Free The Wizard Hunters by Martha Wells Page B

deep breath and consulted Ilias with a look. Ilias shrugged. They had come this far, they might as well go all the way.
    The corridor was narrow and low enough that Giliead had to duck under the light bubbles. The wizards, who mostly seemed to be between the two of them in height, would have barely enough clearance themselves.
    One of the doors stood partly open, revealing a darkened chamber, and Ilias leaned into it for a look. The dim light from the corridor fell on a narrow room lined with big shelves fixed to the wall with metal brackets. From the gray blankets and cushions he realized they were beds. Cold and lonely beds, thinly padded, narrow, and meant only for one person each. “This is how they sleep?” he whispered, glancing back at Giliead. “No wonder they’re all so irritable.”
    Giliead looked too, made a thoughtful noise, and continued cautiously up the corridor. Ilias followed, pausing to look in the other open doors. It was all the same. The lack of personal possessions or clothes might be explained by the thing still being uninhabited, but there were hardly any colors at all except gray and brown. No painting on the walls, no color in the rough weavings they slept on or the padding on the floor.
    It was another way these wizards were unlike Ixion. He had liked comfort and had covered his chambers with fine linens and silks, beautifully woven carpets and painted tiles. It made Ilias wonder what these wizards used their power for, what all this labor was in aid of.
    At the end of the corridor was another dim chamber lined with metal vats, with pipes leading up into the ceiling. A heavy odor hung in the air, detectable even over the foul stink of the mud on their clothes and skin. Ilias couldn’t identify it, except that it was heavy and dark and clogged his nose and throat.
    “Let’s try up here.”
    “What?” Ilias glanced around to see Giliead had found a ladder, set back between two of the vats. He stepped closer, seeing it led up the wall through a hole in the ceiling and into an empty space that glowed with a diffuse orange light. It looked exactly as he imagined a giant beast’s belly would appear from the inside. “Try what up there?” he asked dubiously.
    “Come on.” Giliead started up the ladder and Ilias followed reluctantly.
    Giliead climbed up onto the floor above, the metal creaking faintly. Ilias poked his head through the opening warily, but the sight was disappointing. It was only a long straight narrow passage built of flat metal bars, with walls of some kind of slick brown fabric. It seemed to run the whole long length of the creature.
    Sitting on his heels, Giliead studied the corridor thoughtfully. “Still think it’s alive?”
    Ilias climbed up to sit on the narrow metal catwalk. He touched the wall tentatively but jerked his hand back with a grimace. “It feels like skin. Dead skin.”
    Giliead leaned close to the wall, running a hand over it thoughtfully, with the air of someone who did this every day. “Huh.”
    “Well?” Ilias demanded.
    “It could be skin,” he conceded, getting to his feet. “Come on, let’s see what’s up here.”
    After a short time of searching it became apparent that these narrow metal catwalks and skin walls made up most of the bulk of the creature. Ladders at intervals led up to more catwalks and more brown walls, fading into murky dimness in the stretches where the curse lamps weren’t lit.
    Giliead’s hopes were raised when he climbed cautiously up to one of the dark stretches, only to find yet another identical catwalk and another ladder. Coming back down to the lighted area, he said with a grimace of frustration, “This isn’t telling us anything, is it?”
    Ilias agreed, leaning around Giliead to see up through the opening. “At least down below there were things to look at.”
    “We’ll go down again. If there’s something to tell us where they came from, it’ll be there.”
    A faint sound from back down the catwalk made