A Cage of Roots (16 page)

In the centre of the cold vale was a single hawthorn tree. It thrust its sharp branches out at an angle from the stones at its base, clawing at the sky with bark the colour of fresh blood. The two brothers began the descent without saying
anything. There was no choice but to follow them.

They stood around the tree, shivering. It took Taig a long time to catch up with them, and no one spoke or even looked at each other as they waited. When the fair-headed giant arrived, he was shockingly pale. His taut skin sagged and his blond hair had whitened and thinned. Benvy went to him, but he waved her away, crossly. His two older brothers were themselves weakened and sickly, but they stared at the youngest with strange expressions.

‘I don't understand,' Taig said meekly. ‘I don't understand why this is happening. This shouldn't be happening to me.'

‘You knew the price, brother,' Fergus said, though confusion was etched on his face.

‘He did not think he would have to pay it,' said Lann, grimly. ‘He thought he'd struck a deal.'

The friends looked at each other and then to the brothers.

‘Taig? What deal?' Benvy asked as tears welled up.

The youngest brother looked at her, and then at Lann and Fergus.

‘I thought they would all fail!' he shouted, and then coughed harshly. A drop of blood hit the ground at his feet.

‘So, it
was
you,' said Lann. ‘You gave Ayla to them.'

Fergus took a step towards him, but was stopped by the hand of his older brother.

‘Yes, I gave her to them! What is she to us but a
curse
!' Taig spat, hacking up more blood. ‘I knew we could go home.
Our
home! And so I used that wench Deirdre to help me to contact them. I told them where she was. And I was promised …'

A fit of coughing cut him off.

‘
You little
…!' Fergus tried again to rush him, but was held firmly by Lann, who pulled the great red head towards him and whispered something. Fergus nodded angrily. They both stooped at the foot of the hawthorn tree, and began to hum.

They began running their fingers along unseen patterns in the stones at the base of the tree, and light shone from their fingertips. There was a heavy
boooom!
as the ground split with a wide yawn. Thick, warm air rushed out of the hole.

‘Go!' Lann ordered the friends. Fergus handed them each their weapon, and gave Sean a long look.

‘It is heavy, lad. But you are strong,' Lann said, pushing the boy towards the opening.

When the three had entered the hollow, they looked back. They each shouted to the uncles to hurry, but in a second the ground shut and they were alone in the dark.

Chapter 12

A Battle Below

T
he three friends now found themselves trapped deep beneath the earth. The ceiling was low in the tight, musty passageway. The walls were a mass of thick, red roots that surfaced from mud and stone, and sank again like the backs of sea serpents. They coiled on the ground, leaving barely any flat surface on which to stand. The three did not move for a few minutes. They hunched quietly in the inky blackness, close to tears.

Sean spoke first: ‘How could he do it? How could he betray her like that?’

For a while there was silence again, none of them knowing what to say, until Finny made a decision. ‘We’ll have to move sooner or later. There seems to be only one way to go – down.’

Feeling with his feet and hands, Finny led the way, with
Sean holding his rucksack for safety and Benvy holding Sean’s. They were completely blind in the dark, so Finny made slow progress, with his hand held out in front. While his sword was deceptively light, and Benvy’s javelin perfectly balanced, they were cumbersome and awkward, and they had to find a way to carry them without taking out an eye or worse.

Sean could barely lift Fergus’s huge hammer. They had to run it through the flap on his rucksack, and he bore the weight painfully on his back as best he could. They shuffled on, bent over under the low roof, as the path sank further down into the bowels of the earth. It was Sean who noticed it first.

‘Finny, your sword!’

‘What?’ Finny asked, holding the blade up. It was odd; he didn’t know what he was looking for at first, but he knew something was different. And then it dawned on him: he could see the weapon as clearly as in daylight, despite being in total darkness. It even gave off a dim light.

‘Uh, Sean. Have a look at that big hammer of yours,’ he said. ‘Benvy, your javelin is at it too!’

Benvy said nothing; she was trying hard not to give in to tears.

Sensing Benvy’s deep upset, Finny said, ‘Benvy, we have to …’

‘I know, I know. I just can’t help …’ she rubbed her eyes
and breathed in to compose herself. ‘He was so nice to me. The whole way, up until the cave. And his last words to me were “Listen to the music”. I thought I must have misheard him, but now … He wanted me to fail. He wanted me to …
die
. I just …’

‘I know it hurts, Benv’,’ said Sean, ‘but we can’t think about it now. He’s out there and we’re in here. We have to find Ayla and get her out. That’s all we can think about.’

Benvy nodded, wiping her eyes with her sleeve again.

‘Right, I’m fine. Let’s go get Ayla and get the hell out of here.’

They continued into the shadows.

The light from their weapons was only very slight, but it was enough to show their immediate surroundings at least. The tunnel was still low and hot, the walls dry and rough, but after twenty minutes of walking they began to notice patterns on the wall. More and more of them appeared as they went: intricate carvings woven together in complex arrangements. Then they noticed the first carved head, with its sharp ears and wide, round eyes. More and more of these appeared, so that the design became more frightening. They decided together not to pay them any more attention. After a time, the tunnel widened a bit, and they were able to stand up straight for the first time. A little further down, they encountered their first branch in the passageway.

‘Well, do we keep going or try this way?’ Sean asked.

No one had an answer.

‘We could split?’ suggested Finny. No one liked this idea, but he persisted. ‘Look, we don’t know where to go. We could get lost forever down here. If we split up, at least one of us has a chance of finding her.’

