Page 74 of Silk & Sand
“We need to get out of here,” Raider whispered.
“Why?”
Finger to his lips, Raider signaled Seth to be quiet. Seth glanced behind himself. Finding only the dark, empty tunnel, he frowned.
“I’ll tell you once we’re out of here. We have to go. Now.”
“There’s a—” At Raider’s renewed shushing signal, Seth lowered his voice. “—sandstorm outside.”
“We’re in more danger here.”
“So what is this place?” Seth asked, keeping his voice low. “You’ll waste more time arguing with me than just fucking telling me.”
“These are sand serpent tunnels.”
Frowning, Seth stepped back, releasing Raider from the cage of his body. Like Raider, he was still hard, but he managed to focus in spite of it. He glanced along the tunnel, seeming to assess.
“A snake of some kind was my guess. Some ancient behemoth? It’s clearly long gone. The shed skin is nothing but dust. There’s no evidence of recent meals. Besides, the bandit fled in here to hide.”
Raider couldn’t help but stare at the Curator. He’d expected disbelief or fear. He hadn’t expected an analysis.
Perhaps he should have.
“It’s been dormant for centuries,” Raider whispered impatiently. “But one was woken once, maybe this one, I don’t know. The Sudai have stories of it. It destroyed whole cities, killed thousands, before it went back to sleep. The bandits may have a hideout here, but they know to be quiet. I found a dead man and a broken saddle in the cavern. Was that quiet?”
Seth’s expression said that, no, it hadn’t been, but his stubborn stance said he wasn’t ready to get paranoid.
Raider whispered desperately, “Please, Seth, I’m begging you: trust me.”
Seth gave him a long look. Then he sighed and bent to grab his saddlebags. Slinging them over his left shoulder, he gestured for Raider to lead the way.
Retrieving his own gear, Raider whispered, “Turn off the light.”
“It’ll be pitch black in here.”
Raider snagged Seth’s hand. “I can navigate.”
Seth’s eyes displayed a fresh surge of frustration and desire to argue, but he reached for the arcane lamp hanging from his belt and turned it off.
The sudden darkness and sense of confinement tried to swamp Raider, but Seth’s hand was in his and it kept him grounded, focused. He had to get Seth out of here.
As they crept along the tunnel, Raider heard nothing but their own movement until the wind’s whistling reached him. They were nearing the cavern where Seth had killed the bandit. The storm wasn’t over. They could find a place in the hills to crouch and wait out the last of it.
For the second time since he’d entered the network of tunnels, Raider almost thanked the gods.
Such thanks, as usual, would have been misplaced—because from one of the branching tunnels came the sound of a dry, rasping slither.
CHAPTER 24
SETH KNEW THEY must be nearing the cavern because enough light was filtering into the tunnel that he could have pulled his hand free of Raider’s. He didn’t though. Not until he heard that rasping slither. Not until Raider looked over his shoulder at Seth and barked, “Run!”
Raider burst into a sprint. Seth bolted after him into the vast cavern where he’d killed the bandit—whose body was now gone.
From the corner of his eye, Seth caught movement in one of the branching tunnels, a gleam of light reflecting off a massive, slithering form.
Heart leaping into his throat, Seth raced after Raider, pounding through the vast cavern toward the slope that cut upward to the dusty light of day. Better the sandstorm than a snake powerful enough to have tunneled through stone, big enough that something on its body had cut a cleft into the rock six feet above Seth’s head.
Seth didn’t think he could possibly run any faster, but when he heard the shushing, rasping slide of the snake’s sinuous body over stone, he discovered in himself a new, higher gear.