Cobweb Empire (32 page)

“Now, here we go, Lordships!” Catrine
exclaimed. “Today the Keep is nearly empty, since the Duke an’ his
dead army had gone off to war—”

“What war, by Jove?” Nathan said.

“Dunno, Lordship, the kitchen staff say they
had gone to take Letheburg, and that the crazy Duke has made a high
and mighty ’Liance—”

“Ignacia!” Amaryllis said. “That is surely
her work! Remember, Nathan, what she said to him, something about
an alliance with the Sovereign. I was so stunned that I paid little
heed to the details of her treachery.”

“Well, well . . .” Lord Woult
mused.

“And anyways,” Catrine continued, “as I say,
the Keep is almost empty an’ lightly guarded. They’d gone off
yesterday, but I waited long enough to make sure, and now is the
best moment to run!”

“Must we really follow your harebrained
scheme to go down into the dungeons and follow some kind of
subterranean hell-maze?” Amaryllis interrupted again. “If you say
the Keep is so lightly guarded now, why not chance an escape past
the walls? I am certainly willing to brave the difficulties of the
forest—”

“There’s been a snowstorm, Your Ladyship,”
Catrine said, scratching her brows with her dirty knuckles. “So
much snow, buckets an’ buckets. The forest is very deep now,
waist-high in some places, and I wouldn’t wanna wade through it if
I were you, or to get lost in all that wilderness.”

“Ah, a pity. . . . In that
case, what are we waiting for? Let us instead descend into your
delightful hell.” And Amaryllis stood up.

H
alf an hour later,
after walking in silence along abandoned unlit corridors of a very
unsightly old portion of the Keep, with Catrine ahead, shushing
them every few paces whenever Nathan made too much noise, they
arrived at a stairwell.

The stairs went down, and they could see it
twisting into a distant well of darkness below. The moon came out,
shining in a clear night sky, and casting even pleats of light
through the narrow slit windows of the outside walls.

“The dungeons are way down there!” Catrine
spoke in a high whisper. “And then, right next to them is where we
get out! It’s a great big—oh, well, you’ll see!”

“I still don’t understand, is there a tunnel
of some sort?” Nathan began.

But Catrine said, “Shush!”

And Lady Amaryllis shook her head in disgust
and simply began walking down each stair, carefully placing each
delicate booted foot forward, and holding on to the walls. She was
still favoring one foot a tiny bit, because of her sprained ankle,
but it had healed enough so that she could keep up a steady
pace.

They went down and down, with just a few
landings to mark lower floors, and eventually the well of darkness
had grown so complete that they could only see a bleak bluish spot
of moonlight if they looked up. After half a dozen floors, they
were now moving entirely by feel, carefully testing each step
down.

“When can we get some light?” Amaryllis
whispered tiredly. “Surely a candle would not kill you, nor would
anyone really see us down here in this abysmal cellar.”

“If your Ladyship
insists. . . .” There was a sound of striking of
flints, and a tiny candle flame bloomed in the darkness. It threw
wild jerking shadows along the circular stone stairwell and
illuminated Catrine’s grubby face, and Nathan’s fierce bearded
visage.

“Much better,” Amayllis said and proceeded
walking down.

“We could still be seen, ’tis true,” Catrine
mumbled. “But it is not as likely now, Ladyship. Besides, we are
almost there.”

“No doubt,” muttered Nathan. “I can just
about hear devils stirring their coals.”

“Oh, no, Lordship!” Catrine said. “Nuttin’
of the kind, don’t you be afeared.”

They reached the next landing, and it was
blessedly the last. It had gotten significantly colder too, if that
was possible, considering the chilly draftiness of the upper
floors. By the light of Catrine’s candle they saw a wide tunnel,
and on both sides, rows of ancient cell doors of partly rotten wood
planks and reinforced iron castings. Some had tiny slits with
vertical bars set in place. Beyond the bars was absolute
darkness.

“What a horrible place!” Amaryllis
whispered, her breath curling in vapor from the cold air. “Are
there any prisoners languishing in those cells?”

“Goodness, no, Ladyship, those are not the
dungeons,” Catrine cheerfully reassured. “That is, they are some
kind of very old an’ rotted leftover dungeons, but they don’t use
’em these days. The new dungeon’s up ahead.”

