It was the silence, really, that was oppressive about the dungeons; it actually seemed to press on your ears like a pair of deafening hands. The darkness was complete, cells at this level having no grate to admit a speck of light. It was as suffocating and black as a sack over your head. One could get used to dirt and spiders and even being alone, perhaps, but the silence and darkness, never.
Eilonwy had no intention of getting used to any of it, however. As soon as she was certain Achren was not going to return, she dropped to all fours and scrabbled in the dirty straw underfoot, throwing it aside until she reached the stone floor beneath. She inched her fingers along the seam of one flagstone until she felt a tingle run up her arm, an indescribable sense of knowing.
This one, she thought determinedly at the castle, felt the subtle shift in its essence. And slowly, the stone seemed to…soften? No, that wasn't it; she never could describe even to herself how it felt to have solid stone part around one's fingers like water; she'd certainly never been stupid enough to ask Achren, who had no inkling of her ability, how it worked. She'd discovered it some years ago by accident, some trick combined of her own latent power and the castle's curious, unwilling sympathy towards her, a trick she'd had many opportunities to be grateful for before now.
The stone shifted as she worked it loose, got both hands into the widening crack and silently commanded up. It rose heavily, scraping its thick sides, and she puffed as she pushed it over its neighbor. She wondered vaguely how much it weighed, certain, from the acrid taste of magic seeping into her mouth, that she wasn't moving it with her unaided strength alone. It didn't matter, of course, as long as it worked, but she wished she could do it without touching the stone at all. Her hands were always stiff afterwards, for hours.
A waft of slightly less stale air brushed her face from below, and she felt for the edges of the floor where the stone had been removed, braced her hands against them, and lowered herself into the hole left behind. Bare earth met her sandaled feet and she ducked down, paused to get her bearings, and set off into the darkness in the direction that felt right.
She'd never traversed the maze under Spiral Castle without her bauble, and had to admit now that it was an uncomfortable business. She had no doubt of her direction, but the floor was treacherous, and several times she tripped over obstacles and turned her ankles on loose stones. Feeling her way along a wall, she tried not to think of what else might meet her fingers besides stone and earth. Who knew what nameless things lived down here, things that usually disappeared down dark cracks at the approach of her bauble's glow?
She must retrieve it and return to her cell before Achren came back, but in truth it was only half her reason for picking her way toward the upper-level dungeons. She intended to satisfy her curiosity about that assistant pig-keeper as well; how very convenient that he and her bauble were both in the same cell.
Why had Achren imprisoned him? What was his interest in the other prisoner? Perhaps he'd be able to tell her something of the lands beyond the forest. She had never heard of any Caer Dallben, and wondered how far away it was, and whether it was large or small, and if there were any other people her age there.
It took over an hour, fumbling along in the darkness, and a long moment of thinking hard, impatient thoughts at a certain door until it stopped pretending to be a wall. But at last she paused, examining a mental map of the labyrinthine innards of the castle. The boy's cell should be just above her. She felt upward gingerly in the darkness and found the cold slate over her head.
Once again it molded around her fingers, the paver shifted, then…stopped. Up, she thought, irritated, up, blast you. Something was wrong; some weight on the stone that wasn't stone, one she had no power over, and she realized the boy must be sitting on it.
"Move away!" she shouted, wondering if he could hear anything through the thick block. The stone still would not budge, but she had a vague sense of something stirring in the cell, and shouted again. "Get off the stone!"
Silence. Confusion emanated from inside the cell, almost palpable. Idiot, she thought furiously. Perhaps he really was as stupid as she'd accused him of being. She'd been planning to apologize, and now decided against it. "I can't lift it with you standing on it, you silly assistant pig-keeper!"
A burst of energy brushed at her consciousness and the stone finally lifted and slid to the side. The palest possible square of light opened above her head, and she gratefully drank it in as she leapt up to grab the edges of the floor, kicked at the air, and pulled herself into the cell.
