But I heard a tapping. Occasional, artificial. Not animal claws on stones, nothing like a footstep. Someone was typing on a keyboard. A computer, here?
I followed the sound.
Past the cell where they’d kept me, a tunnel curved to the left and sloped gently down. The ancient rails of the old mine cars were just visible. One of the battery-operated LED lights sat on the floor of the juncture and cast a faint white light, just enough to keep people from stubbing their toes. The light caught flashes in the wall, chips of quartz or ore.
Kumarbis’s chill, bloodless scent was stronger here. I’d probably find his cave farther down. Before that, though, the tunnel branched. A side chamber forked off, and at the branch, I smelled Zora. Another light marked the turn. I crept forward, as quietly as Wolf and I knew how, crouched at the rocky corner, and leaned around to look.
Zora, lit by another of the lamps, worked at a laptop. I wondered how the hell she was powering it, until I saw the stack of battery packs and a solar-powered charger piled against the wall. She’d come prepared to work without a wall to plug into.
But what was she doing on her battery-powered computer? Googling for new ritual techniques, I might have thought, but we were in the middle of nowhere, where she couldn’t possibly have an Internet connection. Maybe she had a magical Internet connection.
That sounded ridiculous even to me.
ȁ="KVCDN">She had her back to the tunnel opening, but was too far away for me to make out any details on the screen, which was turned at exactly the wrong angle.
She’d eaten something as well—a sandwich wrapper and empty bottle of water sat against one wall. An air mattress and a couple of blankets lay piled against the opposite wall. She had her own little cozy den. This was where she’d been spending her nonritual time—with her laptop. Doing what?
Along with the laptop she had a small pad of paper and a pencil, and she scratched notes on it every now and then, drawing diagrams and symbols. She’d chew on the end of the pencil, stare at her drawings, type a few words, read what she’d typed. Back and forth, working intently on her project.
Did I even need to ask what her project was? It was all of this. She was less than a day away from the most important ritual of her life, the culmination of all her plans. She was studying. I almost felt sorry for her.
While I watched, she must have finished, or grown too frustrated and tired to continue. She put the pad and pencil into a document bag, closed programs, powered down the computer. Last thing she did was yank a USB thumb drive out of the back of the laptop and close it up in a kind of box she wore on a chain around her neck. One of the many amulets she wore. This was a little bigger than a matchbox, made of pressed tin and inset with polished stones. Like a saint’s reliquary. Only instead of bones, it held the thumb drive, close at hand.
She kept her spells on that thumb drive. A twenty-first-century wizard, with her searchable, electronic spell book. Who would have thunk?
I didn’t want to draw her attention, now that she wasn’t focused on the laptop. Quickly, I back+ ms powered out the way I’d come, slipping quietly up the passage to the main tunnel. She didn’t follow, and she didn’t make any more noise. She must have curled up on her little bed to get some sleep, so she’d be at her best for tonight.
Maybe I was the crazy one. They all knew exactly what they were doing, and I was flopping like a beached fish.
Didn’t matter, I still wanted to find my phone. Maybe Zora had it under her pillow.
I traced my way back, praying I wasn’t lost, that I remembered the curving tangle of tunnels right. I headed the direction I thought was out, and was reassured when the tunnel I’d picked started sloping up. There, I took another unexplored turn, and found the stretch of tunnel where they stored their food.
A couple of coolers sat against the wall. Opening their lids, I found them packed with snow and ice from outside. They kept a few sandwiches relatively cool. One cooler was empty. A cardboard pallet of bottled water was down to the last four bottles. They were running out of supplies—their time here was coming to an end.
After the food came a few large plastic storage bins. One of them was long enough to store a tranquilizer gun and the gear that went with it. I pulled the bin out, snapped the lid off, found the gun—a compressed air-powered rifle, plastic cases with darts tucked inside. A few people around here I’d like to use it on, just on principle. Not that it would change anything. I thought about dragging it to the ritual chamber, an extra line of defense against Roman in case something went wrong. But in the end, I decided it probably wouldn’t help. A mundane weapon, in a battle stretching more than five thousand miles around the world? I left it in place.
Another bin held batteries, rope, a battery-powered drill, a few extra camp lanterns. And there, tucked in among the various bits and pieces, were my sneakers. And inside my sneakers, my phone and wedding ring on its chain.
I put the chain over my neck, tucking the ring under my sweater, grabbed my phone, and ran. Would it still have a charge, would I be able to get any reception, and if it did—what would I say? When I reached the sunshine at the mouth of the mine tunnel, I stopped. Gratefully took in a lungful of sparkling mountain air. Bright, brilliant freedom.
Run, and