And indeed, a few turns of the dismal
corridor later, they came upon an opening and beyond it a twilit
great chamber, filled with a remote soft sound. A strong draft came
blowing at them at the entrance.

“Just a minnut.” And Catrine paused right at
the entrance to the chamber and blew out her candle.

“Now why in Heaven’s name did you do that?”
Nathan grumbled.

In the new dismal twilight, Catrine turned
to him, her eyes glittering, and said, “Oh, but we have to do that,
before we go inside! You see, Lordships, there are three very
important rules to going inside the dungeons. The first rule is, we
cannot bring any new light beyond what’s already in there. Not even
a single candle, else real bad things will come to pass!”

And Catrine walked ahead of them into the
dim chamber.

Nathan and Amaryllis found themselves in a
huge cavern. No, this was not a mere cave-like chamber of stone,
something wrought by man, but a genuine subterranean formation, a
pocket of air within the earth, grander than the tallest hall, with
smooth dripstone rocks coming down from the remote ceiling in long
stalactite icicles and rising up in stalagmite columns.

On the side nearest the entrance to the
cavern, there was a long iron-barred enclosure, indeed a cage, with
many divisions, and it was filled with prisoners. Young girls and
maidens, most of them peasants—although there were quite a few
well-dressed maidens among them—were on the other side of the bars,
locked inside, huddled in bundles and shivering from the relentless
cold, and there was no one guarding them.

“Here are the other girls, Lordships!”
Catrine said, blowing on her fingers for warmth.

But Amaryllis and Nathan were not paying
attention. Instead, they both stared in amazement at the opposite
side of the cavern, where, beyond shallow banks, a dark silvery
river flowed, with slow-moving waters and no apparent bottom. It
was the source of that strange whispering sound that they had first
heard upon entering the cavern. Overhead, the stalactites dripped
softly—must have been dripping for centuries—casting droplets of
water onto the river below, and it resonated in delicate tinkling
echoes along the current and the cavern walls.

On a distant wall near the bank of the
river, mounted in a rusted sconce, was a solitary oil-burning
lantern. It was the only source of light, casting a warm golden
halo of steady radiance upon the whole cavern, reaching far and
wide, and giving the ivory stone a delicate blue-green quality of
subtle iridescence.

“Heaven! What an amazing sight!” whispered
Nathan. “How high that cavern ceiling must go!” And he turned to
Catrine. “Give me a candle, girl, I am dying to see the extent of
this place!”

“Oh, no!” Catrine exclaimed and almost
jumped back away from him. “You mustn’t light another light in
here!”

“Say what?”

“Rule two,” sounded a girl’s voice from
fifty feet away, from inside the iron cage enclosure. “You must
never let the lantern light go out, and you must never light an
additional one for as long as
that
one burns. Or at least
that’s what they keep telling us.”

They turned to see the speaker, and there
were at least five girls, who had gotten up to stand, hands holding
the bars. “Enough dawdling, Catrine! Let us out of here already,
before someone comes!” said the one who had just spoken, and
Amaryllis vaguely recognized another girl from the incident on the
road a few days ago.

“Sorry, Sybil, took us a while to get here.
And don’t worry, no one’s coming for hours!” And Catrine ran over
to the great cage and started fiddling with the lock.

“Good Heavens,” Amaryllis said to Nathan
softly, “how many of them are there? Will they all be going with
us?”

The lock was finally picked, and the door of
the cage opened, releasing the girls. Sybil, a freckled redhead
wearing a well cut hooded coat of royal blue, with a nice mulberry
wool scarf tied around her neck, was out first, stomping her feet
and straightening her skirts. After her came another familiar girl,
by the name of Regata, also better dressed than the majority, in a
warm green coat and a fur-trimmed cape-hoodlet.

As Catrine came around with her skillful
lock-picking, the rest of the girls, at least two dozen, started
coming out of the other partitioned enclosures, some looking
frightened, others mostly dazed. A few remained seated in the cage
and shook their heads indifferently when prompted by the others to
follow.

“So, a whole warren-full of Cobweb Brides!”
Nathan remarked. “Whatever shall we do?”

