ter and nibbling food, the fourth watching like a cat, all of them
silent participants in some strange ritual.
They walked until Par’s legs began to ache. Dozens of cor-
ridors lay behind them, and the Valeman had no idea where they
were or what direction they were going. The torch they had
started out with had burned away and been replaced twice. Their
clothing and boots were coated with dust, their faces streaked
with it. Par’s throat was so parched he could barely swallow.
Then the Mole stopped. They were in a dry well through
which a scattering of tunnels ran. Against the far wall, a heavy
iron ladder had been bolted into the rock. It rose into the dark
and disappeared.
The Mole turned, pointed up and held one scruffy finger to
his mouth. No one needed to be told what that meant.
They climbed the ladder in silence, one foot after the other,
listening to the rungs creak and groan beneath their weight. The
torchlight cast their shadows on the walls of the well in strange,
barely recognizable shapes. The corridors beneath faded into
the black.
At the top of the ladder there was a hatchway. The Mole
braced himself on the ladder and lifted. The hatchway rose an
inch or two, and the Mole peeked out. Satisfied, he pushed the
hatchway open, and it fell over with a hollow thud. The Mole
scrambled out, Damson and the Valemen on his heels.
They stood in a huge empty cellar, a stone-block dungeon
with enormous casks banded by strips of iron, shackles and
chains scattered about, cell doors fashioned of iron bars, and
countless corridors that disappeared at every turn into black
holes. A single broad stairway at the far end of the cellar lifted
into shadow. The silence was immense, as if become so much
a part of the stone that it echoed with a voice of its own. Dark-
ness hung over everything, chased only marginally by the
smoking light of the single torch the company bore.
The Mole edged close against Damson and whispered some-
thing. Damson nodded. She turned to the Valemen, pointed to
where the stairs rose into the black and mouthed the word
“Shadowen.”
The Mole took them quickly through the cellar to a tiny door
set into the wall on their right, unlatching it soundlessly, ush-
ering them through, then closing it tightly behind them. They
were in a short corridor that ended at another door. The Mole
took them through this door as well and into the room beyond.
The room was empty, with nothing in it but some pieces of
wood that might have come from packing crates, some loose
pieces of metal shielding, and a rat that scurried hastily into a
crack in the wall’s stone blocks.
The Mole tugged at Damson’s sleeve and she bent down to
listen. When he had finished, she faced the Valemen.
“We have come under the city, through the cliffs at the west
end of the People’s Park and into the palace. We arc in its lower
levels, down where the prisons used to be. It was here that the
armies of the Warlock Lord attempted a breakthrough in the
time of Balinor Buckhannah, the last King of Tyrsis.”
The Mole said something else. Damson frowned. “The Mole
says that there may be Shadowen in the chambers above us-
not Shadowen from the Pit, but others. He says he can sense
them, even if he cannot see them.”
“What does that mean?” Par asked at once.
“It means that sensing them is as close as he cares to get.”
Damson’s face tilted away from the torchlight as she scanned
the ceiling of the room. “It means that if he gets close enough
to see them, they can undoubtedly see him as well.”
Par followed her gaze uneasily. They had been talking in
whispers, but was it safe to do even that? “Can they hear us?”
he asked, lowering his voice further, pressing his mouth close
to her ear.
She shook her head. “Not here, apparently. But we won’t be
able to talk much after this.” She looked over at Coll. He was
motionless in the dark. “Are you all right?” Coil nodded, white-