Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance (16 page)

“Stand back,” said Nick. “I got this.”

Nick stepped close to the door, spread his arms open wide, and shouted, “Friend!” Nothing happened. “Amigo!” Nothing, then he turned to the others and whispered, “What’s another foreign word for
friend
?”

“Mon ami,”
said Brooke.

“Mon ami!”
Nick shouted at the door.

“What are you doing?” asked Elise.

“Trying to bust a move from outside the box,” said Nick, and when she rolled her eyes: “Hey, it worked in Lord of the Rings.”

“Dumber than a can of paint,” said Ajay, shaking his head. “Perhaps I should take my hatchet to it.”

“And you didn’t like
my
idea?” asked Nick.

“Hold on,” said Will, holding up a hand, asking for silence.

He closed his eyes. Another image came floating into his mind. Another
picture.

“There’s something else,” he said. “Something back this way.”

He led them back up the tunnel to the T intersection. Will backed into the smaller corridor, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall straight ahead of him. Nick tried to follow, but Elise jerked him back out of the way.

“Give him room, dodo bird,” she said.

Will opened and closed his eyes a few times, trying to line up the picture that had materialized in his mind with the actual wall in front of him.

“What is it, Will?” asked Brooke.

“There’s something buried in the wall,” said Will, walking slowly forward to it. “Covered over with rocks or mud or moss. Eye level. Somewhere in here.”

Will took out his Swiss Army knife, flipped open a blade, and scraped four sides of a square on the wall. The others pointed their flashlights at the two-foot square Will had outlined.

“Want me to use my hatchet?” asked Ajay, reaching into his backpack.

“No need, little buddy,” said Nick behind Ajay as he took a sheathed bowie knife from his pack. “Let’s see what a real knife can do.”

Nick pulled out a wicked-looking foot-long blade and dug in along with Will as the others lit up the square with their flashlights. After they’d hacked away chunks of rock for nearly a minute, something glinted underneath, reflecting back a flash of light. Nick flipped his knife around and stabbed at the spot. They heard a solid
thunk
of metal on metal.

“That’s it,” said Will.

They doubled their efforts, quickly scraping mud and dirt off a rusted metallic surface—dull brass, a foot square, deeply embedded in the rock.

“It’s some kind of metal plate,” said Nick.

Will pulled away a final slab, revealing what looked like a large, old-fashioned keyhole in the center of the plate.

“No,” said Will. “It’s a lock.”

They cleared away the last of the rocky debris, then stood back and studied it.

“Fifty bucks says it opens that door,” said Elise.

“Right, like I’m gonna take
that
bet,” said Nick.

“Hand me the keys, Nick,” said Will.

Nick handed over the tunnel keys and Will picked through them. None of the five keys on the ring looked anywhere near big enough to fit inside the lock.

“That figures,” said Nick, kicking the dirt in frustration.

“You think if somebody builds a super-super-triple-secret door they’re going to leave the key hanging on a hook?” asked Elise.

“We don’t even know if there is a key for this,” said Will.

“I could whack it with my hatchet,” said Ajay.

“Not your best suggestion,” said Brooke.

“Looks like we’re stymied, then,” said Ajay. “Hardly the time or place to call in a locksmith.”

Will turned to Nick. “That’s your cue, bro.”

“Riiiight,” said Nick, then quickly rifled through the outer pockets of his backpack.

“What are you talking about?” asked Brooke.

“You already gots a lock-meister in your midst,
mis amigos,
” said Nick, opening his bag. “And you’re looking at him.”

“Nick picked up a few … miscellaneous skills growing up,” said Will.

“One of the accidental benefits,” said Nick, retrieving his ring of professional lock picks, “of a misspent youth.” He pronounced it
yout.
“Give me some light here, peeps.”

The other four centered their lights on the brass plate. Nick focused his headlamp on the keyhole, then went to work with a lock pick and tension wrench. As he probed the interior with the curved picks, they heard clicks and whirrs inside the lock that sounded promising. Followed immediately by a much less promising series of crunches and grinding of gears that yanked the picks right out of Nick’s hands into the hole, followed by the sound of shattering metal.

