“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Zanna muttered to herself. “Don’t be such an idiot. If you start letting your imagination run away with you down here, we’ll be in trouble for certain.” Instead, she put her arm around her father and guided him toward the nearest dark mouth in the side of the tunnel.
To Zanna’s irritation, the shadowed opening proved to be an alcove, not a doorway. Muttering one of Vannor’s choicest oaths under her breath, she was turning to retrace her steps when the light of her candle caught a stray gleam low in her line of vision: the dull, cold shine of dark and pitted iron. She gave her basket to Vannor, leaving him to lean against the wall for a moment while she peered close to investigate—and almost went sprawling down three deep steps. At the bottom, in the corner of the alcove—not in the center of the wall, where she would have expected it to be—was a narrow wooden door.
It was locked, of course. Given the obvious secrecy of the entrance, Zanna had expected nothing less. All the same, it infuriated her. Because access was denied her, she felt that she must see what was inside—and it never occurred to her that a door, in these eerie depths, might be locked for a good reason: to keep things out, as well as to hold them in. It was irrational, she knew, but suddenly that locked door came to represent all the other deprivations, abuses and insults she had suffered at the hands of the Magefolk since coming to the Academy. It was a symbol of their power over her, of what they had done to her father, and of all they had denied her race. Bracing her feet and putting her shoulder to the door, Zanna gave it a ferocious shove. No one could have been more surprised than herself when it shot open with a protesting creak and pitched her headlong into the blackness beyond.
The candle went out, of course. It fell from her hand, guttered, and rolled away into the darkness. Zanna lay there, shocked and bruised, all the breath knocked out of her. Her righteous anger was suddenly replaced by the chill of fear. What had she done?
But after the events of this night, she discovered a resilience she hadn’t known she possessed. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. How many locked and forgotten chambers must there be in this ancient labyrinth beneath the Academy? The lock was old—it had rusted and rotted, that was all, until even her own slight strength had been enough to open it. Anyway, Zanna—be practical. It was a place to rest.
“Zanna?” It was the querulous voice of an old man—and that frightened her far more than a fall into the darkness. Her dad had always been so vigorous… She’d never thought he would grow old.
“Don’t worry—I’m here. I missed the step, that’s all.” Zanna climbed painfully to her feet, but had no idea which way to go. The darkness was utterly profound. She was glad that she had Vannor to take care of, or she might have been overcome by the sneaking fear that threatened to creep up on her and overwhelm her. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him to strike her a new light—but she remembered that with his injured hand, he would not be able to manage it. Zanna took a deep breath. “Dad—I’m all right, but I lost the candle.
Can you keep talking to me, or calling out, to guide me back to you?”
“Of course I can, lass.” To her relief, he sounded much more like his old indomitable self. “Don’t be afraid, now. Just follow the sound of my voice…” Even though his tones were strained with the effort of fighting the agony in his wounded hand, Vannor had rallied himself for the sake of his daughter. Zanna heard that newfound confidence, and rejoiced.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I met Leynard, and made my original deal with the Nightrunners? It was like this…”
At another time, Zanna might have been enthralled by the tale. Now all her attention was on the sound of Vannor’s voice itself. Following what she profoundly hoped was the direction of the sound, she stumbled forward, her hands groping blindly in front of her. It wasn’t easy. She made several mistakes at first, until the fading of the spoken words proved that she must be going the wrong way. After a time, though, her hearing seemed to have become preternaturally efficient in the absence of her sight. Other senses also came into play—the cold caress of the draft that came through the open doorway on her skin, and the metallic smell of blood that came from her father’s hand.
“And so there we were, all dressed up in our Solstice finery—except for Forral and the Lady Aurian, who’d been out sparring, would you believe—even on a festival day. The crazy fools. Well, your stepmother wasn’t best suited, let me tell you—and when one of the soldiers came to the door and said they’d found a runaway…”
Zanna half-listened to the story. She’d never heard this one before—and it concerned the Lady Aurian. But now it simply served as a beacon to guide her to safety.
“Poor lad—a bondservant they called him, but a better word would have been slave. But the Lady protected him, and cared for him, and took him as her servant—and a good thing too, as it turned out, because in the end, Anvar saved—”
Zanna cursed as she tripped over a step, scraping her already abraded hands and banging her knee painfully. “Dad?” she called.
“I’m here, love.” His voice was comfortingly close—as was the hand that groped for hers a minute later.
Zanna dared not betray her relief—lest he discover how afraid she had been in the first place. “Can you hand me the basket?” she asked him. Once she had grasped it, she groped inside for the spare candles and the tinderbox. It seemed to take endless minutes before she got another candle alight—only to find that it wasn’t much help, because they had strayed into another large chamber. But that was no surprise to Zanna, who had been conscious of the echoes of Vannor’s voice while she had tried to navigate herself out of the room. She simply took comfort in being able to see at all—and, especially, to see her father again.
“Come on, Dad—we’ll rest now.” Zanna guided her father down the steps and into the echoing chamber. Just inside the door, she took him a few paces to one side—to be out of the draft from the entrance, but near enough to it for a quick escape—and eased him down to rest with his back against the wall. Vannor sighed. “That’s better,” he murmured. He accepted the flask from her and took a swig of water, while Zanna rummaged in the basket to find him some bread and cheese. When she turned back to him, he was fast asleep.
Zanna gently freed the flask from his limp hand. She took a drink for herself, nibbled hungrily at a little of the bread, and then settled down to watch over the sleeping merchant. It was surprisingly lonely, being the only one awake in the darkness, but despite her own exhaustion Zanna felt that someone should be keeping watch. Besides, the unnerving atmosphere of the lonely catacombs made it impossible for her to fall asleep. If only she could rid herself of the feeling that she was not alone—that someone, or something, else lurked beside herself and her oblivious father in the darkness. “Well, whatever it is—I hope it knows the way out of here,” she muttered stoutly, trying to stiffen her courage with common sense, “because we need all the help we can get!”
It was no good. As time went on, the feeling grew and grew in her, until the idea of sitting around waiting for some nameless thing to pounce on her became unbearable. And to make matters worse, she was feeling increasing discomfort from the urgent need to relieve herself. Damn, Zanna thought, wishing that she hadn’t drunk that water. This would have to happen now. Where could she go? It seemed an unforgivable sacrilege to use a chamber full of ancient and probably priceless books as a privy. But there was no way in the world that she was going out into that drafty, open corridor, out of sight of her dad. She would simply have to find a corner, she thought, and do her best to clear a space.