Chapter 17
Visible or Otherwise
Two hours later, the passage remained much the same. The black walls sparkled when the blue glow of the light shaft hit them just right. The air felt heavy and wet and old. The path carried them upward slowly.
However, Hamal could hear Cale’s heartbeat and knew his friend was growing more and more restless. Hamal kept looking around, wondering what was bothering Cale.
When Cale spoke, Hamal nearly sighed in relief.
“How many heartbeats?” Cale whispered.
Hamal counted. “Six,” he whispered back.
“And you are counting them at regular intervals?”
Hamal wasn’t used to the word intervals, but he figured he knew what Cale meant. “Yes.”
The seer nodded. “Good.”
They continued for another half-hour. Cale did not relax during that time.
Masly murmured, “The office should be directly above us.”
“Should be?” Cale whispered.
“Is,” Masly amended.
“Better.”
“Thank you.”
Cale said softly to the rest of the team, “In a short distance, the passage turns and runs into a door. A door to which we have no key. But I trust that will not be a problem.” He looked over at Rhyan, who brought up the line directly behind Hamal.
Rhyan held up one hand. Everything about the movement seemed tired, like he was trying to move with weights strapped to his arms. “No. No problem.”
“Excellent.”
In another few minutes, they came to the door: a solid piece of iron wedged deeply into the tunnel on all sides. The top of the door was etched with an ancient blessing Hamal hadn’t seen in years. The words curled almost like flowers and ivy. May the gods bless your passage. You could still find random blessings like this but usually only in Theraine. Carving a blessing into doors this way had been popular maybe five hundred years ago. Was the mine really that old? And if so, how long had it been since this door was opened? The middle of the door was covered with black, slimy growth and the door’s bottom half had turned completely green. The surrounding walls were covered with the same mixture of black and green slime. It almost seemed like a cave’s version of plant growth.
Rhyan knelt in front of the door and put his fingers to the lock. Not in it, as if he were a human key, but on it.
“Better try it first,” Masly whispered. When Cale gave him a look, he shrugged. “Years of experience suggest trying a door before breaking it down.”
“We have no plans to break it down,” Cale replied.
Rhyan tried the door, easing his weight against the handle. It was indeed locked.
“As I said…” Masly began.
Rhyan returned his fingers to the lock and there he stayed, his hand on the door, as the rest of them waited.
One minute gradually turned into five. Hamal couldn’t smell anything burning, couldn’t hear anything, but gradually he noticed he felt warmer than he had a short time ago.
“Might take a while,” Rhyan murmured. “The slower I go, the less likely I am to alert anyone on the other side.”
“Take your time,” Cale said.
Another five minutes crawled past.
As they waited, Hamal counted heartbeats again. There were six: Cale, Masly, Rhyan, Ermond, Vincent, and himself. He couldn’t hear anyone on the other side of the door, and judging by the mold or whatever plant life that was, he guessed the door hadn’t been opened in years. Did it open up directly into the office? Or would it be some sort of side passage? What if someone was stationed there?
Lord Rhyan was a man of talent. He leaned back and pulled lightly on the handle, and the big old door opened silently, just as he had promised. Hamal held his breath as Ermond’s light fell through the darkness, and a waft of different air—less moist, more earthy—swept across them.
On the other side of the door stood another dark passage. The walls were immediately different over there. In the lava tunnel, they were relatively flat and porous, but in the mine itself, they clearly had been hacked and pounded into being by hammers and axes. The ceiling was slightly lower than the lava tunnel’s, and the floor was much dustier.
No workers revealed themselves to Ermond’s light. No one stood guard against intruders, visible or otherwise.
Cale eased through the door and followed the passage as it curved left. The rest of the team followed him. When they came upon a second passage—this one a large black hole to their right—he bypassed it. He walked past two more such openings until, finally, they came to a second door. This one was several years younger than the first door, the one Rhyan had opened. The metal looked fairly clean, and the door was plain, without any decorative etching along the top.
Cale motioned to Rhyan.
