Free Under A Colder Sun (Khale the Wanderer Book 1) by Greg James Page B

skin. They would have to be quick before it was upon them.
    Khale moved against the wind, with Milanda sheltering in his wake. She was still in her nightclothes and barely protected.
    The sky overhead became heavy and pregnant, its dark heart seeming to follow them. He kept going. He brought Milanda to a dark entrance that led down into the earth. The storm’s shadow fell as a pall over the land, and the first drops of rain scattered over the surrounding rocks.
    “Inside. Go. Now.” Khale pushed her in through the opening and down the steps.
    Milanda stumbled over her own feet as Khale lifted and dragged the great stone back over the entrance. The air clapped around their ears as the rock crashed back into place.
    Darkness descended, and the storm’s rage became a distant muttering.
    “What will we do here?” Milanda asked.
    “We will wait,” he said. “Storms do not last forever.”
    “But it’s so dark.”
    Khale whispered and there was light, a curl of flame appeared above his gnarled palm. He began to lead the way down the steps. Milanda wondered if this was a place where he felt at home.
    Here, he was no longer bound to the world of the living.
    As they passed the silent stares of crucified guardian carcasses mounted on the walls, she wondered what it felt like to be in such a state of death, rotting before your own eyes, helplessly watching as time and the dark gnawed on your bones and picked away the choicest remaining pieces of your flesh. Such pain, such horror, such suffering—all to protect the superstitious bones of the dead and buried.
    A sound echoed up to them from below.
    And Milanda wondered if they were alone in this place.
     
    *
     
    Khale’s conjured flame illuminated a doorway scabrous with rust and textured with dead beetle-shells. The barrier of ancient iron was loose, and it took little effort for him to force it open. The light of his flame hurried away into the silty black mire waiting across the threshold, illumining nothing, revealing nothing.
    “Strange,” he said.
    “What is it?” asked Milanda.
    “This place is old, yet here is an iron door—something made by those with greater skill than the men who struck the rocks and arranged the stones above our heads.”
    “Mages?”
    “Not everything men do not understand is the work of mages, girl. You’ll see.”
    He crossed the threshold and waited for her to follow. She did. She couldn’t leave him. He could see how this was all far outside her ken. The rough ground stung through slippers at soft feet that had not ventured beyond the bounds of a castle before this day.
    They trod the ways of a thoughtful labyrinth; an old order shattered by fallen floors and obstructed by collapsing walls. Its long, lonesome corridors led on to crossroads which, in their turn, led them deeper, to spaces where unwashed, mosaic tiles lay scattered about, revealing crumbling scales of plaster beneath. Brown stains decorated the decaying geography as moss and lichen adorned the stones of more natural landscapes. There was nothing natural here; there was only disquiet and malignancy.
    They came to a great hall at its heart. It was an atrophied heart, to be sure. Whatever doors once guarded its portals, wooden or iron, they had long since rotted away.
    Eyes watched them enter, and Khale’s flame illuminated their bearers: a number of pale statues set at regular intervals around the broad, ovular space. Traces of the wild winds lashing at the surface penetrated deep into the catacombs and made the timeworn figures moan with echoes of loss and betrayal from aeons gone. Their outlines were smooth and their human features long lost. No inscriptions or sigils survived to tell their tale.
    Khale heard footsteps. Then, they were gone. A ghost of time and memory, he thought. He could feel decay breeding in his nostrils and stinging at the roots of his brain. Everything here was rotten.
    Perhaps it had not been so wise to explore after all.
    Milanda’s hand