The Eletian turned to Karigan with appraising eyes. “I am called Telagioth. I am ora-tien, leader of these tiendan.”

The word shone through Karigan’s foggy mind as a bright memory. She had met tiendan before—Somial had been one. They were hunters of the king. The Eletian king.

Telagioth, as well as other Eletians who moved about the clearing and encampment, were all clad in the odd, milky armor, though no others possessed spines that she could discern.

At Telagioth’s side was a sword sheathed in the same material as the armor which, she was certain, wasn’t steel. The sword was girded with a belt of embroidered cloth. Lengths of it dangled from the knot at his hip to his knee, the complicated patterns woven into it seeming to move and swim as though alive.

“How do you know me?” Karigan’s cheek was stiff with drying blood, and as she spoke, fresh blood trickled along her jaw.

“We know you,” Telagioth said. “You are touched by Laurelyn’s favor . . . and other things.”

He took her by the elbow, holding a muna’riel aloft in his other hand. He guided her around the cairn, taking special care to avoid the dead.

“Where are we going?” Karigan asked, wishing that the whole nightmare would just end and she’d wake up safe and sound beside the campfire and other Riders. Where was Ty? Had he been slain, too? Was she the only one among the Riders to have survived?

The Eletian paused and gestured toward the cairn. A portion of it had been blown outward. Rubble was strewn before a gaping hole. The light of the muna’riel revealed steps that descended into darkness. He guided her toward them.

“You—you’re not taking me down there,” Karigan said, backing away.

Telagioth turned to her, the crystalline light of the muna’riel making his features smooth and well-angled, and alien. Cerulean eyes, with the transparent depth of blue glass, regarded her with interest.

“You would not enter an empty tomb when there is far more death beneath the open moon?” His demeanor was not hostile, nor was it kind. It was merely curious.

Karigan had no wish to enter that blackness from which the wraith had emerged. She hated tombs.

There were other things that required her attention besides, more pressing needs. “The injured need tending.” And the dead, too, she did not add. She started to walk away, but Telagioth caught her elbow again.

“Come. The air is sound and nothing is below that can harm you. Others shall tend the injured. You must see what lies below, as a witness, so you may tell your king of it.”

Karigan wanted to argue that she had witnessed more than enough already, but she was too weary for argument. And, in a way, his words appealed to her sense of duty, for she knew it was true that King Zachary would want to know the details. She wanted to know the details. Just what had been loosed into the world?

She followed Telagioth down the steps through what had been an entranceway, framed out by stone and now-rotted timbers, before the tomb builders had covered it with rocks. They had to clamber over the shattered remains of a stone door. Karigan’s fingers trailed over glyphs as she worked her way around it.

Their descent took them down a rough shaft that had been cut right through the bedrock. The walls glinted with wet and slime. Currents of damp smelling air that had been trapped for too long beneath the earth lifted tendrils of hair out of her face. She slipped on a step and jolted her arm painfully as she fought to regain her balance.

“The black moss is slippery,” Telagioth said belatedly as he helped her right herself.

“Thanks for the warning,” Karigan muttered under her breath.

The muna’riel brightly lit the way. The black moss was like a disease that grew on the steps and walls.

“How did you happen upon us?” Karigan asked, perhaps to keep her mind off the tomb they descended into.

“We did not happen upon you,” Telagioth said. “Our scouts were monitoring your scouts and the movements of the delegation. When we realized where your encampment was placed, we knew we must come and make ourselves plain to you.”

Their timing could have been better, Karigan thought bitterly. “Why didn’t you come to us sooner? Certainly you must have known our mission.”

“We did know of your mission, but we are hunters, not emissaries. And once we knew of your danger, we came as swiftly as we could.”

Before Telagioth could speak further, a chamber opened up before them and his feet splashed into water. “Hold,” he warned her. He proceeded forward, testing the footing. “Ai, they delved too deep and the water has flooded in. There are two steps more.”

He held out a hand to help her navigate the submerged steps. Ice-cold water seeped through her boots. It was above her ankles.

The chamber was low-ceilinged and dripped with moisture, sounding like rain as it plinked into the pool of water that covered the floor. In the dancing light of the muna’riel, she detected carvings on the walls slimed with more of the moss, and other glistening, moving things.

“This is but an antechamber,” Telagioth said, his voice taking on a hollow sound. “Beware the unevenness of the floor.”

He had to duck as he made his way through the chamber, the ceiling was so low. Karigan hurried after him, feeling the blackness of the subterranean world pressing at her back. She slipped and slid on the uneven floor in her haste and made herself more wet than she wished, but she was across the room in no time, ducking her head beneath a lintel into a tight corridor.