The Book of Dead Days Page 14

  Valerian smiled at her infuriatingly.

  “But there will be no corpse inside here,” he said, tapping the lid. “There will be no bones, no flesh, no decomposing material of any sort whatsoever. There will be simply a way back to the City.”

  “You’re mad,” she said.

  “I thought Kepler was mad,” Valerian said, “but I was wrong. I should have realized sooner what we were looking at in his cellar. This is a map. It is a map of the ancient canals under the City. And this is our way back.”

  “There are no canals in the City,” said Boy.

  “Not in the City, under it,” snapped Valerian. “Under the City is an ancient network of canals. They were once exposed to the sky but were slowly bridged, then built over and rebuilt over, until only the rumor of them remains. I myself explored a tiny fraction of them one evil day when I was a student. I quickly became lost. It took me a day to find my way out and I never dared go back.

  “It is said they feed into the river, or that the river feeds into them. Few know where their entrances lie. And now I believe we have found one, here, in this stinking village. The millrace must run underground and join the canals!”

  Valerian fetched the torch from the wall.

  “Hurry! There is no time to be lost.”

  “But we don’t even know if you’re right,” protested Willow. “There may be nothing inside here at all.”

  “I am right,” said Valerian. “And you two must open the lid. I cannot. Hurry!”

  Willow looked at Boy, and Boy looked at Valerian, who glared at him so that he jumped and started to try to shift the heavy stone lid. It didn’t budge.

  “Wait!” said Valerian. “We ought to copy this map.”

  He tapped the lid once more.

  “I have some paper!” said Boy proudly, and pulled a leaf of folded parchment from his pocket. Delighted at being useful for once, he smiled as Valerian took it from him.

  “Boy, you astound me! What is this? Have you been studying at last, or . . . ?”

  Valerian stopped.

  “Where did you get this?” he said.

  “It’s mine!” said Boy, wishing he had left it in his pocket.

  It was the paper he’d found on the viewing table of the camera obscura in the Tower room, the one with his name at the top and the strange words and symbols underneath.

  “It is not yours,” shouted Valerian. “It is about you.”

  He turned and looked at Willow.

  “Here,” he said. “I have a stub of charcoal. Use the reverse of the paper to copy the map. Do it well!”

  So by the flickering torchlight Willow set about trying to copy the lines onto the back of the paper, using a piece of soft charcoal that kept on breaking.

  “I can’t see!” she complained, but she kept at it.

  “You’ve missed a bit,” said Boy. “Look, there! And that line joins that one, not that one.”

  “You do it if you’re so—”

  “Boy will not do it,” said Valerian, holding the torch. “You will. You’ll be quicker and neater.”

  But it was hard to concentrate with Valerian glaring at her.

  “Hurry!” he said. “God knows how long those thugs will be away for.”

  “They’re just people,” said Willow. “We offended them. They’re angry. Perhaps if we had just asked to—”

  “To what?” interrupted Valerian. “Asked to smash a hole in the floor of their church and dig up the remains of one of the local gentry? I think you should concentrate on what you’re doing.”

  “There!” said Willow. “I’ve finished.”

  “Are you sure?” said Valerian, comparing the engraved lines with the drawing Willow had made.

  “Yes,” said Willow, but she was not sure. She was not even convinced there was anything under the lid of the sarcophagus apart from decaying bodies.

  “Then come on, put your backs into it. Don’t take it right off—we must cover our tracks when we leave.”

  But if Willow was not convinced, Boy certainly was. He still felt strong after the slug from the bottle. He had never felt so confident in his life, and had never felt he understood Valerian so well. It was as though some of master’s power was inside him.

  “Come on, Willow. I need your help,” he said, putting his back against the lid and beginning to shove.

  “Do it together!” urged Valerian. “On my mark! Now!” They both gave a shove and the stone lid not only moved but slid right off the sarcophagus and smashed to the stone floor of the crypt, where it shattered.

