“Don’t do that. It might close again and maybe this time we couldn’t stop it.”
“Haplo?” Bane’s voice floated up out of the hole. “It’s awfully dark down here. Could you hand me the glampern?”
“Your Highness might have waited for the rest of us,” Haplo remarked grimly. No answer.
“Keep still. Don’t move,” Haplo told the boy. “We’ll be down in a minute. Where’s Jarre?”
“Here,” she said in a small voice, coming to stand by the statue. Her face was pale. “Alfred said we couldn’t get back out this way.”
“Alfred said that?”
“Well, not in so many words. He didn’t want me to be afraid. But that had to be the reason why we went into the tunnels. I mean, if we could have escaped by coming up through the statue, we would have, wouldn’t we?”
“With Alfred, who knows?” Haplo muttered. “But you’re probably right. This must close whenever anyone goes down. Which means we have to find some way to prop this thing open.”
“Is that wise?” Limbeck asked anxiously, looking up at them from his position half in and half out of the hole. “What if the elves come back and find it open?”
“If they do, they do,” Haplo said, though he didn’t consider it likely. The elves seemed to avoid this area. “I don’t want to end up trapped down there.”
“The blue lights led us out,” said Jarre softly, almost to herself. “Blue lights that looked like that.” She pointed at Haplo’s glowing skin. Haplo said nothing, stalked off in search of something to use as a wedge. Returning with a length of stout pipe, he motioned Jarre and Limbeck into the hole, followed after them. As soon as he had passed across the base’s threshold, the statue began to slide shut, slowly, quietly. Haplo thrust the pipe into the opening. The statue closed on it, held it fast. He shoved on it experimentally, felt the statue give.
“There. The elves shouldn’t notice that. And we can open it when we return. All right, let’s get a look at where we are.”
Jarre held up the glampern and light flooded their surroundings. A narrow stone staircase spiraled down into darkness below. A darkness that was, as Jarre had said, unbelievably quiet. The silence lay over the place like thick dust, seemed not to have been disturbed in centuries. Jarre gulped, her hand holding the glampern trembled, caused the light to wobble. Limbeck took out his handkerchief, but used it to mop his forehead, not to clean his spectacles. Bane, huddled at the bottom of the stairs, his back pressed flat against the wall, looked subdued and awed. Haplo scratched the burning sigla on the back of his hand and firmly suppressed the urge to leave. He had hoped to evade, by coming down here, whatever unseen danger threatened them. But the runes on his body continued to glow blue, neither brighter nor dimmer than when he’d been standing in the Factree. Which made no sense, for how could the threat be both above and below?
“There! Those things make the lights,” said Jarre, pointing. Looking down, Haplo saw a row of Sartan runes running along the base of the wall. He recalled, in Abarrach, seeing the same series of runes, recalled Alfred using them as guides out of the tunnels of the Chamber of the Damned. Bane crouched down to study them. Smiling to himself, pleased with his cleverness, he put his finger on one and spoke the rune.
At first, nothing happened. Haplo could understand the Sartan language, although it jarred through him like the screeching of rats. “You’ve mispronounced it.”
Bane glowered up at him, not liking to be corrected. But the boy repeated the rune again, taking time to form the unfamiliar and difficult sounds with care. The sigil flared into light, shared that light with its neighbor. One at a time, the sigla each caught fire. The base of the wall, down the stairs, began to glow blue.
“Follow it,” said Haplo unnecessarily, for Bane and Limbeck and the dog were already clambering down the steps.
Only Jarre lingered behind, face pale and solemn, her hands kneading and twisting a tiny fold of her skirt.
“It’s so sad,” she said.
“I know,” Haplo replied quietly.
14
Limbeck came to a halt at the foot of the stairs. “Now what?” A veritable honeycomb of tunnels branched off from the one in which they were standing, lit by the blue runes on the floor. The sigla advanced no farther, almost as if waiting for instructions.
“Which way do we go?”
The dwarf spoke in a whisper, they all spoke in whispers, though there was no reason why they shouldn’t have talked out loud. The silence loomed over them, strict and stern, prohibiting speech. Even whispering made them feel uneasy, guilty.
“The time we were here, the blue lights led us to the mausoleum,” said Jarre.
“I don’t want to go back there again.”
Neither did Haplo. “Do you remember where that was?” Jarre, holding fast to Haplo’s hand, as she had once held fast to Alfred’s, shut her eyes and thought. “I think it was the third one to the right.” She pointed.
At that instant, the sigla flared and branched off in that direction. Jarre gasped and crowded closer to Haplo, hanging on to him with both hands.
“Wow!” Bane whistled softly.
“Thoughts,” said Haplo, recalling something Alfred had told him when they were running for their lives through the tunnels in Abarrach. “Thoughts can affect the runes. Think of where we want to go and the magic will lead us there.”
“But how can we think of it when we don’t know what it is?” Bane argued. Haplo rubbed his itching, burning hand against his trouser leg, forced himself to remain patient, calm. “You and my lord must have talked about how the machine’s central control would work, Your Highness. What do you think it’s like?”
Bane paused to consider the matter. “I showed Grandfather the pictures I’d made of the Kicksey-winsey. He noticed how all the machine’s parts look like parts of our own bodies or the bodies of animals. The gold hands and arms of the Liftalofts, the whistles made in the shape of mouths, the claws like bird feet that dig up the coralite. And so the controls must be—”
“A brain!” guessed Limbeck eagerly.
“No.” Bane was smug-“That’s what Grandfather said, but I said that if the machine had a brain it would know what to do, which it obviously doesn’t, since it’s not doing it. Aligning the islands, I mean. If it had a brain, it would do that on its own. It’s working, but without purpose. What I think we’re looking for is the heart.”
“And what did Grandfather say to that?” Haplo was skeptical.
“He agreed with me,” Bane replied, loftily superior.
“We’re supposed to think about hearts?” Limbeck asked.
“It’s worth a shot.” Haplo frowned, scratched his hand. “At least it’s better than standing around here. We can’t afford to waste any more time.” He set his mind to thinking about a heart, a gigantic heart, a heart pumping life to a body that has no mind to direct it. The more he considered it, the more the notion made sense, though he would never admit as much to Bane. And it fit in with the Patryn’s own theory, too.
“The lights are going out!” Jarre clutched Haplo’s hand, fingers digging into his skin.
“Concentrate!” he snapped.
The sigla that had lit the hallway to the right flickered, dimmed, and died. They all waited, breathlessly, thinking about hearts, all now acutely conscious of the beating of their own hearts, which sounded loud in their ears.
Light glimmered to their left. Haplo held his breath, willing the runes to come to life. The sigla burned stronger, brighter, lighting their way in a direction opposite that of the mausoleum.
Bane shouted in triumph. His shout bounded back to him, but the voice didn’t sound human anymore. It sounded hollow, empty, reminded Haplo unpleasantly of the echoing voice of the dead, the lazar on Abarrach. The glowing sigla on Haplo’s skin flashed suddenly, their light becoming more intense.