He stiffened against the weight of his suspicions as they bore down on him. For an instant, he thought he was crazy, that he should discard his reasoning entirely and start over again. But he couldn’t do that. He knew he was right.
The wind brushed at him, and he pulled his cloak closer in spite of the evening’s warmth. He sat without moving in the protective shadow of his haven and examined carefully the conclusions he had reached, the reasonings he had devised, the speculations that had slowly assumed the trappings of truth. It was silent now in the outlaw camp, and he could imagine himself to be the only human being living in all the vast, dark expanse of the Parma Key.
Shades.
Steff or Teel.
His instincts told him it was Teel.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was three days after they had made their decision to go back down into the Pit to recover the Sword of Shannara that Damson at last took the Valemen from their garden shed hideaway into the streets of Tyrsis. By then Par was beside himself with impatience. He had wanted to go immediately; time was everything, he had argued. But Damson had flatly refused. It was too dangerous, she insisted. Too many Federation patrols were still combing the city. They had to wait. Par had been left with no choice but to do so.
Even now, when she finally judged the margin of risk small enough to permit them to venture forth, it was on a night when reasonable men would think twice about doing so, a night that was bone-cold, the city wrapped in a blanket of mist and rain that prevented even friends of long standing from recognizing each other from a distance of more than a few feet and sent the few citizens who had worked past their normal quitting time scurrying down the glistening, empty streets for the warmth and comfort of their homes.
Damson had provided the little company with foul weather cloaks, hooded and caped, and they wore them now pulled close as they made their way through the damp and the silence. Their boots thudded softly on the stone roadway as they walked, echoing in the silence, filling up the night with a strange, rushed cacophony. Water dripped from eaves and trickled down mortared grooves, and the mist settled on their skin with a chill, possessive adherence that was faintly distasteful. They followed the back streets as always, avoiding the Tyrsian Way and the other main thoroughfares where Federation patrols still kept watch, steering into the narrow avenues that burrowed like tunnels through the colorless, semi-abandoned blocks of the city’s poor and homeless.
They were on their way to find the Mole.
“That is how he is known,” Damson told them just before they went out. “All of the street people call him that because that is what he chooses to call himself. If he ever had a real name, I doubt that he remembers it. His past is a closely kept secret. He lives in the sewers and catacombs beneath Tyrsis, a recluse. He almost never comes out into the light. His whole world is the underbelly of the city, and no one knows more about it than he does.”
“And if there are still passageways that run beneath the palace of the Kings of Tyrsis, the Mole will know about them?” Par pressed.
“He will know.”
“Can we trust him?”
“The problem is not whether we can trust him, but whether he will decide to trust us. As I said, he is very reclusive. He may not even choose to talk with us.”
And Par said simply, “He must.”
Coll said nothing. He had said little the entire day, barely a word since they had decided to go back into the Pit. He had swallowed the news of what they were going to do as if he had ingested a medicine that would either cure or kill him and he was waiting to see which it would be. He seemed to have decided that it was pointless to debate the matter further or to argue what he perceived as the folly of their course of action, so he had taken a fatalistic stance, bowing to the inevitability of Par’s determination and the fortune or misfortune that would befall them because of it, and he had gone into a shell as hard and impenetrable as iron.
He trailed now as they made their way through the murk of the Tyrsian evening, tracking Par as closely as his own shadow, intruding with his silent presence in a way that distressed rather than comforted. Par didn’t like feeling that way about his brother, but there was no help for it. Coll had determined his own role. He would neither accept what Par was doing nor cut himself free of it. He would simply stick it out, for better or worse, until a resolution was reached.
Damson steered them to the top of a narrow flight of stone steps that cut through a low wall connecting two vacant, unlighted buildings and wound its way downward into the dark. Par could hear water running, a low gurgle that splashed and chugged through some obstruction. They made a cautious descent of the slick stone, finding a loose, rusted railing that offered an uncertain handhold. When they reached the end of the stairs, they found themselves on a narrow walkway that ran parallel to a sewer trench. It was down the trench that the water ran, spilling from a debris-choked passageway that opened from underneath the streets above.
Damson took the Valemen into the tunnel.
It was black inside and filled with harsh, pungent smells. The rain disappeared behind them. Damson paused, fumbled about in the dark for a moment, then produced a torch coated with pitch on one end, which she managed to light with the aid of a piece of flint. The firelight brightened the gloom enough to permit them to see their way a few steps at a time, and so they proceeded. Unseen things scurried away in the darkness ahead, soundless but for the scratching of tiny claws. Water dripped from the ceiling, ran down the walls, and churned steadily through the trench. The air was chill and empty of life.
They reached a second set of stairs descending further into the earth and took them. They passed through several levels this time, and the sound of the water faded. The scratchings remained, however, and the chill clung to them with irritating persistence. The Valemen pulled their cloaks tighter. The stairs ended and a new passageway began, this one narrower than the other. They were forced to crouch in order to proceed, and the dampness gave way to dust. They moved ahead steadily, and the minutes slipped past. They were deep beneath the city by now, well within the core of rock and earth that formed the plateau on which Tyrsis rested. The Valemen had lost all sense of direction.
When they reached the bottom of a dry well with an iron ladder that led up, Damon paused. “It is not far now,” she said quietly. “Just another several hundred yards when we reach the top of this ladder. We should find him then—or he us. He brought me here once long ago when I showed him a bit of kindness.” She hesitated. “He is very gentle, but peculiar as well. Be careful how you treat him.”
She took them up the ladder to a landing that opened into a series of passageways. It was warmer there, less dusty, the air stale but not malodorous. “These tunnels were bolt holes once for the city’s defenders; at some points they lead all the way down to the plains.” Her red hair shimmered as she brushed it back from her face. “Stay close to me.”
They entered one of the corridors and started down. The pitch coating on the torch head sizzled and steamed. The tunnel twisted about, crisscrossed other tunnels, wound through rooms shored up with timbers and fastening bolts, and left the Valemen more confused than ever as to where they were. But Damson never hesitated, certain of her way, either reading signs that were hidden from them or calling to memory a map that she kept within her head.
At last they entered a room that was the first of several, all interconnected, large chambers with wooden beams, stone block floors, walls from which hangings and tapestries dangled, and a storehouse of bizarre treasures. Piled floor to ceiling, wall to wall, there were trunks of old clothing, piles of furniture crammed and laden with clasps, fittings, writings gone almost to dust, feathers, cheap jewelry, and toy animals of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. The animals were all carefully arranged, some seated in groups, some lined up on shelves and on divans, some placed at watch atop bureaus and at doorways. There were a few rusted weapons scattered about and an armful of baskets woven from cane and rush.