122 – Travels in tunnels

  By the time they were another hour along, the tunnel began to darken and the air to be dryer. They had crossed two more agricultural caverns, and the trail had changed direction several times. Steven was ready for lunch, and to get one of his torches out. As he did, he produced the change of clothes for Alex. For his part, Alex was pleased to get into his own underwear, not liking the local underwear anymore than his mother had. He also put on the clothes that the elves had provided. Steven took a moment to fix the sleeves and trouser legs to length. Alex had to keep the moccasins that he had been given.

  After Alex had changed, they took the clothes he had been wearing, ripped them to strips and soaked some of them in the bag of oil that Steven had for maintaining torches, and then wrapped one of the strips around one of the torches that Steven had. Steven lit the torch and gave it to Alex, telling Alex to hold it above his eyes as much as he could and to keep up. At first Alex tried to protest but Steven insisted, so that he could keep track of Alex by the torch. Alex stopped arguing with that.

  As they walked along, Alex began to tell all that had happened to him and Diana. They had first been scared when Mom had been separated from them. Then they simply had to keep walking as long as they could every day. The food was terrible and the people mean. The bugs stung a few times. Soon his shoes wore out and he was given some moccasins. Those also wore out, and he was given a second set. Some of the sights they saw were really neat to see. Then he and Diana were put into a cage on a cart and rolled into a city, where they met some scary people. He was separated from Diana and brought to here. They took his clothes and burned them and gave him the clothes he had worn up to now.

  He had met a few boys and girls here, but none seamed to like him, except to tease. He was taken to the smith and the man cut a small patch of his scalp off and put it into the sword that was given to Alex when it was finished. Once Alex had the sword, he found he could stand up to the teasing, and had used some of the fighting that Mom had taught him to beat up a bully who would not leave him alone.

  When they stopped to eat and rest, Alex curled up in Steven’s lap and dozed off. Steven put out the torch and after getting comfortable, Steven napped holding his son.

  In their next awake time, they ate a bit, and continued traveling the tunnels and caverns. At the approximate mid-afternoon, they came out of a wide tunnel onto the floor of the rift that Steven had left some few days and a bit of altitude earlier. Steven turned to his left and started along the floor, looking for the signs of a used trail. As he went he got the second tracker he had been given out of a vest pocket. The spot glowed a bit dim about half way from the middle to the edge, and off to Steven’s 4-o’clock as he aligned himself to he direction of the rift, 12-o’clock being the direction out.

  Alex watched Steven wave it around like he did when using a compass, then put it away. “Which way do we go?”

  Steven sat for a moment, easing his pack off of his back, and let his coat breath a bit. “We are supposed to meet your mother and sister and a friend here somewhere. But I don’t know for sure where. We have three days of food, and I think it is just over two days to hike out. The question is do we wait, or start out?”

  Alex thought for a moment. “How do they find us? This is not the mall or the store.”

  Steven was well aware of that. “Your mother has a tracker like this one, which she can use to find Diana, and another for finding me. Her guide should know the way out to the surface.”

  Alex did not wait to think long. “I want to see the sky. Mom hikes fast. She can catch up.”

  The main road was similar to what Steven had traveled earlier, wide enough for wagons to pass each other, with the ground beyond unproven and irregular at best. The road mostly went straight along the floor of the rift, following the roll of the ground. They walked up an incline, and at the top of this hill they found a warn path that turned into a tunnel in the side of the rift. It had a carved and enlarged entrance. Steven somehow recognized the writing as of the local elf-script, and immediately dragged Alex away from it. as he mulled why he recognized the characters, he recalled both the various alphabets he had seen in Shalaia, and Karen giving him a warning to avoid the people who made that script.

  “We have to get away from here. These people can see in the dark, and maybe even the heat of where your torch was.” Steven led Alex away from the tunnel opening.

  “So can I, Dad.”

  Steven led them up the road a little to where it went through a rock garden. Steven had been to Goblin Valley in east central Utah a few times, and had promised himself to take the kids there someday. This rock garden reminded him of there.

  Alex was visibly getting tired at this point, Steven had been carrying him on and off and figured this was as good a place to stop as any. Steven moved through it to his left and up to the wall of the rift. There was a spring here, trickling into a pool. Steven touched it and found it was fresh water, if a bit warm. Not a geology expert, Steven figured it was probably from the same general source as the lake that he had been past. He refilled Alex’s water skin from him bladder in his pack, then refilled the bladder through the filter from the spring and pool.

