“But wait.” Penny shifted her heavy rucksack from one shoulder to another. “The Bastille was demolished? Aren’t we here to find the cell where they kept Gaios?”
“We are.” Simon brandished his guidebook again and led them through the river of carriages toward the huge elephant. They stopped at the low wall surrounding the plaster monument and Simon gestured as if lecturing from his book. “Pendragon’s prisoners were bound in catacombs beneath the Bastille. We hope those cells still exist, and we’re looking for a way down into them. We’ll start with the elephant. It was intended to be a fountain, so I hope it was placed where they could access underground tunnels to the canals for water. If not, we’ll expand our search for a passageway.”
“If we find the cell, it will help us defeat Gaios?” Malcolm didn’t look at the elephant but rather studied the area around them. Lights were appearing in the windows of surrounding buildings as long shadows crawled over the plaza. It was becoming a very pleasant late-summer evening in Paris, but Malcolm didn’t seem to notice. He wasn’t one to notice pleasant summer evenings ever.
“I hope so,” Simon answered. “Pendragon inscribed the cell with spells to contain Gaios and his elemental powers. I hope there’s information there I can use.”
He hopped over the wall and approached the giant elephant. The beast towered over them like a multistory edifice. Large sections of its plaster skin peeled and puckered in disrepair.
“So we need to get inside this?” Malcolm asked.
Simon surveyed the ground beneath the colossus. Penny rummaged in her bag, and pulled out a small pistol with a tuning fork where the hammer should have been.
“Simon,” she said, “I could use this.”
Simon said, “I thought that gun was destroyed.”
“I do make things, you know,” she replied. “I made another.”
“Excellent.” Simon stood aside. “How do you intend to use it?”
Penny thumbed up the tuning fork. “At low power, it produces feedback that changes depending on the surface the sound strikes. Like an echo. I can find a passageway to the catacombs if there is one.” With both arms extended, she aimed the pistol at the elephant’s massive feet. She pulled the trigger and began to quiver slightly.
No sound came from the strange pistol, but from inside the elephant came an unnerving skittering. High-pitched squealing filled the air. A large piece of plaster from the elephant’s front leg separated, pushed out by claws and wriggling snouts. Hundreds of red eyes appeared in an explosion of rats, an undulating carpet of greasy little bodies spreading out around the thick grey feet. The swarm passed by, streaming outward, causing the crowd around the elephant to shout with alarm and scatter.
Malcolm kicked out at a few grey brutes that swarmed over his feet and up his boots. “Jesus. Are we climbing into a great rat nest?”
“I hope that’s all we find for a change.” Penny pointed at the elephant’s foot that the rats had abandoned. “There’s a void of some sort under there.”
Simon knelt beside the shattered front foot. He dug his fingers into the crumbling plaster and seized the framework of wood beneath and pulled. The backside of the elephant’s leg tore free in a shower of dust and splinters. There was a clear hole in the ground inside the leg. He spat dust from his mouth and held up his hand. Penny tossed him a coil of rope she had pulled from her bag. Simon tied it off to a sturdy brace and tossed the end down into the hole. After a moment, he heard a faint thud. “Good. There’s a bottom. Nick, you go first.”
Stone arches rose above them in the darkness. Their footsteps mixed with the faint sounds of dripping water. The tunnel was built with stone, not carved from rock. Quavering lights from a small lantern carried by Malcolm in the lead, and a flame burning in Nick’s hand at the rear of the group, slid along the rough grey walls.
The hallway turned to the right and Malcolm suddenly shouted, “Losh!” He brought his pistol up.
Simon and Kate were immediately at his side with sword cane, pistol, and crossbow at the ready. The yellow light played over a white bony face with jaws open. There were other skulls around it, stacked along the wall in a strange pattern. In the corridor going forward, as far as they could make out, the walls and ceiling were nothing but skulls and long bones crisscrossed. Malcolm snorted with embarrassment at crying out.
Simon used the tip of his sword to tap one of the frozen skeletal screams. “Like the catacombs south of the river. The art of the dead.”
Malcolm led the way into the charnel tunnel. Black hollow eyes watched them all. Simon glanced back to check on Penny, but she was studying the surroundings as if for design tips.
Nick followed, holding a piece of bread over the flame in his hand, and grumbling, “We’re in Paris, and I’m eating toast I made with my own hand. Sad.”