Chapter Five

There was another rumble of heavy feet as Eilonwy neared Taran's cell for the last time and she paused to listen, concerned. The guard should not be changing again so soon. Something was amiss - perhaps Achren had found her cell empty, or Fflewddur's...in which case the next logical cell to check would be the one above her head. There was no time to lose.

Fortunately Taran required very little prodding to get a move on, and in a few moments the stone had slid into place for the last time over their heads. He crouched next to her, looking uncomfortable in the cramped space.

"This way." She turned and led him briskly into the darkness, her heart racing giddily. Every slap of her foot on the earthen floor echoed with finality in her ears. Last steps...last time through these wretched tunnels...last few breaths of this stale air. A few moments more, and she would be free.

Passing several openings on either side, she sensed Taran slowing to glance around and called back, "Be sure you follow me. Don't go into any of those. Some of them branch off and some don't go anywhere at all. You'd get lost, and that would be a useless thing when you're trying to escape." Along with slowing us down considerably, she added silently to herself, not pleased at the thought of having to go back and find him if he strayed.

She heard his steps quicken their pace and picked up her own, spurred along by her eagerness to leave the castle, barely registering his labored breath as he struggled to keep up with her. Pebbles rattled from somewhere behind them and a there was a rumble of heavy feet above. She paused, holding her light up to illuminate the ceiling. It was trembling as the rumble continued, and tiny crumbs of earth rolled down the walls. Taran came up, panting, behind her.

"We're just below the guardroom," she whispered to him. "Something's happening up there. Achren doesn't usually turn out the guard in the middle of the night."

He looked up anxiously, pale and perspiring. "They must have gone to the cells and found us gone. There was a lot of commotion just before you came." He rubbed his hand across his damp forehead, and she smothered a laugh at the streak of grime it left behind.

"You must be a very important Assistant Pig-Keeper," she observed, amused. "Achren wouldn't go to so much trouble unless..."

He shot her an annoyed look and edged further down the tunnel. "Hurry! If she puts a guard around the castle we'll never get out."

She pursed her mouth in irritation as she pushed past him. "I wish you'd stop worrying. You sound like you're having your toes twisted. Achren can set out all the guards she wants. She doesn't know where the mouth of the tunnel is, and it's hidden so well an owl couldn't see it. You don't think I'd march you out the front gate, do you?"

In truth, she was concerned, and his additional anxiety was unwelcome. Getting out the castle was only half the task; a complete getaway would be far more difficult if Achren began sending search parties into the woods. Perhaps she would even employ the hounds.

Sensing her escape slipping away, Eilonwy doubled her pace around the familiar curves and twists of the tunnel, giving no notice to the fact that Taran's puffing was growing fainter behind her. But presently he yelped, and then, to her alarm, there was a tremendous roar - the unmistakable sound of falling earth and scattering rock. In an instant she was scrambling back toward the sound, visions of him broken and buried under a merciless mountain of stones clawing at her mind.

Heart in her throat, she rounded a corner and saw nothing but clouds of swirling dust, but heard him faintly calling her name, and fell into a crouch, knees weak with relief. Burying her face in her skirt to keep out the dust, she took several deep breaths to steady her nerves before looking up again, and raised her bauble as high as she could, searching for him. "Yes, I'm here! Where are you?"

His voice came, distantly, from somewhere below, and she flopped onto her belly and slid toward the dark space where it seemed loudest. The dust was settling, but what it revealed only made her heart sink. "Wait...I see. Part of the tunnel's given way. You must have slipped into a crevice."

"It's not a crevice," he called up, his voice echoing strangely as though off a cavernous interior. "I've fallen all the way down into something and it's deep. Can't you put the light into it? I've got to get up again."

She held her bauble out before her and crept forward, sliding over a shelf of rock that felt sturdy, until she came to an edge where the darkness yawned under her nose. The golden light bounced off the wall opposite, but there was no floor. "Well, you have got yourself into a mess. The ground's all broken through here, and below there's a big stone like a shelf over your head. How did you ever manage to do that?"

"I didn't do it on purpose!" He sounded affronted.

She felt the castle shifting restlessly around her and frowned. This was not the time for its tricks. She wondered if it would prevent her leaving if it could...she'd just bet it would, come to think of it, but it wouldn't do to let the boy know this was even a possibility.

"I've never seen this before," she said carefully. "All that tramping about above must have jarred something loose. I don't think these tunnels are half as solid as they look, or the castle, either," she added, recalling Fflewddur's sensible question. "Achren's always complaining about things leaking and doors not closing right."

"Do stop that prattling!" Taran's voice was an indignant blurt. "I don't want to hear about leaks and doors! Show me a light so I can climb out of here!"

Eilonwy sighed, chafing at the delay. "That's the trouble; I'm not quite sure you can. You see, that stone shelf juts out so far and goes down so steeply. Can you manage to reach it?"

She heard scuffling for a few moments and then a despairing groan. "Go on without me. Warn my companion the castle is alerted..."

Oh, for goodness sake. "And what do you intend to do? You can't just sit there like a fly in a jug. That isn't going to help matters at all."

"It doesn't make any difference about me," he said. That again. "You can find a rope and come back when things are safe..."

Not likely, she thought. With freedom so close she could taste it, she had no intention of entering this place again once she left. "Who knows when that will be? If Achren sees me there's no telling what might happen. Suppose I couldn't get back? You'd turn into a skeleton while you were waiting - I don't know how long that takes, though I imagine it would need some time - and you'd be worse off than before."

There was a despairing silence, then..."What else am I to do?" His voice was thick; his misery swept like a wave on her consciousness. In spite of her annoyance her heart twisted in sympathy.

"That's very noble of you," she called, "but I don't think it's really necessary - not yet, at any rate. If the guards come out and start beating the woods, I hardly think your friend would stay around waiting. He'd go hide and come back for you later, I should imagine." She hesitated, remembering Fflewddur's hapless stammering as she'd left him. "Unless he's an assistant pig-keeper, too, in which case I can't guess how his mind would work."

"He's not an assistant pig-keeper," came the weary retort. "He's...well, it's none of your business what he is."

She snorted dismissively. "That wasn't very polite. Well, nevertheless, the main thing is to get you out."

"It's impossible," he howled. "I'm caught here, locked up better than Achren ever planned."

She had no patience for such dramatics. "Don't say that; it doesn't help. I could tear up my robe and plait it into a cord - though I'll tell you now I wouldn't enjoy crawling around tunnels without any clothes on." The miserable silence below took on a definite sensation of horror, and she dismissed the idea. "I don't think it would be long enough or strong enough, though. I could cut off my hair and add it in, if I had a pair of shears." She held a tangled red-gold handful of it out at arm's length appraisingly. It was several feet long, but..."No, that still wouldn't do."

His restlessness was pulsing up to her and she cut him off before he could speak. "Can't you please be quiet and let me think?" If only she could see where he was! "Here, wait, I'm going to drop my bauble down to you. Catch!"

She tossed the golden ball over the edge of the stone shelf. The darkness closed upon her like a black curtain, but she kept her eye on the warm light glinting on the walls below. "Now then, what's down there? Is it just a pit of some kind?"

He was silent for a moment, but she sensed surprise, and when his voice echoed up it was brighter. "It's not a hole at all! It's a kind of chamber, and there's a tunnel here, too. "

That settled it. There was no way to get him out, and she could not, in good conscience, go on without him; meanwhile the guards were alerted and the castle was as tense as a drawn bowstring. Something was going to happen; perhaps was already happening, and there was no time to spend dithering about. Another tunnel meant another route, almost certainly. Before he had finished speaking, she was sliding her feet out in front of her and pushing herself over the ledge.

It was a fair drop, but she'd prepared for it, and landed squarely, pebbles rattling around her. Taran, who'd gone a few steps down the tunnel, whirled around at the sound. His face paled with shock, then reddened in dismayed fury. "What did you...why did...you addlepated fool!"

Belin, she thought, as he railed on, called her sanity into question, and gave them both up for lost. This boy was second only to Achren in overreacting to things. Unlike Achren, however, he was rather amusing in his outbursts, perhaps because they weren't accompanied by surges of dark magic or the threat of that leather strap. At any rate she had rather anticipated this one, and waited quietly until he'd run out of breath.

"Now, if you've quite finished, let me explain something very simple." She pointed down the tunnel. "That has to go someplace, and chances are it will be better than where we are now."

He took a deep breath and pressed his palms to his eyes. "I...I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have called you names. But there was no reason to put yourself in danger."

She blinked at him in astonishment, disarmed by his manner and a little confused. A glimmer of warmth bloomed in her breast and she tamped it down ruthlessly. After all, that Fflam had been similarly polite and look how he'd turned out.

"There you go again." She took her bauble from him and stepped resolutely toward the new tunnel. "I promised to help you escape and that's what I'm doing." And I don't abandon my companions. "Besides, I know this castle and how it works. I shouldn't be surprised if this tunnel followed the same direction as the one above, and it doesn't have half as many galleries coming off it." Eilonwy glanced around at the walls and ceiling; unlike the burrows above, these were carefully squared-off and lined with stone, the roof supported on great pillars. If you didn't know you were underground, you could almost mistake it for just another corridor in the castle. "It's certainly more comfortable."

They moved along at a better pace now, as the way was broad and tall, allowing them to walk upright and side-by-side - a situation she found novel. She couldn't remember ever walking with anyone; Achren was always either forcibly dragging her or making her walk in front, "to stay out of trouble" when they were obliged to go anywhere together. It was strange, oddly unnerving to have someone at your left shoulder - rather like being in a boat unevenly weighted on one side. She felt a mild urge to throw her other arm out to balance the empty space on her right.

"How did you learn your way through all these tunnels, anyway?" he asked presently, and she almost startled at the echo of his voice off the stone walls, after the muffling effect of the earthen tunnels above.

Bitter amusement pulled at her mouth. "I've had rather a lot of time to myself. It's not the first time I've been locked in the dungeons. Achren sometimes forgets about me for days at a time."

"I thought she was teaching you magic."

"She is." A gallery opened to their left; Eilonwy glanced at it briefly, felt no inward tug, and continued on without slowing. "But the weather's more predictable than Achren. You never know if she's going to be a thunderstorm or a blizzard."

Taran shuddered, but his voice took on the trace of humor she'd heard before. "I don't suppose she's ever peaceful and summery."

This surprised a real laugh out of her and she glanced at him with amusement. "No indeed." She wondered what, exactly, his interaction with Achren had been. "Anyway, some days she makes me practice dawn to dusk. Other days she can't be bothered, or stays locked in her chamber for hours and hours. She's very busy with a lot of other things, you know, though I don't often know what they are. There are always nasty-looking people coming and going on missions of hers."

"Haven't you ever thought of running away?" he asked, and she turned a startled glare upon him, almost running into a pillar. She had not yet informed him of her intentions, feeling it would perhaps be wiser to save that revelation for once they were outside the castle.

He looked bemused at her expression. "I mean...you don't seem to belong here, really."

She chewed her upper lip as she got her balance back, and continued a few paces before muttering, "I've thought of it. Just never had the chance. I wouldn't know where to go. It's not as though there's another castle just over the next hill."

Taran slowed as they passed another gallery, and she turned a little in his direction to lead him on. "There's no sense branching off yet. Best way to get lost. We'll go straight to the end of this one; there's bound to be something there."

His face was troubled as he glanced down yet another passageway, dragging his heels. "We shouldn't have come this far."

She rolled her eyes and pressed on. "Excuse me. I forgot which one of us has spent more time down here."

"You haven't spent time in this tunnel," he argued. "You don't know how long it goes on. We might go on tramping for days. And isn't it supposed to bring us out above ground? It just keeps going down deeper and deeper."

She grit her teeth, ignoring him, trying to sort out the sensations she was picking up from somewhere nearby. Somehow that strange, niggling sense of the castle being alive was stronger than ever, as though they were nearing its heart, the potent source of the will that ran, like streaks of marble, through every stone. Close, very close - so close that her sense of direction was muddled, like a compass held too near to a lodestone.

They rounded a corner and came to an abrupt stop at a wall of boulders that completely blocked the tunnel. She stared at it blankly in confusion, and Taran gave a cry of dismay. "I knew it! We've gone to the end of your precious tunnel that you know so much about, and this is what we find. Now we can only go back; we've lost all our time and we're no better off."

