“Ah, so that’s how it works,” he said, pushing his spectacles back up his nose. He reached out a hand to check his theory by fiddling with a catch he’d discovered.
Haplo planted his foot gently but firmly on the dwarfs fingers.
“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.