  The sound echoed around the small vault. They began to panic, casting anxious glances back up the steps. Valerian leant over into the hole they had uncovered and smiled. There was a series of iron rungs let into the shaft that dropped down into the darkness. Now they could not only hear the sound of running water, they could smell its dankness.

  “So much for covering our tracks,” said Valerian, looking at the broken lid. “Still, we have a map, and if they follow, they won’t have.”

  “Why did they put us down here if they knew there was this way out?” asked Boy.

  “Well, obviously they didn’t know,” said Valerian. “It’s my guess this is some secret of the Beebe family. But we don’t have time to debate it. They’ll come sooner or later, and the torch won’t last for more than an hour or two. Let’s go.”

  He took a pull on the vial. As he lowered his head, he saw Boy staring at him.

  “What is it, Boy?”

  “I—I was just thinking, wondering whether it would be a good idea if Willow and I had . . . a little of that . . . to help us.”

  “How dare you! No! What a suggestion! This is for my arm. Anyway, it’s not good for you. Too much can . . . That’s not your business. Take the torch and get down that hole, Boy, before I decide to leave you here.”

  Boy tried to hide his disappointment and did as he was bid.

  “You next, Willow.”

  And then Valerian swung his long legs up onto the ledge of the shaft and placed his feet on the rungs. The light from the torch had already stopped swinging about beneath him.

  Valerian was glad the bottom was not far. He had little idea how he would have managed if he’d had to climb down a ladder with only one hand for more than a few feet. As it was it was difficult enough, but quite soon he had reached the bottom and stepped off to find Boy and Willow waiting for him.

  “Look!” said Boy. “Boats!”

  They were in a cavern, standing on a jetty made of iron and wood, which clung to the wall of the chamber. There was the river flowing slowly and steadily past them in the darkness, and tied to the jetty were several boats of a strange sort. They were flat-bottomed and had no oars, but each had a short pole lying in its bottom.

  “I wonder when anyone last came this way,” said Willow. “It feels so forgotten.”

  It was true. The whole place seemed to have been untouched for many years. The rust on the iron rungs had been undisturbed. The landing stage was rotting in places, and they had to tread carefully to avoid the weaker parts of the platform, but the boats bobbed gently in the current, as if happy to see someone after years of abandonment in the darkness. They chose the one that seemed to be the sturdiest.

  “Let’s be gone,” said Valerian.

  4

  The boat, once untied, seemed keen to take them off down the tunnel that led from the chamber, and only leaked a little. Willow sat at the front with the torch, Valerian sat in the middle with the map, giving orders, and Boy crouched in the back, holding the pole and steering them away from the walls. There was little need to propel them forward—the current was enough to keep them moving at a decent speed. Once or twice Boy gave an extra push, but he rocked the boat so badly it made them feel unsafe.

  Time. Who had any idea how time was passing as they sailed along in the long straight tunnel?

  Distance. They had no more idea about how far they had traveled than they had about how long they’d been going. W
hat had seemed so easy to start with began to seem a surreal voyage from nowhere to nowhere. The tunnel was apparently endless.

  As they went, Valerian’s drugs began to wear off and the pain grew again in his arm. With it he began to remember the desperate nature of his situation.

  So what if he made it back to the City? He knew what waited for him on New Year’s Eve, wherever he was. For the ten thousandth time he wondered if there was any way out that he hadn’t considered before. Maybe there was something staring him right in the face that he hadn’t seen. But fifteen years is a long time to think and he had no more ideas.

  They drifted on in the gloom, the torch sputtering, showing signs that it would soon fail.

  It was not much warmer in the underground canal than it had been in the crypt, or in the church, or in the snowstorm itself. It was airless too. Despite the flowing water there was a powerful smell of dampness and decay. Once or twice their faces were brushed by dripping fronds and unseen tentacles, maybe the roots of plants hanging from the bricked vault of the low tunnel. The sound of splashes from the prow of the boat fell dead against the claustrophobic walls.

