Chapter 23

Maze-like turns out to be the perfect word for the tunnels. I acquire some small metal signs embossed with different letters on the ends of short stakes for us to stick into soft parts of the floor. They prove useful immediately. The tunnels double back on themselves so many times it’s unreal, and even though the first few intersections only fork into three other pathways, intersections further down the line have as many as five or even six. Even though Rhys was disappointed the first time I made us turn around, he admits that it was definitely necessary.

It’s slow going. Every time we reach an intersection or larger cavern, plus when tunnels start to curve in unexpected directions, I have to write notes, record distances, and update my map. Every time we reach an intersection that we’ve been to before, I have to recalculate my numbers and make sure I have enough room in my diagrams so that it’s clear which tunnel we came from and which one we’re going in next. I have to recreate my full map multiple times, because the pencil markings on it get erased and redrawn so many times that even though the final routes get traced in ink, the paper gets too grubby to read clearly in the darkness of the caves.

The map quickly gets insanely complicated. Some tunnels go under and over each other without crossing and loop back to different intersections. There are countless dead ends. We sometimes have to change the locations of the little signs to more accurately reflect which direction actually takes you back to the entrance quickest. The way the paths interconnect is much more convoluted than I thought it would be going into this project. He doesn’t say it, but I have a feeling our regular forays underground make Rhys a little relieved that he didn’t get very far into the caves he explored as a child. Without my incessant note-taking and our little signs, we would have gotten lost countless times.

Rhys is having the time of his goddamn life. Despite the repetitive nature of our task and the constant measuring and notetaking through which he has nothing to do but hang out and doodle in the dirt with the tip of his spear, he is much more expressive than I’ve seen him before. He’s actually smiling pretty regularly, and I even hear him laugh on multiple occasions.

“What do you think the purpose of this whole maze is?” he asks me one day while I’m sitting on the floor recording our latest measurements.

“Well,” I say. “I’m hoping it’s so convoluted because the people who dug these tunnels connected them to the catacombs, but didn’t want anyone to be able to easily get inside the castle from there. Since the catacombs are publicly accessible and there aren’t any locks between these tunnels and the interior of the castle, it’s a pretty glaring security risk.”

“Hmm,” he hums thoughtfully. “Doesn’t that mean that we’re making it easy for the castle to be invaded with all these little signs?”

I pause in my writing for a second. He has a point.

“Yeah, I didn’t really think about that,” I admit, “but I suppose we are. If and when we finally find where these connect to the catacombs, we’ll go back through and remove all the signs. By that point we’ll have a finished map anyway.”

He leans on his spear and gives me an odd look.

“You know, when you first got here, some people said that since you’re an outsider, you’d be a threat to national security,” he says conversationally. “I never actually believed that, of course. Looks like I was wrong.”

I look up from my writing in shock, unable to believe that Rhys would seriously say that, only to find that he’s smirking and staring at me to watch my reaction. He’s actually messing with me. Little shit. I throw my pencil in his direction and he laughs when it misses by a wide berth.

“Pick that up,” I instruct good-naturedly. “I’m trying to work here, and you’re accusing me of treason. It’s very distracting.”

He has to walk pretty far to pick up the pencil.

“I can’t believe you missed by that much.”

“Hey, it’s dark and the lantern does weird things with the shadows. I didn’t miss, I just thought you were actually over there.”

For some reason, the kid is really in his element underground. I wonder if after we’re done here, he’ll come back just to wander around, maybe find some spiders to poke with his spear. Maybe he should think about a career change and see if he can’t provide some protection to the chemists on their way to, from, and through the caves they traverse for ingredients. That would be fun for him.

Once or twice, when we start to get into some sections of tunnels that look a little more like natural caves, the choke beetles start to light up and shriek. It’s an eerie sound, made all the more eerie by knowing what it signals. We backtrack right away when that happens, fortunately without incident. I cross my fingers each time that that isn’t the way to the catacombs blocked off by poisonous air.

We run into spiders with horrible frequency. Most of the time, they’re hanging out in the corner of larger caverns, which is unpleasant, but tolerable. Once, though, we hear a horrible scuttling sound echoing from far down the tunnel deep in the darkness, getting louder and louder at an alarming rate. I hide behind Rhys immediately and he readies his spear.

From the moment that the light hits the eight glassy scuttering legs to the moment they overtake us, there’s only a span of about five seconds. I scream and try to climb Rhys like a tree. My life flashes before my eyes. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is where I’m going to die, trapped deep within the earth, my guts sucked out of my body by a creature that comes straight out of my worst nightmares. I resign myself to my fate.

Then, it flies right past us, crawling up the opposite wall from where I’m cowering behind Rhys, stirring up wind in the stale air as it passes without even touching either of us, disappearing back into the dark as quickly as it came.

I collapse on my knees onto the floor and cry for about five minutes after that one. Rhys kindly pats me on the back as my body is wracked with violent sobs. He politely waits until my tears have slowed somewhat before asking me if I pissed myself. I laugh harder at that than I should, a choked, hiccuping sound that bounces loudly off the tunnel walls, and reassure him that miraculously, my pants have remained unsoiled. He agrees to go back early that day, in a different direction than the one the spider was just traveling in. I insist we take a break for a couple days after that. Also, I practically launch myself into Khysmet’s waiting arms that night.