“The damn thing ate my picks,” said Nick, astonished.

“What do you think, Will, is this some kind of aphotic technology?” asked Brooke.

“It’s worse than that. It’s freakin’
carnivorous,
” said Nick.

Will took out his dark glasses, put them on, and looked closely at the plate. “I don’t see anything—”

“I paid thirty-nine bucks for those picks,” said Nick.

“At where, Thieves Are Us?” asked Elise.

Nick banged his fist on the plate in frustration. Everyone else took a step backward, like it might hit back.

“This isn’t aphotic,” said Will, putting his glasses away. “But let’s think this through. If it
is
some kind of lock, whoever installed this here must have put it in at the same time they built the doors, right?”

“I don’t know,” said Ajay. “It would have taken ages for the plate to get covered up like that by any natural geologic process, unless …”

“Unless what?” asked Brooke.

“Unless the rocks were added artificially,” said Will. “As camouflage. Which makes more sense.”

“Maybe it’s a trap,” said Nick. “Maybe you open that door and a monster bites your head off.”

“Yes, perhaps we should leave well enough alone,” said Ajay, taking tentative backward steps toward the exit. “After all, we need to be back in the dorm before curfew—”

“Buck up, little cowpoke,” said Elise, hooking Ajay by the elbow and holding on. “It’s only nine-thirty and we’ve just begun to fight.”

“Yeah, you think we want to go through another ambiguous landing all over again just to sneak down here?” asked Nick.

“Amphibious,” said Ajay.

“Maybe the key’s stashed somewhere nearby,” said Brooke. “You know, like a spare key in a potted plant on the back porch.”

“I note a distinct absence of potted delphiniums in our immediate vicinity,” said Ajay.

“Good idea, Brooke,” said Will. “Let’s look around.”

They spent five minutes scouring every inch of the intersection, all the way to the door and back, searching every nook and crevice.

No key. Nothing.

“I have a question,” said Brooke, raising her hand.

“Yes, Miss Springer,” said Ajay.

“Not trying to be a wet blanket here, but are we absolutely sure we
want
to open that door?” she asked.

“Dude,” said Nick impatiently, pointing toward the doors. “Nepsted’s key?”

“But isn’t it worth considering that maybe this door wasn’t built to keep people out,” said Brooke. “Maybe it was built to keep something, on the other side,
in.
”

They all considered the idea. Ajay wiped sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Look,” said Will. “Nepsted says there is a key—way down deep, at the bottom of the stairs—that will open the magic lock on his cage. And he won’t tell us what he knows about the school and the Knights or anything else until we do.”

“And, trust us, he knows a
lot,
” said Nick.

“So I’m not leaving until we open those doors and find what we came here for,” said Will.

Elise made a gesture with her hands, as if weighing the two ideas. “Yeah, okay. We’re opening the door.”

Another idea whispered its way into Will’s mind. He gave up wondering where they came from and walked over and spoke softly to Elise.

“Sing to it,” he said.

“Are you serious?” asked Elise.

“I don’t even know why I think that’s worth trying, but I do.”

“You mean sing … like a song?”

“No,” said Will, trying to be discreet. “Not a
song
song. One of those
other
skills you said you’ve been working on.”

Elise got the message. She walked over to the plate, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and brought her hands together in a yoga pose, centering herself. A moment later she stepped into a martial arts stance, drew her head back, and opened her mouth.

A clear, high sound, like a bell ringing in one continuous peel, filled the enclosed space. She raised her hands and moved them in front of her and the quality of the sound changed, as if she was bending and shaping it or …

Sharpening
it. The sound grew taut and tangibly powerful. Elise directed the sound—Will swore he could almost
see
it moving through the air—toward the plate in the wall. When it made contact with the plate, a second note arose—in harmony with the first—as the brass resonated. Vibrating, slowly at first, then at an increasingly high rate of speed, filling the air with sound.