She barely heard him; her mind was racing ahead, probing at the stones; she reached out and ran her fingers along the joints, waiting for the buzzing tingle that identified one that would move at her command. "I can't understand," she said aloud to delay Taran, who was already moving impatiently backwards, "why anyone would go to the trouble of building a tunnel like this and not have it go any place. Someone dug it and set all the rocks and it must have been a terrible amount of work. Why would anyone...?"

"I don't know!" Taran burst out. "I wish you'd stop wondering about things that can't make any difference to us. I'm going back. I don't know how I'm going to climb that shelf, but I can certainly do it a lot more easily than digging through a wall."

The wall was solid, she realized, irritated. Not this, not now, you...you blasted pile of rocks. There had to be some other way. There was always some other way, if she could just get the place to cooperate. A strong sense of ambivalence weighed heavy on her, as though the castle itself were divided, and anything she did or said might push it in either direction.

Perhaps best, then, to treat it lightly. "Well," she said, affecting nonchalance, "it is very strange and all. I'm sure I don't know where we are."

"I knew we'd end up being lost," Taran growled. He was almost out of sight beyond the ring of light. "I could have told you that."

Which way? Show me which way. Please. "I didn't say I was lost," she said cautiously, stepping carefully away from the wall, testing the feel of the tunnel like a dowser searching for water. "I only said I didn't know where I was, and there's a difference. When you're lost, you really don't know where you are. When you just don't happen to know where you are at the moment, that's something else. I know I'm underneath Spiral Castle, and that's quite good for a start."

"You're splitting hairs. Lost is lost. You're as bad as Dallben."

There! There it was...a threadlike pull, a tug at her consciousness, just a few paces back and to the left of where Taran was standing. "Who is Dallben?" she asked absently, moving toward him slowly so as not to lose the sensation.

"Dallben is my-oh, never mind!" Seeing her follow with the light, he turned and made his way back up the tunnel.

"We could have a look into that first side passageway," she called out, as much to the castle as to him. That's the one, isn't it. No tricks from you, now.

Taran had slowed and peered into the opening. Coming up behind him, she held up the light to look over his shoulder. This tunnel was still paved, but it was narrow, and the stones were rougher and more hastily set. A breath of slightly less stale air brushed her face. "Go ahead, let's try this one."

"Hush," he whispered, straining his head forward and tucking his hair behind his ears. She pulled her attention away from her inward sense and listened; there were faint sounds, like the rustling of furtive animals, from far down the tunnel. "There's something..."

"Well, by all means let's find out what." She prodded him impatiently. He threw her an annoyed backwards glance and crept forward.

Gooseflesh was erupting on her arms and prickling over the back of her neck as they slipped further down; she felt her breath quicken with excitement mingled of fear and curiosity. She had no idea what was at the end of this passage, but she knew without a doubt it was something important, something powerful, something positively stiff with magic. It was drawing her in; the familiar web-like feel of sorcery was looping over her fingers and forearms and tugging her inexorably forward even as her skin crawled under it and her face stretched into a grimace at the repellant taste and smell.

The rustling grew louder, and other sounds joined it; low gibberings, high thin screeching and wailings that recalled Achren's horror stories about the cyoeraeth. She shuddered, and when Taran stopped for a moment and mopped his face with a handful of his shirt she saw his hands were shaking. He looked back and held his arm up protectively, barring her way. "Give me the light," he ordered, "and wait for me here."

Alone in the darkness with that sound? Not a chance. "Do you think it's ghosts?" she whispered. "I don't have any beans to spit at them, and that's about the only thing that will really do for a ghost." She shut her eyes, feeling about, but she sensed nothing that indicated dark magic; only ancient power, long undisturbed. "You know, I don't think it's ghosts at all. I've never heard one, and I suppose they could sound like that if they wanted to, but I don't see why they should bother. I think it's just the wind."

Taran shook his head incredulously. "Wind? How could there be...?" He stopped, as a cold current of air suddenly threaded past them, lifting strands of hair from his damp forehead. "Wait a minute. You may be right. There might be an opening." He took a breath and strode on, holding the light over his head, and she followed at his heels.

The tunnel ended in another wall of rock, but this one was pierced by a narrow crack, through which the cold current slid like an undulating rope of ice. Taran swallowed hard and wedged himself into the opening.

She followed him, heart pounding.