Read Online Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) by Intisar Khanani - Free Book Online Page B

After all, “soon” can have more than a few interpretations. “There’s a door here,” I say, gesturing at the hole in the wall behind me. He starts toward me. I wait until he’s caught up. I don’t dare turn my back on him. He casts a dark look at me, but remains silent as we walk side by side to the opening. The hall beyond it is dark, lit at irregular intervals by what must be more doorways, some brighter than others. The far end shimmers: an exit to the outside.
    I step over the threshold and send an apprehensive glance in each direction, finding only the same uneven gloom. The mage comes lifts his hand and light blooms around us, the glowstone he holds throwing into sharp relief shards of tiles and empty doorways.
    “Is that wise?” I ask. Ahead of us, there’s a bundle lying on the floor, sharp-edged but too far away to see clearly.
    “Wise?” the mage says, drawing out the word.
    I wave vaguely. “The glowstone. In a magically dead land? It might draw attention.”
    “At least then we would have answers.”
    I bite back my retort. Arguing with him will only slow us down — and the glowstone will make it easier to navigate these hallways.
    I start forward, my eyes drawn to the thing on the ground. I can’t quite make it out. Something pokes out from the bulk of it, reaching across the floor like an errant branch , or dried twigs.
    Filled with foreboding, I move closer, straining to identify the thing in the light of the glowstone. When I do, my throat closes up. The shape stretched out before me is nothing more than papery skin curled over brittle bones — a mummified corpse preserved by the endless heat, untouched by nature, its clothing long since dissolved away. Its bones protrude obscenely, each rib tracing a line around its hollow chest, the skin between the pelvic and hip bones so thin that it seems translucent, as if the light were shining through parchment.
    My stomach tightens into a ball, heavy as lead. The skull bears no expression, dull teeth showing through leathery lips, the eye sockets vacant. But that hand, outstretched… . A plea. Or a single, hopeless attempt to escape death.
    Beside me, the mage breathes a curse.
    I retreat slowly, as if walking through water, gasping for air that’s too dense to breathe. I stumble back to the doorway we just passed, the room dim within. I don’t enter, but peer through the opening — and there amidst a scattering of debris lit by the unobstructed windows, I spot two more desiccated bodies, their arms entwined in an embrace that suggests love and fear and pain and desperation.
    I back away from the door, my eyes roving up and down the hallway. How many rooms are there? And how many—
    “They’re all dead.” The mage stands beside the first corpse, studying it with an eerie calm.
    “I guessed,” I say, hating the waver in my voice. The reality of a fortress — or palace or whatever — filled with skeletons has my body trembling, even as my mind tells me that the dead can harm no one.
    “What else have you guessed?”
    I run the details through my mind, trying to put the pieces together. A place without magic, a place where the people are extinct and the life has been sucked out of the earth itself…. “These are the Burnt Lands.”
    “They are. And you brought us here.” The glowstone transforms him into a nightmare of gray and black and silver, fury radiating from his frame as he stands over the corpse.
    I make myself meet his gaze steadily. “We need to get out of this building.”
    He glares at me a moment longer, then turns and steps past the corpse, striding toward the end of the hall. I follow, wrapping my arms across my chest to clutch the straps of my pack. I hold my breath as I step past the body, irrationally terrified of accidentally touching it.
    The Burnt Lands. Every apprentice — every child, really, regardless of whether or not they have magical talent — knows about the Great Burning. Four hundred years ago, the