The water gate emptied into an underground cave where the water smelled of sulfur and cold copper.
Ren Vale hit the shallow runoff pool with his left hip. It slid through three yards of slick, algae-covered pebbles before coming to a halt against a shelf of coarse purple amethyst. Every joint in his pelvis rang like an iron bell struck by a hammer, a dull, ringing ache shaking up into his lower-back bones. He scrambled to his feet, water dripping from his frayed wool cuffs, his eyes right away scanning the gloom.
“Mira!” he called, his voice bouncing off vaulted walls of jagged quartz crystals.
“Over here,” her voice came from twenty paces ahead, clear and calm. “Watch your footing. The pebbles are round as marbles.”
Ren exhaled a ragged breath and splashed through the ankle-deep salt water.
She was sitting on a dry ledge of black dark rock, wringing the water from the hem of her shift with her left hand. Her right arm, resting across her knees, gleamed in the surrounding violet light radiated by the cave ceiling. The water beaded and rolled off the thirty-two polished facets of her smoky quartz forearm like rain off a grease-treated windowpane. In the quiet of the cave, her chest hummed with its steady, melodic glass-like shear chord. It cast ripples across the dark surface of the pool.
