CHAPTER NINETEEN
We hurried through the grotto and back out into the open air, but the further we traveled away from the entrance the more the city changed. The damage to the ruins was less extreme, and I even glimpsed some partial remains of second floors. Many vine-covered stone pillars rose up from the foundations, showing me that many of the homes once sported porticoes like Mathisi, and they cast their high shadows over us as we raced down the colonnade of columns.
The spindly vines grew thicker, blotting out the sun and casting us deeper into darkness until we reached the intersection where one of the four roads led down to the bottom of the bowl. Ros looked this way and that, and both of us strained our ears.
The soft ring-a-ling sounded again, but this time the noise was clos
