The Mole blinked like an owl. “I was thinking.”
Damson hesitated, her brow furrowing. She stuck the torch into a crack in the rock wall behind her where the light would not disturb her strange friend. Then she crouched down in front of him. The Valemen remained standing.
“What have you discovered, Mole?” Damson asked quietly. The Mole shifted. He was wearing some sort of leather pants and tunic, but they were almost completely enveloped in the fur of his body. His feet were covered with hair as well. He wore no shoes.
“There is a way into the palace of the Kings of Tyrsis and from there into the Pit,” the Mole said. He hunched lower. “There are also Shadowen.”
Damson nodded. “Can we get past them?”
The Mole rubbed his nose with his hand. Then he studied her expectantly for a very long time, as if discovering something in her face that before this had somehow escaped his notice. “Perhaps,” he said finally. “Shall we try?”
Damson smiled briefly and nodded again. The Mole stood up. He was tiny, it ball of hair with arms and legs that looked as if they might have been stuck on as an afterthought. What was he, Par wondered? A Dwarf? A Gnome? What?
“This way,” the Mole said, and beckoned them after him into a darkened passageway. “Bring the torch if you wish. We may use it for a while.” He glanced pointedly at the Valemen. “But there must be no talking.”
So it began. He took them down into the bowels of the city, its deepest sewers, the catacombs that tunneled its basements and sublevels, passageways that no one had used for hundreds of years. Dust lay upon the rock and earthen floors in thick layers that showed no signs of having ever been disturbed. It was warmer here; the damp and fog did not penetrate. The corridors burrowed into the cliffs, rising and falling through rooms and chambers that had once been used as bolt holes for the defenders of the city, to store foodstuffs and weapons, and on occasion to hide the entire population—men, women, and children—of Tyrsis. There were doors now and then, all rusted and falling off their hinges, bolts broken and shattered, wooden timbers rotting. Rats stirred from time to time in the darkness, but fled at the approach of the humans and the light.
Time slipped away. Par lost all track of how long they navigated the underground channels, working their way steadily forward behind the squat form of the Mole. He let them rest now and again, though he himself did not appear to need to. The Valemen and the girl carried water and some small food to keep their strength up, but the Mole carried nothing. He didn’t even appear to have a weapon. When they stopped, those few brief times, they sat about in a circle in the near-dark, four solitary beings buried under hundreds of feet of rock, three sipping water and nibbling food, the fourth watching like a cat, all of them silent participants in some strange ritual.
They walked until Par’s legs began to ache. Dozens of corridors lay behind them, and the Valeman had no idea where they were or what direction they were going. The torch they had started out with had burned away and been replaced twice. Their clothing and boots were coated with dust, their faces streaked with it. Par’s throat was so parched he could barely swallow.
Then the Mole stopped. They were in a dry well through which a scattering of tunnels ran. Against the far wall, a heavy iron ladder had been bolted into the rock. It rose into the dark and disappeared.
The Mole turned, pointed up and held one scruffy finger to his mouth. No one needed to be told what that meant.
They climbed the ladder in silence, one foot after the other, listening to the rungs creak and groan beneath their weight. The torchlight cast their shadows on the walls of the well in strange, barely recognizable shapes. The corridors beneath faded into the black.
At the top of the ladder there was a hatchway. The Mole braced himself on the ladder and lifted. The hatchway rose an inch or two, and the Mole peeked out. Satisfied, he pushed the hatchway open, and it fell over with a hollow thud. The Mole scrambled out, Damson and the Valemen on his heels.
They stood in a huge empty cellar, a stone-block dungeon with enormous casks banded by strips of iron, shackles and chains scattered about, cell doors fashioned of iron bars, and countless corridors that disappeared at every turn into black holes. A single broad stairway at the far end of the cellar lifted into shadow. The silence was immense, as if become so much a part of the stone that it echoed with a voice of its own. Darkness hung over everything, chased only marginally by the smoking light of the single torch the company bore.
The Scions of Shannara
Terry Brooks's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene