“This is very close,” she said.
“A necessary precaution,” I smiled.
The camera panned back toward us, finishing its sweep. It was pointed almost directly at us. Not quite, though. It looked as if we were in its blind spot. I waited for it to resume its pan in the other direction. But it didn’t. Instead, it stayed focused directly on us. Then the alarm sounded and I knew we had been caught.
Chapter 46
The clanging alarm eliminated the need for stealth. Which meant it was time for a change of strategy. Time to hide in plain sight. I walked directly toward the lens, axe behind my back, my face buried in Meryem's neck, punch drunk in love. Meryem picked up on the act and played right along, nibbling at my ear. We passed in front of the lens, its servos buzzing to keep up.
“At least this way, they think we’re harmless,” I said.
“You are not harmless, Michael Chase. Nor am I.”
The iron plaque mounted on the tower wall confirmed that we had indeed found the dungeon. I quickly opened the heavy, iron-banded door and we snuck inside to find a narrow stone stairwell. It was dark so I passed Meryem one of the waterproof light-stick flashlights I’d picked up in town. They were little more than a red LED on one end and a green LED on the other, but they threw enough light that we could see, and if the illustration on the package was to be believed, they floated.
There was a chain wrapped around the inside handle of the door with just enough play that I could reach the iron rings mortared into the stone walls. I pulled the chain taut and tied a simple square knot. It wouldn’t keep anyone out forever, but it would slow them down. We continued down the steep staircase, the little red and green LEDs casting their dull glow.
Then I stopped in my tracks because I saw the bloody face of a tortured man. I felt Meryem squeeze my shoulder. I realized what I was looking at. It was a latex dummy manacled to the stone wall. A display for the tourists. Behind the dummy, a padlocked iron gate cordoned off a pit filled with medieval torture tools. There was a giant iron pot to boil prisoners in oil, a rack, and the like. But what interested me was a second set of iron bars in the rock wall on the far side of the pit. They blocked off a passage that went somewhere, I was guessing down.
The door rattled above. The guards had already found us.
“Move out of the way,” I said.
I ignored the rattling of the door and inserted the blade of the axe between the hasp and the bars of the iron gate in front of me. The hasp popped free. I hopped down to the dirt and rock floor below and made my way to the second gate. I couldn’t see what was on the other side of the bars, but I saw right away that this one was going to be trickier.
The smaller gate was chained. There was no hasp to break. I’d have to attack the hinges themselves. I tried the lever trick, but the hinges were well anchored into the rock. So I swung at the top hinge with the axe. Some dust billowed out, but the hinge was solid. I hit it again. Still fairly solid, but this time I loosened a chunk of rock. I took another big swing. I almost put my eye out with a chip of rock, but I loosened it enough that I was able to get the head of the axe between the metal bar and the rock to lever the gate out. It popped, leaving me with just enough room to slide in over the top of the gate.
“You’re going to love this,” I said.
There were cobwebs everywhere. I crawled in, Meryem behind me. The tunnel wasn’t more than three feet high, with a dirt floor. The guards continued to pound the door above, their beating less frantic, but more directed, as if they had some kind of plan. We crawled forward through dust and dirt for about a hundred feet, my light stick casting a dim glow in front of us. I heard a thud as the dungeon door swung off its hinges behind us. Then I fell.
I fell because the dusty ground was suddenly uneven below my right hand. For a moment, it felt like my palm was on a teeter-totter, and then the ground broke way beneath my knees. I plunged through the air for maybe seven feet. Luckily, I managed to land in a crouch. Not quite catlike but close enough.
“Are you okay, Michael?” Meryem whispered from the passage above.
“Never better,” I said.
I looked around. I was in a decent-sized corridor. A stone staircase descended in front of me, the ceiling just tall enough for me to stand. The wooden trapdoor had landed on the floor behind me. Clearly, it hadn’t been inserted properly in its frame. I picked it up and handed it up to Meryem in the passage above.
“Throw some dirt on it, and put it half into place. Then lower yourself down.”
“I do not like this place, Michael.”
“Neither do I.”
Meryem lowered herself down, stepping into my hands.
“Now push it back into its frame.”
She shoved the trapdoor back into position where I hoped it would hold in place for our pursuers. Then I let Meryem down. The guards’ footsteps were muted above, but I could hear that they were getting closer. There were even more cobwebs than there had been in the passage above. And there were wooden torches on the walls. I grabbed one from an iron sconce and lit it with the disposable lighter I’d purchased. It must have had some kind of kerosene on it because it ignited immediately, the flame casting its warm glow down the sloping corridor. We continued forward through the cobwebs. We had walked several yards before Meryem spoke again.
“Michael?” Meryem said from behind me.
“Yeah?”
“Give me your torch.”
I turned back to see Meryem standing absolutely still, her face buried in a cobweb, five or six leggy arachnids descending toward her. I handed her the torch. Meryem slowly pulled her head back and raised the torch, burning the web, spiders singing in the flame.
“I thought you were afraid of spiders,” I said.
“I said that I did not like them. There is a difference.”
The spiders cringed away, their roasting carapaces smelling like burning hair. Meryem handed back the torch and we continued down the corridor. I was optimistic because the dank air felt less stale, and that meant we might be getting somewhere, if only to a larger space. We continued for several minutes, the corridor sloping down in a reasonably straight line. I could no longer hear our pursuers. In fact, I heard nothing but the flicker of the torch’s flame as the ever-cooler air blew past it. Then I heard a plop.
It sounded like a stone falling in water, echoing up through the corridor like a drum. But I couldn’t tell from where the stone had fallen. The path had narrowed into the steep staircase that we now descended. I dragged a free hand along the stone walls as I went down, damp lime dust coating my fingers in a paste. I was slow and methodical because I didn’t know what was down there. But it wasn't long before I heard another watery plop, this one bigger than the last. Then, there was an enormous cracking groan and the five or six stairs that I could see in front of me fell away, crashing into the darkness.
Chapter 47
I watched the stairs fall away in front of me, seemingly in slow motion, even as I slammed either palm against the corridor walls to prop myself up. I still had the torch jammed against the wall with one hand which made it pretty clear that the stone step I was standing on wouldn’t last long. It was now obvious that the narrow corridor opened beneath my feet into a wide, cavernous space. I watched as the fracture in the wall beside me widened until I felt the stair I was standing on move. It was solid rock, but I could feel it slipping out from beneath me, even as I lifted my weight away.