The Rivers of Zadaa (33 page)

ZADAA

“D
on't panic,” I said. “We can find our way through.”

I had no idea if that was true or not, but it felt like the right thing to say. It wasn't like we had a whole lot of options. I tried to hold a mental image of where we were when the lights went out. I had to compare that to my memory of this launch area when Loor and I were here before. It was next to impossible. In seconds my sense of direction was totally gone. I couldn't tell up from down, left from right.

“Careful!” Saangi shouted.

Bump! The bow of the boat crashed into a rock wall, making us all lurch forward.

“That's good!” I shouted. “Put your hands on the wall. We'll make our way along. Eventually we'll hit the opening that leads to the stairway.”

Alder and Saangi sat on the left—port—side of the small boat with their hands out on the wall. I motored ahead slowly, so they could keep their hands in contact with the rock surface. My memory of the launch area was that if we could continue on like this, we would come upon the opening to the cavern at the base of the stairs. Nobody spoke. As we moved along in the total darkness, I began to worry about something else. I tried to visualize what the archway to the stairs looked like. The stairs were really wide, which meant the opening to the stairs was also wide. But width wasn't what we needed. It was height. If the water had risen to the top of the opening, we could be right in front of it and not know it. Even if the water level had risen to only a few inches higher than the opening to the stairs, we'd miss it. After puttering along for several minutes, my worry turned to fear. I felt sure we should have found the opening by then.

My fear didn't last long. That's because it gave way to panic.

“Ouch!” Alder shouted.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I…I hit my head,” he said soberly. “We are out of room.”

The water had risen so high that it nearly filled the launch area. There was no way we would find the opening to the stairs now. Soon the water would reach the ceiling—and we would drown.

“I'm going to try and get back out to the ocean,” I declared. I had no idea what we'd do once we got out there, but staying in here meant death. “Keep your hands on the wall,” I ordered. “It should bring us back around to the entrance.” My fear was that this launch area was so huge that taking this roundabout route would take too long. But it gave us a better chance than if I simply took a guess as to where the opening to the ocean was and gunned it. We could easily go in the wrong direction and be lost. I knew that we might have to do that at some point, but I wanted to hold off for as long as possible.

“We do not have much room left, Pendragon,” Alder warned.

He was the tallest on the boat and had to duck down to keep from scraping his head against the rocky ceiling. Soon the tops of all our heads were grazing the ceiling. We were out of time. I had to take a chance.

“This is taking too long,” I declared. “I'm going to make a guess and go for it.”

Nobody said anything. I was sure they all had the same concerns I did.

Finally Loor uttered a soft, insistent, “Hurry.”

“Hands in the boat,” I commanded. “Stay low.”

I made a best guess as to where the opening to the sea might be. I was fooling myself. I had no clue. I turned the tiller away from the wall and gunned it. I figured we were either going to get out, or crash trying.

We crashed.

A few seconds after we got up to speed, we hit something. Hard. The bow hit on the right side, and flipped the boat over. We were all dumped into the water. My first thought before getting wet was: Loor can't swim.

I went under with no idea of which way was up. The only clue was the hum of the boat's engine. I kicked my legs and broke the surface, shouting, “Loor!” My scream came back to me as an odd echo. I quickly realized that I had come up underneath the capsized boat.

“Is anybody here?” I called.

“Saangi,” sputtered the acolyte. She sounded scared. “Loor cannot swim.”

“I know. Is she under here?”

There was no answer, which meant no.

“I'm going out,” I said, and didn't wait for her to acknowledge. I kept one hand on the boat, ducked underwater, and pulled myself out. When I resurfaced, I heard thrashing in the water.

“Loor!” I yelled.

“Here!” came a welcome voice. There was a slight, fearful quiver in it, though, which for Loor was the same as gutclenching panic in anybody else. She was floundering. I pushed off into the darkness in the direction of the splashing. It only took a second to reach her. I wrapped an arm around her chest and flipped her over on her back. She trusted me. She relaxed.

“Alder!” I called out.

“Here!” the knight yelled. “I am holding the boat with Saangi.”

I kicked toward his voice and reached forward with my free hand. Soon I felt the hard metal skin of the overturned boat. I pulled Loor up to it and made sure she was holding on.

“I am all right,” she said.

There wasn't time to rest or discuss what had happened.

“We've got to swim for it,” I said.

“Which way?” Alder asked.

I tried to figure out where the wall was that we had hit. We didn't want to go that way. I looked around, though I wasn't sure why. It was pitch black. There was nothing to see. As it turned out, I was wrong. There was something to see. Hovering just beneath the water, a few yards away from us, was a light. Saangi saw it too.

“What is that?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe that's what we hit.”

The little bit of light helped me get my bearings. I let go of the boat and swam toward it. I kept my eyes focused on the strip of light. It seemed to be floating only a few inches beneath the surface. As I got closer I began to sense that this light was part of something much larger. It was so incredibly dark that I couldn't make out any real form, except for right around the light. I got to it and touched it. The light was embedded in something solid, and it was big—much bigger than the light itself. I brought my nose closer to the light to see that it was actually behind what seemed to be a glass window. The window rose above the water, though the light was still beneath the surface. I put my nose closer to this mysterious window, and came face-to-face with a Ghee warrior!

A dead Ghee warrior.

“Ahhh!” I screamed in surprise, and pushed away.

“What is it?” Alder asked.

I had swum quickly back to the boat in a panic. I clung to the side, trying to catch my breath and calm down. It didn't take long for me to realize what I had seen.

