DragonKnight - Donita K. Paul [157]
She came to the end of the hall in a storage room with wooden boxes stacked against the walls. The doneel child was nowhere in sight.
“Toopka!” she called in a hoarse whisper.
Her face popped out from behind a crate, and Kale jumped.
“Don’t scare me like that,” Kale scolded.
Toopka grinned and then nodded to a spot behind her. “There’s a little door back here. I think you can get through it. The boys did.”
Kale grunted as she moved the heavy stack of boxes farther away from the wall. She swung the waist-high door open a bit wider. Then, thinking she did not want to get trapped in any dungeon, she struggled to move those boxes against the door to hold it open.
“Come on!” urged Toopka.
Whatever had made her feel nervous when she first passed into this realm below the castle made her feel positively terrified here. Her skin crawled, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end.
“Filia,” she whispered. “Go back and get Bardon.”
When the little dragon hesitated to go by herself, Kale started to send Dibl with her. “No, you stay here with us, Dibl. I forgot your lightness of spirit gives me courage. And I need to be brave. Metta, go with Filia, and both of you be quick.”
Each dragon picked up a chip of lightrock from the stone floor and headed back the way they had come.
As she walked behind Toopka, Kale looked more closely at the structure of her surroundings. The floor and walls were chiseled out of solid rock. The cold, empty passageway had probably never been used for storage. They moved at a slower pace now.
“Toopka, do you know where we’re going?”
“No,” she said and stopped. “I’ve never seen that door before. This must be the dungeon.”
“I’ve only been in one dungeon before, and it had rooms, not just a long passage.”
“I think,” said Toopka, turning an earnest face to Kale, “I’ll tell Sitti and Ahnek about the book later. Let’s go back and wait until they come up for supper.”
“I think we had better find them and take them back with us,” said Kale.
She looked at the small child in front of her. Toopka turned and stared into the dark of the tunnel with such concentration, she hardly looked as though she was breathing. Her ears usually stood at points, now they drooped. This little girl who rarely stopped moving was immobilized by fear.
“Toopka, I need you to be very brave and go back to get more help.”
Toopka jerked at the sudden sound of Kale’s voice. She twirled to face Kale. “You sent Filia and Metta to get Bardon.”
“Yes, but I’ve decided it would be best if Captain Anton and the guard came. Maybe Holt, too. We may have to search more tunnels to find Sittiponder and Ahnek. I may need help. I’ll send Pat and Dibl with you.”
“All right. I can do that.” She trotted past Kale with the two minor dragons flying as her escort. But after a few steps back, she stopped and turned. “Kale,” she said, biting her lower lip, “You be careful. This isn’t a nice place.”
“I will. I’m just going to get the boys and come back.”
She watched the blue glow of lightrock grow fainter as Toopka ran down the passageway. When she could see the light no longer, she turned to face the dark tunnel ahead.
“Just get the boys and come back,” she repeated. “That sounds like a very good plan.”
She walked another hundred paces. The green dragon perched on her shoulder let her know he didn’t like this journey, either. A small smile touched her lips. “You haven’t fainted since you were a baby dragon, Gymn. You are not going to faint now. But should something pop out at us at this point, you may have to revive me from falling over in a swoon.”
A few feet ahead of her, Ardeo’s glow blinked out of sight. Before she could call to him, he reappeared, flying toward her.
He’d gone around a corner, and around the corner was a huge cavern lit by lightrocks.
Kale sighed in relief. “That’s where those boys will be.”
They quickened their pace and came to the end of the passageway. It came out as a balcony overlooking a huge cavern. The walkway turned and followed the wall in a slow descent to