The others edged away, alarmed. Nick actually covered his ears, but Will moved closer to get a better look.

This is amazing. She’s got so much more control now. Like she’s mastered an instrument … only
she’s
the instrument.

Elise refined the sound, narrowing it down until it focused to a fine beam—Will could see the brass oscillating wildly, like it was being pounded by a drill press—and then she moved her hands to position the beam of sound over and right into …

The keyhole.

The sound vanished up into some supersonic range outside their hearing, swallowed up inside the lock but creating a lot of heat and noise inside.

Elise glanced over at Will, her eyes looking wild, needing to talk but too focused to speak out loud. She had closed her mouth, as if she were whistling a laser beam.

What now?
she asked him.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

What am I looking for in here?

“Nick, how do you pick a lock?” asked Will.

“I don’t know, it’s a feel thing, dude.”

“Okay, so what do you feel for?”

“It’s sort of hard to describe.”

“Trying right now would be excellent,” said Will, waving him over to the wall and Elise. “Over here. Tell
her.
”

“So there’s like this round thing, okay?” said Nick, using his hands, vaguely, to make the shapes he described. “And it has a bunch of, what do you call ’em, tiny little sharp thingies that stick down from it?”

“You’re looking for a
cylinder,
with a series of
pins
descending through its middle,” said Ajay.

“Yes, thank you—pins—what
he
said,” said Nick.

Elise asked Will for help again with her eyes.

“So what should she try to do to them?” asked Will.

“Raise the pins to specific heights, and in the correct sequence,” said Ajay, “which will allow the cylinder to rotate freely and release the locking bolt—”

“Okay, shut up and let me concentrate,” said Elise through gritted teeth.

Elise struggled to maintain the pressure of her sound beam inside the cylinder. She was somehow able to control her breathing to such a degree she could still generate sound while she inhaled, but Will could see the effort was starting to sap her strength. He glanced over and noticed Brooke, standing back and staring at Elise like she was an alien who’d just bungee jumped in from a mother ship.

“It’s most important that you maintain consistent torque on the cylinder so the pins you’ve pushed up don’t fall back down,” said Ajay. “Then you pull the latch—”

“Stop helping,” said Will to Ajay.

Elise glanced at Will:
Don’t know how much longer I can keep this going.
Her whole body was shaking with effort now, sweat dripping down her forehead.

I feel something. Listen. I’m going to try to pull it.

Will moved closer to the keyhole. He heard the sound beam thrumming away inside, hissing with tension, then a sharp click, and a whirring of gears that stopped abruptly.

“That’s it,” said Will. “I think you almost have it.”

Elise summoned up the last of her strength and doubled the pressure. Will felt the brass plate grow burning hot to the touch, its whole surface vibrating. Then, a louder click, a nerve-racking pause, and finally a sustained unwinding of gears from behind the plate.

Elise slumped to the ground. Nick slid over and caught her before she landed and gently lowered himself to the ground with Elise cradled in his arms. She was semiconscious, her eyelids fluttering, her arms hanging limply.

Will looked at Brooke sharply, asking for her help. She knelt down beside Elise and put a hand on her arm.

“She’ll be all right,” said Brooke, studying Elise intently. “She’s exhausted, not injured.”

“How do you know that?” asked Nick, puzzled.

Before Brooke could answer, they heard a massive rumble issue from around the corner, building in volume and intensity.

“The doors are opening,” said Ajay.

And at that moment Will was struck by another impression he couldn’t confirm with his senses or track to its source. He stared into the corridor behind them, both the direction they’d come and the tunnel to the locker room. He didn’t see or hear anything, but his senses were still sending him the same message.

Someone, or something, was following them.

While Brooke and Nick saw to Elise, Ajay and Will hurried around the corner to take a look. The gigantic doors had split along that seam down the middle, and the two halves were opening outward, but ever so slowly, inch by inch, accompanied by the grind of immensely heavy gears meshing and turning.

