Haven (War of the Princes) (5 page)

           
“Down the stairs,” I repeated to myself, and resolved to follow my directional instinct. This was the way. No one had ever done this before. I couldn’t turn back now.

           
I reached the bottom, infinitely grateful for my little lantern. Slinking against another wall, I was acutely aware of how much stone hunched lowly over my head and how tiny my only escape route was. I took a moment to wipe the sweat off my brow and catch my breath.

I hadn’t realized I was truly claustrophobic until that moment.

           
I began to sing quietly to calm my slamming heart, stepping away from the security of the wall to finally look at where I was.

           
Short, wide steps terraced the huge round room gently deeper into the ground. Half moon holes plunged into the walls, each filled with a rectangular stone slab beneath an image etched over the opening. These were graves, and the images were portraits of the dead. Men, women, old and young, and even a few children were carved into the stone. There were dozens upon dozens of them.

           
What if they blinked? What if a pair of stony eyes followed me as I moved? Did their spirits still hug the remains of their bones, cradled within the long sealed coffins?

           
I continued singing. It was the only thing I could do to keep my mind off of the dead. The lullaby coaxed me into a sort of numbness, steadily following the short steps down.

           
Hedging along the wall, I did my best to avoid cobwebs and ignore the distinct feeling that I was getting farther and farther away from my only escape. My own shadow sent my heart racing and the sound of my boots on the dusty flagstone rang in my ears.

           
A broad form climbed up the ceiling and I gasped, just to hold my light up to a curtain of webbing and another exaggerate d shadow.

I kept seeing faces staring at me in my peripheral vision, creeping closer, but they were only those carvings of the deceased.

           
At the final set of steps, I thought I’d come to a dead end. My body kept moving and I found myself face to face with a very angry portrait. The old man’s face was craggy and contorted in a scowl. I stumbled backward with a start and almost dropped my lantern. It fumbled in my hands but I managed to catch it before it clattered to the floor. Finding myself down deep in the Mausoleum without a light was the worst nightmare I could imagine. I might never escape.

I clung to the lantern with both hands and waited until they stopped shaking, mostly.

Making sure I had a firm grip on the little thing, I raised it up again.

The etching of the old man’s face glared at me. The hole where his granite casket should have been was empty.

“
In
we go,” I joked with myself, and swallowed the lump in my throat.

I felt nauseous. Sweat glazed my forehead.

Again, I urged myself to press on. It took a lot of self-coaxing. I wished Ruby and Kyle were here with me, making jokes about me being terrified of scrambling into a little hole. Just a little eight-by-three-foot hole made of solid rock to encase a corpse.

Here goes.

I crawled inside and felt my face plastered with cobwebs. Holding my light ahead of me, I scooted along on my elbows. I could barely breathe. My overactive imagination told me that the grave compartment was getting smaller, clutching me in its rocky grip, happy to squeeze the life out of me and keep me there forever. A spider the size of a mouse scuttled beside me toward my legs. I finally panicked, thrashing and screaming wildly before tumbling out the other side. My knee and one arm smarted where I hit them against the rock. I’d definitely have bruises tomorrow... if I had a tomorrow.

“What am I doing down here?” I whined piteously, balled up against the wall that I had spilled from, hugging my knees against my chest. My arms felt weak as noodles, but I lifted one up, rattling my lantern, forcing it to share its light.

The small chamber I found myself in was hexagon shaped and contained a single granite slab. I knew exactly what it was: a coffin. What I didn’t know was why I kept getting the feeling I needed to crawl inside of it.

Maybe I was suicidal and I just never realized it before. Maybe I was insane and my luck in finding things was really just the self-destructive invention of a lunatic.

           
“We’ve come this far,” I said to no one else, making myself feel even crazier.

           
I put my lantern on top of the slab, steadied my hands on one side of the lid, and got ready to push. Hopping backwards, I danced, quaking with shivers. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to see a dead body. I didn’t want to find a monster inside, or more spiders or rats. I didn’t want to know anymore. I didn’t want to know.

           
For a single, terrifying instant, I was utterly alone in the secret tomb. I had always been alone, yes, but my lucky guiding force helped me along. Whatever it was that led me from place to place, object to object, was ever present, but in my instant of sincere disinterest, I severed that connection.

           
I was in a strange, frightening place, alone.

           
Once again, I felt like I’d come too far to let myself surrender. Closing my eyes, I imagined reaching my goal: The Outside World. Belief blossomed that I was closer to the goal that had brought me here, and so it was that invisible link that I rekindled, instead of a path to home. Being connected to a purpose again was enough to give me the strength to open the tomb. I would find my way out of Haven Valley.

           
Gathering all my strength (physical and mental), I pushed the resistant stone. It was ridiculously heavy. I clamped my teeth, braced my stance and heaved against it until I could hear it grinding and feel it scooting to one end. I fell aside, exhausted. The lid had moved just enough for me to look inside. Steadying my lantern, I peered over.

           
I expected to see the ruin of an ancient corpse. I expected to smell the dry stink of the long forgotten dead.

