Tunnels

'There's talk that they're rebuilding whole areas and patching up the cavern walls. It's said that the whole Colony might be moved there, and there's rumors of work parties of condemned prisoners, toiling like slaves. It's only rumors, though — no one knows for sure.'

'Tam never mentioned anything about more Styx,' Will didn't attempt to hide the alarm in his voice. 'Bloody brilliant,' he said angrily, kicking a rock in his path.

'Well, maybe he didn't think it would be a problem. We didn't exactly leave the Colony quietly, did we? Don't get too worried, though; it's a huge area to cover and there'll only be a handful of patrols.'

'Oh, great! That's a real comfort!' Will replied as he imagined what might be in store for them ahead.

They wandered on for several hours, eventually scrabbling down a steep incline, their feet slipping and sliding in the red sand until they finally reached a level area. Will knew that if he'd been reading the map correctly they should be approaching the end of the Labyrinth. But the tunnel narrowed before them and appeared to end in a blind alley.

Fearing the worst, Will raced ahead, stooping as the roof lowered. To his relief, he found that there was a small passage to one side. He waited until Cal caught up, and they looked apprehensively at each other as Bartleby sniffed the air. Will hesitated, looking repeatedly from Tam's map to the opening and back again. Then he met Cal 's eyes and smiled broadly as he edged into the narrow passageway. It was bathed in a subdued green light.

'Careful,' Cal warned.

But Will was already at the corner. He became aware of a familiar sound: the patter of falling water. He moved his head until just one eye was peering around the edge. He was struck dumb by what he glimpsed, and inched slowly into the open, into the bottle-green glow, to get a better view. From Tam's description, and the pictures his imagination had conjured up, he was expecting something out of the ordinary. But nothing could have prepared him for the sight that met his eyes.

'The Eternal City,' he whispered to himself as he began to move down a huge escarpment. As he looked up, his wide eyes scrutinizing the roof of the immense domed space, water splashed onto his upturned face and made him flinch.

'Underground rain?' he muttered, immediately realizing how ridiculous that sounded. He blinked as it dripped into his eyes, stinging them.

'It's seepage from above,' Cal said, coming to a halt behind him.

But Will wasn't listening. He was finding it hard to come to terms with the titanic volume of the cavern, so massive that its farthest reaches were hidden by fog and the mists of distance. The drizzle continued to fall in slow, languorous swathes as they set off again down the escarpment.

It was almost too much to take in. Basaltic columns, like windowless skyscrapers, arced down from the mammoth span of the roof into the center of the city. Others speared upward from the outlying ground in mind- bending curves, encasing the city with gigantic undulating buttresses. It dwarfed any of the Colony's caverns with its scale, and brought to Will's mind the image of a gargantuan heart, its chambers crisscrossed by huge heartstringlike columns.

He pocketed the light orb and instinctively sought the source of the emerald green glow that gave the scene a dreamlike quality. It was as though he were looking at a lost city in the depths of an ocean. He couldn't be sure, but the light seemed to be coming from the very walls themselves — so subtly that at first he thought they were simply reflecting it.

He crossed over to the side of the escarpment and examined the cavern wall more closely. It was covered in a wild growth of tendrils, dark and glistening with moisture. It was algae of some kind, made up of many trailing shoots and thickly layered, like ivy on an old wall. As he held up the palm of his hand, he could feel the warmth radiating from it and, yes, he could see that there was indeed a dim glow coming from the edges of the curled leaves.

'Bioluminescence,' he said aloud.

'Mmmmmph?' came the vague response from under Cal's canvas hood, which was twitching absurdly from side to side as he kept watch for the Styx Division.

As he continued down the incline, Will switched his attention back to the cavern, focusing on the most wondrous sight of all, the city itself. Even from this distance his eyes hungrily took in the archways, impossible terraces, and curving stone stairways sweeping up into stone balconies. Columns, Doric and Corinthian, sprang up to support dizzying galleries and walkways. His intense excitement was tinged with a sadness that Chester wasn't seeing all this with him as he should rightly have been. And as for Will's father, it would have blown his mind! It was just too much for him to absorb all at once. In every direction Will looked there were the most fantastic structures: collosseums and ancient domed cathedrals in beautifully crafted stone.

Then, as he came to the bottom of the escarpment, the smell hit him. It had been deceptively gentle at first, like old pond water, but with each step they'd descended, the more pungent it had become. It was rancid, catching in Will's throat like a mouthful of bile. He cupped a hand over his nose and mouth and looked at Cal in desperation.

'This is just gross!' he said, gagging on the stench. 'No wonder you need to wear one of those things!'

'I know,' Cal said flatly, his expression hidden by the breathing mask as he pointed to the gully by the foot of the escarpment. 'Come over here.'

'What for?' Will asked as he joined his brother. He was astonished to see him thrust his hands into the molasses-like slurry that lay stagnating there. Cal lifted out two handfuls of the black algae and rubbed it over his mask and his clothes. Then he grabbed Bartleby by the scruff of the neck. The cat let out a low howl and tried to get away, but Cal streaked him from head to tail. As the filth dripped over his naked skin, Bartleby arched his back and trembled, looking at his master balefully.

'But the stink is worse that ever now! What the heck are you doing?' Will demanded, thinking his brother had taken leave of his senses.

'The Division uses stalker dogs — bloodhounds — around here. Any whiff of Colony on us and we're as good as dead. This slime will help cover our scent,' he said, scooping up fresh handfuls of the brackish vegetation. 'Your turn.' Will braced himself as Cal doused the fetid weed over his hair, chest, and shoulders and then down each of his legs.

'How can you smell anything over this?' Will asked irately, looking at the oily patches on his clothes. The reek was overpowering. 'Those dogs must have some sense of smell!' It was all he could do to stop himself from being sick.

'Oh, they do,' Cal said as he shook his hands to rid them of the tendrils, then wiped them on his jacket. 'We need to get out of sight.'

Crossing one by one, they passed swiftly over a stretch of boggy ground and into the city. They went under a tall stone arch with two malevolent gargoyle faces glaring down contemptuously at them, and then into an alley with high walls on either side. The dimensions of the buildings, the gaping windows, arches, and doorways, were huge, as if they'd been built for incredibly tall beings. At Cal 's suggestion, they slipped through one of these openings, at the base of a square tower.

Now out of the green light, Will needed his orb to study the map. As he pulled it out from under his coat, it illuminated the room, a stone chamber with a high ceiling and several inches of water on the floor. Bartleby scampered into one corner and, finding a heap of something rotten, he investigated it briefly before lifting a leg over it.

'Hey,' Cal said abruptly. 'Just look at the walls.'

They saw skulls — row upon row of carved death's heads covered the walls, all with toothy grins and hollow, shadowy eyes. As Will moved the orb, the shadows shifted and the skulls appeared to be turning to face them.

'My dad would've loved this. I bet this was a—'

'It's grisly,' Cal interrupted, shivering.

'These people were pretty spooky, weren't they?' Will said, unable to suppress a wide grin.

'The ancestors of the Styx.'

'What?' Will looked at him questioningly.

'Their forebears. People believe a group escaped from this city at the time of the Plague.'

'Where to?'

'Topsoil,' Cal replied. 'They formed some sort of secret society there. It's said that the Styx gave Sir Gabriel the idea for the Colony.'