Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

The stairs dropped so sharply that Nicci found herself having to breathe the smoke of the two torches carried by the Sisters right under her. As her mind raced, trying to think out her options, she briefly gave consideration to throwing herself down the precipitous shaft in the hope that she could break her neck, maybe even taking the two below her down as well, but with as narrow as the opening was she expected that she would probably get wedged to a stop before falling far. The landings, too, were numerous, so while the stairs were steep they paused frequently to make turns. She would probably only break an arm, not her neck.

They climbed downward for what began to feel to Nicci like hours. Descending at such a steep angle made her thighs burn. By the way they labored to breathe, the three Sisters were feeling the strain as well. They clearly weren't up to the demanding effort and were tiring.

While Nicci was getting tired as well, she wasn't having the trouble the others were. The Sisters had to pause a number of times to take brief rests. When they stopped, they would sit on a step, leaning back against the wall, panting as they caught their breath. They made Nicci stand.

None of the three liked Nicci. As she had told Ann, she was different from the rest of the Sisters of the Dark. They'd always thought that they deserved eternal rewards. Nicci always thought that she deserved eternal punishment. It was a grim irony that only after she had finally realized the value of her life, would she have the punishment she'd thought she deserved-Jagang would see to that.

When it seemed she could not make it down another flight, they came to a flat spot. At first, Nicci thought that it might only be another landing, but it turned out to be a level passageway.

The way ahead burrowed in a wandering course in much the same way the stairs had, only it was flat. In places the tight tunnel was so low that they had to duck down under low hanging rock. The walls had been carved from that same rock, and were irregular, making it almost look like nothing so much as a cave. Some spots were a tight squeeze to get through. In the small places the choking smoke from the torches made Nicci's eyes burn.

The narrow tunnel abruptly widened into a proper passageway easily wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The walls, rather than being hewn from bedrock, were made of blocks of stone. The ceiling, made of huge stone blocks spanning the width of the passageway, was low and blackened by soot from torches, but at least it wasn't so low that Nicci had to bend.

Before long they began encountering intersections and halls to the sides. It quickly became apparent that there was a warren of passageways branching in every direction. As they passed bisecting intersections, the light of the torches briefly illuminated long, dark halls. In some of the side openings, though, Nicci saw rooms with low niches carved into the walls to the sides.

Her curiosity got the better of her. She glanced back over her shoulder at Sister Armina.

"What is this place?"

"Catacombs."

Nicci hadn't known that there were catacombs beneath the People's Palace. She wondered if anyone up above them knew-Nathan, Ann, Verna, the Mord-Sith. At the same time the question came to mind she knew the answer. No one knew.

"Well, what are we doing down here?"

Sister Julia turned back to give Nicci a bloody, toothless grin. "You'll find out soon enough."

Now that she knew what the place was, Nicci realized that what she had seen stacked in some of the rooms to the sides were bodies, bodies in the thousands, wrapped in burial shrouds and covered with dust over the dark, still, silent centuries. As they passed other tightly spaced rooms she began to see recesses in the walls that held not individual remains, but mounds of bones. The bones were stacked in staggering numbers, all fit neatly into the recesses, filling them completely. As the torchlight fell into rooms to each side, Nicci saw skulls stacked together from floor to ceiling. The orderly rows of skulls went as far back as the light penetrated. There was no telling how far those rooms of snugly stacked skulls ran into the darkness.

Nicci found it appalling to contemplate all the individuals she was seeing. These had all once been living people who had been born, grown up, and lived lives probably filled with family and love. Now there were only bones to say that they had ever existed.

Nicci swallowed at the frightening thought that she would soon end up as et another anonymous skull that someone might one day see and wonder about. Just as she didn't know anything about these people, what they dreamed, what they believed, what they loved, or even how they had looked in life, she would be nameless bones slowly crumbling to dust.

She had such a short time ago been up among the beauty of the palace, among color and life. Now she found herself among nothing but dust and dirt and death, on her way to her own.