Harris worked the crank, generating a weak light just bright enough for us to see what we were...

Harris worked the crank, generating a weak light just bright enough for us to see what we were doing.  We made our way down, single file, one hand to the wall, the other gathering up the scruff of the pants of the person ahead of us.  The stairs seemed to go on forever and I could hear Wizard breathing, the hairs in his nostrils rustling.  The walls were smooth limestone and there was this smell in the air: stale, musty.  It got worse as we got closer to the bottom.  We followed a tunnel out into a network of caves— moving slow, not talking.  We took turns on the generator, trying to keep the light going.  Whoever they were, they kept their dead in narrow shelves carved out of the cavern walls.  Empty skulls stared out at us— mute, mournful, the lower jaw missing.   We were all of us used to seeing dead except for Amler.  She kept shivering and her voice kept hitching like some hurt animal.  Beneath the shelves there were inscriptions scrawled in a language none of us could remember.  Wizard held out his hand and brushed his fingers across each etching.  We spent most the day down there— Harris figured it must’ve been fifteen, twenty miles— passing through layers of empire.