Page 21 of Crown and Dragon

The contact left, and after a count of twenty, they did the same.

It was time to find a drunkard and squeeze him for information. If they missed their timing to get into the fortress, they would be caught. Their potion would wear off while in holding cells, no doubt, and then they would be at the mercy of Durniad.

Marius wasn’t about to let anyone capture Tahlia even if he had to give his life to keep that from happening.

Chapter 10

Tahlia

Between two three-story buildings, Tahlia trailed Marius down the set of stairs the safe house contact had told them about. They found one torch and the bag at the bottom of the stairs.

“Keep watch behind us,” Marius ordered as he worked to light the torch.

Watery light from the street level filtered down to Tahlia and the noise of the crowd bounced off the carved pale stones. Wind from farther into the catacombs blew lightly like the breath of a ghost. Tahlia shivered.

Marius held the fiery torch up. “All right. I will go first. Every ten steps or so, be sure to look back to check for anyone creeping up behind.”

“Will do, Commander.”

The plain stone walls gave way to stacks of elaborately organized skulls, femurs, and ribcages. Some skeletons were arranged to appear like they were walking along the wall. Others lay in carved-out alcoves. A massive triangle of skulls marked an archway. The right-side passage was marked with the little carved crown that the safe house contact had mentioned. They turned in that direction and more bones greeted them.

“This is wild,” Tahlia said, eyeing it all by the light of the flickering torch Marius carried.

Marius made his thinking noise.

“Their bones look like ours,” she said, pondering humans in general.

“But they aren’t like ours at all. Our bone density is three times theirs.”

“How do you know that?”

“Albus,” Marius said.

“When did he teach you?” she asked.

“For a while, as a youth, I thought perhaps I could learn some Healer skills for the battlefield. Beyond basic bandaging and how to stop bleeding.”

“Why did you stop training?”

“To be honest, it bored me.”

Tahlia huffed a laugh. “I can imagine you taking notes from Albus and longingly watching dragons take off outside the window.”

“That is an accurate imagining.”

“I never could sit still for learning either,” Tahlia said.

They came to a room of sorts with a high, domed ceiling and began searching for the crown carving. Five corridors branched off from the room. A particularly large display of femurs created the shape of a lion that stretched from one side of the ceiling to the other. Tahlia went to the first corridor on the right to look for the crown.

“Nothing here.”

Marius was across the room, smoothing his hand over the archway on the middle corridor. “I haven’t found one yet either.”

Tahlia went to the second corridor’s entrance. Most of the passageways were stone, but this one had a wooden lintel. Old paint showed the faded remains of a river and three largestructures set around its snakelike form. Beneath the right side, a crown had been painted in black.

“Do you think this counts? It’s not carved, but it’s definitely a crown.”

Marius joined her and studied the painted image. “Since we can’t find another, I think we should try it.”