“Don’t worry, Lordships,” Catrine said,
approaching once again, followed by three others. “They are not all
going with us, just Regata and Sybil here, whom you’ve met, and
Faeline, who’s a local. Some of the girls just wanna hide in
different spots around the Keep and bide their time for later, you
know, sneakin’ out. They’re far too afeared of the river.”

“Rule three,” said the girl called Faeline,
a slim tiny blonde in a grimy tattered dress, and then awkwardly
curtsied before Lady Amaryllis and Lord Nathan. “You must never
drink from the river, nor touch its waters. Everyone else is afraid
to come near it. But me, I don’t really care all that much, Your
Lordship, Ladyship, I just really want to get out of here.”

“I see,” said Amaryllis, pulling her warm
burgundy cape closer about her in the cold. “So what exactly is
wrong with that river? And do you mean to tell me we will be going
near it? Dear Heaven, you don’t expect me to
swim?
”

“Oh, no, we’ll be taking the boat.”

“What boat? I don’t see—”

But Catrine pointed across the cavern, and
said, “That one!”

Nathan and Amaryllis saw that at the
farthest end of the cavern, past the watery expanse, the opposite
shore was visible. On the bank, sat a long wooden boat of bright
yellow oak, pulled out of the water and resting on its side against
a stalagmite. Two oars were lying on the floor of the cave
alongside it.

“Let me see if I understand correctly now,”
Nathan reasoned. “We will all of us get inside the boat—after by
some divine miracle it floats across the river and comes to us of
its own volition—and then we set sail along this possibly poisonous
river that mustn’t be touched, into a dark unlit series of abysmal
caves and tunnels that go lord knows where for lord knows how many
leagues under the earth. And
that
is your idea of an escape?
Are you
addled
, girl?” Nathan folded his arms and exhaled in
anger. “Take us back upstairs; at least there are cots and swill
waiting for us.”

“Pardon, Lordship, but the boat will get us
out of here, it is as sure as I got me a nose on ma’ face.” Catrine
fiddled with her satchel, digging around for something. “The whole
reason I had your Lordships come down is ’cause the boat needs you
to operate it.”

“What she’s saying is, the boat may not be
used by anyone but a lord of noble blood, they tell us here,” added
Regata.

“And who are ‘they’ who tell you all this
nonsense?” Amaryllis trained her cold withering gaze upon the girl.
“Who came up with these three idiot rules? The guards? The local
servants? You seriously believe they would tell you things that are
designed to be anything other than a way to keep you here?”

“Indeed!” Nathan began to pace. “If they
tell you not to touch the river, then it may very well be a real
way out of here! As for the extra lights, it’s certainly a way of
keeping you from seeing possibly another exit or some other useful
things to help you escape.”

“That’s sort of what I believe too,” Sybil
said. “Been sitting in that stupid cold cage for days now, with
nothing to do but think. I bet if we light up another candle or
two, it might scare some bats up in the ceiling, no worse. And if
that lantern goes out, well, that’s just giving us an easy way for
us girls to sneak out of here!”

“Well, let’s see indeed what happens if we
take a better look!” Nathan reached for the satchel, pulling it out
of Catrine’s hands, and took out the short tallow candles and the
lantern with the oil flask.

“Oh, Lordship, no, no! You mustn’t! What if
some terrible monstrous thing comes out of the river?” Catrine put
her hands up to her mouth. The other girls who had been wandering
around the cave and heard this pronouncement, squealed, and a few
of them started running for the corridor exit.

“Frankly, I don’t care if a three-headed
behemoth emerges,” said Amaryllis curtly. “He is welcome to eat me
whole, for I am cold and hungry and weary to death of this—all of
this! Proceed, Nathan, do light up this place!”

And Nathan took two flints and struck them
together, while Catrine covered her eyes in fear. He lit the first
bit of candle and gave it to Regata to hold, then another, and
handed it to Amaryllis who took it carefully between two fingers
and held it as far away from herself as possible, so as not to drip
the melting tallow upon her cape. Sybil took the last candle, and
then, with the tip of her candle flame, she lit the wick dipped in
the oil flask, and stuck it inside the lantern which Nathan
held.

With their small individual flames sending
up grotesque shadows in the cavern, they all turned about, looking
in every direction, and then—because the constant gentle sound in
the cavern suddenly started to fade—one by one they all glanced at
the river. . . .