The Realms Thereunder

4

Freya’s head was still spinning with the excitement of discovering the door’s secret and Nemain’s final attack, so she didn’t notice the peculiar walls of the new tunnel until they had been walking for several minutes.

“Bricks!” she exclaimed. “It’s a red-brick tunnel. Finally -civilisation!”

“Yeah,” groaned Daniel. “And it smells terrible!”

He was right. In fact, the farther on they went, the worse the smell became. It was a decaying, sewage-like smell that stuck at the back of the throat, plugging the nose and burning the eyes.

And then something odd happened-the tunnel stopped. There was no wall in front of them, just a gap in the floor and beyond it a black emptiness that looked so thick you could almost reach out and touch it. They walked to the edge and held their lanterns out into the inky air and tried to make out any detail possible, but it was no good. The light was completely eaten up by the void.

“Listen,” said Daniel, “do you hear that?” They all stilled their breathing and strained their ears. There was a distant shh-shh sound, like water falling a very short distance. It seemed to come from somewhere in the emptiness below.

“Look!” exclaimed Freya, as she glanced downwards. “Steps!

Iron steps! It’s a ladder!”

Below them were long strips of metal with griddle designs that had been fixed into the side to the sheer cliff face. The step had been joined by two sturdy handrails that ran alongside them. Before anyone could do or say anything, Freya had grabbed the lantern that Ecgbryt was carrying and had started down them.

“Does it go far?” Ecgbryt asked.

“It’s hard to tell. I can’t see the bottom,” came the reply from the darkness. “I’ll keep going until I run out of rungs. Oop-okay, that’s it. I’m at the bottom. It’s a drain or a sewer or something!” she shouted. “It’s made of good old red bricks and mortar!” She held the torch above her head and found that she was standing on a ridge, below which ran a dark, murky water through a round channel. Torchlight glinted off of a part of the opposite wall, showing glazed tiles. “We’re almost home,” she said to herself. “We must be.”

The man-made bank turned slightly, following the inside curve of the sewer. She followed it around a few steps to see if she could find anything else.

“Don’t stray too far, lass,” she heard Swi?gar call from above her.

Daniel’s feet slapped down behind her and he picked up a torch and went towards her. “Freya?”

She turned to face him. “We made it, Daniel,” she said in a low voice. “Look at these bricks! We made it back to the real world.”

Daniel looked at Freya looking at the walls around her, her face eager. “Maybe one of these tunnels leads out-they’d have to, right? No one builds this without a way out-that’s impossible.”

“Freya,” said Daniel, sounding more appalled than she thought he should. “We can’t leave now. They need us. We’re the mortals, remember? They can’t destroy it without us. They-think of everyone in Ni?ergeard surrounded by the yfelgopes and think what will happen if we fail!”

“I know that!” Freya declared defensively. “I didn’t say that I wanted to abandon them-I only meant that maybe we don’t have to backtrack all the way back to Ni?ergeard to get home.”

“Fine. But you have to, you know, finish something before it’s over.”

“I know that, Daniel.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Lifiendes,” Swi?gar said behind them. “Come now, don’t wander off.”

They regrouped. “Well,” said Daniel, “where to now?”

The platform that created the ridge extended in two directions. There were no markings anywhere; neither way seemed any more promising than the other.

“On the one hand,” Daniel began, “the river, or sewer or whatever, looks to be going that way. It leads somewhere, obviously.

Another river or an ocean or wherever those things go.”

“A water treatment plant, perhaps?” Freya suggested hopefully. “Isn’t that where all sewers go?”

“The soul box won’t be in a water treatment plant,” Daniel said. “It’s more likely to be somewhere away from anyone who could just stumble upon it. I think it’s this way-against the flow.”

“But we’ve been following the water all this time-it’s what Ealdstan told us to do. Why abandon that now?”

The knights exchanged a look. Freya saw that a decision was made between them without even speaking.

“We must divide our party,” Swi?gar announced. “One of us will go with one of you.”

“What?” blurted Freya. “But that’s the worst thing that we could do!”

“We are close-too close to go slowly. If we went the wrong way, our blunder could alert those guarding the heart and we would have lost the element of surprise that we desperately need for this to work.”

“But we only got this far because we all stayed together! Would we have gotten past the gnomes and the Faerie if it were just two of us? What if there’s an even bigger test coming up?”

“We’d either of us be able to handle it,” Daniel said. “So long as we have the element of surprise.”

Freya scowled. “If something happened, then the other two would be too far away to help. We could lose everything.”

Swi?gar looked at her with an immovable expression.

“What if there are more splits? Is each of us going to end up going alone?”

Swi?gar shrugged. “It may come to that.”

“It’s stupid.”

“It is what we are doing.”

They decided that Ecgbryt would go with Freya, and Swi?gar with Daniel. They divided the provisions in their now very light packs and prepared to separate. Freya had a sad, reluctant look on her face, contradicted by Daniel’s confident expression.

“We’ll meet again,” Daniel said, sticking out his hand.

Freya hugged him. “Be careful,” she said.

They parted and, without backwards glances, went their separate ways.