Page 34 of Wicked Curses
Sahira’s shoulders sagged in defeat, but when Zeth walked away, she straightened them again and lifted her chin.
Good. She won’t be like the others who have let this place defeat them.
Zeth stopped beside a trunk outside one of the horse’s doors. One nickered, the other kicked the wall, and a third banged against the door. The sheep and goats baaed as they shifted impatiently in their stalls. Two of those sheep and goats were pregnant.
“Sorry, guys. I’ll get your food in a minute,” Zeth assured them as he opened the trunk.
Zeth removed a large piece of parchment from the trunk, closed the lid, and set the roll on top. “It’s a map of the whole town and every building. There are plenty of them floating around, but I made this one myself. I placed an X on the buildings with the symbols. I have to feed the animals, but feel free to take a look.”
Orin strolled over to the trunk lid and unrolled the parchment. After staring at the symbol for a few seconds, Sahira walked over to join him. They each held a side down to keep the map from rolling up again while they examined it.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
He studiedZeth’s extremely detailed map with admiration. He’d spent hours poring over the one Belda created, but she didn’t have the demon’s artistic talent with a pencil.
Sahira put her finger on the stable where they stood, then drew a line toward the mercantile and pub. She moved her finger around the map as if searching for a pattern.
“I don’t think witches had anything to do with this,” she said.
But if they did, the pentagram was one of the witches’ favorite symbols. “There’s too many symbols to create a pentagram.”
“Or too few,” she murmured. “Don’t forget the inner points on a pentagram. There would have to be ten symbols and buildings for that.”
“They don’t form into what could become an octagon either… not without another symbol.”
She bit her lip while studying the map. “No, they don’t.”
He wondered if she was beginning to see what he’d seen after studying Belda’s map. He could point it out to her but preferred to find out if she could do this alone. If she couldn’t, she was much less useful at helping to find a way out than he’d hoped.
He considered her smart; it would be disappointing if she proved him wrong.
Her finger landed on a spot at the end of a road. When it did, he knew she’d caught on to what he had.
Good girl.
“What’s here?” she asked.
As he passed them, Zeth looked over her shoulder to where her finger sat. “The pit. It exists because immortals dug it in the hope of uncovering the eighth symbol. When that didn’t work, they turned it into its current function.”
“Son of a bitch,” Sahira muttered.
Orin understood her frustration; he’d experienced it too. “If there was a symbol there, they would all form a compass rose.”
“With the pit being the south part of the compass,” Zeth said.
“Or north,” Sahira said.
Zeth pointed to the top of the map and the library. “This is north.”
“That’s whatweknow north to be, but this realm isn’t like anything we’ve ever known. The pit could be east or west, and we’re standing at north. If it is an infinity sign, it’s been turned upright instead of on its side, which could mean this whole place is shifted onto a different axis.”
“Anything is possible here.”
Orin turned his attention back to the symbol on the wall. He released his piece of the map before walking over to examine it.
He’d come to the same conclusions as her a few weeks ago. This place could be completely backward from everything they knew. It was unlike anything they’d ever encountered, and he wouldn’t rule out any possibilities.
When he first got his hands on a map, he tried to match the points of the arrow to other places on the map. He’d also twisted the symbol around so the arrow pointed in all different directions. Afterward, he’d gone to all the buildings the arrows could have pointed to, but he soon realized that was futile.
