The commotion in the rebel clearing faded behind him as Corvan raced toward the half-dead tree. He thought he could get his bearings from where the statues stood, but the stone figures were nowhere to be found. His ability to see in the dark must be waning.

  Running along one side of the tree, he found what he thought might be the right pathway back to Morgan’s crypt. Jogging along a narrow track he finally came upon the rge sloppy crypt, but there was no one there. Jorad must still be finding his way with Kate in the darkness.

  Corvan sat on a crumbled wall to put his hands on his knees and catch his breath. The ominous creak of rusty metal drew his attention up to a faint green line appearing below the lid of the rge tomb. Corvan shrank back. The light grew brighter as a man’s hand pushed the lid higher, then a face rose in the ghostly light. It was Jorad.

  Corvan jumped to his feet, startling the priest so badly, he dropped the lid, knocking himself back into the tomb with a bang. Corvan wrestled the lid up and out of the way on its stubborn hinges.

  Jorad was sprawled on top of Morgan’s body, rubbing his head, while Kate y curled at their feet, pale and still. Her chest rose a fraction of an inch with each slow breath. Corvan leaned in and pced a hand on her cheek.

  “Kate, can you hear me?” She didn’t respond, but the green glow grew brighter. Resting in her limp fingers was the source of the green light; the disk she had taken from Tsarek in the byrinth. It was smaller than he expected but its markings were clear and bright: a star-shaped medallion on a slender chain, with multiple star points around the outer edges.

  Jorad sat up and groaned. “Next time, warn me before you jump out of the darkness,” he said, his voice low.

  “Is Kate all right?”

  “We barely made it here before she colpsed.” Jorad said, moving close to Corvan and pointing to the glow. “We were fortunate she had a glow globe in her hand. There’s not a speck of lumien light tonight.” Jorad looked at him closely. “How did you find your way here in the dark?”

  Corvan shrugged. He didn’t want to tell the priest about how the hammer had affected his night vision.

  Jorad looked into the darkness. “Their leader will send his men out to find us. He is convinced that he is the promised Cor-Van and that he only he needs a counterpart to make his insane dreams come true. He won’t stop until he finds one. We need to get Kate back to the temple.”

  Corvan reached into the crypt and touched Kate’s hand. It was cool and cmmy. “Kate, it’s me, Corvan. Wake up.” He lifted her hand and grimaced as the bck band slipped along her arm to reveal a ring of crusty red blisters around her wrist.

  “We’ll have to carry her, Kalian,” Jorad said quietly. “Help me lift her out, then I’ll pull out Morgan’s litter.”

  They gently extracted Kate from the crypt and id her limp body on the ground. Her cheeks were sunken and pale. She had lost a lot of weight since leaving home and he hoped the cookies weren’t all she’d had to eat since then. Kneeling beside her, Corvan held her hand and felt a faint squeeze in return. He let out a sigh of relief and checked over his shoulder.

  Jorad was inside the crypt, muttering to himself as he worked at wrestling the litter out from under Morgan’s body. He wasn’t being gentle about it.

  Shielding Kate from Jorad with his body, Corvan reach under his cloak, drew out the hammer, and brought it down on the bck band, just as Kate had done for Tsarek on the Castle Rock. “Release her,” he whispered, but nothing happened. He gripped it tighter and looked at the base of the handle. It remained dark. “Please, I … I love her. Please don’t let her die.”

  The hammer seemed to grow warmer, but there was still no glow. Tsarek had wanted to be free of the band, maybe that’s what made the difference. Corvan pressed his face close to Kate’s. “Let it go, Kate. You need to leave the bracelet behind. Don’t let it control you.” Her head shook ever so slightly, her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids, and a faint sigh escaped her cracked lips.

  “If you let it go, I promise I’ll take you home,” Corvan urged. “I want to see the stars from Castle Rock again, don’t you?”

  There was a long pause before Kate nodded faintly. The glow from the hammer’s handle came to life and spread softly over Kate. Touching the hammer to the bck band, he held his breath, watching and waiting. The band quivered before a small horizontal crack appeared in one of the segmented sections. It widened as the band rexed, then fell to the ground.

  Morgon’s litter struck Corvan in the shoulder, knocking him on top of Kate as Jorad shoved it out of the crypt.

  Corvan quickly sat up, holstered the hammer, then scooped up the bck band and held it tightly in his fist. He didn’t want Jorad to see that Kate had been wearing the evil thing.

  Jorad climbed out, picked up the litter, and set it alongside Kate. “The light she carried is still in there,” he said breathlessly, “underneath Morgan. I’ll grab it so we can see where we’re going.”

  “I’ll get it,” Corvan said, “then we can leave.” He scrambled into the crypt and out of sight before Jorad could respond. A powerful urge was growing inside him, a desire to examine the bck band without Jorad seeing it or taking it away from him.

