Morgan's Choice (29 page)

“Whatever was in the containers disintegrated
long ago.” Unwyn hadn’t paused, strode on purposefully toward the
far wall where a pile of bricks and rubble lay at the base of a gap
that hardly looked wide enough for her slim form.

He slipped off his pack and handed it to
Morgan. “Go easy. This is where we try to disappear if anybody
follows us this far.” He pulled himself up the remnants of fallen
masonry and squeezed through the gap. A moment later his hand
appeared. “Give me the pack. And your lantern.”

Ravindra handed him the pack. “I’ll keep the
lantern. Go on. Do you need help?”

“No.” She scrambled through into a narrow
passage. Ravindra, bigger but lithe and flexible, followed.

Unwyn’s lantern sent a soft glow down a
straight corridor that carried on beyond the reach of the light.
“This was walled up.”

“Why?” Ravindra said.

“I don’t know. But not because of beasts or
anything. I went down a little way the time I came along here and
found no sign of animals. I think it just wasn’t used anymore, so
they bricked it up.”

No beasts, eh? So why wasn’t she
reassured? The air felt… she wasn’t sure. Not bad, just old and
dry. Like a tomb. She brushed
that
thought away. The walls were unadorned, plain grey stone,
cut smooth with some sort of rock cutter. But not smooth enough to
deter the lovers of the dark. The lantern lit up fungi or moulds
and when she looked carefully, some glowed with their own eerie
light, sickly yellow or virulent green. The ground wasn’t dusty
beyond the general area around the steps but it felt gritty
underfoot.

“Why would the ground feel gritty?” Her voice
fell flat, as if the dark had swallowed the words.

“
Tremors,” Unwyn said. “A bit of shrapnel
falling out of the roof. This whole area is a bit unstable. You
shouldn’t let it worry you,
Suri
.
There hasn’t been a major quake for a very long time.”

Tremors? That was all she needed. If she
managed to survive the terror beyond the lamplight, she could fall
victim to the geology. Panic quivered as the word entombed
emblazoned itself on her brain. Easy enough to rationalize. If
that’s all that had fallen for five thousand years.
It’s not gonna
happen. Follow Unwyn.

The roof was lower here, cut as smooth as the
tunnel walls, but still a few arm lengths above her head.

Unwyn strode off.

Ravindra put a hand against her back and
urged her forward. “Proceed,
Suri
.”

She scurried in Unwyn’s wake.

It wasn’t too bad. A few times, they skirted
around or over rock falls, where the tunnel’s wall had collapsed
but Unwyn insisted they were minor.

They encountered the first set of steps after
perhaps half a klick. She trained her lantern down a long flight of
risers, each spaced about two paces apart. “How far does this go
down?”

“This is as far as I went before. But
there’ll have to be a lot of steps to go down to the river.”

At first the walking wasn’t hard; two
paces, step down; two paces, step down. Thirty risers later her
muscles began to complain, at first subtly, with a niggle here or a
jerk there. A few hundred meters without steps afforded some relief
but all too soon the next set of stairs appeared before her. Two
paces, step down; two paces, step down. Her muscles ached, her legs
quivered with fatigue.
Don’t think, just move
.

At the next straight level Unwyn called a
halt. He pulled a bottle of water out of his shoulder pack and
handed it to her. “We’ve done well.”

She drank, handed the bottle to Ravindra and
sagged to the floor, back against the wall, knees bent. Her legs
ached, her feet felt like lumps. They must have been walking for
hours. “Any idea what time it is? I’m very, very tired.”

“Very early morning.” Ravindra towered above
her, dark and still. He’d said nothing for a long time, just
continued on.

“When we get out of here, I’m going to need
to sleep. But give me ten minutes, will you? Just to turn off and
recover a bit. It’s been a very long day.”

He sat down beside her and slipped his arm
around her. When she stiffened he said, “I’m more comfortable than
the stone.”

Not
necessarily
. She sagged
against him, aware of the muscles under the shirt, the smell of
him, his warmth. He shifted his body so she was against his chest,
his heart beating beneath her cheek. He held her to him, safe. Her
eyelids closed.