They trained their flashlights on the gap as it widened, but the beams barely dented the deep, forbidding blackness on the other side. Air wafted toward them from within, almost a slight breeze, conveying suggestions of dampness, ruin, and ancient dirt.

“How long do you think it’s been since they last opened?” asked Ajay, blinking rapidly.

Will pointed his flashlight at the ground, where the bottom edge of both doors scraped slightly along the ground as they opened, tracing etched grooves in the dirt along their elliptical path. Will went down on one knee to examine them.

“Doesn’t look like they’ve been opened a lot,” said Will. “Over time they would’ve carved a trench in the floor.”

“Will, have a look at this,” said Ajay.

He was pointing his light at the backs of the opening doors. They were covered with heavy steel plates, at least an inch thick. Random patterns of heavy gouges crisscrossed the face of the steel on both sides.

“What do you think made these?” asked Will, moving closer to study them.

“They don’t look like the work of a tool or machine, do they?”

“No. I’d say that something … organic made these. Maybe Brooke was right.” Ajay stopped in his tracks. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but there’s something—
perhaps someone
—standing farther down the tunnel.”

Will whirled and joined his light with Ajay’s, but the beams faded into the gloom. “Where? I don’t see anything.”

“Well, I can see
everything,
” said Ajay. “Wait for your eyes to adjust.”

Will waited. By now the doors had opened enough to create a gap of nearly four feet. Slowly a shape appeared in that opening, floating out of the gloom, at an indeterminate distance from the door. Will found it almost impossible to estimate how far away it was.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s not moving,” said Ajay, still whispering. “It’s too big for a human figure, but it’s shaped like one. And it’s glowing, uniformly, with some kind of phosphorescence. Switch your light off.”

They both did, plunging them into pitch-blackness. The heavy grinding of the doors’ mechanicals continued and sounded even louder in the dark. Will still couldn’t see a thing.

“Do you see better in the dark, too?” asked Will.

“Naturally,” whispered Ajay.

“Important question,” whispered Will. “Can it see us?”

“It’s not moving or appearing to react in any way.”

Lights and voices came from around the corner behind them: Nick, Brooke, and Elise, back on her feet.

“Dudes, what’s happening?”

“Be quiet!” Ajay barked back at them in a harsh whisper. “Turn your lights off. Use one headlamp to light the way. Slowly walk up to where we are and stop.”

The others did as he instructed, joining them. Will’s hand found Elise’s and squeezed.
Are you all right?
he asked her silently.

I’m okay. Just don’t ask me to sing along with the radio for a while.

The doors stopped abruptly, about halfway open, with a loud, rusty creak. The breeze blowing toward them out of the opening picked up enough to rustle the girls’ hair.

“Smells like we just cracked open one of the pyramids,” whispered Brooke.

“In a way,” whispered Ajay, “that may be
exactly
what we’ve done. I want you all to point your flashlights ahead of our position, right where I aim mine, and turn them on when I give the word.” He waited for them to get ready before he said, “Now.”

All five lights switched on, pointing straight ahead, and the others quickly lined their beams up with Ajay’s.

They couldn’t see its face because it was turned away from the door . A statue, standing fifty feet beyond the doors, dead in the center of the corridor. A human figure, as Ajay had suggested. Depicting a man at least fifteen feet tall, muscular and broad shouldered. Fashioned from some metallic alloy with a dull greenish cast that reflected back almost none of their beams.

“Let’s take a look,” said Will.

“Do you really think that’s wise?” asked Ajay. “What if we go in and the doors close behind us?”

“I’d say that’s worth thinking about,” said Elise.

“I’ll go in, then,” Will suggested. “I could make it back way before they close.”

“
Nobody
is going in there alone,” said Brooke definitively.

“I hear you,” said Will, unsure of how to proceed.

“Hang on,” said Nick. “Wait here.”

Nick dropped his pack and jogged back around the corner out of sight. A few moments later they heard him grunting and struggling with something. They heard rocks sliding down; something hit the ground with a loud thud and then something dragged along the ground.