They couldn’t argue with that logic. Finny volunteered to take the new passage. Benvy and Sean would continue on.

‘If you get into trouble …’

‘I’ll be fine, lads,’ he said, and left.

As soon as Sean and Benvy saw the light in the tunnel ahead, they stopped dead in their tracks and pressed themselves to the wall. Torchlight was coming from around a corner up ahead, where the ceiling rose suddenly tall and the passage widened into a broad chamber. They listened for a while, holding their breath, and then edged forward as carefully as they could.

Benvy risked a peek, slowly moving one eye just past the corner. Another long corridor stretched out ahead, lit by several small torches. Apart from them, it was empty. At the far end was a small hole, just big enough for a person to fit through.

‘The coast is clear,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

They crept silently along the passage to the hole. Inside was blackness.

‘Hang on a sec’,’ said Sean, and fetched one of the torches from the wall. He held it down to the opening and looked inside.

‘It’s just a tiny room,’ he said. ‘No doorways or anything. Not even big enough to stand in.’

Benvy bent down to see for herself. He was right; there was nothing to it – just a pit, like a badger might live in. The only thing of note was a collection of broken pottery shards scattered on the floor at the far end.

‘Hang on,’ she said, taking the torch from Sean. She pushed through the hole and held the flame to the ground. There was something there among the shards, small and black just like them, but of a different shape. It caught her eye, half-buried in the loose muck. She lifted it and blew the dust off.

‘It’s her phone, Sean!’ she said. ‘Dead as a doornail though.’

‘We must be close,’ he said, pulling her out.

Finny was utterly lost. He had taken the new passageway for a good twenty minutes before encountering a series of
new tunnels, shooting off in all directions. Eventually, his route came to a dead end, and he had no choice but to pick one. He chose the archway closest to him for want of a better option, and followed it down and down, veering left and right, then climbing, then falling further. Twice he came to forks and decided on the wider of the two, only to find himself crawling on hands and knees through airless arteries of dust.

Finny came to a point where the path rose steeply and he hauled himself up, arriving into a wider space at last. The air was only slightly less stale here, and he took a moment to rest on the ground. He didn’t allow himself long.
Come on Finnegan,
he told himself and got to his feet. At least here he could stand to his full height. Holding the sword out, he could see that the walls were decorated with the same horrible carvings they had seen before.

The chamber was wide, and he sighed at the sight of yet more passageways. The other end was in darkness, but as he approached slowly he could make out a large crack in the wall ahead, and then noticed that he could continue past it, around a corner. He rounded it into another sizeable room, where the walls held two extinguished torches, still smoking. Finny moved forward and then stopped. His form was suddenly cast in shadow in front of him, as a light appeared from nowhere behind. He spun around
and gasped: two white orbs like headlights shone on him. Below them, a mouth of burning coals opened and seethed at him. Before he could do anything, he was struck across the face by a sharp claw. He fell to the ground unconscious, his torn cheek oozing blood.

There was nowhere else to go but back. Benvy and Sean made their way to the point where they had separated with Finny, more frustrated with every step. After the high of discovering Ayla’s phone, it now seemed like they were starting all over again. But with no other choice, they pushed on down Finny’s tunnel until they came to a collection of passageways.

‘We need to take the first left,’ Sean said.

‘What? Why? Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. We’ll be going back in the right direction then at least.’

Sean lead the way and Benvy followed, impressed by his confidence.

‘Sean,’ she began, as they ducked under low hanging rocks.

‘Yeah?’

‘If we don’t make it out of this …’

‘We’ll make it.’

‘No, but look,
if we don’t
… I want you to know …’ she hesitated.

‘Know what?’ He had stopped.

‘Um … know that you’ll always be …’ she swallowed. ‘You’ll always be a
total
nerdlinger.’

Silently, she berated herself for being such a chicken.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said and started to move again. ‘You’ll always be my best nerdlinger too, Benvy Caddock.’

She smiled and followed him down the tunnel.

After a series of tight turns and drops, they emerged at last to a wide cavity. It was well lit, and they entered carefully, but they found it empty. To the right, the way disappeared back into blackness; straight ahead was the beginning of another passage. It was the sight to their left, however, that made them gasp.

It was a gigantic door, adorned with a relief that was both incredible and terrifying in equal measure. It featured thousands of gremlin-like creatures – the same ones that decorated the wall murals throughout the warren of tunnels. They were all writhing on top of one another and pointing up. At the top, there was a tree, from which spilled a mess of endlessly long roots, flowing down the face of the door and ending at the goblins’ long fingers. From the other side, noise filtered through, too muffled to discern, but loud enough that they knew this was, in all likelihood, where they would find Ayla.

‘What do we do now?’ Benvy asked. ‘I’m guessing we don’t just knock! And where the hell is Finny? I thought we would have found him by now. I hope he’s okay!’

‘Let’s go straight ahead,’ replied Sean, his authority growing. ‘We’ll see if there’s another way in to whatever is behind that door.’

They crossed the wide chamber as quickly as they could, and hurried under the low vault of the adjacent passage. It narrowed again to little more than a crawlspace, but the noise didn’t abate, and so they were sure they had made the right decision. Eventually, they pushed through, into another large hollow. Sean waved the weakening torch around to inspect. At the far end, there was a pool of black water. Just at its edge, half-submerged, was the grizzly sight of a mutilated carcass – that of a massive toad. It had been stripped to the bare skeleton but for its large head, which remained, dead-eyed, a fat tongue spilling from its mouth.