"Are you sure?" Cal said skeptically.
"Absolutely. Come on."
The deception worked for about a hundred feet, until Cal again came to a standstill.
"You're lying. We should be there by now."
"No, really, not far now," Will assured him. "And don't look down!"
This went on several times, Cal becoming more and more distrustful and angry until Will really did reach the bottom.
"Touchdown!" he announced.
"You lied to me!" Cal accused him as he stepped from the ladder.
"Yeah, but hey, it worked, didn't it? You're safe now," Will replied with a shrug, happy that he'd been able to talk his brother down, even if he'd resorted to deception to achieve it.
"I'm never going to listen to you again," Cal threw huffily at him as he began to hunt around for his walking stick. "You're a lying slug."
"Oh, sure, feel free to take it out on me… just like everybody else around here does," Will replied, more for Chester's benefit than Cal's.
Will turned from the ladder, his feet making a glassy noise as if he were treading on pieces of broken bottle. Indeed, as they all moved around, the ground produced a grinding and vitreous ringing. From what little Will could see, before them seemed to be a colonnade of closely packed pillars spearing up into the darkness, each one more that 200 feet in girth.
"I'm only going to do this because the Limiters should be far enough behind that it doesn't matter, and I want you to know what we're getting into," Elliott said, turning up her lantern and holding it on the area before them.
"Wow!" Will exclaimed.
It was like looking into a sea of dark mirrors. As the beam from Elliott's light struck the nearest column, it was reflected onto another. The beam crisscrossed around them, creating the illusion that there were scores of lanterns. The effect was staggering. He also caught sight of his and the others' reflections from all angles.
"The Sharps," Elliott said. "They're made of obsidian."
Will began to study the nearest column. Its circumference wasn't rounded after all, but composed of a series of perfectly flat plains that ran vertically up its length, as if it had been formed by many longitudinal fractures. It didn't seem to taper in the slightest toward the top.
Scanning around, Will came across a different style of column. The flat plains along its length were gently curved, like some gargantuan licorice twist. Indeed, as he looked further, there were more like this in between the straight columns, and a small number that were pronounced in their curvature.
His mind was awhirl as he started to speculate on the factors that could have produced such a unique natural phenomenon. Although he was bursting to say something about the columns, he checked himself, remembering only too painfully the reaction from Chester when he'd waxed lyrical about the flying lizards. But if ever anything resembled a setting for one of Chester's precious fantasy stories, these crystalline monoliths had to be it. The secret lair of the dark fairies, Will thought wryly. No, better stilclass="underline" the secret lair of the dark and extremely vain fairies. He suppressed a chuckle at this, keeping the notion firmly to himself. It wouldn't be wise to antagonize Chester any further; relations with him were at an all-time low as it was.
Chester picked that moment to speak up, sounding distinctly unimpressed with their surroundings, most likely in a bid to tweak Will..
"Uh-huh. The Sharps. So now what?" he asked Elliott, who turned her lantern down again, dousing the confusion of light beams and multiple images. Will was actually relieved because it was so incredibly disorienting.
"It's a maze in here, so do exactly what I tell you," Elliott replied. "Drake and I set up a cache halfway through, where we can replenish our food and water and also stock up on munitions from the arsenal. It's not going to take us long, and then we're heading on to the Pore. Once we're past that, it's a couple of days' haul to the Wetlands."
"The Pore?" Will asked, his curiosity piqued.
"What about Bartleby?" Cal demanded, bringing the exchange to an end. "He's not here yet."
"Give him a chance. You know he'll find us," Elliott said in an understanding tone, attempting to mollify the boy.
"He'd better," Cal said anxiously.
"Let's do this," Elliott said, sighing as her patience wore thin.
There was no way that the boys could move quietly with the clinking and crunching of the glassy gravel underfoot, although Elliott managed it effortlessly, as if she were gliding over the surface.
"All that noise you're making will carry for miles. Can't you rock apes tread more lightly?" she implored them, but it was useless. However much care they took, they still sounded like a herd of rhinoceros stampeding through a glazier's. "The cache isn't far from here. I'm going to check it, then you can follow me in. Understood?" Elliott stated, then slipped away.
As they hung around, waiting for her return, Cal suddenly spoke.
"I think I hear Bart. He's coming."
Leaving Will and Chester, he edged slowly forward, hugging the side of the column.
His dimmed lantern fell on something.
It wasn't Bartleby.
It wasn't his own reflection in the glossy obsidian, either.
A Limiter stood before him in all his dark glory.
He had been skirting around the column from the opposite side, his rifle at his waist.
For the briefest moment, he looked as surprised as Cal, who squawked an urgent, unintelligible warning, alerting Will and Chester.
Cal's eyes and the Limiter's locked. Then the Limiter's upper lip pulled back into a brutal sneer, his teeth bared in his hollow-cheeked, hideous face. It was animal and insane. The grimace of a killer.
Cal's instincts kicked in and he used the closest thing he had to a weapon. He brought up his walking stick and, by some freak stroke of luck, the handle hooked the Limiter's rifle before he could raise it, yanking it clean from his hands.
It clattered across the obsidian gravel.
For another moment, the Limiter and Cal simply stood there, even more surprised than before. It didn't last long. In less than a heartbeat, the Limiter's hand snapped in front of him, gripping a gleaming scythelike dagger. It was standard issue for the Styx military, with a slightly curved and lethal-looking blade about ten inches long, and Cal had seen it used to deadly effect when the Crawfly cut down Uncle Tam. Brandishing it, the Limiter dived at the boy.
But his big brother was already there, tearing in from the side. Grabbing the Limiter's arm, Will crashed into him, sending the man flying. Will followed him down, landing on top of him. Still holding the soldier's arm, Will used all his weight to keep him from using his knife.
Cal followed suit and launched himself onto the soldier's legs, wrapping his arms around the man's ankles as tightly as he could. The Limiter punched at Will's back and neck with his free arm, trying his utmost to get at his face. But Will's rucksack had ridden up around his shoulders, making it difficult for the Limiter to land his heavy blows. Shouting to Chester, Will kept his head well tucked down.
"Use the gun!" Will bawled over and over again, his voice muffled because his mouth was pressed against the Limiter's upper arm.
"Chester, the gun!" Cal shouted hoarsely. "Shoot him!"
As the boys discarded lanterns sent a flurry of random beams glancing off the columns like a confusion of small spotlights, Chester, poised several feet away, had lifted the rifle and was trying to take aim.
"Shoot!" Cal and Will screamed in unison.
"I can't see!" Chester screamed back. Frantically.
"Do it!"
"Just shoot!"
"I can't get a clear shot!" Chester shrieked in absolute desperation.