They walked until Par’s legs began to ache. Dozens of corridors lay behind them, and the Valeman had no idea where they were or what direction they were going. The torch they had started out with had burned away and been replaced twice. Their clothing and boots were coated with dust, their faces streaked with it. Par’s throat was so parched he could barely swallow.
Then the Mole stopped. They were in a dry well through which a scattering of tunnels ran. Against the far wall, a heavy iron ladder had been bolted into the rock. It rose into the dark and disappeared.
The Mole turned, pointed up and held one scruffy finger to his mouth. No one needed to be told what that meant.
They climbed the ladder in silence, one foot after the other, listening to the rungs creak and groan beneath their weight. The torchlight cast their shadows on the walls of the well in strange, barely recognizable shapes. The corridors beneath faded into the black.
At the top of the ladder there was a hatchway. The Mole braced himself on the ladder and lifted. The hatchway rose an inch or two, and the Mole peeked out. Satisfied, he pushed the hatchway open, and it fell over with a hollow thud. The Mole scrambled out, Damson and the Valemen on his heels.
They stood in a huge empty cellar, a stone-block dungeon with enormous casks banded by strips of iron, shackles and chains scattered about, cell doors fashioned of iron bars, and countless corridors that disappeared at every turn into black holes. A single broad stairway at the far end of the cellar lifted into shadow. The silence was immense, as if become so much a part of the stone that it echoed with a voice of its own. Darkness hung over everything, chased only marginally by the smoking light of the single torch the company bore.
The Mole edged close against Damson and whispered something. Damson nodded. She turned to the Valeman, pointed to where the stairs rose into the black and mouthed the word “Shadowen.”
The Mole took them quickly through the cellar to a tiny door set into the wall on their right, unlatching it soundlessly, ushering them through, then closing it tightly behind them. They were in a short corridor that ended at another door. The Mole took them through this door as well and into the room beyond.
The room was empty with nothing in it but some pieces of wood that might have come from packing crates, some loose pieces of metal shielding, and a rat that scurried hastily into a crack in the wall’s stone blocks.
The Mole tugged at Damson’s sleeve and she bent down to listen. When he had finished, she faced the Valemen.
“We have come under the city, through the cliffs at the west end of the People’s Park and into the palace. We are in its lower levels, down where the prisons used to be. It was here that the armies of the Warlock Lord attempted a breakthrough in the time of Balinor Buckhannah, the last King of Tyrsis.”
The Mole said something else. Damson frowned. “The Mole says that there may be Shadowen in the chambers above us—not Shadowen from the Pit, but others. He says he can sense them, even if he cannot see them.”
“What does that mean?” Par asked at once.
“It means that sensing them is as close as he cares to get.” Damson’s face tilted away from the torchlight as she scanned the ceiling of the room. “It means that if he gets close enough to see them, they can undoubtedly see him as well.”
Par followed her gaze uneasily. They had been talking in whispers, but was it safe to do even that? “Can they hear us?” he asked, lowering his voice further, pressing his mouth close to her ear.
She shook her head. “Not here, apparently. But we won’t be able to talk much after this.” She looked over at Coll. He was motionless in the dark. “Are you all right?” Coll nodded, white-faced nevertheless, and she looked back at Par. “We are some distance from the Pit still. We have to use the catacombs under the palace to reach the cliff hatch that will let us in. Mole knows the way. But we have to be very careful. There were no Shadowen in the tunnels yesterday when he explored, but that may have changed.”
Par glanced at the Mole. He was squatting down against one wall, barely visible at the edge of the torchlight, eyes gleaming as he watched them. One hand stroked the fur of his arm steadily.
The Valeman felt a twinge of uneasiness. He shifted his feet until he had placed Damson between the Mole and himself. Then he said, so that he believed only she could hear, “Are you sure we can trust him?”
Damson’s pale face did not change expression, but her eyes seems to look somewhere far, far away. “As sure as I can be.” She paused. “Do you think we have a choice?”
Par shook his head slowly.
Damson’s smile was faint and ironic. “Then I guess there is no point worrying about it, is there?”
She was right, of course. There was no help for his suspicions unless he agreed to turn back, and Par Ohmsford had already decided that he would never do that. He wished that he could test the magic of the wishsong, that he had thought to do so earlier—just to see if it could do what he thought it could. That would provide some reassurance. Yet he knew, even as he completed the thought, that there was no way to test the magic, at least not in the way that he needed to—that it would not reveal itself. He could make images, yes. But he could not summon the wishsong’s real power, not until there was something to use it against. And maybe not even then.
But the power was there, he insisted once again, a desperate reassurance against the whisperings of his ghosts. It had to be.
“We won’t be needing this anymore,” Damson said, gesturing with the torch. She handed it to Par, then fished through her pockets and produced a pair of strange white stones streaked with silver. She kept one and handed him the other. “Put out the torch,” she instructed him. “Then place your hands tightly about the stone to warm it. When you feel its heat, open them.”
Par doused the torch in the dust, smothering the flame. The room went completely black. He put the strange stone between his hands and held it there. After a few seconds, he could feel it grow warm. When he took one hand away, the stone gave off a meager silver light. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the light was strong enough to reveal the faces of his companions and an area beyond of several feet.
“If the light begins to dim, warm the stone again with your hands.”
She closed her hand over his, tight about the stone, held it there, then lifted it away. The silver light radiated even more brightly. Par smiled in spite of himself, the amazement in his eyes undisguised. “That’s a nice trick, Damson,” he breathed.
“A bit of my own magic, Valeman,” she said softly, and her eyes fixed on him. “Street magic from a street girl. Not so wonderful as the real thing, but reliable. No smoke, no smell, easily tucked away. Better than torchlight, if we want to stay hidden.”
“Better,” he agreed.
The Mole took them from the room then, guiding them into the black without the benefit of any light at all, apparently needing none. Damson followed, carrying one stone. Par came after carrying the other, and Coll once again brought up the rear. They went out through a second door into a passageway that twisted about and ran past other doors and rooms. They moved soundlessly, their boots scraping softly on the stone, their breathing a shallow hiss, their voices stilled.
Par found himself wondering again about the Mole. Could the Mole be trusted? Was the little fellow what he claimed to be or something else? The Shadowen could appear as anyone. What if the Mole was a Shadowen? So many questions once again, and no answers to be found. There was no one he could trust, he thought bleakly—no one but Coll. And Damson. He trusted Damson.
Didn’t he?
He beat back the sudden cloud of doubt that threatened to envelop him. He could not afford to be asking such questions now. It was too late to make any difference, if the answers were the wrong ones. He was risking everything on his judgment of Damson, and he must believe that his judgment was correct.