In that greenish light, Magda could see countless corpses lying in niches. Some of the dusty finery was filled with bones and nothing more. In other places, the dead were desiccated, with mouths hanging open and eye sockets staring up at nothing. In some of the rooms they passed, the places that smelled the worst, the bodies had grotesquely swollen tongues protruding from gaping mouths and eyes bulging out of sockets. It was a natural process that bodies went through as they rotted, but it was horrifying to see. It was one of the reasons she was glad that they had reduced Baraccus’s remains to ashes.

Magda speculated that the sights they passed were also one of the reasons the dungeons were down below the catacombs. As prisoners were brought down through the place of the dead, the rotting corpses would be a demoralizing spectacle meant to be a disturbing preview to the living being taken to the dungeon of the fate awaiting them if they caused any trouble. Or a reminder to those condemned to death of what they would soon look like.

Magda only hoped that those condemned really were guilty. If they were guilty of murders, then they deserved their fate. But such an end was too horrifying for her to contemplate if the condemned were actually innocent. She knew that guilt was not always clear-cut, and there were instances where people wondered if the true guilty party had avoided paying the price, and an innocent person was instead being put to an unjust death.

It seemed like an endless spectacle of corpses as they made their way down the tunneled hallway. It was numbing to see so many dead people.

Magda missed a step and then jerked to a halt. She stood frozen in place. The realization ran an icy shiver up between her shoulder blades to the nape of her neck. With the sudden comprehension, she could feel her hands begin to tremble. Her heart started beating faster.

Merritt turned, holding the light sphere up to better see her face and to look into her wide eyes.

He leaned down a little. “What’s wrong?”

Magda glanced around at all the niches carved out of the stone, all filled with remains of the dead.

“General Grundwall said they hadn’t found the man who killed Isidore.”

“That’s right,” he said.

Magda met his gaze. “That night, when I was lost in the maze outside her quarters, a lot of men—wizards, wizards with gifted abilities to sense the living—came to see what the commotion was all about. They fanned out and searched the maze. They didn’t find anyone. General Grundwall says that they haven’t found those responsible for the murders.”

“I’m listening.”