Lloyd Alexander - The Book of Three

Despite her chattering, Eilonwy kept a rapid pace. Taran bent close to the ground, moving half by touch, keeping his eyes on the faint glow; he skidded past sharp turns, fetched up against rough walls, skinned his knees, then had to move twice as fast to regain the ground he had lost. At another bend in the passageway, Eilonwy's light wavered and dropped out of sight. In the moment of darkness, Taran lost his footing as the ground rose steeply on one side. He fell and rolled. Before he could recover his balance, he was sliding rapidly downward in a shower of loose stones and earth. He collided with an outcropping of rock, rolled again, and dropped suddenly into the darkness.

He landed heavily on flat stones, legs twisted under him. Taran climbed painfully to his feet and shook his head to clear it. Suddenly he realized he was standing upright. Eilonwy and her light could not be seen. He called as loudly as he dared.

After a few moments he heard a scraping above him and saw the faint reflection of the golden ball. "Where are you?" called the girl. Her voice seemed quite distant. "Oh― I see. Part of the tunnel's given way. You must have slipped into a crevice."

"It's not a crevice," Taran called. "I've fallen all the way down into something and it's deep. Can't you put the light into it? I've got to get up again."

There were more scraping noises. "Yes," Eilonwy said, "you have got yourself into a mess. The ground's all broken through here, and below there's a big stone, like a shelf over your head. How did you ever manage to do that?"

"I don't know how," replied Taran, "but I certainly didn't do it on purpose."

"It's strange," Eilonwy said. "This wasn't here when I came through the first time. All that tramping must have jarred something loose; it's hard to say. I don't think these tunnels are half as solid as they look, and neither is the castle, for the matter of that; Achren's always complaining about things leaking and doors not closing right…"

"Do stop that prattling," cried Taran, clasping his head. "I don't want to hear about leaks and doors. Show a light so I can climb out of here."

"That's the trouble," the girl said. "I'm not quite sure you can. You see, that shelf of stone juts out so far and goes down so steeply. Can you manage to reach it?"

Taran raised his arms and jumped as high as he could. He could find no handhold. From Eilonwy's description, and from the massive shadow above, he feared the girl was right. He could not reach the stone and, even if he could have, its sharp downward pitch would have made it impossible to climb. Taran groaned with despair.

"Go on without me," he said. "Warn my companion the castle is alerted…"

"And what do you intend doing? You can't just sit there like a fly in a jug. That isn't going to help matters at all."

"It doesn't make any difference about me," Taran said. "You can find a rope and come back when things are safe…"

"Who knows when that will be? If Achren sees me, there's no telling what might happen. And suppose I couldn't get back? You'd turn into a skeleton while you're waiting― I don't know how long it takes for people to turn into skeletons, though I imagine it would need some time― and you'd be worse off than before."

"What else am I to do?" cried Taran. Eilonwy's talk of skeletons made his blood run cold. He recalled, then, the sound of Gwyn the Hunter's horn and the memory of it filled him with grief and fear. He bowed his head and turned his face to the rough wall.

"That's very noble of you," said Eilonwy, "but I don't think it's really necessary, not yet, at any rate. If Achren's warriors come out and start beating the woods, I hardly think your friend would stay around waiting. He'd go and hide and find you later, or so I should imagine. That would be the sensible thing to do. Of course, if he's an Assistant Pig-Keeper, too, it's hard to guess how his mind would work."

"He's not an Assistant Pig-Keeper," Taran said. "He's…well, it's none of your business what he is."

"That's not a very polite thing to say. Well, nevertheless…" Eilonwy's voice dismissed the matter. "The main thing is to get you out."

"There's nothing we can do," Taran said. "I'm caught here, and locked up better than Achren ever planned."

"Don't say that. I could tear up my robe and plait it into a cord― though I'll tell you right away I wouldn't enjoy crawling around tunnels without any clothes on. But I don't think it would be long enough or strong enough. I suppose I could cut off my hair, if I had a pair of shears, and add it in― no, that still wouldn't do. Won't you please be quiet for a while and let me think? Wait, I'm going to drop my bauble down to you. Here, catch!"

The golden sphere came hurtling over the ledge. Taran caught it in mid-air.

"Now then," Eilonwy called, "what's down there? Is it just a pit of some kind?"

Taran raised the ball above his head. "Why, it's not a hole at all!" he cried. "It's a kind of chamber. There's a tunnel here, too." He took a few paces. "I can't see where it ends. It's big…"

Stones rattled behind him; an instant later, Eilonwy dropped to the ground. Taran stared at her in disbelief.

"You fool!" he shouted. "You addlepated …What have you done? Now both of us are trapped! And you talk about sense! You haven't…"

Eilonwy smiled at him and waited until he ran out of breath. "Now," she said, "if you've quite finished, let me explain something very simple to you. If there's a tunnel, it has to go some place. And wherever it goes, there's a very good chance it will be better than where we are now."

"I didn't mean to call you names," Taran said, "but," he added sorrowfully, "there was no reason for you to put yourself in danger."

"There you go again," Eilonwy said. "I promised to help you escape and that's what I'm doing. I understand about tunnels and I shouldn't be surprised if this one followed the same direction as the one above. It doesn't have half as many galleries coming off it. And besides, it's a lot more comfortable."

Eilonwy took the glowing sphere from Taran's hand and stepped forward into the new passageway. Still doubtful, Taran followed.

AS EILONWY HAD SAID, the passageway was more comfortable, for they could walk side by side without crouching and scuttling like rabbits in a warren. Unlike those of the upper galleries, the walls were lined with huge, flat stones; the ceiling was formed of even larger stones, whose weight was supported by upright slabs set at intervals along the square corridor. The air, too, smelled slightly better; musty, as if it had lain unstirred for ages, but without the choking closeness of the tunnels.

None of this comforted Taran greatly. Eilonwy herself admitted she had never explored the passage; her blithe confidence did not convince him she had the slightest notion of where she was going. Nevertheless, the girl hurried along, her sandals tapping and echoing, the golden light of the bauble casting its rays through shadows that hung like cobwebs.

They passed a few side galleries which Eilonwy ignored. "We'll go straight to the end of this one," she announced. "There's bound to be something there."

Taran had begun wishing himself back in the chamber. "We shouldn't have come this far," he said, with a frown. "We should have stayed and found some way to climb out; now you don't even know how long it will be before this passage stops. We might go on tramping for days."

Something else troubled him. After all their progress, it seemed the passageway should now follow an upward direction.

"The tunnel's supposed to bring us out about ground, "Taran said. "But we haven't stopped going down. We aren't coming out at all; we're only going deeper and deeper."