"Who are you?" the boy's voice, loud with panic, assaulted her ears from a few feet away. He was plastered flat against the wall under the grating.
"Who'd you expect?" she hissed, a loud whisper in his direction. "Don't make such a racket. I told you I was coming back." Her foot thumped against something hard on the ground. "Oh, there's my bauble." She bent to pick it up and sighed at its familiar, friendly weight in her hand.
The boy was panting fearfully, but it was in a lower, wavering voice that he called out, "Where are you? I can see nothing."
"Is that what's bothering you? Why didn't you say so in the first place?" Her bauble flared in her hand and its golden light burst into every corner, edging each stone in sharp black shadows.
The boy flinched violently and turned his head away, screwing his eyes shut in pain. "What's that?"
She regarded him curiously, as though at some strange, never-before-encountered animal. He was about her height, slim and sturdily built. The bright light revealed him to be in even worse condition than he'd appeared earlier. His shirt was torn beyond repair at neck and hem, and nearly every inch of exposed skin sported a layer of grime and blood. He was rather a gruesome sight, but she was used to that, and still determined to investigate him further. Even if he was hopelessly stupid.
"It's my bauble. How many times do I have to tell you?"
"But…" he opened one eye cautiously, still squinting. "But it lights up!"
He stated the obvious so blatantly that it made her want to laugh. "What did you think it would do? Turn into a bird and fly away?" He looked affronted and she chuckled as she dropped the lit sphere on the floor and took a step toward him.
He shrank away from her, but there was nowhere for him to go; when she reached him she grabbed his shoulder and impatiently pushed him around. He made a muffled sound of protest but then, realizing her intent, fell silent as she tugged at his bindings. His hands were swollen; the ropes had cut into his wrists, and she sucked at her teeth angrily. There was no reason for it at all, nothing but pure malice, and the last of her irritation drained from her as pity flooded it out.
"I meant to come back sooner, but Achren caught me talking to you," she explained, feeling a sort of kinship with him for their mutual grief at the queen's hands. "She started to give me a whipping. I bit her," she declared, with grim satisfaction.
"Then she locked me in one of the cells, deep underground. There are hundreds of them under Spiral Castle, and all sorts of galleries and passages like a honeycomb, all put there by the king who built this castle...ages ago. Most of them connect to each other, and I know how to get through them." She omitted her tenuous connection with the castle itself, assuming it would only confuse him. He was listening silently, an exhilarating experience totally foreign to her. Achren would have told her to hold her tongue long since. "It took me longer, though, in the dark, without my bauble."
She worked the loosened ropes over his hands, noticing with growing respect his bruised knuckles and several scrapes of which he did not complain, even when she could not avoid contact with them. Freed, he pulled his arms to the front with a sigh of relief, and rubbed his discolored wrists. When she stepped back around him he finally looked her full in the face without fear. "Won't Achren know you escaped?"
His voice, when it wasn't panicked, was a nice, homely sound, warm and mid-toned and just the least bit cracked at the end of each utterance. Eilonwy smiled. "No. She doesn't know I can get through the cells. And she thinks she knows all the passages, but she doesn't. Not by half. Can you imagine Achren in a tunnel? She's not as young as she looks, you know." In point of fact she did not know how old Achren actually was…only that she used some unspeakable methods of magic to maintain her beauty, the exact nature of which the queen kept carefully guarded.
The boy - Taran – blinked bemused at the irony in her tone, as though laughing at Achren was more than he could yet manage. He brushed a thick cowlick of dark hair out of his eyes with a hand that looked slightly too big for the rest of him, and his gaze darted nervously from her to their surroundings. "Do you live in this terrible place?"
"Well," she retorted, "you don't imagine I'd want to visit here, do you?"
He looked back at her, eyes widening with horror. "Is…is Achren your mother?"
Eilonwy stared at him, incensed, and spluttered an exclamation, barely fighting down the urge to slap him for even suggesting such a thing. How could anyone be so dense? Couldn't he see she was nothing like Achren?
