“His lordship Akhenabi? High Celebrant Zuniyabe?”

The guard shook his head. “Please, High Magister. The cart awaits us.”

After a long moment’s consideration, Viyeki stepped into the mine cart. The dragon-helmed guard entered behind him and closed the barred door, then gave a signal to the overseer of the Carry-men. The huge creatures, only slightly smaller than wild giants, began to crank the capstan.

The massive ropes creaked as the cart shuddered down into the depths, past level after level, each a dark doorway into the roots of the mountain, where Carry-men and other slaves dug for sulfur and gold. As the cart bumped and shook, Viyeki felt the air grow warmer and ever closer, until it pressed at his ears. There was something else pushing at him too, a discomfort he could queasily detect just at the edge of his senses, but could not identify.

At last the cart groaned to a halt, and the guard in the serpent mask pushed the door open. “Go forward, High Magister.”

The queasy feeling had grown stronger. For the first time, he felt real reluctance. “What about you?”

“I have a passenger to carry back, then I will return for you.” The guard sounded impatient at Viyeki’s hesitation. “You must not fear, High Magister.”

Viyeki got out and walked down the low passage. His trained eye told him it had been cut through the mountain long, long ago, or at least with stone tools, not metal or witchwood as used in more recent eras. The strange discomfort inside him grew stronger, as though he stood in the bow of a pitching ship; the heat of the place brought out sweat on his skin. He slowed, but that did not stem the sensation, so he silently said the Prayer for the Queen’s Strength and continued forward.

The corridor turned and bent, then suddenly opened out into a great cavern, this one untouched by tools of any kind, or so it looked to his practiced eye. Shifting red and yellow light turned the entire cavern the color of fire, and in its center a large crevasse belched steam and smoke, as though he were in some smaller version of the Chamber of the Well. From time to time flames darted upward from the cleft in the stone like the tongue of a hungry dragon. Other than that movement, the rocky chamber seemed empty, though the sensations of heat and oppression had grown even more powerful. He no longer felt only a sickness in his guts, but something stronger, a kind of growing terror that clutched at his chest and dried his mouth and throat.

What place is this? A cavern so far below the excavation levels? No Builder had a hand in this, not in my lifetime.

Viyeki stared for long moments into the shifting light and clouds at the center of the chamber before he realized that a mote of darkness drifting high in the clouds of steam above the crevasse was something more. In fact, it had arms and legs and wore a billowing cloak. The tightening of his chest increased. His heart sped.

Have they hung someone there? he thought in sudden shock. Is this a place of execution? May the Garden defend me, was my family right to fear? Is that why I’ve been brought to this hidden place? He stopped, unwilling to go closer to the pit and the slowly moving shadow that dangled high above it.

“I wonder how long he would fall if I pushed him in,” someone said just beside his ear. “Would he cook on the way down?”

Even Viyeki, veteran of centuries in the conspiratorial darkness of Nakkiga, nearly cried out in horrified surprise. He whirled, his hand dropping to the knife on his belt.

Jijibo the Dreamer stood behind him, Utuk’ku’s strange, many-times-great-grandnephew, his narrow face bobbing up and down.

“Lord Jijibo, you startled me.” Viyeki’s eyes turned helplessly back to the figure hanging so high above them in the wavering haze and orange light. “Who is that? Why was I brought here?”

“Does he truly not know?” the queen’s kinsman said. “I did not think him such a fool. Does he not remember that I told him his family had been noticed?” And then, a moment later, without change of tone: “Yes, I would like to have a dried salmon for my meal today.” Now Jijibo pointed a bony finger toward the dark shape floating high in the plume of steam: “Only look, Magister Viyeki. The answer to both your questions waits there.”

Viyeki stared at the figure. “You mean, that’s not a prisoner?”

“Oh, a prisoner, yes, most definitely,” said the Dreamer. “But not of the sort you mean. Hmmm, hmmm, yes, I do wonder what it would be like to flay all your skin from your body.”

In his previous encounters with Jijibo, Viyeki had learned that it was best to pretend most of the things the mad one said had not been spoken aloud, no matter how dire or shocking. “I still do not understand you, Lord Dreamer. Who has summoned me?”

“I cannot stay to talk, noble Lord Viyeki,” Jijibo said with a touch of impatience. “One day when we are dead, we will all smell like this, did you know? The snake in the apple cart is waiting to take me back to my chambers, you see.” He grinned. The Dreamer looked like something poorly made, his skin pulled a little too tight over his bones, his eyes a little too wide. Even his teeth were crooked. “Look at him frown!” he said. “And he has not even met the whisperer yet. How I would love to have that halfblood daughter of his! I would not take her skin off, no, no. Too crude. How would I learn anything?”

Finished with words, Jijibo then made a huge, exaggerated bow and strode off in the direction from which Viyeki had come, presumably to the waiting mine cart. Viyeki watched him go, confused and disturbed by what Jijibo had said about his daughter. Only a moment later did he hear the other thing that the Dreamer had said.

Whisperer, he thought. Does he truly mean—?

Our time is short, a voice said, and the shock of it made his skin crawl. This time the words were not spoken into his ear but seemed to form directly in his thoughts. It was not the queen’s voice in his head this time, but something more strained and distant, as though it drifted to him down a long, long tunnel. Ignore the holy fool, the voice continued on, and the words felt harsh and dry as bits of drifting ash. He is not part of what you must do.

Viyeki spun, heart racing even faster, but whoever had spoken was not behind him, nor anywhere in sight. Then a movement at the edge of his vision tugged his gaze upward once more. The dark figure in the billowing cloak was being lowered from the heights, spinning down slowly through the steam and flickering firelight of the great vent.

No, not lowered, Viyeki saw a moment later. There were no wires, no ropes, no noose. He had never seen anything like it, not from the great sorcerer Akhenabi, not from Queen Utuk’ku herself.

“What do you want of me?” he cried, and was shamed by the frightened quaver in his own voice.

As the robed figure drifted down to float just above the crevice, he saw that the face peering from the hood was featureless, covered in bandages, not even eyes or mouth left uncovered. Viyeki shuddered. He knew now who had summoned him, but the knowledge did not slow his pounding heart. The shape stopped, drifting slightly in the hot air rising from the fiery crevice. A terrible aura of death washed over the magister—not a scent, but something deeper, something beyond his physical senses, a terror that made his mind quail in disgust and fear.

I am one of the queen’s high nobles, he told himself, although he could scarcely think. He measured his breaths until he could summon the strength to speak. “Lady Ommu, the Whisperer,” he said, and even the name in his mouth was fearsome. “Great mistress, was it you who summoned this humble servant of the queen?”

For a long moment the faceless thing did not reply, and he was certain it must be listening to the terrified thundering of his blood. Even the queen herself had never filled him with such dread.