Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [264]
I did it. I won.
Wataru sat down. He was gasping for breath as though he had been underwater for far too long and only just now broken to the surface.
The small door to the side of the altar opened outward, and a few robed men peered out into the room. They stood stunned. When Wataru turned to face them, they screamed and ran off into the room beyond the door, leaving it swinging behind them.
There’s no time to waste. Those men were probably the pastor’s underlings. If they tell the Knights of Stengel or Branch Chief Pam, they’ll come running here in a flash. There’s no way I’ll be able to fight all of them at once.
Time to run. Wataru stood at last, turning toward the main entrance, when he heard somebody shouting in a loud voice.
“Someone, help! Help! There’s been an attack on the cathedral! Tell the branch at once! We need help!”
Uh-oh.
The main entrance was looking less and less like a viable escape route. Wataru lifted his sword to make another barrier, but he was too tired. Just beginning to form the cross with the tip of his sword made him so dizzy he nearly toppled over.
They’ll catch me…
“What happened here?!”
Wataru looked up. There, from the flower-covered pedestal where the statue of Cistina had stood, a man’s face had emerged, his eyes wide.
The pedestal! The pedestal where Cistina stood crushing the beastkin under her feet was the entrance to the dungeons. How like Branch Chief Pam and Father Diamon.
Before the man had time to duck out of sight, Wataru summoned the last of his strength and fired another magebullet. The man shrieked and disappeared, making a bonk bonk bonk sound that faded into the distance as he fell.
Downward.
Wataru dragged his feet into reluctant motion, running over to the pedestal. As expected, the pedestal slid easily off to one side, revealing a ladder stretching into dim light below. Wataru peered down and saw the man from before lying unconscious at the foot of the ladder.
With trembling hands, Wataru grabbed the ladder and began to descend. At the bottom, he found himself in a narrow corridor with stone walls, lit here and there by shaded lanterns. Directly to his right was a small room with a chair and a desk, covered with piles of documents. That must be the guard room.
There was no mistaking it—he had found the dungeons. Directly in front of him was a gate, and Wataru saw bars running down the sides of the corridor beyond it. The people trapped inside scampered in their cages to see who had arrived.
Apparently, the man Wataru had knocked out was the dungeon master because he had a keyring at his waist. Wataru grabbed it, and pressing himself against the gates to the corridor, he called out, “Is everybody okay? Are the people from Bricklayer Street here?”
A great commotion answered his call, and a thousand questions came at him so fast he couldn’t hear them all. “Who are you?” “Have you come to save us?” “What happened upstairs? The ceiling was shaking!”
“I’m a Highlander! I’ve come to get you out of here!” Wataru shouted, then he returned to the base of the ladder, climbed it, and closed the pedestal door. Using a coiled rope he found hanging on the guard room wall, he tied up the unconscious man and pushed him beneath the desk.
There were so many keys hanging from the ring that it took Wataru a while to find the one that opened the gate to the corridor. Meanwhile, the shouts of joy and frustration coming from the people trapped in the cells filled the narrow hall with a cacophony of noise.
Finally, he got the gate open. Everyone was shouting so loudly, that even when he put his hands to his mouth and bellowed back, no one could hear him. Wataru drew his sword and banged it against the bars of the gate.
“Quiet! Everybody quiet!”
When the prisoners had finally quieted down, Wataru called out, “Is Mr. Fanlon down here?” He heard Toni’s excited reply from a cage a little ways down the