Ian Irvine - Rebellion

He took another step. The door was on his left. He pushed it open. “Glynnie, Benn?”

They came up.

“Go through.”

“But, Lord…” said Glynnie. “What about you?”

“Now!”

They went through. The pack leader was up on its toes, its tongue out. Rix swung the torch back and forth, but this time the beast’s eyes didn’t follow. It was a bad sign. It had his measure and was getting ready to attack.

Now! And if he was wrong, it was all over. He swung the blazing torch around, turned on the balls of his feet and tossed it out and down towards the bottom of the steps. The pack charged. He hurled himself through the door.

“Hold it shut!” he panted, taking hold of the door and forcing it closed.

The pack was clawing at the door when an enormous thudding boom was followed by a blow on the door that burst it wide open and hurled Rix, Glynnie and Benn six feet backwards. Tongues of fire licked in, then a rolling blast of sulphurous heat. The pack leader tumbled past them, its fur blazing, snapping uselessly at the flames and howling in agony. It raced down the tunnel, lighting the way for a few seconds, then disappeared.

Rix heaved the door shut and slumped against it, panting.

Glynnie was staring at him, wide-eyed. “Lord, I didn’t know you could use magery .”

“I can’t. Stink-damp is heavy and it pools in low places. I tossed the torch down to the bottom, praying it would be thick enough there for it to explode.”

“And you saved us, Lord.” The light was back in her eyes. The belief that he could do anything.

“Not yet. The enemy will send people to investigate. We’d better get going.”

The hero-worship made him acutely uncomfortable, nonetheless there was a kind of solace in doing his duty by Glynnie and Benn. Without them, he would have hurled himself at the shifters in a suicidal attack.

They crawled through another fissure that appeared to have opened recently, then continued along one passage after another. The air reeked of burnt fur for a while, though they did not see the shifter again.

“Do you think it’s dead?” said Benn.

“Yes, lad.” Rix put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m sure it is.”

But there would be others, and soldiers, too. The enemy did not give up.

“I knew you could do it, Lord,” said Benn. “And… and you can save Hightspall, too.”

“Don’t start that again,” Rix growled.

“But it’s true,” said Benn, bewildered. “You’re strong and clever and brave, and Hightspall needs you, Lord. Why can’t you see?”

“Benn!” said Glynnie.

They continued in an uncomfortable silence. Benn was plodding now.

“Anyone smell water?” Rix said after several minutes. “Benn?”

“Sorry, Lord,” said Benn after a long pause.

“I think… the lake is this way,” said Glynnie, pointing to a passage that went left, sloping gently down.

“How can you tell?” Rix did not like being underground and had no idea which way to go.

“It feels colder and danker… and there’s a rotting smell.”

After the tidal wave and the brutal enemy onslaught, the main things rotting in the lake would be bodies. “We’re still under the palace, so it can’t be more than a few hundred yards to the water. Let’s try it.”

Shortly they came to a broad crack running across the passage; the floor on the other side had also dropped a foot. The crack was only three feet across but the bottom could not be seen.

“Jump,” said Rix.

Benn leapt across but Glynnie, so brave in every other way, baulked at the gap.

“It’s only a yard,” said Rix.

“I can’t do it.”

“Come on, Sis,” said Benn.

She tried to jump, froze on the edge and teetered there, her arms windmilling.

“Sis!” screamed Benn.

Rix dived for her, caught her with his good arm, swung her around and, before she could resist, heaved her across.

He sprang over. “Come on.”

Glynnie did not move. She was looking up at him, tears filling her dark green eyes. Rix pretended he hadn’t noticed.

Further down, they entered an ancient drainage line built from neat stone blocks. Puddles of water lay here and there, and scatters of rotting fish.

“This must date to Cythian times,” said Rix, noting the quality of the stonework. “That means it’s more than two thousand years old,” he explained to Benn.

“What are the fish doing here?” said Benn.

“The great tidal wave forced lake water right up these drains, lad. In places, it squirted up through the lawn in fountains twenty feet high. We could find anything down here.”

Benn shivered and took his sister’s hand. Rix wished he hadn’t said anything when, several minutes later, they turned a gentle bend and found a tangle of broken bodies lodged in a collapsed section of the wall.

As they edged by, Glynnie put her hand over Benn’s eyes. He tore it away.

“Got to see everything,” he said. “Got to know what happened.”

Rix did not look, for fear he would recognise people from the palace. Too many good memories had been destroyed in the past few days; he wanted to preserve the few he had left.

“I can hear waves breaking,” said Glynnie. “Lord, we must be near the lake.”

“Carefully,” said Rix. “They’ll have guards along the shoreline, and they may have located all the tunnel exits by now.”

But before they had gone another fifty yards Rix realised that the enemy could not have discovered this exit. The rest of the tunnel was full of water; the outlet must lie beneath the lake. And surely the pursuit could not be far away. The stink-damp explosion would have shaken the whole palace.

“Can either of you swim? You, Glynnie?” Rix could not resist adding, “You said you could do everything.”

“I can swim a bit,” she said, gnawing her knuckles. “Old Rennible taught me when I was little.”

The former Master of the Palace, a gentle and kindly old man. The chancellor had hanged him from the front gates along with the lord and lady, plus all the other heads of Palace Ricinus. Guilty, innocent, it mattered not, as long as the lesson was taken. When a great house fell, everyone who had belonged to that house, or served in it, fell with it.

“How far can you swim?” said Rix.

“Twenty yards.” She faltered. “But I never swum underwater.”

“What about you, Benn?”

“I can learn,” said Benn, uneasily.

“There’s no time to teach you.” Rix looked up the tunnel, then down at the dark water. “I can’t see any light, though it can’t yet be dark outside.”

“Does that mean it’s a long way to the end?” said Glynnie.

“Could be. Or it could be deep underwater. The lake’s full of churned-up mud; you can’t see far at all. I need to know how far it is to the outlet — if it’s more than forty yards, we’ll run out of air getting there.”

She also scanned the conduit behind them, swallowing. “Can you swim through to check?”

“It’d take too long.” Rix was infected by her unease. How long before the pursuit found them? He frowned, rubbed his jaw. “I can’t take you both at once. If we lose contact I’ll never find you again.”

“Take Glynnie,” said Benn. “I’ll be all right.”

Memories of the time Rix had lost contact with Tali in a lake out in the Seethings still burned him. She had been within seconds of drowning and it had been his fault. “You’re smaller. It’ll be easier if I take you first.”

“Where would you leave him when you get out?” said Glynnie. “You can’t take him to shore; there’ll be guards everywhere.”

“I don’t like either option,” said Rix. “What do you think, Benn? If I take Glynnie first, will you be all right by yourself? It’d only be for five minutes.”