The Silver Wolf novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Under the Long House

The tunnel mouth was behind the creek, under a screen of ferns, exactly where the map said it would be.

Cormick went in first with the knife in its sheath and his left arm held tight to his strapped ribs.

I went second with Hattie's map in my fist.

The stone walls were wet and cold, and they sloped steadily down.

"The Guard dug this," Cormick said, very quietly. "Your mother used it."

"How do you know?"

"I helped her."

I let that sit, because there was no room in the dark to do anything else with it.

Ahead, light began to show.

It was a pale blue-white, and it shifted on the walls.

The tunnel opened out into a round chamber wider than the Long House above it.

In the middle of it stood a slab of black rock, waist high and twelve feet across, veined all through with silver.

The veins were glowing.

Carved deep in its top, in letters worn by years of hands, was a long line of names.

The last one was my mother's.

Beside the Stone, on a wooden post, Hattie sat tied at the wrists with her grey braid come undone.

She looked up and saw me, and her whole face went hard.

"Go back," she said. "It's a trap, honey."

"I know it is."

"Then why..."

"Because I'm done being told to go back."

A voice answered from behind the Stone.

"Oh, you came," Lorelei said. "I told him you would."

She walked out into the blue light in a long dark coat, and her auburn hair was pinned up neat.

She didn't look sorry.

She didn't look anything.

"You smell like him," she said, and tipped her head at Cormick. "You've smelled like him for a week."

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