  Boy began to feel his joy slip from him.

  He could see little but Willow by the light of the torch. What had he brought her into? This life with the madman who was his master. He was possibly a murderer, whose life was now forfeit over something that had happened fifteen years before. Valerian had thrown it all away for one night with a woman who had rejected him.

  Nothing made sense, especially not this stupidly straight tunnel.

  “Boy,” said Willow quietly, “I’m scared.”

  “It’s all right,” Boy said. “It’s—”

  And then Willow shrieked and dropped the torch into the canal, where it was extinguished at once with a short hiss.

  “Willow!” called Boy. “Are you all right?”

  “Something hit me! I’m sorry—oh, I’m sorry!”

  “Are you all right?” Boy asked again.

  “Yes, but what will we do now? We can’t see where we’re going!”

  “What does it matter anyway?” said Boy. “We’re only going one way, and that’s forward. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “But we could be down here forever,” cried Willow.

  The darkness was total, and still they floated on.

  Valerian barely seemed to have noticed. Boy now gently eased himself into the bottom of the boat from his perch on the stern, and Willow, somewhat hysterical, felt her way back toward Valerian and curled up at his feet.

  Then she sat up. “I’ve still got a bit of a candle,” she called to Boy.

  “But we’ve no way of lighting it,” he said miserably.

  They fell silent again, and so they went, Boy and Willow half numbed by the cold and half asleep, and Valerian in some strange place where the pain and the last of the drugs had taken him.

  5

  Had they had any idea how time was passing they might have guessed that it was now well past midday on the day before New Year’s Eve.

  Had they had any idea of how far they had traveled, they might have known that they were indeed back in the City or, at least, beneath it.

  Valerian was right. Valerian was always right. They were in the maze of underground canals that lay far from sight and far from knowledge, forgotten and corrupt, while the City sprawled above.

  They had drifted into the canal system proper, where the current had become more gentle. Had they had any light to see by, they would have been able to make out ruined doorways and steps, landing stages and blocked-in windows, where once a thriving business life had been conducted along the waterways of the City. Now the only life came from the water itself, gurgling and slurping its way toward various hidden gutters where it rushed unseen into the pestilent river that bisected the City itself.

  Boy was half awake now. Despite his exhaustion, his fear would not allow him to sleep for long. Valerian was unconscious again, Willow whimpering in her sleep like a disturbed dog at his feet. So it was only Boy who knew what happened when the boat suddenly struck something in the dark and came to a halt.

  Slowly, he put both hands out into the darkness. The boat was resting against a low wall on his left. He could hear the sound of wood on wood in front of him. On the other the side of the boat he felt another prow under his fingers. Ah! The boat had hit another one moored at a landing point.

  “Valerian!” he called as loudly as he dared. “Willow! Wake up!”

  He felt around the wall and found a crevice between two of the stones. He dug his fingers in and found it did not take much effort to keep their boat against the side. Keeping careful hold, he called, “Wake up! I think we might be able to get out. We’re at some sort of jetty again. We’re somewhere at last.”

  “What is it?” came Valerian’s voice from the darkness. “Where are we? Why is it dark?”

  “The torch went out,” said Boy. There was no need for Valerian to know that Willow had dropped it. “It went out ages ago.”

  “Where are we?” said Willow.

  “What difference does it make?” asked Boy. “It’s dark everywhere.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Willow. “Look there!”

  “Where?” asked Valerian.

  In the dark it was impossible to know where Willow was looking, but then Boy saw.

  Away to one side of them was a speck of light in a distant tunnel. It seemed to be very far away.

  “Can you get out of the boat?” Valerian said.

  “Who are you talking to?” asked Boy.

  “Either of you!” Valerian barked, and his voice echoed around them, finally dying away after many beats of their hearts. They were at the edge of some vast chamber, from across the far side of which came the faint light.

