Ross Lawhead (45 page)

“It didn't need to be, as long as everyone assumed it was. All these poor people—we thought they were prisoners, but they were just part of the illusion.”

The next thing that anyone knew, Nemain was flying through the air towards Daniel, launching himself like a cat. Daniel registered the movement out of the corner of his eye and by the time he started to turn his head, Nemain was already flying towards him, his clawlike hands slicing the air in front of him.

Everything seemed to slow for Daniel. He tried to duck out of the way but could not move fast enough. He felt the burning pain of four razor-sharp fingertips rake across his upper arm. He screamed and fell.

He landed on the wooden bookrack, knocking it over and sending the enormous painted book crashing to the floor next to Nemain.

The Faerie shrieked in horror and rushed over to the book.

“You! You
creased it!
” Nemain picked it up, smoothed one of the bent pages, and shut it just as Swiðgar's massive hand clutched him around the neck and shoulders. With a fierce and brutal violence, he slammed Nemain's chest into the ground several times, the book bouncing in his hands. He was stopped by Freya's shouting.

“No! Swiðgar, stop! Please, stop!”

Swiðgar relaxed his hold on the Faerie, who gave a whimpering moan and crawled back to the book. He drew it close to himself and curled up into a ball, whimpering slightly.

Daniel writhed in agony on the floor. He would have been crying out with pain, but he couldn't catch his breath. His arm hurt terribly, and he was gripping it as hard as he could, not wanting to let go. He felt Ecgbryt's hands pull his own away and tug at the cloth of his shirt, examining the wound.

Freya stood above them as Ecgbryt untied the strings on Daniel's shirt and opened it slightly. He very carefully pulled Daniel's arm out of its sleeve. There was starting to be a lot of blood. Ecgbryt took the water pouch from his belt and washed the arm. Daniel found his breath finally and let out a howl of pain.

Ecgbryt tried to sooth him with low words while giving his arm a few very careful prods.

“How is he?” Swiðgar asked.

“Not so bad for all of that. Do you hear, boy? You fought with one of the Tuatha Dé and will live to tell the tale. Not many can say as much.” He asked Freya to fetch a small tin from his pack that contained a poultice—a dry, mossy substance with healing properties. He laid that to one side and then pulled a small knife from his belt; he cut a long strip off the bottom of one of the oilcloth blankets, then he placed the mossy material over the gashes on Daniel's arm and bandaged it up. “You know, Ælfred had his share of scars, and more besides. Did I ever tell you—?”

Ecgbryt's voice dulled to a pleasant murmur as Freya turned her attention to Nemain.

“Don't get too close to him,” Swiðgar said. His spear was in his hand, angled downwards once again at the creature. Freya stood just next to the knight and looked down at the Faerie who was sobbing quietly. She frowned at his pathetic shape, chewing her lower lip.

“I don't think that you're a bad person,” Freya said to Nemain. “You love the book because it's beautiful, and it's good to love beautiful things.”

She crouched down and spoke in a lower voice. “But Daniel is worth more to us than the most expensive book in the world, and you damaged him. I think you know where we're going and what we're trying to do. We're trying to make sure that many more people are going to be safe from harm—we're going to try to stop someone from destroying a lot more than just one beautiful book—we're trying to save people. I don't know why you would want to stop us from doing that.”

Nemain's sobs stilled to a broken, jagged breathing, allowing them to hear Daniel's gasps as Ecgbryt helped him sit up. Freya looked into the face of the Faerie for a little while longer and then stood. She walked over to the wall where the silent women were huddled. “You can leave now. The door's open. Follow us, if you like.”

There was no response so she repeated herself with large gestures, and still there was no reaction to this news.

“Can they understand me?” Freya asked, turning to Swiðgar.

“Yes, but they will not listen. Come, let us depart. Their tale is not ended, and we can help them best by doing what we were sent to do.”

Freya joined the others at the door. Ecgbryt packed up his things, stowed his weapons, and then lifted Daniel to his feet.

Swiðgar backed away from the now shuddering Nemain.

As they stood in the doorway, about to pass into the large, dry tunnel behind it, they heard a hacking cough and the sound of a weak voice trying to be strong.

“Everything will be destroyed in time. Nothing lasts forever.

The only freedom is death—and the only escape is to hell!”

4

Freya's head was still spinning with the excitement of discovering the door's secret and Nemain's final attack, so she didn't notice the peculiar walls of the new tunnel until they had been walking for several minutes.

“Bricks!” she exclaimed. “It's a red-brick tunnel. Finally —civilisation!”

“Yeah,” groaned Daniel. “And it smells
terrible
!”

He was right. In fact, the farther on they went, the worse the smell became. It was a decaying, sewage-like smell that stuck at the back of the throat, plugging the nose and burning the eyes.

And then something odd happened—the tunnel stopped. There was no wall in front of them, just a gap in the floor and beyond it a black emptiness that looked so thick you could almost reach out and touch it. They walked to the edge and held their lanterns out into the inky air and tried to make out any detail possible, but it was no good. The light was completely eaten up by the void.

“Listen,” said Daniel, “do you hear that?” They all stilled their breathing and strained their ears. There was a distant
shh-shh
sound, like water falling a very short distance. It seemed to come from somewhere in the emptiness below.

“Look!” exclaimed Freya, as she glanced downwards. “Steps!

Iron steps! It's a ladder!”

