Elei's Chronicles (Books 1-3) (67 page)

With a ponderous groan, it rose, raining soil, clumps of vegetation and dirt on them. Elei shielded his face with his forearm as the door swung higher, a round eye against the sky.

Underneath was a black hole with a ladder shimmering inside like a pearl inside an oyster.

Cat stood at the rim and peered down, tail whipping.

“Hey, that looks like your cat,” Kalaes said, panting.

Elei shrugged. Before he could say anything, Cat jumped into the hole.

“No.” Elei bent over the hole and stared into the darkness, his eyes adjusting enough to see the smooth, curved walls of a well. “Dammit, Cat.”

“They say cats have nine lives.” Alendra looked down. “It should be okay.”

Elei passed his sleeve over his sweaty face. She was trying to comfort him, and that made him feel warm inside. Well, maybe he didn’t have nine lives, but he’d chosen to come this far and he’d at least do what he could to protect his friends.

“Going in,” he said before Hera or Kalaes or anyone else had a chance to open their mouth. He slid his legs inside, found the first rung, and smiled. “Follow the black cat.”

***

The vertical vent was wide, its walls covered in slimy moss. The powdery smell of mold hung heavy on the still air.

It was the stillness that tightened Elei’s stomach. If the vent led to tunnels and underground chambers, shouldn’t the air be moving, circulating?

He descended, fingers tight around the rungs, placing foot after foot, the soles of his boots sometimes slipping on the cold metal. There was a soft vibration in the walls, as if a heartbeat passed through them, as if they were descending into the gullet of a beast.

Glancing up, he could see Hera’s boots and long legs, and farther up, a sliver of light. Dawn must’ve broken. They hadn’t closed the hatch door completely, wedging a couple of rocks in the rim, in case there was no way to reopen it from the inside. In case this was a dead end and they had to go back.

Where in the hells was Cat? Had the kitty fallen to his death? Weren’t animals supposed to have a strong feeling of self-preservation? He’d been really glad to see Cat again,
dammit
, as long as it’d lasted.

Insects crawled on the walls— spiders and cockroaches, flies and millipedes. They moved quickly, not sluggish with cold as he’d often seen them in the trashlands of Ost when winter came. Every living creature had been slow to move then, slow to breathe; everything suspended in the cold.

So maybe there was warmth farther down. He thought he heard a faint meow. “Cat!” he called, not loud, but his voice bounced off the walls of the well and amplified until his ears rang.

“Quiet,” Hera muttered above him and the word danced inside the vent like a butterfly.

After that, he didn’t dare call out again and climbed down as fast as he could. Somewhere, some time, the vent had to end, and either they’d be able to continue or go back up. He really hoped it wouldn’t be the latter. He thought of Alendra, thought of Kalaes who’d barely begun to get his strength back, and his stomach twisted in a knot. There had to be a tunnel waiting for them below.
Please
.

The line of light above had long been swallowed by the dimness. The thermos clanked in Elei’s backpack and he tried to remember when he’d last had the medicine. Well, it’d be hard to attempt to kill Hera as they clung onto a ladder, wouldn’t it? He forced his mind to other things.

How had Cat come to Ert? If there were tunnels under the straits between the islands, maybe Cat had used one. Then he remembered the holes he’d seen on the metal platform. Had Cat come through there?

Were the sewage tunnels on Dakru City connected to the larger network? What about the underground chamber Kalaes and Maera had taken him to when he’d first arrived in Dakru? He remembered the strange symbols he’d seen on the walls of the sewage tunnels, and he slowed enough to trail a hand next to the ladder. Under the moss and mold it was hard to tell, but he thought he felt relief shapes underneath.

Caught up in his endless loop of thoughts, he yelped in surprise when his foot met a ringing metal surface instead of the ladder.

“Elei?” Kalaes called from above, creating a deafening din.

“What is it?” Alendra and Hera asked at the same time.

Elei moved his foot around on the surface, trying to determine if it was stable. “I think... I’ve found a floor.”

His tainted eye showed him the metal floor underneath him in a blue flash, with the yellow and red pinpricks of living insects. A meow made him twist around. Cat was a ball of red color, a warm presence, stalking toward him. If Cat stood on that floor, maybe he could as well.

Maybe
. Of course, he had like a hundred and thirty pounds on Cat.
Crap
.

