Haladras

Sixteen

THE LOW WHISPERED voice of Grim roused Skylar after only a few unsatisfying hours of sleep.

"Awake, my prince. The time is come for our escape."

Skylar groaned and wished that he had awakened somewhere far from where he was. Somewhere warm, where no one was trying to harm him. Despite his body's protest for more rest, Skylar quickly got out of bed and dressed himself.

Barryman waited outside their door, lantern in hand. None of them spoke as the innkeeper led them downstairs. Even the wooden floorboards and stair steps, sensing the gravity of their plight, kept the silence and refused to creak or moan. In the kitchen, Barryman set his lantern upon a table.

The boy, Harold, suddenly appeared. He and the innkeeper went to work removing tiles from the floor. They worked swiftly and methodically, as though they'd performed this routine a hundred times before. When they had finished, a hole in the floor, little wider around than Grim, revealed a series of short wooden planks. These Barryman removed.

Nothing but gaping blackness lay beneath the planks, its depth unknown.

"It's easy to lose your way once you're down there. These catacombs crawl beneath the city like a spider's web. Just keep heading south and you should come to an outlet."

Barryman handed the lantern to Skylar.

"Don't break this―unless you want to spend the rest of your short life wandering around in the darkness down there," he said, perhaps jokingly, but Skylar did not think it funny.

Harold brought over a rope, which he fastened around a wooden column and fed the other end down the hole. He held the rope up for Skylar to take hold of.

"Maybe you ought to carry the lantern," said Skylar, handing the precious light to Grim.

Barryman chuckled and would surely have boomed with laughter were the need for silence not so dire.

"Are you certain you will be alright?" said Grim to the jolly innkeeper.

"Of course! I'll cook those two weasels in my stew if they try to come in here."

He smiled and laughed again. Yet even in this dim lantern light, his smile could not hide the fearful look in his eyes, or how he wiped his hands nervously on his apron. Skylar did not know whether Grim noticed this too, but he feared for this kindly innkeeper and prayed him safe.

Grim descended the rope first, nimbly handling it in one hand while the other held the lantern.

The distance to the bottom proved less than Skylar imagined. Seven meters―perhaps fewer. Skylar took hold of the rope and made his way down, though less skillfully than Grim.

"Farewell, little prince," whispered Barryman as Skylar's head slowly disappeared into the hole. "Our hope, our salvation."

A strong scent of decay and age hung in the thick air. It struggled to squeeze through Skylar's nostrils, choked his lungs, and filled his mouth with an acrid taste. Pale walls, ceiling and floor stretched out before them in either direction as far as the dismal lantern light dared to shine. At sporadic intervals, dark openings in the walls led off to some never-ending tunnel.

The path Grim led them along bent and twisted as much as a snake's body. Despite its serpentine path and constant forks in the tunnel, Grim pressed onward as one who navigated those catacombs daily.

"Do you think Barryman will be alright?" asked Skylar after a time.

Grim made no immediate reply, leading on with his sure stride.