest.
Kull groaned. I knelt beside him as his eyelids fluttered open. “Olive?” he whispered.
“I’m right here.”
“What—what happened?”
He attempted to sit up. When he moved his arm, I saw an object in his hands that made me gasp.
It looked almost like mine, except it was woven from black string around a loom of the same color. Dark magic poured out of it.
A dream catcher.
Chapter 16
“Drop it.” I tried to keep my voice level.
Kull stared at the dream catcher, then let it fall to the floor. It landed with a soft thump. “What is it?” he asked.
I used the hem of my cloak to pick it up. My breath caught in my throat. The dark magic flowing from the loom felt palpable, as if it were drawing the breath from my lungs. Whoever had created the spell had been a powerful practitioner.
“Where did you find this?” I asked.
He rubbed his temples. “I don’t remember. I was walking toward that tomb. I saw something….” He shook his head.
I looked at the tomb he’d pointed to. Like the others, the runes inscribed in the stone had been scratched out, although the scarring on this tomb looked deeper, as if someone had used a pickaxe to completely remove the name.
“Do you remember anything else?”
“A dream. Very strange.” Firelight cast his face in bronze. “A dream I had as a child. I saw my sister. And a goblin. He took her.” He looked away.
My stomach squirmed. I’d heard the stories of what goblins did to women, to children. Kull’s worst childhood fear had come back to haunt him, just as Charon had come back for me, and the dog in Jeremiah’s dream. These were our greatest fears come to life.
“Kull, I know this isn’t easy, but do you remember anything else?”
He paused before speaking. His eyes looked distant, as if he remembered something from long ago. “The goblin said that my sister belonged to him. He would twist her soul. Make her evil like him. And then he said there would be nothing I could do to stop him. I’d forgotten the dream until now.”
Even with my cloak covering the dream catcher, I felt its power licking at my fingers.
“What sort of magic recreates nightmares?” he asked me.
“I don’t know.” If I’d dared to touch the woven loom, I could possibly detect the spell and recognize the spellcaster. But I had safer ways of discovering its secrets. I’d just have to get back to Earth to do it.
Kull rubbed his eyes as if trying to erase the images of the nightmare. “Do you think whoever has your godson is using such a spell on him?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Who would do such a thing to a child?”
I shook my head. “Someone desperate.”
“Or evil.”
Kull glanced at the tomb with the gouged-out runes. “I remember finding the loom near that tomb.”
We walked toward the tomb when my toe stubbed something. I glanced down to see a heap of chains. Holding the torch close, I knelt, inspecting the chains.
“You found something?” Kull asked, kneeling beside me.
“Yes, I think so.” The chains looked like something I could’ve purchased in a hardware store from Earth, which seemed odd given our current location. Kull held the torch as I picked them up. A pair of manacles dangled from the bottom.
Small manacles, the size that would fit around a child’s wrists.
My heart dropped.
“My godson was down here,” I said.
“It appears so.” Kull fingered the manacles. “But where is he now?”
The metal loops clanked as I placed them back where I’d found them. I stood, searching the area. Kull did the same, though we found no further evidence of my godson’s existence in the tombs.
“Your godson’s presence here must have something to do with these tombs. His captors must have brought him down here for a reason. Perhaps if we learn that, we’ll understand where he is now,” Kull said, once again returning to the tomb where he had found the dream catcher. He handed the torch back to me.
I held the light close to the vault. The torchlight illuminated the hole where the runes had been. Images of hunched-over humans with fearful faces had been carved below the gouged names.
“Any idea who was buried here?” I asked.
“Whoever it was, someone went to great trouble to