He licked dry lips and put his foot down. Nothing creaked alarmingly, so he lowered the other and stood. Waited.

“What’s happening?” Kalaes whispered.

“He’s standing,” Hera said. “The floor seems stable.”

Elei moved a few steps away from the ladder. Cat came to rub his small face on his pants. “Yeah, it seems okay.”

Hera grunted and climbed off, letting Kalaes and Sacmis follow. Meanwhile, Elei walked around carefully, testing, making sure the platform wouldn’t crumble.

Then suddenly there was no more floor.

He opened his mouth but no sound came out, and he pitched forward into a blackness not even he could fathom.

A hand grabbed the back of his hoodie and hauled him back. “Dammit, fe, don’t do this to me.” Kalaes shone a flashlight in Elei’s face. “If I die of a heart-attack, I’ll never forgive you.”

Elei snorted, too shaken to do anything but stand there, Kalaes’ hand still bunched behind his neck, the flashlight cutting a line of white in the dark.

When his breathing had calmed enough to speak, Elei said, “Platform.”

“Yeah, I gathered. No walls. Just a resting place.” Kalaes released him, but as an afterthought he caught Elei’s arm and led him back toward the center. The three girls huddled at the foot of the ladder.

“What are they doing?”

“There’s another hatch. The ladder continues down.”

Elei groaned. Of course they hadn’t found the bottom. Who knew how deep the vent was. As they approached, Hera lifted the lid and peered down.

“Let’s rest,” Sacmis said with a sigh. “This is even worse than training. At least then we could see the end of the ladder.”

Hera gave a non-committal grunt.

“I’ll take that as agreement? Damn, I’m getting good at translating.” Kalaes took off his backpack, set it down, and settled next to it, stretching his legs. He placed the flashlight beside him.

“Turn that off,” Hera said, “to preserve the battery.”

He did, plunging them into darkness. “I swear, every single muscle in my body is having a protest demonstration. With banners and placards and everything.” Kalaes closed his eyes.

Sacmis gave a wry smile, pulled a bottle of water from her pack and shoved it into Kalaes’ hands. “Here, drown your sorrows.”

Kalaes cracked an eye open and one corner of his mouth twitched up. “Girl, it’ll take much more than water to drown these protests. But since I don’t suppose anyone had the foresight to bring something stronger,” he raised the bottle in a toast, “I’ll just have to make do, won’t I?”

Elei lowered himself to the floor, removed his backpack and rubbed his aching shoulders. Alendra reached toward him and placed her hand on his arm, then his face.

“Elei?” she said uncertainly, and he smiled in the dark, fighting with all he had the desire to lean into her touch.

“Yeah,” he said, glad his voice didn’t waver.

“Oh, good,” she said, and passed him water and a piece of bread. He took both, trying not to stare at the slender line of her throat, knowing she couldn’t see him. He felt like a voyeur, and with that thought, he finally managed to look away.

“So, how far down do these vents go?” Sacmis asked around a mouthful of bread. “How deep do you think we are?”

“According to the map, this vent goes down as far as twenty thousand feet,” Hera said quietly.

“Holy shit.” Kalaes choked on his water. “We’ll never reach the bottom.”

“Maybe we don’t need to,” Alendra said. “Do the tunnels and chambers start so far down?”

“No, there are tunnels less deep,” Hera said. “There are paired numbers on the ladder. I believe one must be the depth, and the other—”

A bang sounded in the vent. They jerked and looked about, even those who were blind in the dark.

“What was that?” Kalaes whispered and reached for his flashlight.

“Don’t turn that on,” Hera hissed. “Wait.”

“Could be some animal,” Sacmis whispered. “Maybe more cats.”

Cat jumped on Elei’s shoulder, scaring the crap out of him, and growled, sending vibrations down Elei’s body.

“Maybe it’ll start raining cats,” Kalaes mused. “I should’ve brought a wide-rimmed hat.”

Alendra giggled, a nervous sound. The noise didn’t repeat, and they went back to eating, quiet and subdued.

When another clank sounded above, they stopped.

“I think,” Elei said, rising, “someone’s coming down.”

Kalaes shoved the bottle into his backpack. “You don’t think Verne decided to follow us? Maybe Hera forgot her hair ribbons and lipstick back at the town.”