Feet planted, she threw her head back proudly and stared him down. "I am Eilonwy, daughter of Angharad, daughter of Regat, daughter of…" she paused, noting his blank stare. "Oh, it's such a bother going through all that. My ancestors were the Sea People." No reaction. She tried once more. "I am of the blood of Llyr Half-Speech, the Sea King."
Taran seemed utterly nonplussed, shrugging, and she frowned, unimpressed by his ignorance of what were, according to various books and even Achren's admission, rather important figures in the history of Prydain. "Well, anyway. Achren is my aunt. Or that's what she says. I'm not so sure, myself."
He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and leaned against the wall. "Then what are you doing here?"
"I said I live here," she returned irritably. "It must take a lot of explaining before you understand anything." Her hand crept to the crescent pendant dangling from the silver chain at her throat, twisting the chain around her forefinger. "I was sent to Achren to learn magic after my parents died. It's a family tradition, you see. The boys are war leaders and the girls are enchantresses."
"But Achren is in league with Arawn of Annuvin!" he burst out. "She's an evil, loathsome creature!"
It was common knowledge, but she was relieved to see he wasn't a complete imbecile. "Oh, everyone knows that. I often wish my kin had sent me somewhere else. But I think they must have forgotten about me by now." Truth be told, she had no memory of anything before living with Achren, which must mean she'd been sent there when she was very young, and she often wondered what kind of fools would send a little girl to live with a sorceress whose infamy – as Achren herself proudly acknowledged – was legendary.
She had been staring into space for a moment, reflecting, and came to herself with a start when her eyes refocused on him, noticing the red-stained gash in his left sleeve."Where'd you get that?" She grabbed his arm and examined it; beneath the sleeve his upper arm was sliced across - a superficial wound, but inflamed and oozing blood. The straightness of it proclaimed it the work of a blade. "I don't believe you know much about fighting if you let yourself get knocked about and cut up so badly. But I don't imagine assistant pig-keepers are often called on to do that sort of thing."
"I didn't let myself get cut up," Taran protested indignantly, stiffening. "That's Achren's doing, or your aunt's. I don't know which and I don't care. One is no better than the other."
He sounded rather as though he meant to insult her, but her anger was too focused Achren-ward to be distracted. "I hate Achren," she muttered, kneeling down and gathering the tattered hem of her own linen skirt into her hands. "She's mean…" She jerked, and the fabric ripped with a satisfying sound…"and spiteful…" Rip. Riiiiiip. She tried to imagine it was Achren's hair, but Achren's hair was whiter than her garment, which hadn't been white in ages. A long strip separated into her hands, trailing a few threads of the golden embroidery that had once adorned the hem, and she rose and reached for his arm. He flinched back a little, jumpy as a cricket in a frying pan, but she grabbed his wrist determinedly and pinned it under her arm."Of all the people that have ever come here, you're the only one who's the least bit agreeable to talk to, and now she's had you damaged!"
He wrinkled his nose at the process of binding his wound, though whether in pain, or at the condition of the bandage she could not tell. "That's not the end of it. She means to kill my friend."
His friend? That fellow in the other cell, then; no wonder he'd been interested. Perhaps that was why he'd come to the castle, to rescue the man in the other dungeon. "If she does that," she informed him, "she'll include you as well. Achren doesn't do things by halves. It would be a...a shame if you were killed. I should..." she faltered, bewildered at her own dismay at the prospect, not knowing exactly how to express something so unfamiliar. "I should be very sorry."
He grabbed her hand suddenly, making her jump. "Eilonwy, listen! If there are tunnels under the castle, can you get to the other cells? Is there a way outside?"
She shrugged, staring at his hand, trying to comprehend the warm tingle that shot up her wrist at the contact. "Of course. If there's a way in, there has to be a way out, doesn't there?"
