The Awakened: Book One (11 page)

“There he is,” yelled someone from the hallway below.

Adair couldn’t hold back the panic.  He was defenseless with his lower body completely exposed.  He wriggled from side to side while boosting his upper body on his elbows and slowly began to gain the leverage he needed.  But it was all happening too slowly.  With one more pull he managed to get his legs into the passage.  At the same moment he felt something slam into his right foot followed quickly by the sound of metal glancing off the stone.  By reflex he jerked his foot further into the tunnel, but it was too late.  A searing pain spread through his foot and leg.  He knew he was injured, but he kept crawling, trying to get free of his pursuers.

He reached out with one hand against the stone beneath him and pulled, while simultaneously pushing forward with his knees.  He felt like a worm trapped inside a piece of fruit that was about to be consumed.  As he approached the end of the tunnel, his surroundings became brighter and the air clearer.  His head exited the passage into open air.  Craning his neck to look above him, he could see stars shining brightly in the night sky overhead.

Turning to look down, he saw what looked like an enormous well.  It was at least seventy-five feet across and had a spiraling staircase carved into the stone along the inside.  He looked across and saw other ventilation shafts just like his own, drilled into the stone at regular intervals, eight feet above the stairs.  Looking down to the stairs below, he knew that it would be a painful jump from this height, but an instant death if he overshot the stairs and slipped into the darkness below.  The staircase had no railing, only steps that dropped off the edge into nothingness.  His options were limited and he was in danger of death regardless of whether he went forward or backwards.

It was difficult and painful to turn himself around in the tight passage, but once he changed his direction, he was able to slide backwards out of the tunnel, letting his legs dangle while holding onto the ledge.  As gravity began to pull his body out of the tunnel, he realized that his grip was compromised by the slick coating of blood coming from his foot.  A feeling of panic surged within him as he realized the peril of his situation.

In a last second attempt to keep himself from falling over the side of the stairs, Adair pushed his feet out a few inches away from the wall and let go, leaning in toward the face of the stone as he fell.  His feet hit the ground, sending a wave of pain from his right foot up into his leg.  His position caused him to fall forward into the sheer face of the stone and roll down a few stairs before coming to a halt.  His foot was throbbing intensely, but he tried to put it out of his mind until he was safe.

Even though the moon was not visible, its light illuminated the opposite side of the well.  Adair stood in the shadowed half and looked up to the rim that was almost two hundred feet above.  Knowing that the soldiers would inform everyone else of his whereabouts, it was only a matter of time before they closed in on him.  He needed to get to the top of this chasm and out of sight as quickly as possible.  He began to painfully limp up the spiraling stairs, hurrying almost to a run when he came to the illuminated side of the well.

It seemed like an eternity before he reached the top.  Fortunately, the stairs ended in the shadows.  Adair crouched down to keep his head from being visible above the rim, while crawling up the last few steps.  He waited for a brief moment to listen for any movement nearby.  When he was satisfied that it was safe, he peeked over the rim.  What he saw amazed him.

He was perched atop a small
island
of stone that gently sloped fifty feet down to the ocean surface.  Docks sprouted from the island like spokes from a wheel.  Several hundred feet away from the shore of the island was the inside of the circular
wall
that surrounded this secluded place.  The inside of the wall was made up of hundreds of covered ports.  Some were empty and some contained ships.  It was too dark to tell for sure, but Adair knew that if even half of the ports were filled, this place contained a fleet that would rival the Empire itself.

One area of the waterway between the wall and the island was teeming with ferries, offloading crates of goods from one of the ships and transporting them to the island.  Adair looked back down the stairs and realized that all this time spent running down hallways and hiding from his captors, he had been beneath the ocean.  Even as the realization came to him, he denied the possibility of it. 
Who could make such a place?

“Stop right there.”

Adair spun around to see two men standing on the opposite rim of the chasm.  They both held torches and immediately separated, running around opposite sides of the well.  Adair stood and ran up the last few steps, not wanting to get trapped inside the chasm.  The stairs ended at a pathway which circled the rim.  Other narrow footpaths radiated out from the main path to end at stairways heading down the outside of the hill.  He took only a few steps before seeing another pair of men coming up the nearest set of stairs at a full run.  Adair paused for a brief moment, unsure of whether he should fight past these men to escape, or run back down the stairs where immediate safety was available.  He instinctively chose the latter and rushed back down the stairs into the well.

What have I done?
  Even through the unbearable pain shooting into his leg, Adair knew that he made the wrong decision.  There was nowhere for him to go now but down.  He might be able to keep ahead of them, but what would that gain him?  They had him trapped now and he was finally starting to feel afraid of not making it out alive.

He ran down the winding staircase as fast as his injured foot would allow him, keeping to the inside of the treacherous steps.  Suddenly, a torch landed on the stairs in front of him, sending a shower of sparks into the air before falling over the edge and disappearing into the darkness.  Adair didn’t even pause to see how close they were or who had thrown the torch; his instinct for survival drove him downward.

Gradually the light of the moon disappeared altogether and Adair ran in complete darkness, dragging his hand along the rock face to maintain a sense of proximity to the edge.  After what seemed like an hour, Adair noticed a dull orange glow coming from the center of the darkness below.  It was just enough light to illuminate his surroundings.  His breath was ragged and his right leg was nearly useless.  He slowed his pace and looked up behind him.  Far away he could see the bouncing torches of his pursuers.  They must have slowed long ago, realizing that his capture was inevitable.

