Chantel loved swimming. It was almost like flying. But she didn’t much care for being underwater.
Nonetheless, all the girls and Franklin practiced diving deep, and staying under as long as they could. Chantel disliked the feel of the water pressing in on her, and being so far down frightened her.
But she was desperate to find out what was happening in the city. And so she swam deeper and deeper, searching for the entrance to the underwater tunnel.
She groped in the darkness. Her ears rang and she saw deep red flashes at the corners of her eyes. And something moved toward her . . .
“Are you summoning me for a third time, sorceress?” Queen Haywith’s voice rippled through the water.
“No!” said Chantel, her voice coming out in bubbles. “I mean, no, thank you. Not yet. Go away, please, and when—if I need you, come again. Thank you.”
She was out of air. She fought her way to the surface.
She hadn’t found the tunnel, and the thought of being trapped in it terrified her. She was going to have to wait for Lightning to wake up.
Chantel had never seen Anna so excited about anything as she was about inventing the new Buttoning. The other girls caught the excitement from her, and they worked for hours on end, practicing new signs and new combinations of magical ingredients.
There would be no drawing signs on the cobbles with their feet. The cobbles were deep underwater.
Chantel told the others how she’d felt the interconnectedness of the switches, and the whole wall. If the girls worked all the spells from a rooftop near Dimswitch, and if Chantel herself touched the wall, it might be enough.
When Chantel wasn’t working on the spell, she taught Franklin to read. He was quite disagreeable about it at first, which Chantel supposed she could understand. After all, even the smallest girls could read. It must be embarrassing.
And they explored the caves. Anna sent the younger girls to look for a magical ingredient she said was called amberat, which she insisted could be found sticking into crooked crannies in the upper regions of the cave.
“It’s crystallized pack rat urine,” Anna explained.
The girls howled in gleeful disgust and went running off in search of it.
“Does it really exist?” Chantel asked skeptically. Anna had gotten good at coming up with distractions to keep the girls from running amok.
“Oh yes,” said Anna. “Could you go after them and make sure they don’t fall into anything?”
Chantel went, but slowly. Most of the things to fall into—shafts and potholes and the like—were in the lower, more distant regions of the cave, the ones that hadn’t been worked on by humans.
She wandered off along the green-stone path to think. Weirdly, she didn’t see the round chamber with the painting of the robed men and women. It seemed to have disappeared. She went up through the royal chambers to the rubble that blocked the passage. She looked at it.
What was going on up above? Had the city fallen? Were the streets even now running with blood?
There was no way to know. There was nothing she could do.
She went to help the little girls gather amberat.
The spell still had to be done at dawn, Anna insisted. The rising sun strengthened spells of opening and closing.
At last the dragon woke. Chantel told him about the collapsed passage up to the castle.
“We were wondering if maybe you could help us dig it out,” said Chantel. “If you please.”
The dragon gave a huge yawn, showing a flame-lit throat which could have swallowed Chantel whole. “Help?” he asked, sounding amused.
And of course it wasn’t help. Lightning did all the work, and the girls and Franklin kept well back as he flung rocks.
Chantel hoped it wasn’t too late to save the city.
They packed up all their magical equipment and ingredients. And they followed the end of Lightning’s tail as he snaked his way up through passages that began to look more and more like a part of the city of Lightning Pass, until finally they came out in the castle cellars, deep inside Castle Rock.
The castle cellars were very ancient, and had several layers, starting with sub-sub-sub-basements. The children passed through dungeons where long-forgotten skeletons were manacled to the wall, and Chantel was uncomfortably reminded of fiends. They passed through an armory, stripped bare of everything except broken swords, leather armor that came to pieces in their hands, and a battle-ax with only half a head.
On the next level up there were storerooms . . . these were better stocked. There were barrels of wine and ale, and of flour, and even sugar. There were jugs of honey and bins of potatoes and vegetables. All the things, in fact, that you couldn’t get anymore in the markets of Lightning Pass.
Following the dragon, Chantel and the others climbed the last steep stone staircase out of the basements. They emerged into a tiled hallway. Everything was quiet. Either the city was still unconquered, or . . . Chantel clenched her fists.
There was the painting of Queen Haywith, inexplicably red-haired, being driven from the city by dogs.
They moved as quietly as they could along the deserted corridor. Nonetheless, the dragon’s claws and scales rattled against the tiles, and their own feet echoed loudly in the night stillness. Chantel kept expecting someone to cry “Halt!”
Where was everyone?
They reached the front door of the castle. The great iron hinges creaked horribly. Outside, the moon was full and the night was cold. Chantel guessed it might be halfway between midnight and dawn.
Lightning stepped out onto Castle Peak. And before Chantel could say anything to stop him, he took flight. Chantel watched him soar away over the city.
Meanwhile, the king’s mother sat on a small stool, knitting in the cold moonlight.
24
IN WHICH JUST ONE THING GOES VERY BADLY WRONG
Lady Moonlorn looked up sharply. “So! It’s you again! And how did you get into the castle, eh?”
“We came in by the back way,” said Chantel, curtseying briefly.
She looked down over the city. There were lights here and there in the higher neighborhoods. Down in the lower city, there were many more lights. Some of them were moving. She thought she could see torches reflecting off the floodwaters. A battle? No, it was too quiet for that. Men preparing for battle?
“There is no back way.” Lady Moonlorn reached the end of a row, and set her knitting aside. “Did you just see a dragon? It is not real, you know. It is a symbol of the city’s power, which is to say, my son’s power.”
Lightning was coasting over Seven Buttons. Chantel could feel a connection to him in her mind.
“There are a great many of you,” said Lady Moonlorn. “The king wishes to have you under his protection. You will place yourselves in my care.”
“What’s going on down there?” Chantel asked.
“My son is handling matters,” said Lady Moonlorn repressively.