  “I think I can,” said Willow, but Boy was already slithering over the side of the boat onto what turned out to be a quayside, long forgotten in this abandoned subterranean world.

  “Find my hand,” said Willow, holding it out in the blackness.

  Boy worked along the side of the quay, gripping the low edge of the boat, until his arm bumped into Willow’s.

  “Take the rope,” she said, passing it to Boy, who, fumbling around, found an iron ring to tie it to.

  He pulled Willow up, and then they both helped lift Valerian out.

  Once on firm ground, he seemed to recover and take charge again.

  “We may as well head for the light. Perhaps it is coming in from the outside.”

  And so they walked.

  It was like walking on a black night, lit only by a few stars. They could make out their destination clearly enough, but the ground under their feet not at all.

  On more than one occasion they caught their boots on rough ground, and twice Willow was unlucky enough to walk into low stone bollards and fall over. It was an ancient square, which seemed to slope slightly uphill away from the canal, and with every step they could see more clearly that the light they were heading for was not daylight but artificial.

  It was coming from a low archway in the corner of the square, and beyond it a series of smaller arches led into tiny tunnels, each half the height of an average man.

  Boy and Willow hesitated, but Valerian strode through the entrance arch and then bent down at the opening of the small passage that now seemed to their eyes to be dazzling with light.

  He jumped back.

  The light wavered and then emerged from the hole. It was followed by a man.

  “Valerian!” he gasped.

  “Kepler!” spluttered Valerian.

  6

  The two men stood staring at each other.

  Kepler was thin, and dwarfed by Valerian. His receding hair lay in black straggles scraped across his head. He wore small glasses of his own design and manufacture. He was dressed in a black frock coat and worn boots and his two gold teeth shone.

  “What’s happened to your arm?” he said.

  “Broken,” said Valerian. “I ran int
o Meade and his gang.”

  “I warned you—”

  “You warned me about a lot of things. But how are you here? The book! What about the book?”

  “You would have done better to listen to me,” said Kepler, ignoring Valerian’s question. “If you had, you might not be in this mess.”

  Boy and Willow were amazed by the light he was carrying. It was one of his own devices, without doubt. Slung over his shoulder on a wide canvas strap was a box with a brass handle protruding from it. From this, one of his special wires connected to a wooden handle with a glass ball on the end. It was this glass ball that was glowing with a strong yellow light. From time to time the light weakened and Kepler would wind the handle on the box furiously. As he did so the light would return to its full strength.

  Kepler walked over to Boy and Willow and inspected them by the light.

  “Boy I know. Who is this?”

  “A girl. Of some use. She’s cleverer than Boy.”

  Kepler grunted.

  “What are you all doing here?”

  “Listen!” said Valerian. “Have you found the book?” He grasped Kepler with his good hand.

  Kepler sighed deeply.

  “Alas, Valerian.” He sighed. “I have not.”

  “But what were you doing in there?” asked Valerian, pointing at the small tunnel from which Kepler had emerged.

  Kepler hesitated just a fraction before answering.

  “That was my last attempt,” he said. “My investigations, on your behalf, led me down here. I was led to believe that the answer lay in these catacombs. It has not been easy. Finding a safe entrance to this world was hard enough. I succeeded, but now I have failed. I am sorry, Valerian. There can be no other way.”

  “But the motto!” Valerian cried. “The Beebe motto led you down here?”

  “Yes. The motto. That led me close. I learnt that the Beebes knew of the catacombs. The family were advisors to the Emperor for many years. They came and went from Linden to the Palace through the canals. I thought the book was hidden here. It was not. You will have to face your past and your future tomorrow night.”

  Valerian raged, cursing himself, cursing Kepler and Boy, cursing life itself. Again and again he cried, “No!” It seemed there would be no end to his anguish, but at last he fell silent. His head dropped.