This time Rhyan tried the handle on his own, and when this door was locked as well, he took a knee beside it and put his fingers to the locking mechanism.
Three minutes.
Four.
“Hamal,” Cale whispered in the quiet.
Hamal knew what he was going to ask and counted heartbeats again. Unexpectedly—well, somewhat unexpectedly—he lost count and had to start over. In close quarters like this, squeezed up around a door, he found distinguishing each man’s heart to be more difficult. It was easier when people were spread out, as they had been in the tunnel.
Rhyan conquered this door more quickly than the first. As he wrapped his hand around the handle and prepared to pull it open, Cale stopped him.
“Save the light,” Cale ordered in a whisper.
The shaft in Ermond’s hand disappeared without sound.
Darkness dropped through the tunnel. Complete, deep darkness. And Hamal lost count. He started over again, and then counted another time, just to be sure. His heart jumped. That can’t be right, he thought and counted again. How hard was it to count to a number less than ten? It should not be this difficult.
Cale reached for the door.
“Cale,” Hamal whispered, trying to sound calm.
The seer paused. “What is it?”
“There are seven.”
“What?”
“There are seven of us in the passage.”
Every sound dropped away except the heartbeats, suddenly rapid, which Hamal had been counting. But one of the beats did not sound alarmed. One of them was calm. Hamal’s mind began to tell him he felt the sensation of eyes in the dark. Chill bumps lifted on his arms.
“Light,” Cale said.
Lightning sparked on Ermond’s hands. It wasn’t a light shaft this time, just the light flickering across his palms. Masly drew his sword, and the blade gleamed bluish green.
They were alone. The six of them. No one else was there.
“I know you are not good with numbers,” Cale whispered slowly.
“I can count to seven,” Hamal replied.
“Right now, you hear seven heartbeats in the passage?”
Hamal counted again—two more times, in fact, for the number had changed. “Now I count eight!”
Cale and Masly looked at one another. Masly shook his head.
“Where?” Cale asked.
Hamal pointed down the tunnel, away from the door. “That way. Down there. They are close by.”
Quickly Cale asked, “Coming or going?”
“They are not moving. They’re just standing there.”
The tunnel was empty. Standing at the door, they could see about fifteen paces behind them until the darkness consumed all light. No one was there—and yet Hamal could hear the heartbeats. It was the strangest sensation. He knew people were there and yet couldn’t see them.
Cale drew a deep, slow breath.
Masly said, “You are certain of what you hear, Hamal? We are hundreds of feet below the surface of the sea. This land is riddled with old passages and potentially heated waterways. It would not surprise me to discover that something earthy and quite natural could produce sound on its own. Are you certain you hear heartbeats and not something else?”
Hamal began to describe them. “We are being watched by two men. They do not seem disturbed by our presence. They are just observing. For now.”
Near silence fell through the passage. The heartbeats remained the same. Eight in total. Six rapid, two calm.
“I have the door,” Rhyan whispered behind them. “We could go.”
Cale stared at Hamal with silver eyes. “Any change at Rhyan’s suggestion?”
“No,” Hamal answered.
Cale’s look intensified. Quite seriously he asked, “Do you believe it is the e’nethaine?”
Hamal considered. “They sound like men,” he said slowly, “and yet we cannot see them.”
Masly leaned back on his heels. “But why would the e’nethaine—who, I might add, have not stepped foot in King’s Barrow in hundreds of years—inhabit a mine that is known to harass healers? It makes no sense.”
“No,” Cale said darkly. “It does not.”
“I don’t have any reason to be afraid of the e’nethaine,” Hamal insisted.
“Still…” Masly said.
Cale looked at the door. “Let’s go.”
– H –
Author’s note: When I first wrote this book six years ago, I was single—and had been for a while. But today as I prepare to post this chapter, my son is playing out on the porch. ❤️ He’s also sticking things in his mouth. Please excuse me.
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Comment below or find us on Facebook. Copyright notice: © 2026 by Lauren Stinton. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or sapient plants is purely coincidental.
