So they went on.
Down, and down, a more crooked path than the cavern in Cabeswater. That passage had clearly been worn by water, while this one seemed unnatural, clawed out instead of formed. Ahead of them, Chainsaw cawed. It was a strange, daytime sound to hear from the blackness ahead.
“Chainsaw?” Ronan called, voice rough.
“Kerah!” came the reply, from not too far away. This was the bird’s special name for Ronan.
“Thank goodness,” Blue said.
Gansey, at the head, spotted her first, clinging to a ledge in the rock wall, scrabbling with one foot and flapping a little to keep her position. She didn’t flee as he approached, and when he held out his arm to her, she flew to him, landing heavily. She seemed no worse the wear for her possession. He half-turned. “Here’s your bird, Lynch.”
Ronan’s voice was odd. “And there’s your tomb, Gansey.”
He was looking past Gansey.
Gansey turned. They stood at a stone door. It could have been a door to many things, but it was not. It was a carved tomb door — a stone armored knight with hands crossed over his breast. His head rested on two ravens, his feet, on fleurs-de-lis. He held a shield. Glendower’s shield, with three ravens.
But this was wrong.
It was not wrong because this was not how Gansey would have expected Glendower’s tomb to look. It was wrong because it was not supposed to happen this way, on this day, when his eyes hurt from sleeplessness and it drizzled outside and it was a cave they had only found a few days before.
It was supposed to be a clue, and then another clue, and then another clue.
It was not supposed to be thirty minutes of walking and a tomb door, just like that.
But it was.
“It can’t be,” Adam said, finally, from the back.
“Do we just — push it open?” Blue asked. She, too, sounded uncertain. This was not how it worked. It was the looking, not the finding.
“I feel peculiar about this,” Gansey said finally. “It feels wrong for there to be no … ceremony.”
Be excited.
He turned back to the tomb door as the others drew close. Withdrawing his phone, he took several photos. Then, after a pause, he typed in some location notes as well.
“God, Gansey,” Ronan said, but it had made Gansey feel a little better about himself.
Carefully, he touched the seam around the effigy of the knight. The rock was cool, solid, real; his fingers came away dusted. This was happening. “I don’t think it’s sealed. I think it’s just wedged in. Leverage, maybe?”
Adam ran a finger along the edge. “Not much. It’s not in very tightly.”
He thought about the fact of the three sleepers, one to be woken, one to stay asleep. Would they know if this was the one to leave undisturbed? Surely — because if it was Maura’s job to not wake this sleeper, there would be signs of her here.
But he didn’t know. There wasn’t a way to know.
Everything about this day was tinged by indecision and uncertainty.
Suddenly, the wall exploded in.
As dust swirled in the air and they fell back, coughing, Blue said, “Ronan Lynch!”
Ronan rebalanced in the midst of the slowly clearing cloud; he had kicked the tomb door in.
“That,” he said thinly, to no one in particular, “was for taking my bird.”
“Ronan, tell me now if I have to leash you, because I will,” Gansey said. Ronan immediately scoffed, but Gansey pointed at him. “I’m serious. This is not yours alone. If this is a tomb, someone has been buried here, and you’re going to give that person respect. Do not. Make me. Ask you. Again. For that matter, if any of us thinks they won’t be able to contain themselves going forward, I suggest we turn around and come back another day or the party in question waits out here.”
Ronan simmered.
“Don’t, Lynch,” Gansey said. “I’ve done this for seven years, and this is the first time I’ll have to leave a place looking worse because I’ve been there. Don’t make me wish I’d come without you.”
This, finally, made it through the steel to Ronan’s heart. His head ducked.
In they went.
It was like they had walked back into the past.
The entire room was carved and painted. The colors were unfaded by the sun: royal blue; berry purple; ruddy, bloody red. The carvings were sectioned into windows or arcades, bounded by lilies and ravens, columns and pillars. Saints looked down, watchful and regal. Martyrs were speared and shot, burned and impassioned. Carved hounds chased hares chased hounds again. On the wall hung a pair of gauntlets, a helmet, a breastplate.
It was too much.
“Jesus,” breathed Gansey. He stretched his fingers to touch the breastplate and then found he couldn’t. He drew his hand back.
He was not ready for it to be over.
He was ready for it to be over.
In the middle of the tomb was a stone coffin, waist-high, the sides heavily carved. A stone effigy of Glendower lay on top, his helmeted head pillowed on three carved ravens.
Do you remember saving my life?
Blue said, “Look at all the birds.”
She trailed her flashlight over the walls and coffin. Everywhere, the beam found feathers. Wings garnishing the coffin. Beaks plucking fruit. Ravens sparring over shields.
The light landed on Adam’s face. His eyes were narrowed and wary. Beside him, Ronan looked strangely hostile, Chainsaw hunched down on his shoulder. Blue took Gansey’s phone from his pocket and took photos of the walls, the coffin, Gansey.
Gansey’s eyes dragged back to the coffin. Glendower’s coffin.
Is this really happening?
Everything was sideways, mirrored, not exactly as he’d imagined it.
He said, “What are we doing?”
“I think between all of us, we should be able to leverage the lid off,” Adam replied.
But that wasn’t what Gansey meant. He meant: What are we doing? We, of all people?
With a little, unfunny laugh, Blue said, “My hands are clammy.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder. Gansey counted down, a breathless three-two-one, and then they strained. Unsuccessfully. It was like they were trying to shift the cavern itself.
“It’s not even wiggling,” Gansey said.
“Let’s try the other side.”
As they moved to the other side and lifted, fingers barely finding purchase, lid unmoving, Gansey could not help but think of the old fairy tales. He imagined this wasn’t an ordinary weight holding the lid down; rather, it was unworthiness. They had not proven themselves in some way, and so Glendower was barred from them still.