Zacharias lost all sense of up and down, and he fell, but only smashed his face into the bundle of clothing that dissolved all at once into nothing until, when he took a coughing, wheezing breath, it was as if he inhaled all the dust of what had once lain there, sucked up into his mouth and lungs.
The blackness chokes him. Salt water bubbles against his eyes and lips, popping in his nostrils. His lungs hurt, but he keeps swimming although the tunnel is entirely drowned. If he goes too far, he will not have enough air in his lungs to swim back, yet what difference does it make? Where else can he go? Without memory, he is dead anyway.
He is like the skrolin, trapped in a cul-de-sac whose tunnels only take him around in circles. He must go forward to free himself as well as them.
His lungs burn. His head slams into the ceiling, his fingers scrabble against rough walls, and his feet push along rock as he thrusts forward and all at once comes flailing to the surface. He drags himself out into air and lies spewing with his lungs on fire and his eyes stinging and the world hazing to darkness.
Agony slices through his body as a cold hand brushes the top of his head and an icy finger tugs on his ear as if to drag him back into the water.
He was no longer lying half in and half out of water but rather on the dusty remains of the burial chamber.
A dry voice whispers through his mind. “He has already been claimed.”
Zacharias recognizes them; they are his grandmother’s gods, the young Huntress, bright and sharp, the Bounteous One, and the Old Woman, toothless with age.
“I fear you,” he whimpers, although he cannot truly speak. He says the words in his mind, and they hear him. “You are the gods my grandmother worshiped. She was loyal to you.”
“The days when we ruled on Earth are long forgotten. Our power has faded.”
“I remember you!”
“You remember us. You are our grandson.”
He weeps, feeling their affectionate touch. Where his tears meld with the dust, the earth speaks to him in a voice as heavy as stone, reaching him through the ancient ones who linger within the tomb.
Can. You. Hear. Us?. Are. You. The. One. We. Seek? Help. Us.
“I hear you. I will help you. Tell me what to do.” His lips and his mind form the words although the breath that escapes him is little more than a rising and falling of vowel sounds, not real words at all.
The earth replies not with sound but with its voice throbbing up through his head.
Listen. Wait. You. Are. Not. The. One. We. Seek. But. We. May. Have. Need. Of. You. The. Crown. Can. You. Reach. And. Touch. The. Crown?
“I can.”
Light flared. Hugh cursed.
“Damn it. There must be a hidden opening somewhere, to let in a breeze like that. Zacharias! For God’s sake, man, get up off the floor. Is the lamp ruined? And broken, too.” His shoulders heaved as he sighed. “Well, no matter. I’ll take this mirror. We’ll leave the rest undisturbed.”
With some difficulty because of the pain still cutting through his body, Zacharias pushed himself up to hands and knees and, as Hugh’s light bobbed away down the tunnel, to his feet. He bent to pick up the fallen lamp and such a wave of dizziness and disorientation swept him that he moaned.
Hugh’s lamp stopped. There was silence.
From this distance and angle Zacharias could only see Hugh’s face framed by the wavering light, golden and beautiful and utterly frightening. The presbyter studied him a moment more, then turned his back.
“Come quickly. I’ve no wish to linger. There’s nothing here of interest.”
The ancient queens waited in the shadows, but they did not advance, only watched. He tingled all over, staggered, dizzy. Hurting. Changed.
Hugh had seen and heard nothing. He had allies that Hugh knew nothing of, that Hugh could not combat.
“Zacharias?”
All his life Zacharias had struggled to keep silence, to speak prudently or not at all. All his life he had failed at this task. He had cast away his faith in God, turned his back on the Lord and Lady, on his kinfolk, and on the calling that had taken him into the east and slavery years ago. He had walked as a beggar through the world, starved for sustenance, fearful and cowardly. He had no words, he had lost his tongue, yet he had been changed utterly.
All the fear was gone. Vanished.
“Go, grandson,” the queens whispered as they faded into the tomb. “Return to us when you can.”