Ring. Sister. Piano (Book 4 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Sixty Two: Revolted Fascination

After two and a half days underground – if her pocket-watch was to be believed – Ellini had seen more of the fire-mines than she had in the whole five years of her imprisonment there.

She had roped her way across underground rivers, waded through half-flooded chambers, squeezed through narrow fissures, and lowered herself down chimney-like shafts by putting pressure on opposite walls as she descended.

In a way, it was wonderful. The lack of light and sound – the lack of any extraneous detail – meant she was able to concentrate on what little she did see and hear with extraordinary clarity. Besides, she remembered so well how to navigate down here – how to tell who'd been here before you and which way they were going, how to use the currents of air to scent your quarry's trail and hide your own.

Alice had made the mistake of wearing eau de cologne, which smelled so unlike anything you would get in the fire-mines – so heavy and complicated next to the earthy, smoky, bat-dung scent of the caves – that tendrils of it seemed to stretch across the air like rope.

Ellini followed the scent for a mile or so, until she got to a point where the tunnel must have collapsed behind Alice and Val. Was that why they hadn't come back? Had they been trapped by the rock-fall? Or even injured by it? But the scent was so fresh – as if they had passed by mere hours ago.

The cave-in wasn't just a wall of rubble, but half a mile of the stuff, loosely packed together and desperately unstable. Ellini managed to squeeze in for a little way, before coming to a point where she could get no more than an arm through. And she didn't want to try shifting stones, having come so far into the debris, for fear that she might be buried.

So she back-tracked and tried to find a way around the cave-in. She went down several levels, across the chamber that housed the lake, and tried to find a new way up. The rubies embedded in the rock gave a little light, and made each cave ceiling look like an ominous night-sky.

And, as she worked, she explored – half against her better judgement. So many places had been off limits to her before, as a slave-girl. The rock-cut temples of the fire-mines, their altars still sticky with sandalwood. The crypts and vaults where the gargoyles housed their dead.

She felt a kind of revolted fascination. So much of it was motivated by wanting to leave this place utterly behind when she found the others and got out. She didn't want to leave any mysteries that might puzzle her and tempt her back.

That was why she stopped outside the rock-cut steps to the largest temple. The grand entrance-way was flanked by lion statues, just like at the British Museum, and the dark, opalescent rubies which were so abundant down here had been set into their eyes.

She wondered about that. A civilization of blind creatures who not only adorned their temples with carvings, but gave those carvings eyes. As if they knew what eyes looked like, and what they were for.

The temple had been abandoned even in Ellini's time. According to Matthi – who, of course, had been there much longer – the male gargoyles had renounced their religion when they'd cut themselves off from Eve.

As for what they had done for recreation when they hadn't been whipping slave-girls, Ellini could find no clue. They hadn't needed a place to sleep. Their cave – which had always been forbidden territory for the slave-girls – was large and bare, with thousands of scratch-marks in the walls.

That had been part of their culture, hadn't it? She was sure she remembered Matthi telling her that nails had been important to them – a mark of power – which was why they'd deprived the slave-girls of their own. Perhaps these scratch-marks were some kind of art, or a way of asserting their potency. But still, it gave the impression of trapped animals clawing at the walls of their cage.