“It's a dygo,” I said. “There's a Ghee inside. I—I think he's dead.”

“It must be one of the dygos that drilled through the ceiling of the cavern,” Alder said. “The rising water must have pushed it in here.”

Nobody said anything for a moment. I think we were all trying to process the information. It was Loor who first put our thoughts into words.

“It is our last hope,” she said.

“Can you open it from the outside?” I asked. “Without flooding it?”

“We will have to try,” Loor said. “I will need help to get there.”

I instantly swept my arm around Loor and pushed off of the boat, headed for the crippled dygo. Saangi and Alder swam right behind. In seconds the four of us were hanging onto the silver sphere.

“The hatch is on the other side,” Loor said.

We all carefully moved hand over hand around the floating orb until Loor said, “Stop. The hatch is underwater.”

“We have to spin it,” I said.

It wasn't easy. Though the dygo was floating, it was big and clumsy. It wasn't until Alder went to the far side and pulled down while we pushed up, that the section of the sphere that held the door broke out of the water. Loor ran her hands across the surface, which was no easy thing since the only light we had was the dim glow that came from the window. A few agonizing seconds later I heard the welcome sound of a latch being released and the hatch being raised. She had done it!

“Careful!” I said. “We don't want to flood it.”

We maneuvered the dygo so the open hatch was directly on top. Alder came up from the back side and pulled the hatch fully open. It instantly hit the rocky ceiling. We only had a few feet to maneuver.

“Saangi first,” Loor said.

Saangi didn't hesitate. She pulled herself up and slipped inside the dygo, head first. Loor slid in next. I was about to enter when Loor said, “Wait!”

“What's the matter?” I asked.

I was holding on to the edge of the open doorway. My answer came in the form of a cold hand that was laid across mine. It was the hand of the dead Ghee warrior. Loor and Saangi were pushing him up and out of the dygo.

“There isn't enough room,” Loor said.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I wanted to be respectful.

“He was a Ghee,” Loor said. “He died in battle. This is how it must be.”

I pulled the body of the fallen warrior up and out of the craft, while Loor and Saangi pushed. It wasn't easy, for all sorts of reasons. He was heavy, and he was dead. I tried not to be too grossed out by the whole thing. I think I was too far gone for that. We finally got the body clear of the hatch. I pushed him away and the fallen warrior floated off into the darkness, never knowing that his sacrifice may have saved our lives.

“Hurry, Pendragon,” Alder said. “We are nearly out of room.”

Alder was holding the hatch, but he couldn't open it all the way, because we were getting closer to the ceiling as the water rose relentlessly. There was only about a foot-wide opening now. In a few seconds the hatch would be forced practically closed and the opening wouldn't be wide enough for us to get through. I dove for it and went in headfirst, falling into Saangi's lap.

“C'mon!” I shouted back to Alder.

Alder snaked around the hatch, dropped his feet and legs inside, then fell the rest of the way in. No sooner did he fall inside than the hatch was forced closed by the ceiling overhead. Saangi reached up and sealed it tight.

“Done!” she shouted.

Loor reached for the console and flipped a switch that lit up the interior. We could see! We were a jumble of arms and legs and bodies on top of one another, trying to figure out where to go. I was happy to see that this dygo was larger than the one Loor and I had driven before. It wasn't exactly spacious, but there were four seats, two in front and two behind. At that moment, however, it was on its side.

Loor took charge. “Saangi, next to me,” she ordered. “Pendragon, Alder, to the rear.” She was already moving herself around to get into the driver's seat, which is not easy to do sideways. After an awkward minute of maneuvering, we were all in our seats but still lying on our sides. Loor worked busily to power up the dygo.

“Does this work like a submarine?” I asked.

“No,” Loor said. “We must sink to the bottom.”

I didn't like the sound of that, but Loor seemed to know what she was doing. She toggled a few switches, and I heard what sounded like a burst of air bubbles being released. I could feel that we were sinking. Loor must have been taking on water so that we would drop down. Gulp. As we sank, the sphere gradually righted itself. We were heads up!

“I'm turning off the inside lights,” Loor said.

A moment later we were back in black. It didn't last long. Loor hit the switch that turned on the outside lights. I felt like I was back in the hauler submarine on Cloral, with Spader. There wasn't much to see through the windshield, though. The water was too murky. No sooner had I gotten used to the sensation of floating in this big sphere than we gently landed on the bottom.

“We're treads down, right?” I asked.

Loor gave me a quick look, as if to say, “Give me a break.”

She hit the throttle and the dygo crawled forward. It didn't feel much different from when we were on dry land. We had an unobstructed view through the windshield in front, which meant that the drill was behind us.

“I do not know which way to go,” Loor said.

“We've got to find the stairs,” I replied. “Keep going until we hit a wall, then we'll follow it like we were trying to do on the surface.”

Loor pushed the sphere forward. We crawled along slowly. It wouldn't be smart to crash into a wall. A minute later the headlights reflected off a rocky surface directly in front. We had found the wall.

“Excellent,” I said. “Let's go right. Keep the wall in sight. Eventually we have to hit the stairs.”

Loor carefully moved the dygo along. She turned the whole sphere so that the window faced the wall, but the treads were ninety degrees the other way. We were actually moving sideways. For the first time I began to think we actually had a chance of getting out of this. We had been moving along slowly for a few minutes when suddenly the wall disappeared, and we were faced with nothing but water.