Magda knew that Merritt was telling her the truth about needing rest to complete her recovery from the ordeal of creating the key. Healing alone hadn’t been enough. From little things he had done at the time, to hints in the way he had acted, she suspected that the use of her blood and life force in the effort to create the key had come close to costing her her life.

Before she could rest, though, they needed to get down to the dungeon. That was the prime concern. If the sorceress was still alive, they had to talk to her.

The deserted corridor they hurried through, carved from banded, tannish sandstone, created a maze of twisting passageways. None of the walls were square or straight. For the most part, the passageways were little more than a warren of tunnels gouged out through the stone.

She hadn’t been in these particular underground passages the last time she’d come down into the catacombs. This area was considerably deeper beneath the section she’d been in before, where not only were there resting places for the dead, but rooms where wizards also worked. That level was also where Isidore’s place had been.

Over time, as ever more people had died, the available space in the catacombs had been filled to capacity. The living then had to dig even deeper to create more room for the newly deceased. That meant that some of the areas they were entering were not nearly as old as the places above that she had seen before. Up above, some of the tombs were centuries old. Some were said to be thousands of years old. Magda didn’t know if that much was true or not, but it was clear enough that some sections of the catacombs higher up were ancient.

This part, though, was newer. In fact, it was repulsively new. The stagnant stench of death hung in the air down in this place. Even the scent of the stone all around and the smell of burning pitch from the occasional torches stuck in holes drilled in the soft rock of the walls as well as pots of aromatic oils was not enough to mask the smell of death. In spots, some of the rooms they passed with the recently dead reeked so strongly of rotting flesh that it gagged her and spurred her to hurry past.

As they made their way through the tunnels, Magda couldn’t help glancing off into the dark recesses where the dead were laid to rest. The light sphere Merritt carried cast a greenish glow into the hollowed-out chambers. In the tunnels, the light sphere helped fill in shadowy stretches between torches.