  Crouching low inside the tomb, he pushed Morgan’s cloak aside. The glow from Kate’s pointed medallion leapt out at him and he covered it with his free hand to hide its light. Warmth filled his hand as the light grew stronger. Spreading his fingers slightly, he discovered that some of the symbols glowing on the medallion looked the same as those on base of the hammer. When he lifted to his face for a better look, and sharp pain cut into his other hand, as if the bck band had just bit him. His hand sprang open and he stifled a cry—the hand holding the bracelet appeared withered and wrinkled, the bones highlighted under the skin, like an old man’s hand.

  He wanted to drop the bck band, but his hand closed around it as a thought forced itself into his mind: accept it to live; refuse it and you will die.

  And intense cold crept up from the hand gripping the bracelet, but it was immediately answered with a wave of warmth moving up the other arm from the medallion. The two met at his shoulders. Shards of pain shot into his neck and head as snippets rattled through his mind—truth or lies, love or anger. He had to choose now, or he would be split in two, just like the half-dead tree.

  A clear memory of Kate’s smiling face rose to the forefront of his thoughts. She was not saying anything, but the look in her eyes told him what he needed to do. Squeezing the green glow, he forced the hand with the bck band open to reveal the segmented bracelet ying coiled on his palm. The medallion was the right choice both for himself and for Kate and yet he still found himself not quite ready to tip his hand and let the bck band drop.

  A harsh thump on his shoulder sent the bracelet tumbling across the crypt. Jorad’s anxious voice broke the silence. “Hurry up, Corvan. Did you find her light?”

  Corvan held up the medallion, the light leaking past his fingers. He inhaled deeply, allowing the medallion’s warmth to spread down into his chest as he crawled over the crypt wall.

  Jorad reached over to pull the lid back over the crypt. As it shut, Corvan caught a glimpse of the bck band slithering toward Morgan’s leg, like a glistening leech looking for fresh blood.

  Jorad eased the top quietly into position and lifted the first tch.

  “Don’t lock him in,” Corvan said, holding up the light in his fist. “If he’s already dead, it won’t matter, but if he’s not …”

  “I told you before: this is not your business,” Jorad said firmly.

  Corvan pointed the lighted hand at him. “I can’t walk away again and leave him to die.”

  “Not even if he is a murderer?” Jorad asked.

  “I can’t judge Morgan’s past but I heard the High Priest tell you that if you killed someone, you can’t be a priest and you can’t get married. Is making sure that Morgan is dead worth that to you?” Corvan opened his hand a bit more, and the light of the medallion cast its glow on Jorad’s tense features. The man stared into the light for a moment, then let the tch drop with a soft cnk.

  Turning away, Corvan crouched next to Kate. Jorad had pced her arms alongside her body and Corvan raised one hand and pced it over the medallion in his own. Kate took a deep breath, drew it in close to her side and her face rexed. Removing his hand from under hers, Corvan touched her cheek. “It will be okay, Kate. I’m taking you home now.”

  He looked up to find Jorad standing at Kate’s feet between the poles of the litter, a puzzled expression on his face as he stared at the glow beneath Kate’s hand. It seemed he wanted to say something, but Corvan ignored him and turned around to grasp the poles of the litter, facing away from Kate. He had not intended to take the lead, but Jorad lifted Kate’s feet and pushed him along the track, into another alley and then along the wall that separated the City of the Dead from Kadir.

  The cemetery gates were closer than Corvan thought and as they exited the graveyard, he felt Jorad use the poles to direct him across the road and into one of the darkened streets.

  No sooner were they within the crumbling ruins than a thin, wailing voice from a building immediately to their right, interrupted their shuffling walk. It warbled and settled down to a low cackle.

  The tension on the litter poles increased as Jorad urged Corvan on. “Keep in the middle of the street,” he whispered. “Even if they come out, keep moving. I don’t believe the Broken will attack a priest.”

  Another wail from the right was answered by two more behind them. The voices were close, but Corvan could not detect any movement even though he was able to see into the ruins around him.

  “Turn left,” Jorad urged as he pushed harder on the poles. They began to jog, the haunting voices driving them forward. Jorad was directing him from behind with the poles, but to Corvan it felt more like the unseen cries were herding them through the narrow streets.

  Rounding a corner, Corvan stopped short. Just ahead, the street was blocked by a massive pile of rubble. At some point in the distance past, the cavern wall had colpsed and smashed the front portico of a great building. Tall, fluted columns had been tossed about like a giant’s game of pick-up sticks. “This way,” Jorad said, pulling back on the poles and over to the right. Corvan twisted his end of the litter around to a square tunnel that had been cut into the alley wall off to the side of the ruins. A chorus of haunting cries thrust him forward and he ran inside the passage, pulling Jorad along.

  It was a dead end.

  Jorad swiveled them sideways in the tight space just in time for Corvan to watch a metal gate rumble across the opening and cut off any chance of escape.