I’ve come to actually appreciate Khysmet’s evening visits. He doesn’t come by every night, so I still have a reasonable amount of alone time and don’t feel smothered or anything. He also doesn’t try to sleep with me every time he comes by. I wouldn’t complain if he did – he’s a very attentive lover, and the sex is amazing – but it’s sort of nice that some nights he really does just want my company. I find myself tending to head to bed around eight almost every evening despite professing my hatred for that request. However, I do make sure to deliberately stay out running around the castle at least twice a week, just to keep him from getting complacent. On more than one such occasion, I find him waiting in my bedroom when I return. Those nights are fun.

About a month in, I feel like we must be getting close to having mapped most everything. The chart is so intricately tangled, and we're running out of loose ends. It's taking longer and longer to get to intersections we haven't fully explored yet, and Khysmet's time constraint is becoming an actual problem impeding our progress. I don't know how much farther we're going to be able to get since we have to worry about going there and back within four hours. At this point we're averaging one new tunnel per trip.

One day, after hiking the hour and a half it takes to get to an unexplored path, we pick our new tunnel and head down it like always. Only this time, rather than going a little further down to a new intersection, it keeps going. And going. And going. It twists and turns, but doesn't branch. For the first time in a while since we started coming down here, I feel my heart start to race with excitement. We're actually going somewhere. But where?

We're past the point of no return time-wise, but I look Rhys in the eyes and see my same excitement reflected there. He nods. We keep going.

Countless twists and turns, eight caverns, one snack break, and three hours later… there it is. A sharp turn up ahead. Ninety degrees. Squared. Different from the gradual twists and natural caves that have characterized the tunnels the whole way before now. My heart stops. Is this it? Can it possibly be?

We round the corner and find an angular, paved corridor lined with stone caskets. Bones scatter the floor. The corridor continues in a straight line as far as our lanterns reach, with some archways that indicate other paths branching off at ninety degree angles along the way. Intricate. Undeniably man-made. There's not a doubt in my mind that we've actually made it to the catacombs.

I don't scream. I don't jump up and down. I don't hug Rhys. I don't even cry. I just fall to my knees and sit on the ground, exhausted, speechless, overwhelmed.

Rhys is the one who speaks first.

"I don't believe it," he says in a detached yet reverent tone. "We actually made it."

"Yeah," I say, my voice hollow. "We did."

We stay there like that, frozen in shock and awe, for maybe ten quiet minutes. I've been walking for five hours. I don't know when I'll be able to get up again and make the trek back. Maybe we should try to find an exit and go back by a more direct route?

Before I can express this sentiment, I hear a noise. Not just any noise, but a voice.

"Lights out," I command immediately. Rhys takes a minute to process my words, but before he can, I have grabbed the lantern from his hands and blown it out, pulling us back around the corner we just came from and peeking around it ever so slightly.

It's not long before we can see a light coming from down one of the branching corridors up ahead. The voices are getting louder by the second. Right when I think they're about to come into view, I pull back into the tunnel completely, tugging Rhys with me, so neither of us are in view at all. We listen silently to their conversation.

"Do you think this is a good place to paint it?" one voice, deep and male, asks.

"It's as good a place as any," another voice, warm and melodic with indeterminate gender, replies. "I wish we didn't have to change location all the time. It's impossible to find anything down here."

"I know, I've missed so many meetings just due to getting lost. Where do you think I should put it? Behind that casket?"

"It's a little too hard to see there. Just put it on the casket instead."

"Yeah, okay. Good idea."

"It's not like most people would even know what they're looking at. We don't need to hide it that well."

There's a few moments of silence interspersed with some snippets of small talk, but nothing of any note. And eventually the two unseen people move on, their lantern light disappearing gradually until we are once more in complete darkness.

Once I'm sure we're safe, I exercise my practiced ability to light our lantern in the dark. Once it's lit, I tell Rhys to stay right at the tunnel entrance so we don't stand a chance of losing it somehow and go looking for the painted symbol. It's still wet and glistening in the light, so it's very easy to find. I pull out my sketchbook and copy down what I see, which appears to be a small circle with a little vertical line in the center, like a reptilian eye, inside an upside down triangle surrounded by a larger circle, with a horizontal line cutting all the way across the symbol through the bottom tip of the triangle. Five lines radiate out from the circle above the horizontal line. I have no idea what it means. I take the drawing back to Rhys, and he doesn't know either.

"I did hear the word 'meetings' though," he says. "Seemed pretty secret. Looks like your theory might have been correct."

"Yeah, it sounds like they switch rendezvous locations frequently, though," I say. "We got unbelievably lucky to have seen what I'm guessing is where their next meeting is going to take place, but it's not like we'll be able to stake it out and listen in. By the time we get back here, it may very well be over already. It's a long walk. One that we should start back on right now, because it's going to be after ten by the time we get back to the castle."

"We at least know that there are meetings. In the catacombs. Like you thought there would be. That's not nothing, Miss Catarina," Rhys says encouragingly as we start the long return trek.

I sigh deeply. "It's not nothing, but it's not much. I don't even know where to go from here. The meeting locations could move all over the city for all we know. We might never get this close to finding them again."

"We got lucky once. It could happen again. You never know."

Our walk back to the castle is exhausting and uneventful. Ten fucking hours round trip is insane. We didn’t pack enough food for such a long trip either, so we’re both getting dizzy from hunger by the end. Thank the gods we have enough water, at least. I'm practically walking into walls by the time we've reached the exit. I say goodnight to Rhys and plod back to my room, desperate for a bath and to just go to bed.

Naturally, though, when I open the door to my bedroom, Khysmet is pacing the room waiting for me. And he does not look happy.