“Kal, hush.” Hera put a finger to her lips. “Sobek’s tail, I think—”

Something fell down the vent. Alendra yelped, Sacmis hauled her back, Kalaes half-rose, shouting for them to look out.

Elei stumbled back. Something struck his hip and knocked him to his knees. Hera grabbed him, and he realized he’d been about to fall off the rim again. “What in the five hells was that?” he whispered.

“A rock,” Hera said, disgusted.

“The rocks we placed to keep the hatch open?” Kalaes’ voice was flat.

“Too big,” Sacmis muttered. “Kalaes—”

The same clanking noise, and Elei turned to Hera. “We need to move.”

He wondered if the same thought had entered her mind — even if the rocks didn’t kill them, the platform may collapse under the growing weight.

“Let’s go down.” Hera stepped away from him. “Now!”

A rock fell where she’d stood, and the metal platform shuddered.
Shit
. Kalaes grabbed a backpack and cradled it to his chest. He gasped and moved aside as another rock fell right next to him.

“Pissing hells,” Elei said, his voice unsteady. “Alendra, you go first.” Cat meowed and climbed up Elei’s leg to his shoulder.

“I won’t be able to see,” she said. “You should go first.”

“Fine. Where’s my pack?” He spotted two by the opening. “Just a second—”

Another rock cluttered down. It hit the packs and they tumbled down the hole.

Gone
.

Elei gaped.

“Move it, fe!” Kalaes shouted. “We need to haul ass.”

“My medicine. It was in my pack.” Elei swallowed hard. This was bad. Very bad.

“Let’s survive this first,” Sacmis growled close to his ear and pushed him toward the vent. “Go.”

Kalaes clutched his pack, his face white, as Elei slid his legs into the opening without another word. At least Kalaes still had his medicine. Elei climbed down fast, rocks raining from above, Alendra and the others following him. The last one, Sacmis perhaps, closed the hatch. The platform shook over their heads, booming like a gong with each hit.

Elei’s pulse roared in his ears. Sacmis was right. If the platform collapsed, they wouldn’t need medicine, or anything else.
Not anymore
.

Chapter Thirteen

“S
ee anything?”
Alendra asked, hanging on the ladder above Elei. Her question echoed.

He peered between his feet. “Nothing yet.” And, even worse, no change in the staleness of the air, no fresh current coming up. He had the feeling of descending into a death trap, his hands growing numb from the cold touch of the metal.

“I see something,” Alendra said.

A glance down showed him the end of the ladder. Below was a round platform no bigger than his arm span. He tried it and it felt stable. He stood with the black void surrounding him and a sinking feeling in his stomach. Nothing was there. They’d never retrieve their lost bags. His medicine was gone.

A glance over the side — damn heights — showed him another ladder. He took a steadying breath and called a warning to the others before searching with his foot for the first rung while Cat clung to his shoulder.

He really preferred his feet on solid ground.

Sending a vague plea for protection to whichever god or goddess might be listening, he grabbed the ladder and started down.

Lower and lower he went, relieved to see the others above him, following. He lost himself in the rhythm of descent. It seemed like days later when he looked down and finally saw something in the depths.

He leaned back to get a better look. “Hold up.”

“What is it?” Alendra whispered.

“Looks like another big platform.”

When they reached it, Cat jumped off him and bounded noiselessly around. Elei tapped the floor with his foot. “This isn’t metal.” It sounded like stone or concrete.

“So, not a platform?” Alendra stepped down next to him. “Elei?”

“I’m right here.” He placed a hand on her elbow and she jumped. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Her breathing came fast. The utter darkness had to be unnerving.

He heard the thump of the others’ boots as they left the ladder. Kalaes cursed as Sacmis led him by the hand toward them.

“I feel like I’ve gone blind,” he said. “The damn flashlight’s lost. Don’t they have any lights down here?”

“Maybe they also have luxury rooms for us to sleep,” Hera muttered.

“Well, not if this place was made for Gultur, of course.” Kalaes pulled on the straps of his backpack. His and Hera’s were the only ones remaining. “You’d sleep on freezing concrete with your gun for your pillow, I’m sure. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“Oh, of course not.” Hera sucked a sharp breath. “Because you know everything about us, right?” Her voice was dangerously low.

