An old ice house, an underground predecessor to the modern Yakhchāl. That would certainly explain the cold. Old though it might be, it was a sign of some kind of civilisation.

  Some three hours of stumbling in the dark had brought them to a broad, low-ceilinged hall carved out of the rock. At some point, it had warmed beyond freezing just enough to melt the ice, and the remnants were now sloshing around their ankles just as unpleasant as the air.

  Rexis knelt in the water, scooping as much as he could into waterskins. His breath misted the air and he shuddered as he pushed the stopper into the last of the waterskins. “It might be cold, but it won’t kill you,” he said as he looked over his shoulder at the flickering forms of Aiur and Daiss, stood at the base of the stairs. They were huddled around their only source of light and warmth: a sputtering torch formed from strips of cloth wrapped around the remains of a khopesh.

  “It damn well might,” Daiss grumbled, staring at the water as if it were a pit of serpents, hissing and snapping at his heels. He shuffled back out of its reach.

  Rexis sighed, water splashing as he rose to his feet and dripping from his soaked clothes. “We’re going through. No way anyone was lugging ice into and out of that crevasse. There’ll be a passage at the end,” he said, jerking his thumb into the darkness behind him.

  “Why would there be an entrance that way?” Daiss whined, still watching every ripple in the water’s surface.

  “Why would there be an ice house?” Rexis stated, his tone deadpan. “Civilisation. It might be old, but someone, or something, out there would have used this. A small town, village, whatever. But there’s one thing they would always need.”

  “Water,” Aiur stated, staring off into nothingness as he thought. “There’s no qanat’s for miles so the most obvious and abundant source would be…the river. The Ahbek?”

  “The Ahbek.”

  Aiur nodded, resigned to another gruelling walk, stepping into the water with a shiver and sloshing his way toward the scout. He raised his tail to keep it above the waterline and held his makeshift torch aloft. “You’re damn near immune to this cold. How in the hell do you do it Rexis?” he said, pressing his free arm closer around his chest. It didn’t do much to help.

  “I’m not,” Rexis replied sourly. “I hate this. I hate every single second of this. The cold’s not just in my muscles and in my limbs, it’s in my damn blood. I can feel it spreading with every beat of my heart. But we have no choice.” He turned his gaze to Daiss, eyeing him sternly. “Living in fear of the task ahead will get you nowhere…or in this case, killed. Best to just do it.”

  Daiss looked away, gripping his tail and hefting it up with another tortured metallic screech, before lumbering into the water and thumping across to the pair of them.

  “Why is this place even flooded?” he added once he’d reached them. “Where’d all the water come from?”

  “It was an ice house,” Rexis stated flatly, as he started sloshing forward through the water. “Clearly, it warmed up a little in here.”

  “Not a very good ice house is it then,” Daiss grumbled as he and Aiur followed along, filling the space with the echoing splashes of their footfall.

  “Something’s probably blocked, filled in with sand would be my guess,” Aiur commented absent-mindedly, casting his torch along the walls in search of an opening.

  “What?”

  “These old ice houses would operate on the same principles as a Yakhchāl, I assume. Air flow,” Aiur explained, casting his arm in a wide arc, though his companions could barely see the gesture. “Hot air rises, so you have flues and tunnels that let it escape upwards. Then you have entrances lower down to funnel in cold air. Assumedly, some of them are blocked with sand…or, maybe this place never worked right in the first place, who knows.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Someone’s an expert.” Rexis chuckled. “Where’d you learn all that?”

  Aiur shrugged. “I just paid attention in my classes. A noble education has its uses.”

  “What classes did they teach us that in?” Daiss complained, face screwing up behind his chainmail veil.

  “The ones where you weren’t paying attention. They were teaching us about infrastructure, expanding territory with new settlements. ‘A good noble should know what tradesmen a settlement requires and should have realistic expectations of how long building takes,’ was the priestesses’ precise reasoning, if I remember right.”

  “Ah,” was all Daiss said at first, turning his head away. “Yes…I... can’t even begin to remember that.”

