Chester bit his lip, dawdling beside the slowly lapping water, which was still agitated from Will's passage through it. He turned to look sheepishly into Drake's single, glowering eye.
"Um… he began, wondering how he could possibly avoid submerging himself in the grimy-looking pool before him. "I can't…"
Drake grabbed his arm, but without any real pressure. "Listen, I mean you no harm. You are going to have to trust me." He raised his chin, looking away from the frightened boy. "It's not an easy thing to put your trust in a total stranger, especially after what you've been through. You're right to be cautious — that's good. But I am not a Styx, and I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. OK?" He brought his singular gaze to bear on the boy.
Close to the man, Chester looked directly into his face and somehow knew that Drake was being straight with him. He was suddenly filled with confidence.
"All right," he agreed, and without further hesitation waded into the dark waters, submerging himself in them. And as he propelled himself through, using the half-swimming, half-running method Will had employed, he didn't allow any doubt to cloud his mind.
On the other side, Will was there to help Chester out.
"You OK?" Will asked him. "You took so long, I thought you got stuck or something."
"No problem," Chester answered, breathing heavily and wiping water from his eyes.
"Now's our chance," Will said quickly, trying to see what lay beyond in the darkness, then glancing back to the pool. There was no sign of Drake, but he wouldn't be far behind. "We should make a break for it."
"No, Will," Chester said resolutely.
"What are you talking about?" Will demanded, already turning and trying to pull his friend with him.
"I'm not going anywhere. I think we're safe with him," Chester replied. He widened his stance to resist Will, who saw he meant what he was saying.
"Too late," Will said furiously as a faint light shone from deep within the water. It was the miner's light on Drake's forehead. Will made a growling noise at Chester just as the man's head and shoulders broke from the surface, and he rose out of it like some apparition, barely disturbing the water at all.
Drake's light was more intense than either of the boys' lanterns and it played on the walls around them. Will could now see that what he had assumed to be moisture was something else altogether. Both walls and the ground upon which the boys stood were streaked with a multitude of fine golden veins, as if a priceless cobweb had been draped over them. The veins glittered with a thousand tiny points of light, suffusing the chamber with a glorious kaleidoscope of warm yellow.
"Wow!" Chester gasped.
"Gold!" Will mumbled in disbelief. He looked down at his arms, noticing they were covered in it, too. They had all picked up a good measure on their clothes and skin from the shining dust floating on the surface of the water.
"'fraid not," Drake said, now standing beside them. "It's only fool's gold. Iron pyrite."
"Of course," Will said, recalling the shiny cube his father had bought him for his minerals collection back home. "Iron pyrite," he repeated, slightly ashamed that he hadn't known better.
"I can show you places where there's gold, places where you can fill your boots," Drake said as he surveyed the walls. "But what's the point if there's nowhere to spend it?" The coldness had returned to his voice. "Sort out your kit" — he pointed at their rucksacks — "we need to get going."
Once the boys were ready, Drake turned and was off again, an imperious figure taking powerful, long strides down the exquisitely golden gallery.
Marching briskly through a confusing maze of rock passages, they eventually came to a ramp leading up to a rough archway. Drake reached through the opening and felt to one side. He pulled out a knotted rope.
"Up," he said, holding the rope toward them.
Will and Chester hauled themselves up the thirty feet of so to the top and waited there, panting from the exertion. Drake followed up with no more effort than it would take a normal person to open a door. The boys found themselves in a sort of octagonal atrium, from which they could see openings leading to other faintly lit spaces. The floor was even and covered with silt, and as Will scuffed his boot on it, he could tell from the echoes that the adjoining rooms were of a reasonable size.
"This'll be home for a while," Drake said, unbuckling the bulky belt around his waist. Slipping off his jacket, he slung it over his shoulder. Then he reached to the contraption in front of his eye and lifted it upward. It was hinged, revealing that his other eye was, in fact, quite normal.
As he stood before them, the boys took in the musculature of his bare arms and how exceptionally lean and honed he was. His cheekbones were prominent, and his face so thin that the muscle groups composing it were almost visible through his skin. And every inch of his flesh, ingrained with dirt and the color of tanned leather, was lined by a mesh of scars. Some were large, bleached-white hyphens that stood proud, while others where much smaller, as if pale filaments had been trailed around his neck and the sides of his face.
But his eyes, overhung by his prominent brow, were intensely blue, and simmered with such an awe-inspiring ferociousness that both Will and Chester found it hard to bear their scrutiny. It was as though their depths divulged a glimpse of some terrifying place, a place neither of the boys wanted to know anything about.
"Right, wait in there."
The boys began to shuffle toward the room Drake was pointing to.
"But leave your rucksacks here," he ordered and, still facing the boys, added, "Everything OK, Elliott?"
Will and Chester couldn't stop themselves from peering past Drake. By the top of the rope, the small girl was poised, stock-still. It was evident that she had never been very far behind, all the time they'd been walking but neither of the boys had noticed her presence until now.
"You are going to restrain them, aren't you?" she asked in a cold, unfriendly voice.
"Not necessary, is it, Chester?" Drake said.
"No," the boy answered so readily that Will looked at him with barely concealed astonishment.
"And you?"
"Uh… no," Will muttered less enthusiastically.
Once inside, they sat unspeaking in the gloom on some rudimentary beds they'd found in there — the only items of furniture in the room. Just long enough to accommodate the bys, there was little width to them, and their surfaces were barely padded at all — like a couple of narrow tables with blankets thrown over them.
As they waited, clueless as to what was going to happen next, the room reverberated with sounds from the corridor outside. There were the muffled tones of a conversation between Drake and Elliott, and then they listened as their rucksacks were upended and the contents tipped out onto the floor. Finally they heard retreating footfalls, then nothing.
Will took a luminescent orb from his pocket and began to absentmindedly roll it back and forth across the top of his sleeve. Now that his jacket had dried, the action dislodged glittering grains of iron pyrite, which scattered to the ground in a small sparkling shower. "Looks like I've been to a disco," he muttered, and then, without missing a beat, he addressed his friend. "What's the deal, Chester?"
"What do you mean?"
"You seem to have thrown your lot in with these people, for some reason. Why do you trust them?" Will demanded. "You do realize they're just going to steal all our food and then ditch us somewhere? In fact, they'll probably kill us. That's the sort of thieving scum they are."
"I don't think so," Chester replied indignantly, frowning.
"Well, what was all that about out there, then?" Will indicated the corridor with a jab of his thumb.