Chapter
Thirty-Four

Lakshmi tried to ease the crick in her
neck, massaging the muscles with stiff fingers. This contraption
wasn’t built for comfort and certainly not for sleeping. She would
have slept in the tent if the weather had been better. Daylight
insinuated itself through fogged-up windows. She rubbed a hole in
the moisture and peered outside. At least the rain had stopped. The
fellow in the pilot’s seat stirred, shifted and snored.
When Lakshmi poked him he
jerked awake. “What time is it?”

Scratching at his hair he peered at the
chrono on the dashboard. “Oh seven hundred,
Hai Suri
, more or less.”

The two men in the seats behind began to
stir, woken by the movement. She opened the door and stepped out to
find the men on duty. One came back from behind a rock, hands
fumbling at his pants. The others paced around, stamping their feet
against the cold.

“Well?” Lakshmi said. “Any sign of our little
friend?”

“No. No one’s been near here. The way sound
travels we would have heard a vehicle klicks away.”

“What about Unwyn? Has he popped up from
underground?”

“
No,
Hai Suri
. No sign of him, either.”

So Unwyn was still down there. That seemed
odd. Very odd. She turned to the other two men, stretching the
sleep from their bodies. “What about you fellows? Any sign of
anything in your shifts?”

They exchanged a glance and shook their
heads. “We’d have told you,
Hai Suri
.”

“I think we’ll go and take a look, shall we?”
They both looked uncomfortable, one shifting from foot to foot. She
tossed an impatient head. “Oh, all right. Go and have a pee.” Truth
to tell, she could use one herself. On the other side of the tent
from the men, of course.

She sent two men down into the pit before she
climbed down the ladder herself. Not that she’d admit it to anyone
but the pit bothered her. She wasn’t frightened; not like the
Selwood freak, but it wasn’t her choice of places. It reminded her
of a tomb. She swallowed her relief when she finally stood on the
ancient floor. One hand on the ladder, she gazed around the
chamber. Nothing to see here. The figures on the walls that had
been changed to suit Asbarthi’s story, their pupils outlined in
white, almost mocked her. ‘Asbarth’s’ shopfront caught her eye.
Huh. She could almost believe it was true that his history traced
so far back as a merchant. She didn’t love him—whatever that
meant—but he was rich and getting richer. She had no doubt he would
eventually be ruler of all Krystor, something she could admire. And
she would be his consort, not the Selwood freak.

“Anything?” she asked the nearer of the two
men.

He shook his head, frowning at the sensorpack
he carried. “Not in here. We should try the corridor.” He pointed
to his left.

“Yes. I’ll come with you.” The lights were on
but the shadows beyond were dark.

They walked down the long corridor, clambered
around the rock fall and entered a room.

She stopped in the doorway while the men
shone their lanterns around. “Unwyn?” Her voice fell flat. She’d
guess this used to be a kitchen.

Something skittered and she flashed her torch
at the source. Nothing visible, at any rate.

“
I don’t think he’s down here,
Hai
Suri
,” the second guard
said.

She shot him a disgusted look. “He has to be
down here. Unless there’s another way out.”

Fairly decorative he might be; intelligent he
clearly was not. She snatched the sensorpack from his hands and
peered at the layout of the dig. Nothing. No exits except the
pit.

“Maybe he had an accident and he’s
injured.”

“Well, we’d better find him, then.”
Plausible, she had to admit. But somehow… that worm of suspicion
still tickled inside her.

“
Hai Suri
, over here. Stairs to the
cellar.”

Ah. The other one seemed a little brighter.
She picked her way over the floor to where he stood.

“Someone’s been down here fairly recently.
See?” He pointed at a boot mark in dust.

“Very good… what’s your name?” she asked.

“
Telmus,
Hai Suri
.”

“Very good, Telmus. I’m impressed. Well, go
on. What’s down there?” Her pulse surged in anticipation. Even so,
she let the guards go first, their torches carving a path in the
darkness. Telmus checked his sensorpack, Lakshmi leaning over his
shoulder. It was set to pick up body heat. Eeerk. Small animals
scuttled about behind barrels.

