The Wizard Hunters Read Online Free PDF Page A

without the return visit to Ixion’s workroom.
    They got the torch lit with flint and tinder and started down the passage, wary of sudden pitfalls or traps in this unknown territory. Soon the shaft lost its square shape and began to look more like a natural tunnel, the walls growing rougher and narrowing until they had to turn sideways to slip through. It slanted down, first gradually, then dramatically, and they had to scramble down nearly vertical slopes.
    When the passage widened out again it was abrupt and they suddenly found themselves in a larger chamber. Ilias fell back a pace, drawing his sword to cover Giliead’s back as his friend lifted the torch to check the knobs of rock overhead. Things often hid in the ceilings of the big chambers in the lower caves, waiting to drop on whatever passed below.
    As they made their way cautiously forward, Ilias’s foot knocked against something that rolled away. He spared a quick glance down and reported tersely, “Bones.” His eyes widened as the flicker of light revealed more of the chamber floor. It was covered with bones. “Uh, lots of bones.”
    Giliead turned around, trying to look in every direction at once. There were two other tunnels intersecting here and it was a good spot for a trap. “What kind?”
    Ilias glanced around, studying the remains with a practiced eye. The odor of decay that hung in the air all through the caves made it impossible to judge how recent the death was. He nudged a skull out of a pile with the toe of his boot. It looked human, except for the elongated jaw and the fangs. The bones didn’t appear that old, but the scavengers in the lower caves would strip any carcass they found within hours and many of the long bones were broken or chewed. “Howler,” he said. “Nothing looks fresh, though.” He frowned at a skull, then leaned down to pick it up. It had a neat hole drilled through it, just above the right eye. “What does that look like to you?” he asked Giliead, holding it out.
    Giliead spared it a glance, brows quirking. “Like something bored into its head and ate out the insides?”
    “That’s what I thought.” Mouth twisted in disgust, he tossed the skull back into the pile. “Which way?”
    “The air is coming from this one.” Giliead picked the tunnel on the far left. “What’s that smell?” he muttered.
    “I still can’t place it. Bitter, isn’t it?” Ilias paused to sheathe his sword and while Giliead kept watch, he used his knife to scratch a trail mark on the floor. The trail marks were a language all their own, the individual lines telling which direction the maker had come from, which direction he went, what his name was and what he was looking for. Hias wrote the mark to say they were looking for trouble, which he thought summed up the situation nicely.
    Not that Halian or anybody else will be coming through here to appreciate it, I hope , he thought, getting to his feet and following Giliead into the next tunnel. Giliead had made Halian swear on his grandmother’s ashes not to come after them if they didn’t come back. Ilias hoped that Halian would hold to it, even if it meant their bodies were lost and their souls trapped here forever.
    The acrid odor in the air became thicker as the tunnel floor slanted even further down. “So say you’re Ixion—” Ilias began.
    “I’d rather not, thanks, I have enough problems of my own.” Giliead lifted the torch to chase away the shadows overhead.
    “—and you’re sitting around one day in your dark dank cave, watching the howlers and the grend hump and kill each other, and you think, ‘Hello, I’ll make something that jumps on people’s heads and bores through their skulls and eats out the insides.’ Why does that happen?”
    “Because he’s a wizard and that’s what wizards do,” Giliead said patiently. “What else—” He stopped abruptly.
    Ilias froze, a hand going to his sword. He heard it too, a muted click of claws against stone. He drew