  “Your talents clearly lie elsewhere,” Rexis interjected, with a hand on Daiss’ shoulder. “The fact that you’re still walking, and without complaint, is damn near a miracle.”

  “It doesn’t hurt that badly,” Daiss lied. “Frankly…I’m used to it by now.”

  “Yes…but you are bending metal with every step, and not so much as groaning about it. If that doesn’t speak to your strength or constitution, I don’t know what would,” Rexis said with a smile, patting him lightly.

  Daiss sniffed and nodded. His small smile invisible to them.“I ‘spose so.”

  “Good,” Rexis said, turning away to slosh further ahead. “Got any more trivia or topics to keep us entertained Aiur? I think I’ve found the passage, but it looks to be a long walk back up.”

  Aiur sighed and moved closer to examine the perfectly squared doorway looming out of the darkness, wide enough to fit two people abreast and tall enough for a horse. Beyond it,a neatly cut passage slowly sloped up into even deeper darkness and mercifully out of the water. “Not particularly. All I can think of is how much of a terrible idea this has all been… and how selfish it was to come out here in the first place.”

  “It’s my fault. It was my idea,” Daiss countered, leaning on the frame of the doorway.

  “No, it was not, Daiss,” Aiur said with a heavy sigh. “I latched onto the idea. I abandoned my duties and pushed for us all to come out here… I acted selfishly and irresponsibly and… I am not even sure why.”

  “That’s hindsight talking.” Rexis growled. “You were perfectly confident when you came to me.”

  Aiur stepped into the passageway first. “No, I was not. I came to you because the loyalties of those around me were being tested, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I used you to escape. The idea…lodged itself in my mind and stayed there. It was selfish…irresponsible, and ultimately has proven quite the mistake.”

  Rexis paused, brow creasing. “Lodged in your mind? A curious way of phrasing it. Almost like it doesn’t feel like your own thought?”

  “Because it was mine!” Daiss interjected with an incredulous wave of his one good arm.

  “No. it wasn’t.” Aiur snarled venomously. “I pushed for this. I brought us here. I got all of those people killed…”

  Rexis raised one hand diplomatically, pinching his chin with the other. “Hold. Hold a moment…” his eyes rolled back and forth, one finger tapping a slow and steady rhythm on his chin. “I have been plagued by a feeling that we were meant to see what we saw.”

  “So, you’re saying it wasn’t my fault after all? Wishful thinking, I’m afraid.” Aiur sighed with a shake of his head.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps I am deluded. Marching for days through the desert will do that to you. But I this feeling has been in my gut for days, and then you begin to speak oddly of ideas lodging themselves in your mind, almost as though they were outside your control.”

  Aiur shot him a quizzical look. “You think we’re being manipulated? That someone orchestrated our encounter with that monster? That’s far-fetched even for you…how could that happen without our notice?”

  “Magic?” Daiss added with a shrug, releasing his tail and letting it fall to the floor with a thump.

  “I cannot think of any other method. The question is who.”

  Aiur rolled his eyes, humouring their train of thought. “The priesthood holds a monopoly on magic. If someone was manipulating us with magic it would be with their help, or their doing.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Rexis’ eyes darted back and forth at an alarming rate. “But who benefits from this, and what was the goal? If it's supposed to draw attention to the Naga, the priesthood doesn't. They’re the only ones who might have that kind of magic. But none of the high priestesses have gotten involved with, or even care, for Naga attacks; at least not publicly. House Amunet have the most interaction with Naga, and they have been proclaiming more needs to be done for years, but this seems drastic for them. Or maybe someone just wants us dead. They might want the Consul of House Zerkash out of the way…” his voice trailed off and he simply shook his head.

  “House Amunet? If we’re heading to Balanzar we should be able to at least cross that off the list of possibilities,” Daiss noted.

  Aiur sighed, pushing past them and walking further up the sloping passage. As he bore their only source of light, the others quickly followed. “Then let’s hope you’re wrong and they’d much prefer us alive.”

  Yet, deep in the dark, a wet and gurgling voice cackled a single word in some malformed attempt of mimicry.

  “Bah-lan-zar.”