The tunnel yawned ominously as the blue ball of light floated deeper, before disappearing around a winding corner. Arcturus couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread. Somewhere on the other side lay the wild jungles of the orcs.
He set his jaw and forced himself to step deeper into the darkness. He could not show weakness in front of the others—they would abandon him if he slowed them down.
“What do we do with this pair of idiots?” Sergeant Caulder asked, pointing at the two rebels lying unconscious on the floor.
“We should…,” Prince Harold began, but Sergeant Caulder held up a finger.
For a moment he peered at the pair, then picked up the spear that lay on the ground. He prodded the nearest rebel, and was rewarded with a yelp of pain.
“Cheeky bugger.” Rotter grinned, kneeling beside the rebel and tying his hands with a strip of cloth.
“Help! Hel—”
Rotter clamped a hand over the rebel’s mouth, and together with Sergeant Caulder they succeeded in gagging the struggling man. Rotter followed suit with the second rebel, and then the pair were lifted onto the soldiers’ shoulders—one wriggling like an eel, the other a motionless sack of potatoes.
“Right, let’s get out of here,” Rotter growled.
The nobles released a stream of wyrdlights from their fingers, illuminating the passageway in ethereal blue light. The new glow did little to calm Arcturus’s nerves—the gloom still wavered in the moving light, and the stalactites and stalagmites that pierced the air reminded him of the maw of a giant beast. Worse still, the path angled downward, as if they were descending into the bowels of the earth.
He hesitated as the team moved forward, his earlier courage dissipating as quickly as it had arrived, but soon fear of being left alone in the dark stirred his feet, sending him stumbling forward over the uneven ground.
Finding himself shrouded in darkness at the very back of their band, he released his own wyrdlight, and guided it ahead of him. He concentrated on keeping it steady, distracting himself from the walls that seemed to close in on him with each step.
For a moment he was tempted to summon Sacharissa to keep him company, but after his foot slipped and he found himself knee-deep in a pool of water, he thought better of it. Why subject her to the same, for no more than a modicum of comfort?
Moreover, the others might see it as a weakness—the only other summoner who still had their demon out was Elaine. Better to push on ahead, and only summon Sacharissa if he needed to swim. He shuddered at the thought.
“How much farther?” Prince Harold’s voice echoed from up ahead.
“An hour or so, if I remember correctly,” Edmund replied. “In truth, I have never come this far, or seen the exit on the other side. But the dwarves mapped it out for us.”
“Are you serious?” Zacharias moaned. “What if they lied? What if we’re trapped down here?”
“Better than being trapped up there with the rebels,” Alice snapped. Clearly, the blond-haired noble had worn her patience thin.
So they walked. It seemed a never-ending procession of warped walls and undulating ground, coupled with the echoes of their footsteps and the ceaseless trickle and slosh of water. It was a wonder to Arcturus that the entire place didn’t flood, for the drops of water from the porous rock above soon left him bedraggled. As for his boots and trousers, they were soaked through—the group had been forced to wade up to their waists more than once. Every step then had been a moment of terror, as Arcturus imagined plunging into a hidden pool below.
On and on they went, any attempts at conversation forced, and soon cut short by the gut-churning dread of their predicament. It seemed they were now as deep beneath the ground as Vocans was tall, and Arcturus felt as if the ceilings could collapse, swallowing them in a jumble of jagged rock and creeping water.
Only Rotter seemed in good spirits, though if it was just an act to calm the others, Arcturus could not tell. Whatever the reason, the jaunty tune he began to hum halfway through their journey was swiftly silenced by a cursed order from Zacharias.
Just under an hour later, the tunnel began to bend upward, and Arcturus was not the only one to thank the heavens out loud. It was a blessed relief to begin their ascent, away from the oppressive darkness and the walls that seemed to shrink toward him with every step.
Even so, it soon became hard going, the angle so acute that it became almost a climb. More than once, Arcturus found himself using a stalagmite as a handhold, heaving himself up another steep incline, his hands slipping against the smooth limestone.
Elaine had to be hauled up by Edmund, and Arcturus could see even her little Mite, Valens, tugging at her collar valiantly as he hovered above her.
“Is that light?” Prince Harold called hoarsely.
It was. Barely more than a dim glow, filtering through a crack in the wall of the passageway. And beyond, a solid wall of rock—the end of the line. They had made it.
CHAPTER
25
THE TEAM COLLAPSED ON the ground, careless of the scattered puddles, groaning with relief.
“I tell you what, I’m not looking forward to going back,” Arcturus panted. “The Celestial Corps can pick us up on the other side of that crack.”
“Agreed,” Edmund said. “I’ll have Athena guide them to us when the time comes.”
He tugged forth his scrying crystal, and peered into it. Within the image, Arcturus could see rolling green hills, as the young lord’s demon flew over Hominum’s landscape.
“Guide us where?” Alice asked. “We don’t know where that comes out.”
She sent her wyrdlight to hover beside the crack, a jagged tear in the rock, where Arcturus could see the first signs of life—plush moss living off the meager light from outside.
“Those dwarves did a shoddy job,” Zacharias said, still breathing heavily. “An orc could fit through that gap.”
“My father said it’s well hidden,” Edmund vouched, though his voice was laced with doubt. “And how would an orc know where it leads? If one wandered in here, it would look like this goes down into the depths of the earth.”
To illustrate his point, he threw a stray pebble down the way they had come. There was a faint rattle as it fell, fading but still sounding as the rock bounced deep into the earth.
“One word from those dwarves to the orcs…,” Zacharias muttered.
Arcturus ignored him and turned to look at the others. Rotter had been forced to leave Elaine to her own devices as he dragged the rebel he had been carrying into the darkness to tie and gag him. There were groans coming from where the soldier was hunched over, and Arcturus realized the second captive must have regained consciousness.
He scooted over to Elaine, who had wrapped her skinny arms around her knees and was rocking back and forth. Even little Valens could do little to distract her, though he buzzed to and fro in front of her, as if he wanted her to play.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she replied in a small voice. “Just thinking.”
“We’re going to be fine,” Arcturus said. “We’re miles from the rebels by now.”
“It’s my brothers,” Elaine said, shaking her head. “Our estate is even smaller than Edmund’s, and my parents were away too. This might be happening in my home right now.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Arcturus thought aloud, putting an arm around her shoulders. “They attacked us here because it’s so far from civilization, and there are half a dozen noble children here, including the prince. I doubt they’d split their forces to catch a few sons of an impoverished noble family.”
Elaine smiled at that.
“Sometimes being poor has its advantages,” she said. Arcturus thought she didn’t know what poverty was, but kept it to himself. After all, she would have some idea if they survived the night, when hunger gnawed at her belly and the next meal was nowhere in sight.