  “I am a priest of the Cor,” Jorad shouted as the gate cnged shut. “I bring no harm and seek only your peace.”

  His echo faded away, then a small door in the side wall of the tunnel opened inward. A gentle push signaled Jorad’s intentions, and Corvan moved inside. As soon as Jorad cleared the door, it shut hard behind them. They both stopped to listen to the reverberations of an immense space before them. Together, then slowly carried Kate out from under a low ceiling and into a dimly lit great hall, dwarfed by massive pilrs that soared high overhead. The air was thick with mold and a familiar outhouse stench.

  Flickering torches highlighted the center of the circur room and Jorad directed him toward them. They passed between rows of heavy stone tables piled high with stacks of rotting scrolls; each one presided over by a small version of the lumien mp stands Corvan had seen in the square. The twin rings at the ends leaned over the crumbling scrolls like empty eyes.

  Jorad moved them to the middle of the cathedral like room where firesticks in the hands of four statues on short pedestals, shed their light on a rge round table squatting on a single ornate column. “We’ll put her on the table,” Jorad said, the stale air of the huge room swallowing his words.

  After sliding Kate’s litter onto the stone table, Corvan turned and looked into her seemingly lifeless face. Leaning close, he held his fingertips near her lips and felt a faint wisp of breath. They needed to find someone who could help her, and soon.

  The band of gems Kate was wearing in the rebel clearing had fallen from her hair onto the top of the stretcher. Carefully removing it, Corvan put it into his pocket, then brushed a few strands of hair away from her closed eyes. Kate liked pretty things, and the tiara would cheer her up ter. He pushed away a thought that she might not live long enough to see it again. It would be his fault if she died in this terrible pce. He never should have let her use the hammer in the first pce, but maybe . . .

  Unclipping the cover of the holster, he gnced over his shoulder. Jorad was occupied with looking about the room, so this be a good time to try using the power of the hammer to heal Kate. He shook his head. Since Kate had chosen the bck band, the hammer might hurt her, like it did in his room after he had lied to his dad. She was far too weak to risk it. He snapped the cover back into pce and sighed heavily.

  A shallow breath rattled in Kate’s lungs. The power of the hammer might be too much, but the comfort of the medallion seemed to help her. It should be closer to her heart. Opening her limp hand, he removed the medallion and gently id its glow face down in the open neck of her tunic.

  Kate took a deeper breath, then both hands moved from her sides to cover the medallion’s light. In that pose, she appeared more dead than alive. “Please let Kate live,” he whispered, raising his eyes and looking overhead.

  His words seemed to the vaulted ceiling overhead, along with the heat from the four torches. On the underside of the dome, rge painted faces gazed down at him in rapt attention, their eyes seemingly focused on the table in the center of the room. Around the faces were smaller paintings of people and other creatures. Many were obscured by the dark smudge of old smoke, but off to the sides, some of the murals were clearer. Was that a blue sky and a golden sun? Corvan stepped back to get a better view, stumbled on a loose brick, and fell backward into a pile of damp scrolls piled against a statue’s pedestal. Getting to his feet, he came up beneath the gray face of one of the statues. It gazed back at him in unblinking silence.

  A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him to one side. Jorad looked fiercely into his eyes. “Don’t touch anything. They are watching every move we make.” The man turned away, and Corvan could clearly see that he was not taking his own advice, for he had cleared off a nearby table, spread out a rge scroll and weighted it down with pieces of stone. Corvan followed the priest back to the scroll and watched Jorad trace his finger backwards under a line of text. The man muttered some words but to Corvan the markings looked like the tracks their chickens left behind in the mud.

  “Incredible,” Jorad excimed. “And this is only one scroll of hundreds that are not ruined.” He gestured around the room, and Corvan saw that the walls around them were covered in cubicles of various sizes, many of which contained one or more scrolls.

  Jorad moved to the closest wall and pointed above the cubicles, where a balcony ran around the room to meet at a set of curved stairs. “There are likely even more up there. I have heard stories of the remains of a great library in the broken half of the city, but I never believed it could be this vast. It would take a lifetime to read all of these.” From the tone of his voice, Corvan knew Jorad wanted to start immediately and would not be easily distracted from the task.

  The priest moved along, tugging out scrolls, reading the identifying tags, then reluctantly pushing them back into pce. “You can see where the water rose up.” He pointed a line of bck mold encircling the room about three feet from the floor. “All the documents below are hopelessly ruined, and the dampness in the room will eventually destroy those the water did not touch. And look here.” His voice choked in anger as he kicked at the remains of a campfire made from scrolls. “They used scrolls for a fire! Fires are not even permitted in the Cor. Our air is much too precious. And there!” His hand shook in wrath, pointing to where long strips from a scroll had been used for toilet paper. “Animals. The Broken have become nothing but animals!”

  “Who are you to judge our people?” a woman called out from behind them.