  Steven let the torch burn down low, and out of the way as he worked. Their thrust slaked, they leaned against the wall as Alex again curled up not quite in his lap. The torch went out not long after both father and son sank into sleep. Fortunately the smell of the burnt torch kept the local critters from coming to close to investigate.

  Alex woke at the noise. People were running by on the road. He could not see it from here, so they probably could not see him. This allowed him to relax, and count. He though he heard four people run past, rattling in some kind of gear. As he looked around, he could see the shapes in the heat. The rock garden stretched out around them for as far as he could see. The wall they were against stretched to both sides and a long way up. Above the tops of the close rock pillars, he could see the far wall also going up too far to see.

  Alex had gotten used to the novelty of seeing in the dark the first few nights on planet. So had Diana. But until he had gotten into the village no one had explained it to him. When Dad had given him the torch, Alex knew that it was going to hinder him from seeing that way, if he had the torch in front of him, but had not been able to get his Dad to listen then. As it was the torch was long enough to hold high and behind his head, so it did not effect his sight too much. Now Alex felt and saw that his Dad was soundly asleep and they were for the moment safe. The people had run on, and were gone. Alex lay his head back down and went back to sleep.

*     *     *

  Caspian led by deliberate decision of Roxanne. She did not want his light from his staff interfering with her vision. She had come to see quite clearly with her recently discovered ability. As they hiked the floor of the rift, they left the arches and pillars behind, and quickly found a crossroads, where the path turned to their left and through a carved opening in the rift wall into another tunnel. There was a carved arch in the natural rock, with carved characters in it. Rox could recognize the individual characters as such, but had no idea what the language was or the meaning of the characters.

  Caspian looked the arch over. “This is probably it. Check you r tracker.”

  Rox got the tracker for Diana out, and looked it over. The point of light was a forward and to her right from center, and a bit over half way down the curve of the surface.

  Caspian stood by and looked at it, and nodded. “That is promising. She is a day away, give or take, in that general direction.”

  He started forward into the darkness of the tunnel. Rox put the tracker back under her jacket a followed after.

  This road was a bit more than one wagon wide, having been carved to that width. In prior conversation about it, Caspian had joined the Caplan’s speculation that these tunnels were not fully carved from solid rock, but rather existing tunnels and cracks that had been enlarged.

  The tunnel did not branch, but it did twist some. Soon they came out into a cavern. This cavern was humid and sticky feeling. Rox could see all sorts of crystals lining almost every surface. Water seamed to pool and puddle in the low spots of the carved road. The crystals and water glowed with whatever light struck them. They exited the far side of this chamber through a hole surrounded by crystal. There were no natural bio-luminescent sources, even with Caspian’s staff giving off light. Rox could see just fine with her expanded visual range.

  Karen came to Roxanne’s mind saying they would have to travel through three caverns like this, and then the elf village of Chigoria would be in a large series of caverns after that. Rox found to the road now went uphill as she went.

  Within the second chamber, Rox realized that they were inside what might be a large geode, of similar type of cavern. As they left the third, the humidity of the previous area seamed to end abruptly as if a door prevents its passage. The road was still a wagon width, and the passage was carved and decorated.

  The next chamber was also lined with crystal, but this was being sculpted and cut, rather than left natural. There was no one here at the moment, but the chamber looked like it was being cleared for use.

  Rox was ready for lunch, and Caspian agreed.

  They crossed this chamber into a natural rock tunnel and were quickly into a maze of regular carved tunnels, some road sized, some walkways. Caspian led in a left-handed direction through the tunnels, looking for a place to rest for a bit.

  Caspian was on edge, and Rox could see he was a bit stressed. They found a chamber that was organic in its scent. As Rox looked it over, it was like a large green house with some strange kind of leafless trees growing from the ceiling, and orderly rows of indeterminate crops arrayed across the large chamber.

  “This is a garden of some sort. I don’t see anyone here.”

  Caspian agreed as he moved off to his left against the wall, then stopped at a curve of the wall. He leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, then sat down.

  “Time to do some setup, and reconnoitering. Cyrril is out buzzing around testing for any standing magic fields. I haven’t felt any active magic yet. We may have managed to sneak in without detection, so far.”

  Rox nodded as she took her bag off.