Adair pressed on and within minutes he reached the bottom of the staircase.  It ended at a tunnel which led away into the side of the rock face.  The tunnel was completely dark and Adair had to move by feel once again.  After a slow hundred yards, the passage began to slope downward and veer to the right.  The slope gradually steepened until Adair almost tripped down another set of stairs.  It was a strange sensation to be underneath the ocean and he marveled at how much work must have gone into building this place, aside from the fact that it seemed physically impossible.

Slowly, the tunnel began to lighten with the same orange glow.  His pace quickened in the soft light, as he no longer needed to feel his way through the passage.  After several more minutes of descending the curving steps, the tunnel opened up into an enormous cavern, hundreds of yards wide and equally as tall.  Torches burned along the wall, casting an eerie light throughout what looked like a gigantic temple to some unknown god.

Or gods,
Adair thought as he noticed great stone statues, at least a hundred feet tall, lining the perimeter of the cavern.  Each one was shaped almost like a man, but their features were stretched vertically, with great wings that extended to either side of the statue.  The tips of the wings touched the tips of the next statue, so that the whole cavern was encircled by them.  Adair continued out of the mouth of the tunnel and ran down the remaining steps, which were carved into the wall of the cavern like the chasm above him.  When he reached the floor of the cavern, his feet crunched into pure sand, like the shores of
Bastul
.

He looked down to take in this unexpected sight and noticed the bloody mess of his right foot.  The severed sole of his sandal dragged uselessly across the sand, held to his leg by a thin strip of twisted leather.  His foot had gone numb.  Across the cavern was a lake whose water was still and smooth as glass.  At the center of the lake was a stone dais, thirty feet across and only inches above the level of the water.  Narrow footbridges of stone extended from the dais on opposite sides, arching over the water and ending at the sandy perimeter of the lake.

On the other side of the cavern was a large arched doorway.  It appeared to be the only other way out of this place.  A quick look around told Adair that it would be quicker to head straight over the dais via the footbridge than it would be to skirt the lake.  Once his goal was set, he quickened his pace to a run.

The sand slowed his progress and sapped his already depleted energy.  By the time he made it to the start of the footbridge, his pursuers spilled out of the tunnel behind him and onto the staircase.  Adair ran with all his might up the narrow bridge, trying to keep his footing on the polished stone.  His lead on the soldiers had lessened considerably and he feared that he would lose this race.  His only hope now was to make it through the archway at the other side of the cavern and hopefully find a narrow corridor where he could defend himself against one man at a time.  Even then, they would eventually wear him down.

Slowing little by little with every painful step, he looked across the cavern at the archway and tried to fix his will on getting through that doorway.  Just as he took his first step on the dais, the dark hole of the archway began to change.  There was movement inside it and Adair suspected that he had failed.  When row upon row of soldiers filed out of the archway, Adair felt all hope drain from his body, like the wind being taken from the sails of a boat.

He stopped running and unexpectedly lost his footing on the slick surface.  His left foot shot out from underneath him and he landed painfully on his elbow before sliding to a stop.  Knowing that the chase was over, he lay back on the stone and stared up at the ceiling.

It only made the situation worse when he saw stars overhead.  The ceiling above him had a huge hole right through the middle of it.  It took a second before he saw the spiraling stairs and recognized it as the chasm with which he was already acquainted.  He could see freedom right above him, but there was no way to reach it.  He lifted his head to get a view of his odds at the last moments of his life.  Altogether, there were about fifty archers and foot soldiers surrounding the lake.  It was over.

Adair looked around and realized he was sitting roughly in the center of the stone dais.  Its surface was polished like marble, and seemed to glow with a silver light.  Just beneath the surface, as if encased in ice, was a strange pattern of concentric circles like the rings of a tree that had been frozen, then shattered.  He ran his hand over the smooth surface and marveled at its translucency.  Even more strange was that it was perfectly clean.  Adair ran his finger over the surface and rubbed it with his thumb. 
Not even a speck of dust.

It’s beautiful.
  It looked like an altar. 
I guess it’s a fitting place to die.

He struggled to his feet as the soldiers advanced up the bridges on either side of him.  They were within shooting range now and it was only a matter of seconds before he would see death.  His thoughts turned to his family. 
Maeryn, with her beautiful blonde hair and gorgeous smile.  Kael, with that inquisitive look in his eyes.
  Tears began to stream down his face as he realized that he would never see them again in this life.

He looked back to the soldiers marching toward him and noticed that they looked wavy and distorted as if he was seeing them through poorly crafted glass.  He rubbed the tears from his eyes and looked again, but his vision didn’t change.  Adair looked down at his feet and saw his own reflection on the dais spiraling inward.  He suddenly felt very heavy as if he had consumed too much wine.  He looked up again at the soldiers and saw that they were retreating with looks of astonishment on their faces.  Their images continued to distort and pull inward toward Adair as he felt the weight of the world pressing in on him.  Suddenly, a burst of blue light flashed in his eyes, sending a jolt of pain through his head.  It was the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness.

Chapter 7

The panel of men staring at Maeryn would have been intimidating, if she were the type of woman to be easily intimidated.  But she wasn’t.  Though she was doing her best to appear that way and the men were buying it.