Dust of Dreams

something much like it, Cafal. If we start dragging stones loose the whole thing is likely to come down on us.’
    ‘We have no choice.’ He walked over to the wall where the bats had swarmedthrough moments earlier. Drawing a dagger, he began probing. A short time later, Torrent joined him, using his hunter’s knife.
    To the sounds of scraping and sifting earth, Setoc sat down closer to the lantern. Memories of that white fire haunted her. Her head ached as if the heat had seared parts of her brain, leaving blank patches that pulsed behind her eyes. She could hear no muted howls—the Wolves were lost to her in this place.
What world have we found? What waits beyond these stone walls? Does a sun shine out there? Does it blaze with death, or is this a realm for ever dark, lifeless?
    Well, someone built this place. But . . . if this is indeed a barrow, where are the bones?
She picked up the lantern, wincing at the hot handle which had not been tilted to one side. Gingerly rising, she played the light over the damp, mottled ground at her feet. Guano, a few stones dislodged from above. If there had ever been a body interred in this place, it had long since rotted down to crumbs. And it had not been adorned with jewellery; no buckles nor clasps to evince clothing of any sort. ‘This,’ she ventured, ‘is probably thousands of years old. There’s nothing left of whoever was buried here.’
    A muted mutter from Torrent, answered by a grunt from Cafal, who then glanced back at her. ‘Where we’re digging, Setoc—someone has been through this way before. If this is a barrow, it’s been long since looted, emptied out.’
    ‘Since when does loot include the corpse itself?’
    ‘The guano is probably acidic,’ Cafal said. ‘It probably dissolved the bones. The point is, we can dig our way out and it’s not likely everything will collapse down on us—’
    ‘Don’t be so certain of that,’ Torrent said. ‘We need to make a hole big enough to get my horse out. The looters had no need to be so ambitious.’
    ‘You had best prepare yourself for the notion of killing your mount,’ Cafal said.
    ‘No. She is an Awl horse. The last Awl horse, and she is mine—no, we belong to each other. Both alone. If she must die, then I will die with her. Let this barrow be our home in the deathworld.’
    ‘You have a morbid cast of mind,’ Cafal said.
    ‘He has earned the right,’ Setoc murmured, still scanning the ground as she walked a slow circuit. ‘Ah!’ She bent down, retrieved a small, half-encrusted object. ‘A coin. Copper.’ She scraped the green disk clean and held it close to the lantern. ‘I recognize nothing—not Letherii, nor Bolkando.’
    Cafal joined her. ‘Permit me, Setoc. My clan was in the habit of collecting coins to make our armour. It was his damned hauberk of coins that dragged my father to the sea bottom.’
    She handed it to him.
    He studied it for a long time, one side, then the other, over and over. And finally sighed and handed it back. ‘No. Some empress, I imagine, looking so regal. The crossed swords on the other side could be Seven Cities, but the writing is all wrong. This is not our world, Setoc.’
    ‘I didn’t think it was.’
    ‘Done with that, Cafal?’ Torrent asked from where he worked at the wall, impatience giving an edge to his tone.
    Cafal offered her a wry smile and then returned to Torrent’s side.
    A loud scrape followed by a heavy thud, and cool dew-heavy air flowed into the chamber.
    ‘Smell that? It’s a damned forest.’
    At Cafal’s words, Setoc joined them. She held up the lantern.
Night, cool . . . cooler than the Awl’dan.
‘Trees,’ she said, peering at the ragged boles faintly visible in the light.
    There was possibly a bog out there—she could hear frogs.
    ‘If it was night,’ Torrent wondered, ‘what were the bats doing inside here?’
    ‘Perhaps it was only nearing dusk when we arrived. Or dawn is but moments away.’ Cafal tugged at another stone. ‘Help me with this one,’ he said to Torrent. ‘It’s too heavy for one man—Setoc, please, stand back, give us room.’
    As they dragged the huge stone free, other rough-hewn boulders tumbled down. A large lintel stone ground its way loose and both men leapt back as it crashed on to the rubble. Clouds of dust billowed and a terrible grating groan sounded from the barrow’s ceiling.
    Coughing, Cafal waved at Setoc. ‘Quickly! Out!’
    She scrambled over the stones, eyes stinging,