           
What I did find was the last thing I expected: a gust of cold air, overfilled with oxygen, and a sloping dirt tunnel, brightened by aquamarine light.

           
For the first time on that trip since leaving my house, I felt the excitement of discovery. A normal person would have rushed out of there and told someone what they found, or at least been wary of a light source this far underground.

           
Normal was not a choice word in describing me, but I will admit to being afraid. I was shaking all over as I slipped between the stones into the passage. If I was frightened by everything I’d experienced so far, I wasn’t at all prepared for what I saw next.

           
Each of the three rough walls before me were etched everywhere with the word, “STOP!” The letters were uneven and chaotic. It was almost as if they’d been carved in a hurry. My heart almost followed their command, it was so unnerving. I had the distinct feeling I was being watched, and that didn’t help. Still, the little string in my mind led me onward.

           
The corridor curved, and the words changed.

           
DON’T GO! TURN AROUND! FOR YOUR SAFETY! DON’T GO! DON’T GO!

           
I looked down and pressed on, forcing myself not to read the phrases.

           
The corner of my eye caught the word “DIE” and I couldn’t help but read the next set.

           
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! YOUR DEATH! YOUR DEATH!

           
If I had been with my friends, I might have laughed at seven hundred year old graffiti like this. But I was on my own, inside of a false coffin buried underground, inside of
Rivermarch
Mausoleum. The words made an impact on me.

           
The light had been growing brighter until finally the corridor ended. Ahead of me was a luminous aqua pool, only about six feet around. On the flattened wall above it, the last of the writing said, “DON’T LET THEM IN.”

           
I could almost hear the whispers of the dead in the caskets above me, imploring me to follow their advice.

           
Standing still as the stone around me, I looked between the writing and the water. My skin crawled.

           
“How is there light?” I wondered aloud and stooped to the pool’s edge.

           
The water was clear, but it showed nothing except its bottom, and somehow it was the source of both the light and the blissfully fresh air. A slight breeze touched the stray hairs that hung free from my braid.

           
I reached a cautious hand out to touch the water and stopped.

           
The writing on the wall said I was going to die. But it had warned me not to leave, and not to let them in. It didn’t say I shouldn’t touch the water.

           
I plunged my hand into the chill pool. It felt strange. When I pulled it back out, not only was it perfectly unharmed, but it was
dry
.

           
“This isn’t safe,” I said to myself, but my curiosity was on fire. “Oh Katelyn, you’re insane. You’re absolutely, truly, insane.”

           
So far, it was certainly the most completely, utterly stupid thing I’d ever done in my life. I have no idea what made me think my actions were a good idea at that time. If you asked me now whether I would do something like that again, knowing absolutely nothing about that which I meddled, I’d invariably tell you, no, no, no.

           
But that day, I wasn’t one for heeding warnings.

           
I stepped into the pool and sunk. It was odd. It didn’t feel like I was holding my breath, but I wasn’t breathing either. The sensation wasn’t uncomfortable, but I could not deny that it was cold. Feeling almost weightless, I looked slowly at the ground as my boot made contact. My hair floated around me. I pushed off and soared gracefully upward. Like the badger burrow, there was the pool opening I had come through, and then there was another. I angled toward the second, answering the final call of my directional sense, and surfaced.

Chapter 7: Rune

           
Just like my hand, I emerged from the glowing pool completely dry.

           
I was in a cave. The walls were black and flecked with veins of icy blue crystal that reflected the light of the aquamarine water. The new air I breathed was full of strange scents, like a mix of oxygen, mulch and fire.

           
For some reason I didn’t feel as confined in this cave as I had in the mausoleum. It was bigger, for one thing, but the air circulated steadily too, with little gusts and drafts. I still wanted to get outside under the open the sky, but I wasn’t sweating or hyperventilating anymore.

I felt much, much better… for the moment. Then I realized that something had changed. My sense wasn’t pulling me. That could only mean that I had found what I was looking for.

           
“The outside!” I gasped. A smile spread over my face.

           
To my infinite shock, a check on my pocket watch read two minutes past twelve. My crawl through the mausoleum had felt like an eternity. I had even packed for an all night journey, and here I was, a measly hour and a half after leaving, on the outside of the world!

           
Cheerily, I began exploring the cave, keeping a mental note on the location of my pool, not that I’d ever lose it. Aside from my lucky ability, it
was
glowing.

           
I studied the crystal in the walls, and the cracks and stalagmites. I followed the soft sound of dripping water, humming all the way, until I came to a relatively far drop. I held out my lantern, barely able to see water shimmering below. It looked normal.

           
Sitting down carefully, I continued to hum to myself, studying the high ceiling of the massive cave.

           
There was a scraping sound down at the bottom of the cliff, somewhere near the edge of the still water.

           
I sucked in my breath and froze. Fear struck me and I cursed myself for being an idiot. What was I doing singing to myself and fluttering around this place like it was my own personal clubhouse? Anything could have been in there with me.

           
Heart racing, I scooted backward away from the drop.

           
“Wait,” a voice said. It was male.

           
I went still again, wondering how long it would take me to dash back to the glowing pool. It was my worst fear: something was talking to me through the blackness.