The vaulted ceiling of the Chapel of Saint Jude soared twenty-five feet above the stone flags, supported by four heavy eight-sided pillars of red mountain granite.
Under the emerald soft glow of six moss jars, the chamber was revealed not in ruins, but in frozen, terrifying stillness.
Arranged in five spotless, disciplined ranks across the nave of the chapel were one hundred and forty men.
They weren’t corpses. Nineteen years of dry, sealed air had reduced them to clean, bleached skeletons. Yet every skeleton sat or lay in full military stance. Some rested upon the split-oak benches, their backs straight against the stone walls. Others lay upon clean beds of dry floor straw, their boots lined up, their arms folded with deep awe across their rusted iron breastplates.
At the front of the center aisle, kneeling before the simple cedar altar with his brow resting against the stone rail, was an officer. His skeletal fingers were still clasped around the handle of a notched broadsword, its steel rusted dull gray but free of blood.
Sile Rook stepped through the doorway, his boots making a crisp, dry crunch on the stone flags. He stopped, his massive shoulders dropping as his gaze swept across the silent ranks.
