They bore no legend or the names of the dead. Maximizing the expansion, perhaps? Each one was marked by a headstone, some made of carved rock or wood. Hundreds of mummies, stretching out into the desert, spaced farther and farther apart. A thin coating of sand covered most of them, but once brushed aside, it became clear that it was these bodies that formed the octopus’s tentacles. As they followed along one of the trails down the hill, they eventually came across unwrapped bodies, baked and charred into a mummylike state by the dry desert sun. They were all mummies, or at least they looked to be mummies. Quite the opposite.” Madame Lefoux was crouched down examining one of the bodies.

“Ghost trails,” said Alexia, repeating Zayed. They could see down the sloping back side of the hill the eight long pathways out into the desert. Madame Lefoux held up a hand and they all stopped walking and simply looked. “Yes, dear.” The earl wrinkled his nose and shook off his boot. “Conall, do be careful! Inhale one of those and you could be mortal forever! Or something equally nasty.” It made a sad, dry, cracking noise and let out a little puff of brown dust. Or to be even more precise, it was where Lord Maccon accidentally stepped on a long-dead preternatural. It was there, on the top of that hill, they began to see the bodies. Then came Genevieve, and then Conall and Prudence. Alexia took the lead, despite her damp dress hindering her stride, her parasol raised against the vicious sun. The sand-covered hill they scaled formed the back part of the roof of the temple, where it had been carved into the side of a cliff. “Yes, darling.” Alexia could almost hear her daughter’s adult commentary behind the baby phrases: Sooner you than me, Mother.

Timeless carriger novel