It made Elei’s muscles clench. “Hey.” He moved toward her but didn’t dare touch her, not sure of his own self-restraint. “He’s only joking.” With Hera ready to strangle them at every step, and without his medicine, coming to blows was probably a matter of time. “We need to hurry.”

Sacmis rapped her knuckles lightly on what looked like a metal wall. “We’re in a kind of room,” she said.

A roofless space made of metal. And their packs weren’t there. They must’ve fallen wide.
Damn
.

“Any doors?” Alendra asked.

“None that I can see,” Sacmis said.

“The map shows that it connects to a tunnel to the south-east.” Hera’s small face was thoughtful.

“And how do we know where south-east is?” Kalaes asked, quite reasonably, in Elei’s opinion. “We haven’t got a compass and it’s not like we can see the position of the sun.”

He waited for Hera to reply, to say she knew another way, that she sensed it gods dammit, that Regina could do it, even in the depths of the earth.

But Hera shrugged, and Elei’s heart sank. “Let’s get out of here first.”

Think, think, dammit
. His head pounded. He wondered if the oxygen was running low and if that was the reason his head felt thick, full of spiderwebs.

No doors
. But they’d been going down.
Down below
. “Another trap door,” he breathed.

“Where?” Sacmis asked.

“My guess is at the center, where Kalaes is standing.”

Kalaes looked down at his combat boots as if he could penetrate the dark. “Come again?”

Elei walked over to him. A faint outline showed on the floor. “Here”.

Both of them knelt and brushed away dirt. “There’s a handle,” Kalaes said. He turned toward the others, well, in their general direction, and grinned. “This way, ladies and gentlemen. The show is moving down to the nether hells, as promised. And may the gods be with us.”

***

The next level was only ten feet or so below. Elei stood on another concrete floor and waited for the others. This time they landed in a tunnel. The walls were dry, but the cool air flowing through held a scent of mold and wet rock. He thought he also smelled animal droppings and rot as he took deep breaths, feeling his head clear, the pounding headache ease.

They dropped into the tunnel one by one, Hera, Kalaes, Sacmis, and lastly Alendra, who smiled. He knew why; she could see. The arched roof glowed with phosphorescent moss that gave a green cast to her face and made her eyes shimmer.

“Where to now?” Kalaes asked. “Hera, please tell me you’ve still got that map.”

Hera pulled the folded paper from her pocket and spread it on the ground. “Here.” She pointed at a symbol. Elei leaned closer and saw the cache she’d chosen, on Dakru. “We need to get here.”

“You know this is insane, right?” Kalaes knelt. “We’ve found a tunnel, but we still don’t know if to trust this map. For one, it didn’t show all the trouble we’d go through to get here.”

“A map can’t show everything,” Alendra said.

“Which is what worries me.”

“Well, if this animal,” Hera pointed at Cat who was sniffing along one tunnel wall with great interest, “is your cat, and it apparently crossed here from Dakru, then so can we.”

“We’re bigger than cats,” Kalaes said.

“But obviously not more intelligent,” Hera muttered.

Kalaes shook his head. “What if it found a way to cross over the bridge between the islands? Security can be lax sometimes.”

Sacmis placed a hand on her hip, her eyes colorless in the green illumination from above. “It’s obvious you have never used the bridges. The fear of plagues crossing between the Islands means strict security and health controls for whoever puts foot on a bridge. Animals approaching are exterminated on sight, if they do not get electrocuted on the fence around the gates first.”

“Still.” Kalaes shrugged. “Are we even sure it’s the same cat?”

“Are you always so negative?”

“I’m cautious, girl. Just cautious.”

“Speaking of cautious,” Hera said, “we should see how much water and food we have left and ration it.”

A sobering thought
. Cat came back to Elei, purring, and stood pressed to his leg. “No food, Cat, sorry.” He thought with unease of the few loaves of blue bread left in the bags.

He tried hard not to think of his medicine; all gone, the thermos smashed at the bottom of a vent. He remembered Hera’s words about this being Rex’s final stage.
Perhaps. Probably
. He remembered pressing his hands around Hera’s neck.

“How long,” he cleared his throat which had suddenly gone dry, “will it take us to cross to Dakru and open this cache?”

Hera gave him a narrow look. “Is this some sort of a joke? I do not know we can. I just assume.”