Below them were long strips of metal with griddle designs that had been fixed into the side to the sheer cliff face. The step had been joined by two sturdy handrails that ran alongside them. Before anyone could do or say anything, Freya had grabbed the lantern that Ecgbryt was carrying and had started down them.

“Does it go far?” Ecgbryt asked.

“It's hard to tell. I can't see the bottom,” came the reply from the darkness. “I'll keep going until I run out of rungs. Oop—okay, that's it. I'm at the bottom. It's a drain or a sewer or something!” she shouted. “It's made of good old red bricks and mortar!” She held the torch above her head and found that she was standing on a ridge, below which ran a dark, murky water through a round channel. Torchlight glinted off of a part of the opposite wall, showing glazed tiles. “We're almost home,” she said to herself. “We must be.”

The man-made bank turned slightly, following the inside curve of the sewer. She followed it around a few steps to see if she could find anything else.

“Don't stray too far, lass,” she heard Swiðgar call from above her.

Daniel's feet slapped down behind her and he picked up a torch and went towards her. “Freya?”

She turned to face him. “We made it, Daniel,” she said in a low voice. “Look at these bricks! We made it back to the real world.”

Daniel looked at Freya looking at the walls around her, her face eager. “Maybe one of these tunnels leads out—they'd
have
to, right? No one builds this without a way out—that's impossible.”

“Freya,” said Daniel, sounding more appalled than she thought he should. “We can't leave now. They
need
us. We're the mortals, remember? They can't destroy it without us. They—think of everyone in Niðergeard surrounded by the yfelgópes and think what will happen if we fail!”

“I know that!” Freya declared defensively. “I didn't say that I wanted to abandon them—I only meant that maybe we don't have to backtrack all the way back to Niðergeard to get home.”

“Fine. But you have to, you know, finish something before it's over.”

“
I know that
, Daniel.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Lifiendes,” Swiðgar said behind them. “Come now, don't wander off.”

They regrouped. “Well,” said Daniel, “where to now?”

The platform that created the ridge extended in two directions. There were no markings anywhere; neither way seemed any more promising than the other.

“On the one hand,” Daniel began, “the river, or sewer or whatever, looks to be going that way. It leads somewhere, obviously.

Another river or an ocean or wherever those things go.”

“A water treatment plant, perhaps?” Freya suggested hopefully. “Isn't that where all sewers go?”

“The soul box won't be in a water treatment plant,” Daniel said. “It's more likely to be somewhere away from anyone who could just stumble upon it. I think it's this way—against the flow.”

“But we've been following the water all this time—it's what Ealdstan told us to do. Why abandon that now?”

The knights exchanged a look. Freya saw that a decision was made between them without even speaking.

“We must divide our party,” Swiðgar announced. “One of us will go with one of you.”

“What?” blurted Freya. “But that's the
worst
thing that we could do!”

“We are close—too close to go slowly. If we went the wrong way, our blunder could alert those guarding the heart and we would have lost the element of surprise that we desperately need for this to work.”

“But we only got this far because we all stayed together! Would we have gotten past the gnomes and the Faerie if it were just two of us? What if there's an even bigger test coming up?”

“We'd either of us be able to handle it,” Daniel said. “So long as we have the element of surprise.”

Freya scowled. “If something happened, then the other two would be too far away to help. We could lose everything.”

Swiðgar looked at her with an immovable expression.

“What if there are more splits? Is each of us going to end up going alone?”

Swiðgar shrugged. “It may come to that.”

“It's stupid.”

“It is what we are doing.”

They decided that Ecgbryt would go with Freya, and Swiðgar with Daniel. They divided the provisions in their now very light packs and prepared to separate. Freya had a sad, reluctant look on her face, contradicted by Daniel's confident expression.

“We'll meet again,” Daniel said, sticking out his hand.

Freya hugged him. “Be careful,” she said.

They parted and, without backwards glances, went their separate ways.

5

Daniel and Ecgbryt walked down the tunnel, along with the flow of the sewer water. The walkway they were on took several sharp turns and sometimes the stream they followed moved fast, other times it moved slowly. A few times they passed a couple of deep, square pools of water, but the walkway never branched. They didn't go up, and didn't go down, just kept snaking through the darkness.

They had been walking for quite a long time when the section of the walkway they were on collapsed beneath their feet. It felt as if a rug had been pulled from beneath them—there was only the slightest sound of crumbling stone, and then they were falling. Daniel spent a frantic few moments clawing for handholds and kicking his feet against the shifting stone helplessly before they came to a stop.

“Are you hurt, æðeling?” Ecgbryt asked.

“I don't think so,” Daniel replied. He had lost grip of his lantern, but it was lying quite near him. He checked himself for damages, but beyond the buzz of adrenaline, there was nothing.

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

He rolled over to pick himself up. Ecgbryt had already made it to his feet and was looking over the collapsed section of the bank.

Coming to stand next to him, Daniel gazed up at a large scoopedout area where the path they were walking had been, and beneath it, a pile of rubble. It looked pretty impossible to get back up.

“It would seem,” stated Ecgbryt, “that our best course would be to follow the burn with an eye to the path. If it wanders from us, then we will find a way to pursue it. But for now we must ensure our way is fast. I fancy that path fell by design, not by accident, and that our steps are not going unnoticed.”

They gathered themselves quickly and moved on without a word more. They were walking along in the sludge now, so their progress was unsteady at first in the slippery canal but then more sure—the sewage water pulled at their feet, urging them faster and faster onwards.

6

Freya and Swiðgar crept up the tunnel, against the flow of the water.