“So much for covering our tracks,” said Valerian, looking at the broken lid. “Still, we have a map, and if they follow, they won’t have.”
“Why did they put us down here if they knew there was this way out?” asked Boy.
“Well, obviously they didn’t know,” said Valerian. “It’s my guess this is some secret of the Beebe family. But we don’t have time to debate it. They’ll come sooner or later, and the torch won’t last for more than an hour or two. Let’s go.”
He took a pull on the vial. As he lowered his head, he saw Boy staring at him.
“What is it, Boy?”
“I-I was just thinking, wondering whether it would be a good idea if Willow and I had… a little of that… to help us.”
“How dare you! No! What a suggestion! This is for my arm. Anyway, it’s not good for you. Too much can… That’s not your business. Take the torch and get down that hole, Boy, before I decide to leave you here.”
Boy tried to hide his disappointment and did as he was bid.
“You next, Willow.”
And then Valerian swung his long legs up onto the ledge of the shaft and placed his feet on the rungs. The light from the torch had already stopped swinging about beneath him.
Valerian was glad the bottom was not far. He had little idea how he would have managed if he’d had to climb down a ladder with only one hand for more than a few feet. As it was it was difficult enough, but quite soon he had reached the bottom and stepped off to find Boy and Willow waiting for him.
“Look!” said Boy. “Boats!”
They were in a cavern, standing on a jetty made of iron and wood, which clung to the wall of the chamber. There was the river flowing slowly and steadily past them in the darkness, and tied to the jetty were several boats of a strange sort. They were flat-bottomed and had no oars, but each had a short pole lying in its bottom.
“I wonder when anyone last came this way,” said Willow. “It feels so forgotten.”
It was true. The whole place seemed to have been untouched for many years. The rust on the iron rungs had been undisturbed. The landing stage was rotting in places, and they had to tread carefully to avoid the weaker parts of the platform, but the boats bobbed gently in the current, as if happy to see someone after years of abandonment in the darkness. They chose the one that seemed to be the sturdiest.
“Let’s be gone,” said Valerian.
4
The boat, once untied, seemed keen to take them off down the tunnel that led from the chamber, and only leaked a little. Willow sat at the front with the torch, Valerian sat in the middle with the map, giving orders, and Boy crouched in the back, holding the pole and steering them away from the walls. There was little need to propel them forward-the current was enough to keep them moving at a decent speed. Once or twice Boy gave an extra push, but he rocked the boat so badly it made them feel unsafe.
Time. Who had any idea how time was passing as they sailed along in the long straight tunnel?
Distance. They had no more idea about how far they had traveled than they had about how long they’d been going. What had seemed so easy to start with began to seem a surreal voyage from nowhere to nowhere. The tunnel was apparently endless.
As they went, Valerian’s drugs began to wear off and the pain grew again in his arm. With it he began to remember the desperate nature of his situation.
So what if he made it back to the City? He knew what waited for him on New Year’s Eve, wherever he was. For the ten thousandth time he wondered if there was any way out that he hadn’t considered before. Maybe there was something staring him right in the face that he hadn’t seen. But fifteen years is a long time to think and he had no more ideas.
They drifted on in the gloom, the torch sputtering, showing signs that it would soon fail.
It was not much warmer in the underground canal than it had been in the crypt, or in the church, or in the snowstorm itself. It was airless too. Despite the flowing water there was a powerful smell of dampness and decay. Once or twice their faces were brushed by dripping fronds and unseen tentacles, maybe the roots of plants hanging from the bricked vault of the low tunnel. The sound of splashes from the prow of the boat fell dead against the claustrophobic walls.
Boy began to feel his joy slip from him.
He could see little but Willow by the light of the torch. What had he brought her into? This life with the madman who was his master. He was possibly a murderer, whose life was now forfeit over something that had happened fifteen years before. Valerian had thrown it all away for one night with a woman who had rejected him.
Nothing made sense, especially not this stupidly straight tunnel.
“Boy,” said Willow quietly, “I’m scared.”
“It’s all right,” Boy said. “It’s-”
And then Willow shrieked and dropped the torch into the canal, where it was extinguished at once with a short hiss.
“Willow!” called Boy. “Are you all right?”
“Something hit me! I’m sorry-oh, I’m sorry!”
“Are you all right?” Boy asked again.
“Yes, but what will we do now? We can’t see where we’re going!”
“What does it matter anyway?” said Boy. “We’re only going one way, and that’s forward. I don’t know what else to do.”
“But we could be down here forever,” cried Willow.
The darkness was total, and still they floated on.
Valerian barely seemed to have noticed. Boy now gently eased himself into the bottom of the boat from his perch on the stern, and Willow, somewhat hysterical, felt her way back toward Valerian and curled up at his feet.
Then she sat up. “I’ve still got a bit of a candle,” she called to Boy.
“But we’ve no way of lighting it,” he said miserably.
They fell silent again, and so they went, Boy and Willow half numbed by the cold and half asleep, and Valerian in some strange place where the pain and the last of the drugs had taken him.
5
Had they had any idea how time was passing they might have guessed that it was now well past midday on the day before New Year’s Eve.
Had they had any idea of how far they had traveled, they might have known that they were indeed back in the City or, at least, beneath it.
Valerian was right. Valerian was always right. They were in the maze of underground canals that lay far from sight and far from knowledge, forgotten and corrupt, while the City sprawled above.
They had drifted into the canal system proper, where the current had become more gentle. Had they had any light to see by, they would have been able to make out ruined doorways and steps, landing stages and blocked-in windows, where once a thriving business life had been conducted along the waterways of the City. Now the only life came from the water itself, gurgling and slurping its way toward various hidden gutters where it rushed unseen into the pestilent river that bisected the City itself.
Boy was half awake now. Despite his exhaustion, his fear would not allow him to sleep for long. Valerian was unconscious again, Willow whimpering in her sleep like a disturbed dog at his feet. So it was only Boy who knew what happened when the boat suddenly struck something in the dark and came to a halt.
Slowly, he put both hands out into the darkness. The boat was resting against a low wall on his left. He could hear the sound of wood on wood in front of him. On the other the side of the boat he felt another prow under his fingers. Ah! The boat had hit another one moored at a landing point.
“Valerian!” he called as loudly as he dared. “Willow! Wake up!”
He felt around the wall and found a crevice between two of the stones. He dug his fingers in and found it did not take much effort to keep their boat against the side. Keeping careful hold, he called, “Wake up! I think we might be able to get out. We’re at some sort of jetty again. We’re somewhere at last.”