The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [195]
She felt helpless, but being dead or a captive would make her even more so.
“Hands!” she shouted. “Everyone keep holding hands!”
Anne searched back over her shoulder but saw no telltale lantern light behind them. Of course, the passage twisted and twined often enough that their pursuit needn’t be far to remain unseen.
Austra, with her in the front, held their only working lamp, and it now showed them two possibilities.
“The right branch,” she decided. They turned right, but after only sixteen paces they reached a dead end so freshly made that she could smell the mortar.
She hadn’t foreseen this. In her mind’s eye, the right passage wound its way through the outer wall of the castle and eventually, after a few more turnings, directly into her mother’s old solar.
“He’s blocked it up,” she murmured bitterly. “Of course he would.”
It was exactly what she had planned to do.
“The other one?” Austra asked hopefully.
“It goes under the castle, into the dungeons.”
“That’s better than being caught, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Anne agreed. “And there are ways into the castle from the dungeon. Just pray he hasn’t blocked this one off, as well.”
Sounds of pursuit seemed near as they moved back into the left passage.
“Where are we going?” Cazio asked.
“Don’t ask questions,” Anne said. “It’ll only make things worse.”
“Worse,” Cazio muttered. “It’s already worse. At least let me fight.”
“No. Not yet. I’ll tell you when to fight.”
Cazio didn’t answer. He might have forgotten already that they’d been talking.
The tunnel branched again, but as she suspected, the one she wanted was blocked off, this time a lot less neatly; its ceiling had been collapsed. It looked as if it had been done in haste, but it was every bit as efficient.
“He can’t know all of them,” she told Austra. “He can’t.”
“What if he has a map of some sort? Maybe your mother or Erren had one.”
“Maybe,” Anne said. “If so, we’re done for.” She stopped, a little chill working up her spine.
“Did you hear that?” she asked Austra.
“I didn’t hear anything,” her friend replied.
But Anne heard it again, a distant whispering of her name. And she remembered.
“There is one passage,” she murmured. “I saw the opening, but even I couldn’t see where it went. There’s a sort of fog there, and something else…”
“Something worse than Robert?”
An image flashed then, painfully bright, of the red-tressed demon. But that wasn’t right. That wasn’t who was whispering to her.
“You know what it is,” she replied. They reached a small chamber with two passages leading out of it. Both were blocked.
“You mean him?” Austra hissed. “The last of the…?” She didn’t finish the thought. Her breath was coming hard.
“Yes.”
Anne made her decision and reached for the place she knew instinctively was there, a small depression in the stone.
She found the catch and pressed it. Something inside clicked, and a portion of the wall eased open. Anne saw that the stone had been cut very thin and somehow fixed to a thick wooden panel.
“Quickly,” she said to the others.
She ushered them through, stepped in, and pulled the door shut, listening for it to click into place. Then she turned to see what their situation was.
The six of them just managed to crouch on a small landing in a rough tunnel carved of living stone. After the landing the passage descended rather dramatically. If it hadn’t been so narrow, going down it at anything but a fall probably would have been impossible; as it was, they were able to control their descent by bracing their hands against the walls. Austra handed the lantern back to Cazio, and Anne led, with the light coming from behind her, throwing her shadow down the strange warren. The air was thick with a burned sort of smell, but it wasn’t hot; if anything, she had a chill.
“He’s down there,” she murmured.
“What does he want with you?” Austra wondered aloud.
“I’ve no idea,” she said, “but it looks like we’re going to find out.”
“What if this is