"Yeah," I reply. I hear his footsteps as he moves cautiously into the room.

"Right here," I say as he gets close.

A light appears between the two of us; a small blue-white ball of glowing phosphorescence, floating above Enturi's open palm.

"That's handy," I say. "A bit dangerous to actually use where anyone could see, though."

The pretty boy grins. "Good thing it's just you and me here then, right?"

We look around the room. Enturi gasps and his light flickers, almost going out.

It's what I feared. We are in a chamber in the wall. I don't see any other way out. There is no gate to the human side of the wall, not even a blocked one. But aside from a narrow space in the center of the room, the space in which we are standing, the room is full. Full of bones, elven bones and skulls, piled almost to the ceiling, like some bizarre necromantic dream of a bone dragon's hoard. The corpse-filled chambers in the sea wall are like piss closets compared to the vastness of this chamber.

"Well, here's your answer," I say to the elf beside me.

"My answer?" he asks uncomprehendingly.

"Yeah," I say roughly. "You asked how many elves they killed on that altar. Here's your answer. Start counting." I'm not angry at him. I'm just angry. Every bone in this room belongs to one of my people, a neighbor and fellow prisoner of war, who was brought to this building and cut apart while still alive in the furtherance of the humans' unending thirst for power. What in the world could possibly be so valuable, so desirable, as to be built on the foundation of this?

I look around in the pale blue light of Enturi's orb at the jumbled piles of crumbling bones and I feel like I am the only one in Elftown who understands how deeply the humans have wronged us. All of these elves were denied the spirit-freeing flames of the ceremonial pyre. It's not enough that we are forced to live a life foreign to our nature, deprived of all that makes us happy: freedom and nature and art and song. When we die, murdered before our time or warped into premature age by the unnaturalness of the spiritual poverty of our trapped existence, we are denied freedom again, left to rot like orcs or molder like dwarves within the walls that imprison us.

It would be better if the whole rotten above-ground dungeon of Elftown burned down to the mud with every elf in it. At least then there would be an end to this perversion, and each of us would die in fire, free in death if not in life. If I had a lantern right now I would pour the oil on the nearest bones and toss the wick into the flammable wetness and beseech the goddess that the bones be dry and brittle enough to burn to ash.

Beside me, Enturi is still and silent, staring at the bone pile. Two tears sliding down his cheeks reflect the light in his hand. Ugh.

"Brace up!" I snarl. "You're a deadly enforcer, not some sniveling babe. It's not like you're a stranger to death." I should cut him some slack. He hasn't seen what I have the past few days.

"There are so many," he whispers. "So many."

"Let's get out of here." I push him toward the door. He doesn't resist, but holds up his light and keeps looking at the bone piles as I move him. When we reach the tunnel, I pause.

"Light out," I command. "Don't want any light leaking out the hole to where the guards on the wall might see it." Enturi complies, making some complex hand gesture which causes the little ball of light to wink out. I propel him back out into the ritual room. He pulls away and looks at me in irritation.

"Getting a little pushy, aren't we?" he says peevishly. "I wasn't done looking around in there." He rubs his cheek absently and seems surprised to feel the wetness of his tear there. He hurriedly wipes both cheeks dry. I pretend not to notice.

"I don't think there's much else to see," I say. "Just a crowded tomb. What did you find out about the wards?"

"They're in the walls," he says, moving to the wall of the building to the right of the hole we entered through. "Watch this." He pulls out a small square stone and angles the face of the stone slightly toward me so I can see it. Painted on the side of the stone that had been inserted into the wall is a rune. It is different from the blood rune on the wall.

I move forward to look more closely.

"Stay back!" Enturi warns, shifting the runed surface of the stone away from my eyes.

Oh yeah. Probably best not to get in front of this stinkin' rune again. Heh. Though if the pretty boy mocks me for this rookie mistake, I'll be pissed at holding back about his tears.