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Why would they have been granted the vision of the phoenix if God had meant for them to die in such a pointlessfor him where the tunnel floor sloped upward and out of the water

"Co"

"Gerulf?"

"That’s the old Lion" Baldwin tugged hi him when he stumbled Weariness settled over Ivar’s shoulders He shivered convulsively, soaked through He wanted nothing ht where he stood and sleep until death, or the phoenix, ca the other, it was hard to think with the walls wavering around hiils had been carved into the pale stone, broad rocks set upright and incised with the syued the people of elder days: four-sided lozenges, spirals that had neither beginning nor end, broad expanses of hatching cut into the rock as though straw had been pressed crisscross into the stone

Yet how could he see at all, deep in the heart of a toered forward until the tunnel opened into a smoky chamber lit by fire He stared past his companions, ere huddled around a torch The chaht He could not see the ceiling, and the walls were lost to shadow He sneezed

Just beyond the s torch, a stone slab marked the center of the chao: there lay her bones, a pale skeleton asleep in the torchlight, its hollow-eyed fra with precious gold that had fallen around the skull and into the ribs Gold antlers sprang into sight as Gerulf shifted the torch to better investigate his comrade’s wound

"You shouldn’t have lit a fire in a barrow!" cried Ivar, horrified "Everyone knows a fire ake the unholy dead!"

Frail Sigfrid sat at the unconscious Lion’s head, nearest to the burial altar He looked up with the calm eyes of one who has felt God’s miraculous hands heal his body "Don’t fear, Ivar" The voice itself, restored to him by a miracle, was a reproof to Ivar’s fear "God will protect us This poor dead woman bears us no ill will" He indicated the half-uncovered skeleton, then bent forward as the old Lion spoke to hifrid tell? Ivar had grown up in the north, where the old gods still swarmed, jealous that the faith of the Unities had stolen sowhat ht wake

Erether, hands clasped in a cousinly eo it seeether as novices at Quedlinhao that they had all been cast out of the convent for coivable sin of heresy

Baldwin circled the stone altar and its dead queen, crouching to grasp one of the gold antlers The light touch jostled the skeleton Precious a in a rush

"Don’t disturb the dead!" hissed Ivar But Baldwin, eyes wide, reached right in to where strands of desiccated wool rope, whose ends were banded with sreenish-metal rods, curled around the pelvis His hand closed over a slint of blue

"Look!" he cried, with his other hand lifting a stone mirror out of the basin leamed As Ivar took a panicked step forward to stop Baldwin from further desecration, he saw his movement reflected in that mirror

"Ai, God, I fear my poor nephew is dead,"him home safely"

Other shadows ures obscured by darkness They walked out of the alcoves, ancient queens whose eyes had the glint of knives The first was young, robed in a splendor as bright as burning arrows, but her irth, the generous bulk of a noble lady who never wants for food, and in her ar over with fruit The third wore her silver hair braided with bones, and the wrinkles in her aged face seemed as deep as clefts in a mountainside Her raised hands had the texture of cobwebs Her gaze caught him as in a vise He could not speak to warn the others, who saw nothing and felt no danger

Hathuh the ghosts as a hand clears away algae frorown pond

Ivar found his voice "Baldwin! Put that down, you idiot!"