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Inscribed in the black granite covering the lower walls was a rather odd admonition to remember the foundation that made all that lay above them possible. That foundation, it said, had been laid by all the countless souls long forgotten.
The coffin itself, made of smooth stone in a simple shape, was covered with inscriptions advising those who visited to keep in mind all those who had passed from this life and into the next.
Sister Armina, surprisingly, put her weight against one end of the coffin. With a grunt of effort, she pushed, and the coffin moved a few inches, exposing a lever. She reached down into the narrow slot, grasped the lever, and pulled it up until it clicked into place.
The coffin pivoted, making only a whisper of sound.
Once the coffin had turned aside, Nicci was surprised to see a dark opening. This was no tomb. It was a hidden entrance to whatever lay below.
When Sister Julia shoved her, Nicci stepped forward onto the raised platform until she saw stairs, roughly hewn from rock, descending into darkness.
Sister Greta stepped down into the opening. She lit one of a dozen torches stuck in a row of holes in the rough stone wall and then took it with her as she started down. Sister Julia went next, also taking a torch.
"Well," Sister Armina said, "what are you waiting for? Get going."
CHAPTER 21
Lifting the skirts of her black dress, Nicci stepped over the raised edge of the pedestal that hejd the coffin. She gripped the edge of the opening to steady herself as she started down the steep run of stairs. The first two Sisters were already making their way down. The wavering glow of their torches showed nothing but a nearly vertical shaft of steps.
Once Sister Armina had climbed in after Nicci, she pushed a lever back into the wall, then took a torch for herself. Overhead, the coffin pivoted back into place, sealing them in.
It looked to Nicci like they were about to descend into the underworld itself.
The stairs wound downward haphazardly. The shaft was only wide enough for one person at a time. Descending at a steep angle, the steps turned at small landings only to continue tu
The stairs dropped so sharply that Nicci found herself having to breathe the smoke of the two torches carried by the Sisters right under her. As her mind raced, trying to think out her options, she briefly gave consideration to throwing herself down the precipitous shaft in the hope that she could break her neck, maybe even taking the two below her down as well, but with as narrow as the opening was she expected that she would probably get wedged to a stop before falling far. The landings, too, were numerous, so while the stairs were steep they paused frequently to make turns. She would probably only break an arm, not her neck.
They climbed downward for what began to feel to Nicci like hours. Descending at such a steep angle made her thighs burn. By the way they labored to breathe, the three Sisters were feeling the strain as well. They clearly weren't up to the demanding effort and were tiring.
While Nicci was getting tired as well, she wasn't having the trouble the others were. The Sisters had to pause a number of times to take brief rests. When they stopped, they would sit on a step, leaning back against the wall, panting as they caught their breath. They made Nicci stand.
None of the three liked Nicci. As she had told A
When it seemed she could not make it down another flight, they came to a flat spot. At first, Nicci thought that it might only be another landing, but it turned out to be a level passageway.
The way ahead burrowed in a wandering course in much the same way the stairs had, only it was flat. In places the tight tu
The narrow tu
Before long they began encountering intersections and halls to the sides. It quickly became apparent that there was a warren of passageways branching in every direction. As they passed bisecting intersections, the light of the torches briefly illuminated long, dark halls. In some of the side openings, though, Nicci saw rooms with low niches carved into the walls to the sides.
Her curiosity got the better of her. She glanced back over her shoulder at Sister Armina.
"What is this place?"
"Catacombs."
Nicci hadn't known that there were catacombs beneath the People's Palace. She wondered if anyone up above them knew-Nathan, A
"Well, what are we doing down here?"
Sister Julia turned back to give Nicci a bloody, toothless grin. "You'll find out soon enough."
Now that she knew what the place was, Nicci realized that what she had seen stacked in some of the rooms to the sides were bodies, bodies in the thousands, wrapped in burial shrouds and covered with dust over the dark, still, silent centuries. As they passed other tightly spaced rooms she began to see recesses in the walls that held not individual remains, but mounds of bones. The bones were stacked in staggering numbers, all fit neatly into the recesses, filling them completely. As the torchlight fell into rooms to each side, Nicci saw skulls stacked together from floor to ceiling. The orderly rows of skulls went as far back as the light penetrated. There was no telling how far those rooms of snugly stacked skulls ran into the darkness.
Nicci found it appalling to contemplate all the individuals she was seeing. These had all once been living people who had been born, grown up, and lived lives probably filled with family and love. Now there were only bones to say that they had ever existed.
Nicci swallowed at the frightening thought that she would soon end up as et another anonymous skull that someone might one day see and wonder about. Just as she didn't know anything about these people, what they dreamed, what they believed, what they loved, or even how they had looked in life, she would be nameless bones slowly crumbling to dust.
She had such a short time ago been up among the beauty of the palace, among color and life. Now she found herself among nothing but dust and dirt and death, on her way to her own.
The two Sisters in front lead them through a confusing series of intersections. Some of the passageways they took sloped downward. In several places they had to descend yet more flights of stairs to halls even deeper in the ground.
Everywhere there were rooms filled with bones, some with skulls, some with other bones stacked neatly in every available space, all bearing silent witness to lives once lived. Some of the passageways they passed through were made of brick but most had been constructed of stone. By the varying sizes of stone and styles of construction it seemed like they were passing from one era to another, each age preferring a different method to add to the ever-growing catacombs for their dead.