Behind the fall, the tunnel was clear.
'Go, go, go!' Kali shouted, and just in time. The sudden and dramatic fall of rocks into the lava had disturbed its recently calm rise and it began again to spurt and belch. Unnoticed by Slowhand as he darted into the shadowy tunnel mouth, a patch of the molten fire spattered onto his trouser leg, burning into the cloth, but before it could reach his skin Kali followed him in and tore the offending patch away.
'Don't get excited,' she said. 'That's all that's coming off.'
'Hey, flesh happens,' Slowhand retorted, and stared at her heavily perspiring form. 'Hot stuff.'
Kali shook her head — the man could never resist. She followed him into the dark, making out a winding tunnel that curved away into the rock. She hesitated to think when last it had been used, but for a second thought that she caught a stale whiff of whatever had been the last thing to tread the passage, something overtly male — the smell, perhaps, of dwarf? Her eyes adjusted further to the dark and all her instincts cried out for the time to examine her surroundings — especially as she could now see this was no mere cave but a constructed tunnel complete with those X-shaped dwarven runics — but that was simply not to be. The avalanche that had stirred the lava back into angry life had, it seemed, disturbed more than just the lake, perhaps ruptured another vent beneath the dome and, as she watched, the lava began to bubble into and then sweep with increasing acceleration up the tunnel behind them.
'Hooper,' Slowhand said. 'I strongly suggest that we run.'
'Ohhh, running as we speak,' Kali said, passing him.
Slowhand put on his own spurt and the two of them raced up the tunnel as fast as they could, but the collapsed rock at the dome entrance was not the only place where the integrity of their dark confines had been compromised, and every few feet or so they found their progress slowed by roof-falls which they had to clamber over. Thankfully, these same roof-falls acted also as makeshift dams — albeit briefly as it didn't take long for the lava to engulf them — and they managed to stay ahead of the flow. Just.
'Hooper, how far to the exit?' Slowhand asked, vaulting over another blockage in front of them.
Kali leapt in his wake, a spray of pebbles from her heel vanishing into the lava that was now immediately behind her. She slammed a palm onto the wall. 'Not sure. But the temperature of the rock suggests we've still a way to go — maybe a tenth of a league?'
'Pits of Kerberos — a tenth of a league?'
'Excuse me! You did ask.'
'I know but, hells, Hooper, sometimes I wish you didn't know as much as you do.'
Kali stopped, slammed her hands on her hips and nodded back where they'd come from. 'I got us out of there, didn't I?'
Slowhand sighed and grabbed her as the lava plopped over where they had vaulted, catching up with her heels. They ran on. 'Maybe,' he said, nodding ahead, though Kali was still so busied staring daggers at him that she hadn't noticed what he had.
'Fark.'
'What?'
'The tunnel dips. Deeply. Some kind of U-bend.'
'What?' Kali said again. 'Why in the hells would it do that?'
Slowhand pointed towards the roof of the tunnel. 'Maybe because of that.'
Still moving, Kali looked up, then skidded to a halt. A few yards in front of them, the roof of the tunnel nosed downwards and changed in texture, no longer composed of rock but something else, some kind of fossilised remains, a dark and chitinous substance that reminded her of the brackan in the Sardenne. But these remains were not those of any brackan, because they were bigger — much, much bigger — and as well as nosing down they folded themselves through the walls on either side of the tunnel and into its floor, immortalised as an organic archway in the rock.
'The speed of this stuff, we'll never make it out the other side,' Slowhand said.
Kali studied the dip, saw that the tunnel levelled out again beyond it and then turned her eyes on the fossil. These remains had to be hardy, considering it was clear to her that the dwarves had had no choice but to tunnel under them rather than through.
'Help me,' she said, picking up a rock.
'Throwing stones at the lava won't make it go away.'
'The fossil!' Kali shouted. 'There, where it's been cracked by the tunnel subsidence! We can bring that part down!'
Slowhand looked exasperated. 'Why?'
Kali leapt onto a slight rise of rocks at the tunnel's edge, avoiding the lava that had now caught up with them. Slowhand did the same on the opposite side, looking down warily as the red river overtook them and began to flow into the dip.
Kali smashed at the section of the fossilised remains with the rock. ''Liam, just help me!' she pleaded.
The urgency of her tone persuaded him and — though he still didn't have a clue what she hoped to achieve — Slowhand joined in. It took a fair number of strikes but finally the dark mass came loose from its resting place of ages and crashed down into the lava-filling dip, flipped over to become a bowl shape floating on the surface.
Some kind of carapace, it could just as easily have been a boat.
Kali began to hop from rock to rock at the side of the tunnel, towards it. 'Move,' she shouted.
Slowhand did as he was bidden, mirroring Kali, and it did not take him long to realise what she had in mind. And it was just a little bit frightening.
Kali reached the rim of the dip and hurled herself forwards, crashing into the bowl with an explosion of air and a grunt. Slowhand was half a second behind and almost didn't make it, but, as he threatened to shortfall into the roaring red river, Kali stood, balancing unsteadily, and grabbed his flying form by the scruff of the neck. She yanked him to safety and Slowhand crashed down next to her, winded.
The makeshift boat rose on the lava until it rode above the opposite side of the dip. And there, sailing the lava with its speed building slightly, it continued along the tunnel.
Slowhand stared at the passing rock walls, and down at the lava river, thinking it was a little like being on some carnival ride, only hotter. Like that new thing they'd had at Scholten Fair, the Tunnel of Luurrvv. The blupping of the lava even sounded quite romantic.
'Hooper…' he said, sweeping back his hair.
'Get your head down,' Kali said.
Slowhand raised his eyebrows, looking surprised. 'Don't you want to take things a little more slowly?'
'Down, you idiot!' Kali repeated and, as she spoke and Slowhand obeyed, the carapace slammed into a thick stalactite dropping from the tunnel roof. The impact sent the makeshift boat into a spin and it began to careen along the tunnel, crashing into its walls and generally out of control. As the pair of them clung to the carapace's sides, lava splashing all about them, it seemed to Slowhand that his Tunnel of Luurrvv had suddenly become a tunnel of soon to suffer very painful death.
Kali, though, didn't seem too perturbed.
'You get up to this kind of thing every day?' Slowhand asked, swallowing.
'Course not. Maybe once a week. Not enjoying the ride?'
Enjoying was not perhaps quite the word but Slowhand had to admit it was exhilarating, but only after the carapace had taken enough knocks without splitting open to reassure him that it might, after all, be safe enough to survive the trip. The flow of lava had sped up again beneath them, and now the carapace moved through the tunnel at dizzying speed, impacting and spinning with each new twist and turn as it made its inexorable way towards the tunnel's end. Then, suddenly, the tunnel began to slope downwards, its exit visible ahead. But the exit, too, was blocked.
'Hooper?' Slowhand said.
Kali smiled. 'We'll be fine… fine.'
Slowhand did not look convinced as they hurtled towards the pile of rocks blocking their only way out of the lava. He imagined the carapace shattering on impact, spilling them both into the lethal surge that would inevitably envelop them.
'You're saying you think this thing's strong enough?'
'Definitely,' Kali said.