He let go, pushed past her and paced the cell in agitation; turned to face her, his face tense and determined. "Will you help us? It is important that we be free of this place. Will you show us the passage? My friend and I?"
"Let you escape?" Eilonwy blurted. Oh, blast, why hadn't she thought of it? She clasped her hands and bounced on her toes in subversive delight. "Oh, wouldn't Achren be furious at that! What a wonderful idea; more fun than anything I could think of. Can you imagine her face when she comes down to find you?" An image of that white face, stark with impotent fury, swam invitingly before her mind's eye. "I'd love to see it. Serve her right for whipping me and locking me up."
"Listen," he said impatiently. "Can you lead me to my companion?"
She considered it. The passage between the two cells, while not long, involved several hairpin turns and one crawl. "That would be very hard. Some of the galleries connect with the ones leading to the cells, but what happens is when you try to cross them, you run into other passages that..."
"Never mind," he interjected, running his fingers through his hair again as though he had a mind to pull it out. "Can I join him in one of the passageways, then?"
Irritation at being interrupted made her scowl at him. "I don't see why you want to do that. It would be so much simpler for me to let you out and then go back for him. You can wait for him out in the woods." His expression said he was about to argue the point, and she cut him off. "Why do you want to complicate things? It'll be bad enough for two people crawling around down there, but imagine three! Suppose you got separated. You couldn't possibly find your way around by yourself."
"Very well." Taran of Caer Dallben was clearly about to lose his temper. "But free my companion first."
That would require a ridiculous amount of backtracking. Why did he refuse to be sensible? "That's silly," she said bluntly. "I'm here, now, in your cell. Do you want to get out of here or don't you?"
"Of course I do!" He stopped pacing and leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. "But what if something goes wrong? What if he isn't well enough to move? Then I'll have to think of some means of carrying him, and you couldn't do that by yourself."
"It doesn't matter about me," he insisted, when she opened her mouth to argue. He was silent a moment, his face paling, before muttering, "My life means nothing to anyone. But his mission must not fail." He looked up, straight into her face, and something in the set of his chin told her he was not going to give way. "No. Free him first. You must."
"I must do nothing at all, may I remind you," she huffed at him, but in spite of her irritation a tiny bud of admiration was blooming inside her at his selflessness. It made her soften, albeit ungraciously. "Have it your way. It's still more fun than doing nothing."
He sucked in his cheeks thoughtfully and added, "And there's a white horse, Melyngar...I don't know where they've taken her."
She frowned, tempted to call the whole thing off in return being ordered about like a servant, but settled with snorting at his foolishness. "She'd be in the stable. Isn't that where you'd keep a horse?"
He ignored her tone. "Please, you must get her too. And weapons for us. Can you manage it all?"
"Of course I can." She perched herself at the edge of the hole, and again imagined Achren's face when she found the dungeon empty. It made her giggle aloud. "This is more excitement than I've had in ages." Pocketing her bauble, she leapt lightly to the tunnel below. The stone shifted over her raised hands and rasped slowly back into place; she was off, spitting into the dirt to get the magic taste out of her mouth.
It was so much easier to move about with light that she was positively cheerful as she navigated the tunnel to the other cell, except the one down which she had to crawl on her knees and elbows - which she would have to do twice, she thought, muttering about the noble ideals of assistant pig-keepers. It was odd...made no sense, really. Why would anyone choose not to be rescued first? Now and then, in her books, she came upon legends of great heroes who had forfeited their own lives in exchange for someone else's, or some equally worthy cause. But she'd never met anyone who'd be willing to do it, and an assistant pig-keeper certainly didn't fit into the same realm as those legendary characters.
He had said his life meant nothing to anyone, she remembered suddenly, with a pang of sympathy. She knew what that was like, but Great Belin, her life meant something to her, and she wasn't sure she'd be willing to risk it if she found herself in a situation like his.
He was a strange, fascinating creature, this Taran of Caer Dallben.