“What the heck is he doing?” asked Elise.

“Before anybody gets all bent about it,” said Nick as he walked back into sight, dragging one of the heavy timbers from the tunnel walls, “this one was already loose and it didn’t cause a cave-in or anything.”

Nick dropped the timber on the ground. The post was square, like a railroad tie, six by six inches wide and six feet long. Will helped him wedge it into place between the split doors, perpendicular to the walls. From there they were able to leave a gap of less than an inch on either side.

“If they start to shut, that oughta hold ’em for a while,” said Nick.

Will felt uneasy about leaving the doors open. He stared back at the empty tunnel behind them, hooked Nick by the arm, and whispered, “Did you see or hear anything back there?”

“Nah, dude. Nothing, nobody. Why?”

“Just trying to be careful,” said Will; then he turned back to the others. “Let’s go in.”

Everyone moved through the open doors. Except Nick. Will turned back to him.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I had a fairly recent bad experience with a, uh, you know, statue,” said Nick uneasily.

“Of course you did,” said Will. “We totally understand. Wait here if you like.”

Nick hesitated. “Nah, what if it starts throwing down? What are
you
guys gonna do, bore it to death?”

Nick joined them and they edged cautiously forward. The floor, walls, and ceilings on the far side of the door were paved with some kind of closely stacked earthen bricks that were gray, dusty, and worn with age. The whole shape of the tunnel turned more circular and symmetrical.

“A completely different style of construction,” said Ajay, flashing his light around.

“Strange,” said Elise, “doesn’t look anything like what we’ve seen so far.”

“Word,” said Nick. “It looks like a freakin’ subway tunnel.”

The walls widened out an additional ten feet by the time they reached the statue, forming a slightly rounded alcove around it. The figure stood on a simple square pedestal of rough rock, about three feet high. They edged around it, light beams moving up and down its length as they got their first good look at it.

“Look familiar?” asked Ajay.

“The Paladin,” said Will. “A modern version of the Paladin.”

It held the same posture as the school’s mascot, weapon raised, staring vigilantly into the darkness ahead. But instead of a medieval knight carrying a sword and shield, this was a uniformed American soldier wearing a bucket helmet and holding a rifle.

“What is this?” asked Brooke.

“A World War Two infantryman,” said Ajay, shining his light to various points. “Enlisted man, a private by rank. Note the single stripe on his sleeve. He’s carrying an M1 bolt-action semiautomatic Garand rifle, the standard-issue weapon for the U.S. military.”

“Does that matter?” asked Elise.

“Here’s why. The M1 was put into service in 1939. The M1
carbine,
fully automatic with a larger clip, wasn’t introduced until 1942. So this weapon tells us when the statue was built.”

“Or you could just look at the date carved in the base here,” said Brooke, pointing her light at a small Roman numeral in the upper right hand corner.

“Built in 1939,” said Will, shining his light on the number.

“I’m feeling fairly good about my original estimate,” said Ajay with a proud smile.

“So people
have
been in here,” said Will. “At least in 1939.”

“It’s made from cast bronze,” said Elise, who had climbed onto the pedestal to take a closer look at the rifleman. “They’d have to make something like this in a foundry.”

Brooke joined her on the pedestal. “The big question is how they got it down here.”

“The biggest question is what it’s doing here,” said Will.

“Dude, it’s so obvious: standing guard,” said Nick.

“Against what?” asked Elise.

“What, too hard for you?” Nick turned and pointed his light into the vast darkness in front of them. “Something out
there.
”

At that moment the light breeze easing through the chamber picked up and moaned ever so slightly. Which didn’t do much for anyone’s nerves.

“So who put it here and why?” asked Brooke, visibly shivering.

“Can’t answer that yet,” said Will, squinting to see farther down the tunnel.

“Let’s deduce what we can,” said Ajay, his voice wavering a bit. “This is a modern variation on the original Paladin statue, which was originally put up outside the Barn in 1917.”

“Agreed,” said Will.

