Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [184]
The weight in Vi’s pocket burned. She told her tongue to move, to tell him, but it was lead in her mouth.
“If it were any hit but this, she’d never forgive me. If I do this, the Khalidorans will lose, Logan will be king, the Warrens will be different forever, and Jarl won’t have died in vain. If there is a One God, like Elene always says there is, he made me for this kill.”
Jarl? How can he talk so calmly about Jarl to me? “So what was your question?” She sounded a bit militant, even to her own ears—Jarl! Gods! Her emotions were so out of control she couldn’t even identify them—but Kylar answered gently.
“I needed to know if you were in this with me. All the way to the Godking. All the way to death, if it takes that. But I think you’ve already answered me.”
“I’m with you,” Vi said. Her whole heart swore it.
“I know. I trust you.” Looking in his eyes, Vi knew he was telling the truth. But the words made no sense. Trust? After what she’d done?
He turned back to the door.
“Kylar,” she said. Her heart was pounding. She’d tell him about Jarl first, then the note and the earrings, everything. She’d throw herself at his feet and dare him to accept all of it. “I’m sorry. About Jarl. I never meant—”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t see his murder in you.”
“Huh?”
“Vi…” he said softly. As he put a hand on her shoulder, tingles shot through her whole body. She looked at his lips and he was stepping close and her head was tilting of its own accord, her lips parting slightly, and he was so close she could feel his presence like a caress on her exposed skin, and her eyes closed, and his lips touched her—forehead.
Vi blinked.
Kylar dropped his hand as if her shoulder was on fire. Something black flitted across the surface of his eyes.
“What the fuck was that?” Vi demanded.
“Sorry. I almost—you mean my eyes? I was checking if you were using a glamour. I mean, I’m sorry. I was just—Uh, let’s get this done, huh?”
Now she was totally confused. He’d thought she’d used her glamour? Did that mean he’d wanted to—he almost what?—no, surely not.
What were you thinking, Vi? “Sorry I killed your best friend, Kylar, wanna fuck?”
Kylar opened the door and Vi saw the gaping mouth for which the Maw was named for the first time. The Maw looked like a dragon opening its mouth to swallow her. Red glass eyes with torches behind them glowed with evil intent. Everything else was carved from black fireglass: the black tongue they walked on, the black fangs poised overhead. Once they stepped into the mouth, there was no light.
“This is wrong,” Kylar said. He stopped. “This is totally different.”
When Kylar had saved Elene and Uly, the ramp into the Maw had led down a short tunnel and then forked. The nobles’ cells had been to the right, and the rest to the left. The ceilings had been about seven feet high everywhere, giving a claustrophobic feeling to the Maw.
“I thought you were in here a couple months ago,” Vi said.
“Looks like the wytches have been busy.”
They entered a vast subterranean chamber. The ramp that had once descended thirty feet now plunged more than a hundred. The nobles’ cells and the cells from the first and second levels of the Maw were gone. The ramp was wide enough for four horses abreast and it spiraled around a great central pit. At the bottom, they could see a gold altar with man tied to it and meisters around him.
“Shit,” Vi breathed. “We have to go down there.”
Kylar followed her eyes. She wasn’t looking at the man on the gold table. She was looking at the south end of the pit, where a small tunnel led toward the castle.
The place felt wrong. It wasn’t the altar or the darkness. The smell of the Hole was thick here now. Sulphuric smoke crawled along the floor. It reminded Kylar of his fight with Durzo.
Beneath the smoke, there were other smells. Old blood and the cloying stench of decaying flesh. Beneath the darkness