“Right. At least Kalaes managed to keep his medicine.” Elei rubbed the back of his neck. The hells with it. “But I lost mine, so we’d better hurry.”

Kalaes threw him a concerned look. “It fell?”

“The only packs left are yours and Hera’s,” Sacmis said.

“But you should be fine for a couple of days, right?” Kalaes studied Elei. “Rex shouldn’t get too strong so soon. Besides, we haven’t got anything sweet to eat.”

That was true. “As long as there isn’t much danger, I should be able to control it.” Elei decided not to explain that having a trigger-happy Hera around him would qualify as danger.

His answer seemed to satisfy Kalaes who nodded and put down his bag. “We should check what we’ve got.”

A clank overhead cut through the chatter. They looked up. As they waited, another clank sounded.

Kalaes shouldered his bag and stood up. “I think we should move away from the hatch.”

“According to the map, there should be an elevator if we continue for a mile or so down the tunnel.” Hera frowned. “If this is the right tunnel.”

“Elevator,” Alendra whispered. “So we’ll go deeper?”

“Hey, Ale,” Kalaes drawled, “if we’re going to cross to Dakru under the sea bed, good luck taking the stairs.”

Sacmis nodded. “The elevator it is.”

They walked in silence, Cat trotting alongside Elei. The tunnel stretched, dark and endless. Their steps echoed and their breaths formed white clouds in the cold air.

Hadn’t they covered one mile already? Had Hera miscalculated the distance on the map, or was the narrowness of the tunnel the reason it felt like they’d been hiking forever?

“Elei?” It was Kalaes, and Elei realized he’d fallen behind. He couldn’t see the others ahead. “Everything okay, fe?”

“Yeah.”

But his answer didn’t seem to satisfy Kalaes, who placed an arm around Elei’s shoulders and dragged him along. “You’ll be fine. I don’t think it’ll take us all that long to find what we’re looking for. Hera knows what she’s doing. And that Sacmis chick, too.”

Elei nodded, his stomach in knots. “What if I turn into something else? If Rex makes me...”
Gods
. “If it makes me hurt you or the others. You have to promise to stop me, Kal. If that happens.”

“It won’t. Trust me.” Kalaes patted him on the back. “You’ll see.” They walked in silence, until Kalaes’ stomach growled.

“I’m starving too,” Elei confessed.

“There’s this place,” Kalaes said, “near where I used to live in Aerica. A diner.”

“Dima’s?” Elei remembered how he’d entered the small restaurant to save himself when he’d first arrived to Dakru.

“Nah, Dima doesn’t know how to cook to save her life.” Kalaes snorted. “The place is called Ten Dils, and it’s tucked in a tiny basement downtown. Serves amazing shark steak.”

“I’ve never tried shark.”

“Then you don’t know what you’re missing.” Kalaes grinned. “The best grilled steak you’ll ever find in this side of forever. Do you like black pepper?”

Elei shrugged. “I like everything.”

Kalaes clapped him on the back again. “That’s my man! Black pepper’s great with the steak. And sweet bush fruit and lots of fooncakes. You’ll love it. When we get back, when we get peace, we’ll go and eat there, and then have a drink at the bar.”

It was a lifeline for Elei somehow, to hear those words, to imagine eating that steak with Kalaes. Doing normal things, having a good time. They’d make it through this. They had to, even if it was just to try that steak in the small diner in Aerica.

Then he remembered something else. He patted his pocket where he kept Kalaes’ braids, the ones Kalaes had cut off before entering Dakru City. He’d go to Akert with Kalaes, to the memorial place, and place them at the stone set for Kalaes’ brother and father. He’d drink in their memory, together with Kalaes. And that was something else to live for.

The tunnel took a steep turn and they hurried to catch up with the others. Kalaes went first, Elei following. He rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks.

The elevator. Huge metal doors, buttons and levers at the side. Like the elevator he’d seen in Pelia’s company building, only ten times bigger. Cat was there, licking a leg with an air of intense concentration. Alendra and Sacmis were examining the buttons and levers while Hera pored over the map.

Sacmis looked up as they approached and her lips quirked in a smile. “You talked of the netherworlds,” she said. “Well, you had better say your last prayers, because this time we’re going deep. All the way down.”