Up ahead stood a massive wall with a small black opening—a gooseneck. He took them through the narrow archway, past the gate, winding left, then right. The corridor was lightless and unguarded, the gates left open. In their panic, the people were avoiding the narrow passages in favor of the corridors that led directly to the surface. He guessed the older boy had come this way to get himself as far as possible from the Priory. He was an escaped prisoner and the underground city was a perfect place to hide as he fled.
The passage opened into a wide, smoke-filled corridor. The boys walked shoulder to shoulder, not wanting to lose contact with each other, Ren with a hand on Adin’s shoulder, feeling the sweat drip off his friend’s neck. The caverns were growing warmer, the smoke thicker. The crowds thinned as they pressed deeper into the Hollows. Ren and the two boys passed unmolested through the goosenecks, but the smoke at the end of the last was so dense they could hardly see. They clutched fabric, torn from their shirts and wetted, to their mouths and noses. They wiped their eyes, but the sting was maddening.
The smoke churned, caught in an unseen draft. Ren pushed onward, but something held him back: Kollen’s arm across his chest. “There.” The older boy pointed through a patch of smoke, across a bridge, at a doorway.
The path was unguarded, but smoke poured from the Priory. The darkness beyond the door flickered red and orange.
“Are we really going in there?” Adin asked.
“Do we have a choice?” Ren had to find Tye. He tore a fresh strip from his tunic and covered his face again. He put his shoulder down and barreled toward the door. It gave way, hotly, to a plume of smoke and fire. Ren was aware of Kollen and Adin behind him, dimly, the sound of their coughing cutting through the gloom.
Inside, smoldering embers and fallen beams littered the corridors and fire rippled across the ceiling, but the stones held. The Priory’s walls were rock, but the substructures, the floors and ceilings, were wood. The boards were alive with flame, the heat intense. Up ahead, the body of a boy lay crushed under a fallen beam. Somewhere, from inside the Priory, a voice cried out, “Help!” followed by a single long shriek. A boy emerged from the smoke, his body black with soot, his hair on fire, skin peeling at the neck. He plowed directly into Ren, his hot breath exhaling into Ren’s mouth as the two collided. The boy was unrecognizable—the fire had taken his face from him, robbed him of his voice—but Ren tackled him and beat the flames out as the boy screamed. A second shadow emerged from the smoke. “Kollen, get them out of here,” Ren demanded. Kollen picked up the burnt boy and slung him over one shoulder while he pulled the other by the scruff of his neck, and led them both toward the entry.
Ren tried to orient himself.
The Priory felt alien, changed, but not only by the fire and smoke. Not even a month had passed since he had last been there, but the place felt different, the corridors smaller, the ceilings lower.
Down the hall Ren and Adin found two more boys huddled in their cells, Nix and Benk, neither boy older than ten. Ren pulled them out of their cells, and Adin started to ferry them to Kollen, who would show them the route to the surface. But both boys made it only a few steps before stopping. “You’re looking for survivors?” Benk asked.
“As many as we can,” said Adin.
“I’ll help you,” said Benk, and Nix nodded too. Four of them would be able to cover more ground. So they did, scurrying through the Priory’s serpentine corridors, moving beams and leaping across gaps in the floor. They found Aric dead in his cell, only seven years old—choked to death on smoke, probably. Geb was dead too, his head crushed by a fallen door. A second body lay at his feet, the face burnt beyond recognition. Is that you, Tye? Ren couldn’t tell. Keep looking. Keep looking as long as you can.
He found three more boys, including Carr Bergen. “Where is everyone?” Ren asked.
“The guards bolted when the fire started,” Carr said. “They left us to die in our cells. Everyone in the refectory escaped.” He scowled at Kollen, who joined them once more. “They left without opening our cells. He left.” Carr pointed at Kollen.
“I saved my own ass,” Kollen said. “Nothing wrong with that. I should have kept going when you two found me. Now we’re all going to die in here, isn’t that just roses?”
Ren pushed past the older boy, leading Carr and the others out to the hallways. They clambered up steps into the practice hall and found two more boys huddled in a corner, half dead from smoke. Ren could not recall their names, but he guessed they were nine or ten. The pair was sitting on a half-burnt rug, brandishing wooden swords. Ren reached out a hand to pull them up, moving more quickly now, not stopping to talk. They went up and down the hallways, beating down doors and freeing whomever they could. They searched the crypt and the passages beneath the Priory.
“We should leave,” Adin said, watching the flames creeping down the hall toward them.
“Not yet. I have to make it to the roof; perhaps she was sent to the Sun’s Justice.”
The boys passed the crude lesson rooms, the scrolls now on fire, and then the armory, where the wooden swords were now embers, the racks turned to ash.
They found only dead bodies on the third level, a single living boy on the fourth. They climbed to the fifth level, running past the last rows of cells, all empty, or else their occupants were dead. They were twelve now in Ren’s little group, twelve boys from how many he could not recall.
The refectory was empty, its stone construction and spare decoration saving the chamber from the flames. The great cauldron was still there, the long table and hard, flat benches, the bronze cups and wooden plates. He kicked a bench and watched it tumble.
“Tye’s not here, not alive at least,” Adin said, grabbing Ren’s arm. “Let’s go before the rest of us are dead too.”
Ren searched the boys’ faces. Some were scared, others eager to continue their search. “There’s just the roof, let me look,” Ren said, breaking loose of his friend’s grip and heading toward the stair that was always guarded but now stood open. Where did you go, Tye? He dashed up the steps, skipping one, and then two at a time, stretching his gait as wide as he could manage. The door at the top was unbolted, the place where the guards stood now empty. He pushed the massive wooden leaf aside. Smoke whirled in the doorway, the sun illuminating the roof. He saw the place where he had stood in the light. The nest of shafts and wells that fed light and air into the Priory were empty save for columns of smoke and ash. Ren’s heart broke at the sight of the empty roof.
No Tye.
Did she escape? Did the flames claim her, or did something else happen to his friend?
Ren hobbled, alone, down the winding stair.
“There’s no one—” Adin started.
“I know,” Ren said. “Tolemy’s house is empty.”
Ren led the survivors down the twisting steps, past the cells, through the training rooms, and out toward the bridge. He stood at the door, counting the boys, marking each as they left the Priory and crossed the bridge over the chasm. When he was sure they were all out, when he was certain they were all safe, he glanced one last time at the passage, his gaze fixed upon the corridor that led to the Prior Master’s chambers.