Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
I manage a few steps and then we emerge from the room into what looks like a large, somber chamber. There’s a pool of water with a trickling fountain in the center, surrounded by mushrooms of every shape and size. A garden of some kind, I realize. The ceiling overhead is nothing more than a decorative lattice with an intricate weave, made out of the same strange material the door was made from, and through the holes in the lattice, I can see rock overhead. The chamber itself has a few stone benches set along the walls, and one large seat at the head of the room that looks like it belongs to the man in charge. There’s a golden banner behind it with a woven pattern that looks like a double starburst—or twin suns.
“Come,” Rem’eb says, taking my arm and leading me through the room. “We must travel as far as we can this tide-fall.”
The stranger arrives again—Cas’zor—and carries a large pack and a long tube that looks like a waterskin of some kind. He hands them both to Rem’eb, settling them over his shoulder. “Hurry.”
“Are you sure you will not come with us?” Rem’eb asks the man. “Everyone will be furious when they have found out what you have done.”
“I have done the right thing,” he tells us in a stiff voice. “Let them be angry.”
Rem’eb hesitates, clearly torn.
“They need a voice of reason right now,” Cas’zor says. “And your female needs your help.”
Rem’eb looks over at me and that decides him. He nods, adjusting the pack over his shoulder and looping the canteen over his head. “We will go as fast as we can. You have my thanks, Cas’zor. I will not forget this.”
“Be safe.” He nods at Rem’eb and then leaves us.
Rem’eb clasps my hand again. “Come. I am taking you to your suitor and then we will return both of you to the surface. Tell me if I move too fast for you. We must make haste.”
Then he tugs me behind him and races out of the room, with me dragging along after him.
At first, my legs tingle and I worry that I don’t have shoes, but the floors in the cavern seem to be smooth and there’s a cobbled street. I’m able to keep up with him, and the more I move, the stronger I feel. It takes everything I have not to gawk at my surroundings, though.
There’s an entire city here in the vast stretch of caverns.
Everywhere I look, there are more of the square houses made out of stone bricks, just like the ones back in Croatoan. Here, though, there’s so many that I can’t count all of them. They line up in neat rows along the main street, and it’s down this street that Rem’eb pulls me along. The huts here have no roofs that I can see, but they’re so familiar to me that the sight makes me ache. The doorframes are not privacy screens covered in leather like back home, though. Here they’re doors just like the strangely made one in my old cell, and some even look to be made of metal.
Tubes of light made out of the same strange wavy glass are located along the street itself, and the ceiling high above glows with faint light—more of the strange moss, I think.
I want to stop and examine them, but there’s no time. “Where is everyone?” I ask, confused. Rem’eb has never indicated that there’s anything but a bustling city around him, but this place looks deserted and terrifying. “Is it the middle of the night?”
He turns at my hushed tones, never stopping. When I make a hand gesture for “people” and mime walking legs, then point at a doorway, he nods. “You are wondering where everyone is? They are asleep.”
“Asleep?”
“Cas’zor the Loyal is indeed loyal. He added something to the communal stew and now they will sleep soundly all night…which is why we must be gone by tide-rise.”
Man, these people sure do love to drug a bitch. With a shiver, I speed up just a little. “How many people?” I repeat myself twice before he understands me. To be fair to him, we are power-walking through the place as quickly as we can, so I get it if he misses a few of my gestures.
“Perhaps one hundred,” Rem’eb says. “We are all that is left after the great sickness.”
A great sickness? I want to ask more questions, but the timing and our language barrier makes me sit on my questions.
Rem’eb rushes past the last few houses in this area, heading for what looks like a long wall made of more of the same bricks. To my surprise, it narrows in, splitting off the cavern and the city itself in half. The wall is decorated with carvings, mimicking the ones back in Croatoan and leaving no doubt in my mind that these people are related to the ones that lived there, once upon a time.