“Can this thing see through walls?” she
asked.

“To an extent. But the signal’s
degraded.”

“Okay. So you’ve used this while we’ve been
looking?”

“
Of course,
Hai Suri
. He’s not here, but someone’s been in this room
recently.” He pointed at the floor.

Lakshmi peered. “Where?”

“Here.” He outlined the faint imprint of part
of a boot. “Looks small for a man, though. Is he a small man?”

“No. Quite the reverse.” Selwood? Hard to
believe. “Where do they go?”

Telmus played his torch over a pile of rubble
against the back wall. “They seem to end here.”

“Someone’s climbed here.” Wes played his
torch over the rocks. “See? The rubble has shifted.”

He scrambled up, stretching a hand out.
“There’s a gap. Not big, but I reckon you could slide through
sideways at a squeeze. And look.” He held something between his
fingers.

Lakshmi reached up and took the strand from
him. One long hair. Selwood. And she’d bet Unwyn was with her. She
wouldn’t do this alone. The blood raged to her head. She’d flay him
alive; gut him and make Selwood watch.

Telmus climbed up next to Wes and checked the
heat sensor. “Nothing. If he went this way, he’s not in range.” He
jumped down. “Should we clear this and follow?”

“This is a tunnel?”

“Seems to be. Looks as if it was bricked up,”
Telmus said.

She folded her arms. She didn’t fancy
barreling off into the bowels of the earth. But then, maybe she
didn’t have to. “If it’s a tunnel, it goes somewhere. If we can get
an idea where, we can get there quickly in the copter. Maybe even
first. Come on, Telmus. Where is this likely to lead?”

Wes took the
sanvad
from his colleague and pressed a few buttons. “Down to the
river, I’d guess.”

The display showed the various mountain
streams joining together to form the Kalnesh, which meandered
through the jungle to the sea.

“What else is down there? Habitation?”

“Not much. The nearest town is Ullanar.”

Little more than a hamlet, five klicks from
the main road to Zaffra Bay. “Nothing else? Zoom it in. Take a
close look.”

“We could look here,” Wes said. “Below the
waterfall.”

Telmus peered over his shoulder. “Why?”

“Well, if that tunnel has a purpose, they
could have brought things up the river and then—”

“Carted it up here,” she finished. “It makes
sense. If that tunnel ends there, we’ve got them trapped.” She
stared at the map for a moment longer. Ullanar would have been
nice, but trapping those two as they came out of that hole in the
ground would make up for it.

Before they left, she had the men fasten down
the hatch that covered the pit. Anybody down there wouldn’t be
coming out this way.

The copter lifted off from Unwyn’s base camp
and headed down the gorge where the river leapt and roiled in the
tight confines of its bed. She wouldn’t like to admit it but the
proximity of the rocky walls on both sides was… not frightening, of
course. But the mountain seemed very close. She was relieved when
the vista widened into a rocky gully that ended suddenly.
Thundering water curled smoothly to disappear into a cauldron of
white. The jungle, swathed in mist, steamed, hundreds of meters
below.

The pilot turned the copter to face the
waterfall. Her heart thudded in her chest, her eyes on the tower of
water in front of her. The falls roared like a wild animal. The
copter lurched, tossed in the uneven air currents. She held on,
knuckles white. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had.
Spray surrounded the vehicle, misted the windows. She shot a glance
at the pilot, tight-lipped, tense. But the copter’s information
system would be doing most of the work. At last the machine settled
on the riverbank below the torrent. She let out a breath. That was
one ride she really didn’t ever want to repeat.

Two hundred meters away, the waterfall
thundered down from the heights, a thick silver curtain wreathed in
spray. The rocky pool at its base seethed, almost like an enormous
cooking pot that overflowed into the river’s bed, surging over
rapids. Where she stood the river had carved a gouge where the
water appeared calmer. The remains of three pillars leaned with the
current, all that remained of the jetty that would once have stood
here. Moisture hung like a veil in the air, dripped from plants,
gleamed on the rocks. What a nightmare of a place.