Something whizzed out of the darkness—a bolt, big around as Bane’s hand. The chunk of metal didn’t come any where near its target, clunked harmlessly into the wall behind them. The dwarves were still in awe of their leader, who had, for a brief time, given them dignity and hope. But that wouldn’t last long. Hunger and darkness, cold and silence bred fear.
Limbeck didn’t say anything. He didn’t flinch or duck. His lips pressed together grimly, he kept walking. Jarre, face pale with worry, posted herself at his side and flashed defiant glances at every dwarf they passed. Bane skipped hastily back to walk near Haplo.
The Patryn felt a prickling of his skin, glanced down, saw the sigla tattooed on his arms start to glow a faint blue—a reaction to danger.
Odd, he thought. His body’s magic wouldn’t react that way in response to some frightened dwarves, a few muttered threats, and a thrown piece of hardware. Something or someone truly menacing was out there, a threat to him, to them all.
The dog growled, its lip curled.
“What’s wrong?” asked Bane, alarmed. He had lived among Patryns long enough to know the warning signs.
“I don’t know, Your Highness,” said Haplo. “But the sooner we get that machine started again, the better. So just keep walking.”
They entered the tunnels, which, as Haplo remembered from his last journey, bisected, dissected, and intersected the ground underneath the Kicksey-winsey. No dwarves lurked down here. These tunnels were customarily empty, since they led nowhere anyone had any reason to go. The Factree had not been used in eons, except as a meeting place, and that had ended when the elves took it over and turned it into a barracks.
Away from the whispers and the sight of the corpselike machine, everyone relaxed visibly. Everyone except Haplo. The runes on his skin glowed only faintly, but they still glowed. Danger was still present, though he couldn’t imagine where or how. The dog, too, was uneasy and would occasionally erupt with a loud and startling “whuff” that made everyone jump.
“Can’t you get him to stop doing that?” complained Bane. “I almost wet my pants.”
Haplo placed a gentle hand on the dog’s head. The animal quieted, but it wasn’t happy and neither was Haplo.
Elves? Haplo couldn’t recall a time his body had ever reacted to a danger from mensch, but then—as he recalled—the Tribus elves were a cruel and vicious lot.
“Why, look!” exclaimed Jarre, pointing. “Look at that! I never saw that before, did you, Limbeck?”
She pointed to a mark on the wall, a mark that was glowing bright red.
“No,” he admitted, removing his spectacles to stare at it. His voice was tinged with the same childlike wonder and curiosity that had brought him to first question the whys of Welves and the Kicksey-winsey. “I wonder what it is?”
“I know what it is,” cried Bane. “It’s a Sartan rune.”
“Shush!” Haplo warned, catching hold of the boy’s hand and squeezing it tightly.
“A what?” Limbeck peered round at them. Eyes wide, he had forgotten, in his curiosity, the reason for their being down here, or their need for haste.
“The Mangers made marks like that. I’ll explain later,” said Haplo, herding everyone on.
Jarre kept walking, but she wasn’t watching where she was going. She was staring back at the rune. “I saw some of those funny glowing drawings when that man and I were down in the place with the dead people. But those I saw shone blue, not red.”
And why were these sigla gleaming red? Haplo wondered. Sartan runes were like Patryn runes in many ways. Red was a warning.
“The light’s fading,” said Jarre, still looking back. She stumbled over her feet.
“The sigil’s broken,” Bane told Haplo. “It can’t do anything anymore—whatever it was that it was supposed to do.”
Yes, Haplo knew it was broken. He could see that for himself. Large portions of the wall had been covered over, either by the Kicksey-winsey or by the dwarves. The Sartan sigla on the walls were obscured, some missing entirely, others—like this one—cracked and now rendered powerless. Whatever it was they had been supposed to do—alert, halt, bar entry—they had lost the power to do.