door! It’s something that feels like smooth rock going past very quickly, and I’ve skinned my hand on it. That’s why my ears have been popping! We’re in a lift!”
Even as he spoke, the floor seemed to press against their feet, and a chill, damp air blew upon their faces, and they were aware of a silence so profound that they could hear their hearts beating.
“Where on earth are we?” said Colin.
“It’s probably more like where in earth are we!”
Susan knelt on the floor of the cupboard and stretched out her hand to where the door had been. Nothing. She reached down, and touched wet rock.
“Well, there’s a floor. Let’s have our bike lamps out and see what sort of place this is.”
They took off their knapsacks and rummaged around among the lemonade and sandwiches.
By the light of the lamps they saw that they were at the mouth of a tunnel that stretched away into the darkness.
“Now what do we do?”
“We can’t go back, can we, even if we wanted to?”
“No,” said Susan, “but I don’t like the look of this.”
“Neither do I, but we haven’t really much choice; come on.”
They shouldered their packs and started off along the tunnel, but seconds later a slight noise brought them whirling round, their hearts in their mouths.
“That’s torn it!” said Colin, gazing up at the shaft, into which the cupboard was disappearing. “They’ll be on to us in no time now.”
The children went as fast as they could, stumbling over the uneven floor, and bruising themselves against the walls. The air was musty, and within a minute they were gasping as though they had run a mile, but on they sped, with two thoughts in their heads – to escape from whatever was following them, and to find Cadellin or Fenodyree. If only this were Fundindelve!
The passage twisted bewilderingly, and when Susan pulled up without notice or warning, Colin could not avoid running into her, and down they sprawled, though they managed to keep hold of their lamps. There was no need to ask questions. The tunnel ended in a shaft that dropped beyond the range of their light. And hanging from a spike driven into the rock was a rope-ladder. It was wet, and covered with patches of white mould that glistened pallidly, but it looked as thought it would bear the children’s weight. The urgency of their plight killed all fear: they dared not hesitate. Both hands were needed for the climb, so they tucked the lamps inside their windcheaters, and went down in darkness.
The rope was slippery, and it took all their willpower to descend at an even pace. They did this by moving down rung by rung together, Colin setting the pace by counting. “One – two – three – four – five – six – seven.” He was ten rungs higher than his sister, and the urge to increase the rate was very strong; he tried not to think of what might happen if Grimnir reached the top of the ladder while they were still on it. “A hundred and forty – and one – two – three – four – five.”
“I’m at the bottom!” called Susan. “And it’s wet!”
The end of the ladder dangled a few inches above an island of sand that lay at the foot of the shaft, and from here four ways led off, none very inviting. Two were silted up, and two were flooded. Colin chose the shallower of the flooded tunnels, along which stray lumps of rock served as unreliable stepping-stones, and for a few yards the children made dry, if cumbersome, progress. Then Colin, in helping Susan over a particularly wide stretch of water, saw the end of the ladder begin to dance wildly about in the air. Someone obviously had started to descend.
The brown water splashed roof-high as Colin and Susan took to their heels, skidding over slimy, unseen rocks. But the tunnel sloped upwards, and to their relief, they left the water behind and were running on dry sand. This, however, was not long an asset: for soon it lay so thickly that the children were compelled to run bent double, and, finally, to scramble on hands and knees.
What if the roof and floor meet, thought Susan, and we have to go back … or wait?
Sweat was blinding her, her hair and clothes were full of sand, stones added to her bruises, and her lungs ached with the strain of drawing air out of the saturated atmosphere: but she had her Tear, and this time Susan was going to keep it, even if all the witches and warlocks that ever were came after her.
Suppose we can’t go on, though …
But almost at once her fears were allayed: the lamp’s beam outlined the end of the tunnel against a blackness beyond.
“Oh, glory be!” she spluttered, and they crawled out on to a soft mound of sand. At first, they could only droop on all fours, heads sagging like winded dogs, and gulp in the cold air, which was a little more wholesome than that of the tunnel; and, from the sudden lack of resonance, they guessed that they must be in a cavern. Every movement in the tunnel had produced a magnified, hollow echo, which made their breathing now appear dry, and remote. The children staggered to their feet, and looked about them.
In shape and size it was just such another cave as the Cave of the Sleepers in Fundindelve, but instead of the light, darkness pressed in from every side. The yellow walls were streaked with browns, blacks, reds, blues, and greens – veins of mineral that traced the turn of wind and wave upon a shore, twenty million years ago.
Colin bent down and listened at the tunnel mouth.
“I can’t hear anything,” he said, “but we’d better move on, if we can.”
Losing their pursuer was an easy task. It seemed that they were in an intricate system of caverns, connected by innumerable tunnels and shafts. These caverns were remarkable. The walls curved upwards to form roofs high as a cathedral, and the distance between the walls was often so great that, at the centre of a cave, the children could imagine themselves to be trudging along a sandy beach on a windless and starless night. The loose sand killed all noise of movement, and helped the silence to prey on their nerves: moreover, it made walking hot, laborious work, and the air was still not good; ten minutes under these conditions sapped their energy as much as an hour of normal tramping would have done.
Tunnels entered and left the caves at all angles and levels. They turned, twisted, branched, forked, climbed, dropped, and frequently led nowhere. They would run into a cave at any point between roof and floor, and wind out on to dizzy ledges, which in turn dwindled to random footholds, or nothing at all. And the square-mouthed shafts were a continual hazard. Through some, the distant floors of lower galleries could be glimpsed, while others disappeared into unknowable depths. It was no place for panic. Every corner, every bend, every opening, had to be approached with the greatest caution, for fear of an unwanted meeting; and the caves were the worst of all. After crossing through half a dozen or so, and peering round at the holes which stared sightless from all quarters, Colin and Susan took to scuttling over the floor and diving into the first tunnel they saw, trusting blindly that that particular one would not be tenanted. In the tunnels they were close to wall and ceiling, lamps held their own with shadows; but in the caves the children felt truly lost, for their puny light only accentuated their insignificance, and the feeling of being exposed to unseen eyes grew ever stronger. Somewhere within this labyrinth someone was hunting them down, and Colin and Susan were never more aware of this than when they broke cover beneath a soaring dome of rock and ran through the nightmare sand.
How far they travelled, and for how long before they had to rest, was impossible to judge: time and distance mean little underground. But at last they could go no further, and, chancing upon a tunnel with a partially blocked entrance, they wriggled inside and lay stretched on the floor. They were consumed by heat and thirst, and fumbled