Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
Well, maybe Kipp is ready. He trots into the encroaching darkness with confidence, little sword at his side. If he’s as rattled as the rest of us, he doesn’t show it.
“I didn’t realize it’d be so dark,” Mereden whispers as we move deeper into the tunnels. “I mean, I know we’re underground. I guess I just wasn’t prepared…for this.”
I understand what she means. The circle of light given off by our lantern feels small, the darkness at the edges oppressive, like it’s pushing in on us. Like it’s an ocean being held back by the flimsiest of barriers, just waiting to sweep over us once more. She’s right that our training in the darkness, at the river, didn’t quite prepare us. At the river there was moonlight and the stars overhead. Here, there’s only the ceiling overhead, so low I can touch it with an outstretched hand, and leagues and leagues of rock just waiting to collapse our tunnel….
I shove those thoughts out of my head. If large, hulking Hawk can do this—if dozens of other Taurians can do this—I can do it, too. I ignore the resentment that bubbles inside me. Magpie should be here. Hawk should be here. Someone should be at our side, guiding us. Instead, Hawk’s busy trying to save the guild from itself, and Magpie’s taking a nap. We’re on our own.
We’re silent as we creep along in the tunnel, until it opens up. Then, suddenly, it goes from a cramped passageway into a warren of side tunnels. There’s a discarded pickaxe off to one side and a broken rope, proof that others have been here in the past.
Kipp stops, and Lark swings the lantern around to the entrance of the other tunnels. Five—no, six—spread out like a fan before us. “Which way?” she asks, looking at me.
How am I supposed to know? “You’re the navigator.”
“Shit. Right.” She makes a face. “I don’t feel much like a navigator, gotta admit.” She gestures at the nearest tunnel. “That one, maybe?”
We head down it for a time, only for the tunnel to twist and turn and branch off repeatedly. Some of the branchings go for nothing more than a few feet, but some descend into the darkness for quite a ways.
Lark gets skittish as we pass yet another deep, branching tunnel. “I don’t know that we should go down.”
“You don’t have a good feeling about it?” Mereden asks.
“I don’t have a good feeling about any of this,” Lark confesses. “I don’t want to be the one who gets us lost.”
“You won’t,” I reassure her. “If we get lost, Hawk will come and find us anyhow. They sent us down with a retrieval beacon, and Hawk knows these tunnels better than anyone. He’s always down here.”
My belly flutters at the thought of my husband. Not for the first time, I wish he was here with us instead of Magpie. He wouldn’t have abandoned us to take a nap in the larger cave. He’d be right here with us, offering advice. I try to imagine what Hawk would say if he was with us. “Let’s just consider today a scouting expedition,” I tell them. “We’ll get a feel for things, explore a little, and then return to camp to rest and check in on Magpie. Once we’re comfortable, then we’ll start looking for something to bring back.”
“How will we know where to start digging?” Gwenna asks. “You’ve read a bunch of books about this place. What did they say?”
I’m starting to realize just how much information my books have left out. Because everyone in those books always seemed to automatically know where to dig and how deep. They’d just stick their pickaxes into a wall and magical artifacts would fall out. Looking around me, I know that’s not the case. One rocky wall looks the same as the next, and the farther we go in, the less of Old Prell there is. There are no broken bricks here, no bits of pottery or statues, and I’m reminded that Drop Thirteen is considered unlucky. Bare, even. “We’ll know when we see it.”
We continue exploring for the next while, just to try to get comfortable with the caves. I can’t help but notice that every time I look back, Gwenna, Lark, and Mereden are all clustered together, holding on to one another. I don’t blame them. I want to do the same, but only Kipp’s brave exploration keeps me from joining their huddle. Somehow when I’d pictured myself as a fearless excavator, it had been more glamorous—and more well lit—than this. I’d pictured artifacts just falling into my hands with a bare modicum of digging.
This? This is going to be a lot of work.
“Let’s try one more tunnel before we head back,” I suggest after a time, when we make it back to the fanned array of passages. “We can tell Magpie that we were looking for the best place to spend our efforts. Lark, pick us a tunnel.”