Will nodded.
"Right," the big man said.
"Thanks, Uncle Tam. I can't tell you how…," Will said falteringly.
"No need, my boy." Tam ruffled his hair. He looked down at the table and didn't speak for a few seconds. It was totally unexpected; silence and Uncle Tam didn't go together. Will had never before seen him like this, this gregarious and massive man. He could only think that he was upset and trying to hide it. But when Tam raised his head, the broad smile was there and his voice rumbled as it always did.
"I saw all this coming… it was bound to happen sooner or later. The Macaulays are loyal, and we will fight for those we love and believe in, no matter what the price. You would've tried to do something to save Chester, and gone after your father, whether I'd helped you or not."
Will nodded, feeling his eyes fill with tears.
"Thought as much!" Tam boomed. Like your mother… like Sarah… a Macaulay through and through!" He grabbed Will firmly by his shoulders. "My head knows you have to go, but my heart says otherwise." He squeezed Will and sighed. "Pity is… we could have had some times down here, the three of us. Some high times indeed."
Will, Cal, and Tam talked well into the early hours, and when he finally got to bed, Will hardly slept a wink.
Early in the morning, before there was a stir in the house, Will packed his bag and tucked the cloth map Uncle Tam had given him into the top of his boot. He checked that the node stones and light orb were in his pockets, then went over to Cal and shook him awake.
"I'm off," Will said in a low voice as his brother's eyes flickered open. Cal sat up, scratching his head.
"Thanks for everything, Cal," Will whispered, "and say good-bye to Granny for me, won't you?"
"Course I will," his brother replied, then frowned. "You know I'd give anything to come, too."
"I know, I know… but you heard what Tam said: I have a better chance by myself. Anyway, your family is here," he said finally, and turned to the door.
Will tiptoed down the stairs. He felt exhilarated to be on the move again, but this was tempered by an unexpected pang of sadness that he was leaving. Of course, he could stay here, somewhere where he actually belonged, if he chose, rather than venturing out into the unknown and risking it all. It would be so easy just to go back to bed. As he reached the hallway, he could hear Bartleby snoring somewhere in the shadows. It was a comforting sound, the sound of home. He would never hear that sound again if he went now. He stood by the front door and hesitated. No! How could he ever live with himself if he chose to leave Chester to the Styx? He would rather die trying to free him. He took a deep breath and, glancing behind him into the still house, slipped the heavy catch on the door. He opened it, stepped over the threshold, and then closed it gently behind him. He was out.
He knew he had a considerable distance to cover, so he walked quickly, his bag thumping a rhythm on his back. It took him a little under forty minutes to reach the building at the edge of the cavern that Tam had described. There was no mistaking it as, unlike most structures in the Colony, it had a tiled rather than a stone roof.
He was now on the road that led to the Skull Gate. Tam had said that he had to keep his wits about him because the Styx changed sentries at random intervals, and there was no way of knowing whether one was just about to appear around the corner.
Leaving the road, Will climbed over a gate and sprinted through the yard that lay in front of the building, a ramshackle farm property. He heard a pig-like grunting coming from one of the outlying buildings and spotted some chickens penned up in another area. They were spindly and malnourished but had perfectly white feathers.
He entered the building with the tiled roof and saw the old timber beams leaning against the wall just as Tam had described. As he crept in under them, something moved toward him.
"What—"
It was Tam. He immediately silenced Will by putting a finger to his lips. Will could hardly contain his surprise. He looked at Tam questioningly, but the man's face was grim and unsmiling.
There was hardly enough room for both of them under the beams, and Tam squatted awkwardly as he slid a massive paving slab along the wall. Then he leaned in toward Will.
"Good luck," he whispered in his ear, and literally pushed him into the jagged opening. Then the slab grated shut behind Will, and he was on his own.
In the pitch-darkness he fumbled in his pocket for the light orb, to which he'd already attached a length of thick string. He knotted this around his neck, leaving his hands free. At first, he moved along the passage with ease, but then, after about thirty feet, it pinched down to a crawlway. The roof of the tunnel was so low that he ended up on his hands and knees. The passage angled upward, and as he heaved himself painfully over jagged plates of broken rock, his backpack kept snagging on the roof.
He caught sight of a movement in front of him and froze on the spot. With some trepidation he lifted the light orb to see what it was. He held his breath as something white flashed across the passage and then landed with a soft thump no more than five feet ahead of him. It was an eyeless rat the size of a well-fed kitten, with snowy fur and whiskers that oscillated like butterfly wings. It stood up on its hind legs, its muzzle twitching and its large, glistening incisors in full view. It showed absolutely no sign that it was afraid of him.
Will found a stone on the tunnel floor and threw it as hard as he could. It missed, glancing off the wall next to the animal, which didn't even flinch. Will's indignation that a mere rat was holding him up welled over, and he lunged toward the animal with a growl. In a single effortless bound it leaped at him, landing smack on his shoulder, and for a split second neither boy nor rat moved. Will felt its whiskers, as delicate as eyelashes, brush his cheek. He shook his shoulders frantically and it launched itself off, springing once on the back of Will's leg as it sped away in the opposite direction.
Will spat a few choice curses at the retreating rodent, then took a deep breath to steady his nerves before setting off again.
He crawled for what seemed like hours, his hands becoming cut and tender from the razor-sharp shards strewn across the floor. Much to his relief, the passage increased in height, and he was almost able to stand up again. Now that he could move at full speed, he became almost euphoric, and felt an irrepressible urge to sing as he negotiated the bends in the tunnel. But he thought better of it when it occurred to him that the sentries at the Skull Gate probably weren't very far from his current position and might somehow be able to hear him.
Eventually he reached the end of the passage, which was cloaked with several layers of stiff sacking, dirtied up to camouflage them against the stone. He brushed them aside and drew his breath as he saw that the tunnel had come out just under the roof of a cavern, and that there was nearly a one-hundred foot drop to the road below. He was proud that he'd gotten this far, past the Skull Gate, but he felt certain that this couldn't be right. He was at such a dizzying height that he immediately assumed he must be in the wrong place. Then Tam's words came back to him: "It'll look impossible, but take it slowly. Cal managed it with me when he was much younger, so you can do it."
He leaned over to scan the array of ledges and nooks in the rock wall below him. Then he cautiously clambered out over the edge of the tunnel lip and began the descent, checking and rechecking each skaking hand— and foothold before he made the next move.