A patriarch made a grab at Chantel and she ducked out of his way. She, Bowser, and Anna stumbled onto the stairs and hurtled, half-falling, down them.
They scrambled away from the staircase, crawling, staggering to their feet, running. It was only when Chantel smacked into a wall—a bumpy, not-quite-right feeling wall which rattled when she hit it—that she stopped.
Anna and Bowser were beside her, panting.
The darkness down here was total. The feeling was damp and small and made Chantel want to scream. There was a smell of mold. The walls felt oppressively close. The one Chantel was pressed against shifted and clanked.
Why aren’t they following us? Chantel wondered.
“Chantel!” Lord Rudolph’s voice boomed down from above. “Chantel, and, er, company. Come back! There are things down there that you don’t want to meet.”
Chantel could well believe it. But there were things up there she didn’t want to meet either.
“Come up here and cooperate,” said Lord Rudolph. “No one will hurt you.”
That, Chantel did not believe. Swords out, gentlemen.
“Can we get anyone to go down there after them?” said Sir Wolfgang.
“Any volunteers?” said Lord Rudolph sardonically.
Silence from the patriarchs.
“No one should go down there without a strong protection spell,” said Lord Rudolph. “We’ll post a guard, in case they come out alive.”
Chantel tried to convince herself that this exchange was merely meant to frighten her and her companions.
It was working.
Something gripped her arm, and she stifled a yelp. It was only Bowser. “Can’t you girls make a light or something?” he whispered.
“It . . . yes,” said Chantel. “Wait.”
This spell was not as easy for her as summoning. She moved away from the not-quite-right wall. She traced the fourth sign in the air. Carefully, she took four steps backward, turned twice, put her hands on her shoulders, and then reached out her right hand. A globe of white light appeared in her hand.
Thousands of empty eye sockets stared down at her.
The narrow corridor was formed of bones and skulls, stacked. Rows of bones were topped by rows of skulls. Then more rows of bones and more rows of skulls, all the way to the ceiling. No wonder the wall had felt not-quite right.
“They can’t hurt us,” Anna whispered. “They’re dead.”
“Right, I know,” said Chantel firmly. “Let’s walk fast.”
They walked away from the stairs and the patriarchs. Chantel held her light out before her. The rows of skulls interspersed with rows of bones went on and on and on. Lightning Pass had been a very big city for a very long time, and millions of people had died in it. And now those millions were underneath it, separated, sorted, stacked, and staring.
“There is another way out of here, isn’t there?” said Anna, speaking aloud. They were well away from the Hall of Patriarchs now.
“Of course,” said Chantel. “There has to be, because of the air flow. Otherwise people couldn’t breathe.”
“The kind of people who are down here aren’t the breathing kind,” Bowser pointed out.
They walked on in uneasy silence.
After what seemed like a very long time, they reached a place where the walls were no longer fitted out with floor-to-ceiling bones. Instead, there were shelves scooped from the stone. Waiting for the people who aren’t dead yet, Chantel thought.
The snake in her head had settled down a bit, but every now and then he gave an uncomfortable squirm that made it hard to focus her thoughts.
Which was probably just as well.
“Chantel, you gave Lord Rudolph a Look,” said Anna.
“He deserved it,” said Chantel.
“Do you think we should try to get Japheth out of your head?” said Anna.
“Not right now,” Chantel snapped. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“He really went into your head?” said Bowser. “It wasn’t just magic?”
“Of course it was magic,” said Chantel. “But he’s in my head, all right?”
Bowser shrugged and looked hurt, and Chantel was annoyed at him for being hurt, annoyed at herself for hurting him, annoyed at him for pretending not to be hurt, and just generally extremely annoyed.
The narrow catacomb ended abruptly, and there was a passage leading off to the left and two leading to the right.
“Which way do we turn here?” said Bowser.
“Let’s go left,” said Anna. “If we turn left whenever we come to a split—”
“Then we’ll go in a circle,” said Chantel.
“Maybe we should take this one. I think it goes up a little bit,” said Bowser.
“What’s that noise?” said Anna.
There was a scraping sound somewhere behind them.
They took the passage Bowser suggested, and quickly.
The scraping came again, followed by an almost imperceptible sound like cloth brushing over stone. It was closer this time.
They broke into a run. Their shadows were huge black shapes sliding along the walls. The thing chasing them sped up, too.
“Left!” Bowser called, and that was how Chantel knew there was another split. She followed the others. The thing was closer still, and now she heard its breathing, in-out-in-out, impossibly regular for any living thing. It sounded like a bellows with pneumonia.
“Right! And then left!” yelled Bowser.
The sound was closer, and Chantel felt ice-cold breath against her neck. Inside her head Japheth squiggled. “Faster!” Chantel yelled. “It’s almost—”
Something grabbed at her shoulder. The light-globe rolled off her hand and went out. She felt cold slime soak through her robe, and there was an algae smell, like a flooded grave. She tore away and put on a burst of speed, shoving Anna forward.
“It’s a fiend!” Chantel yelled.
The fiend screeched, and they all ran faster than Chantel would ever have thought possible.
“Daylight!” Bowser gasped.
And Chantel saw it too, a tiny yellow-white scrap of light up ahead. She felt hope for a second, then two slimy clawlike hands gripped her.
“It’s got—” she yelled, and then the hands were on her neck.
She turned and fought, hard. She hit and kicked. She clawed at the fiend’s horrible green face as its slimy fingers tightened around her throat. Then Bowser and Anna were climbing over her to get at the fiend, grabbing it, dragging it forward, why—?
Chantel understood, just as Anna yelled, “Get it into daylight!”
The three of them fell, got up, and stumbled onward, Anna and Bowser pulling Chantel and all three of them dragging the fiend. Everything was going black at the edges as the fiend strangled her.
Then they reached the sunlight.
Suddenly the horrible hands were gone, and Chantel lay gasping in the patch of daylight on the floor of the catacomb.
“Get up, Chantel, quick!” said Anna.
Chantel got to her feet with difficulty. She and the others staggered up a narrow, uneven set of steps. They squeezed through a gap between two rocks, and out into the bright, bright sunlight. Chantel collapsed on the ground.