“The Paladin is the Center’s mascot,” said Ajay, “but the Knights of Charlemagne were also originally known as Paladins. Can we therefore assume this has something to do with either the Knights or the Center?”

“Or both,” said Will. “But we still don’t know why.”

Elise and Brooke hopped down and they started forward again as a group. As they left the alcove, the tunnel narrowed to its previous dimensions.

“Now turn the lights off and look back,” said Will.

They all did. The statue of the soldier, about twenty-five yards behind them, was glowing brightly in the dark, pointing its gun at them, an eerie and forbidding specter.

“Our lights recharged the phosphorescence,” said Ajay.

Will still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was farther back in the darkness behind the statue, either watching or stalking them, but he kept it to himself.

“I think we can hazard a guess about what the statue’s for,” said Ajay, his voice shaking even more noticeably. “To scare the pantaloons off whoever or whatever sees it.”

“Dude, I told you,” said Nick. “It’s a sentry, standing guard.”

“But against what?” asked Brooke, turning to look behind them.

No one answered, but the others quickly turned around and switched their lights back on, the beams swallowed by the Stygian darkness ahead.

“Let’s keep going,” said Will, swallowing his fear and taking the lead.

“We’re dropping, subtly, in elevation,” said Ajay a few moments later, studying his GPS device. “And we’re heading, even more subtly, to the left, or southwest.”

They picked up their pace and with the combined lights illuminating the entire tunnel around them they realized that, as they continued to descend, they were turning to the left.

“Hold on,” said Ajay. “Turn your lights off again.”

Everyone did. Ajay took a few steps forward and peered ahead.

“There’s another statue down there,” he said. “Also glowing in the dark.”

They inched up beside Ajay but had to advance another twenty yards before a second figure slowly appeared out of the darkness, shining pale luminous green, probably a hundred feet ahead and slightly below them. They switched their lights back on and jogged forward. The corridor widened again, creating an alcove identical to the last one around the figure.

Just like the last one, the statue stood on a pedestal, facing away from them. Another soldier, of similar size, fashioned from alloyed metal. They moved around, examining it from every angle. An identical pose to both the GI and the original Paladin, poised for action, rifle at the ready.

“This one’s from World War One,” said Ajay, eyes wide, taking in details. “Enlisted man, also infantry, private by rank, in the same defensive posture, but carrying a British Enfield rifle, which means it dates from—”

“Nineteen-seventeen,” said Elise, shining her light on another Roman numeral on the corner of its base.

“If he’s American, why’s he carrying a British rifle?” asked Brooke.

“The Enfield was a standard British forces weapon,” said Ajay, “but it was used by American doughboys because we didn’t have enough rifles when we entered the war, but the
American
version was two inches longer and nine-tenths of a pound heavier than—”

“God, you could
so
design an app for insomnia,” said Nick.

“Thank you, Ajay,” said Will.

“This one’s older than the last,” said Elise, scraping at its leg. “Made from cast copper and a lot more corroded.”

“But, dude, how are these dudes
glowing
? I thought that was some kind of modern Halloween technology.”

“I would say they were all alloyed with a phosphorous compound,” said Ajay.

“Let’s keep going,” said Will.

They found one more glowing statue in another alcove a few hundred yards farther down the tunnel. This variation depicted the Paladin figure as an infantryman from the Civil War, armed with a musket, pistol, and hand ax. Elise thought the statue was made from cast iron since it appeared cruder than the others.

“This pedestal has no date,” says Elise, examining the base, “but the initials I. L. C. are carved in the corner.”

“Ian Lemuel Cornish,” said Will.

“If Ian Cornish put this here,” said Ajay, “it dates to the late 1860s.”

“I’ll ask again,” said Brooke, standing back. “What are these for?”

“They’re all soldier dudes,” said Nick. “Sentries.”

“Versions of the Paladin, updated every time they stuck one down here,” said Will, thinking it over. “American versions.”

“In the form of whatever figure represented the warrior archetype of that era,” said Ajay.