After the second grate, they ran out of ledge and had to wade along the fast-flowing stream. It chilled Janu’s legs and ran as deep as his knees, the force of it threatening to knock him over. The firelight ahead of them gave him little to see by, but he could see an opening on the left up ahead. He tried to move as quietly as possible, but any nearby guard must hear their splashing.
Stopping a moment, he waited for Heketas to catch up and took hold of his arm. ‘You said you used to get assigned guard shifts down here, didn’t you?’
Heketas blinked, then nodded. His face hadn’t lost its shocked expression ever since he had heard them discussing the dragons. Janu hoped that wouldn’t become a problem.
‘Where did you stand guard?’ Janu asked. ‘Could you see the stream?’
‘No. Not this bit of it, anyway. It was... It was a weird duty. We just stayed in the barracks the whole time, bored as shit. Nothing ever happened. We just heard weird noises from whatever Critobulus was up to.’ A hint of a grin crept back onto Heketas’ face. ‘Whether magic or women.’
‘And the barracks, do they have windows?’
‘It used to, but they all got bricked in before I ever went down there.’ Heketas shrugged. ‘I reckon Critobulus just got paranoid and didn’t want anyone seeing where his secret door was. We weren’t technically allowed out unless Critobulus called us, but the stream was the best place to go to piss. Just had to be careful to check Critobulus wasn’t looking – his chambers still have windows.’
‘If you weren’t allowed out, what exactly were you meant to be guarding?’
‘Shit if I know. Not sure he even wanted us there.’
Janu stared downstream and sucked air through his teeth. If only his drakling-with-a-glass idea was feasible, they could have sent one to spy on Critobulus’ whereabouts. The best they had was Heketas and his outdated knowledge of an infrequent posting. Make do with what you’ve got, Janu.
He pushed Heketas on ahead. ‘You first. You know what to look out for. Let us know if the coast is clear.’
With a nod and a more determined expression, Heketas trudged forwards. He kept to the left side of the stream, so Janu made sure to follow in his wake. This approach kept them out of sight of anyone in the opening for as long as possible. No chatter or sounds of movement came from ahead, which could only be a good sign.
At a quiet splash behind him, Janu looked back and picked out Divya’s outline in the gloom. Their message was on its way, then.
Instead of getting brighter the closer they came to the opening, the firelight dimmed. When they reached the corner, Janu looked around, confused. They hadn’t passed any candles or lamps. And still it dimmed, even though they weren’t moving. Sticking his hand out in front of him, he could only just make out his fingers.
‘No one’s there,’ Heketas said.
Janu flinched at the sound of his voice. ‘What about the flame?’
‘That?’ Heketas’ silhouette shifted slightly. ‘Just a lamp in one of the sconces. Someone must have left it lit. It’s just about burned out.’
That left three options in Janu’s mind: either someone had just left and gone into the palace, or they had gone through Critobulus’ hidden door, or they had just forgotten to put more oil in their lamp. He didn’t like any of those. Two left someone nearby or in their way. One still carried the possibility of a witness in Critobulus’ windowed chamber.
Heketas stepped out of the stream with a splash and a squelch. A few more squelches suggested he was walking around, and Janu winced at each one.
‘Come on,’ he called after a while. ‘The windows are shuttered. We’re all clear.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Janu hissed. ‘What about the barracks?’
‘It’s a thick door. They won’t hear us.’
Biting his lip to cut off everything he wanted to say, Janu followed Heketas out of the stream. He emerged into a gaping blackness. Only the vague outline of a section of wall beside them was visible, lit by the dim orange glow of the oil lamp Heketas had mentioned. Beside its alcove lay the border of a window and the hint of a shutter pressed up against it.
Janu patted the air around him until he found Heketas. ‘Where are the barracks?’
‘This way.’
Picking up the lantern for what little light it would give, they shuffled across the room in the dark, arm in arm. A little circle of light haloed their footsteps, picking out the uneven surface of the floor beneath them, but it made no mark on the shadows until they reached another wall. Heketas inched along it, holding the lamp close. At length, they came to a door that stood slightly ajar.
Janu froze. Anyone inside would have heard Heketas talking earlier. But Heketas went straight ahead and rubbed his hand on the door knob. When he held up his fingers to show Janu, they were covered in thick dust.
Without saying anything, Heketas pulled the door open just enough to stick his head and the lamp through.
‘It’s empty,’ he said, pulling back. ‘Looks like it has been for a while.’
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Janu let out a sigh of relief. ‘Push the door to, then. Just in case.’ Then he unhooked and uncovered the small lantern on his belt. The oil lamp fizzled out when he used it to light the lantern, but not before setting a steady flame going.
As the lantern’s light increased, more of the chamber they stood in revealed itself. True to Heketas’ description, it had been carved out of the bedrock and remained unfinished. Deep gouges showed the marks of the tools they had used on the floor and ceiling, although the wall opposite the stream looked more like the result of a cave-in.
Ilarion, Galnai and Divya stood in a crouching huddle by Critobulus’ door, their forms far enough from the light that they were indistinct and fuzzy. They straightened when Janu approached and told them all was clear, and he lit the other two lanterns held by Ilarion and Divya. Together, they made everything a little clearer. Ilarion immediately drifted away, examining the floor.
‘What now?’ Galnai asked.
Janu looked to Heketas. ‘Did Critobulus always keep the windows open when he was here?’
Heketas shrugged. ‘No way to know. We only crept out when the shutters were closed. We didn’t stick around long enough to see if he was in when they weren’t. But with how Critobulus is, I’d guess he would want to keep an eye on whatever it is he does down here. Especially if us guards weren’t allowed to watch it – that would mean only him.’
More guesses. Janu didn’t want to risk everything on those, but if Critobulus kept the horn in his chambers, they had to go in there. He made his way over to the door – far sturdier than the barracks’ door – and reached for the handle.
‘Don’t.’ Divya’s voice whipped across the chamber.
He froze. The handle was so close he could almost feel it. ‘Why not?’ he asked, lifting the lantern to check for anything that might indicate a trap.
Divya walked up beside him, her footsteps squelching on the stone. ‘Some magic has been set on this door. Look.’
She pointed to the doorframe. What Janu had at first taken for scratches and weathering turned out to be small letters carved into the stone. Identical letters mirrored each on the outer edge of the door itself. Nowhere he had ever broken into used magic like this.
‘What would it have done,’ Janu asked, ‘if I’d opened it?’
With a shrug, Divya said, ‘Why should I know? This is all academic magic, for people who spend too much time in dark pits like this with their noses in books and ink on their fingers. The boy should get outside and learn some real magic.’
Janu sighed. ‘I’ll be sure to pass on your feedback if we see Critobulus. Can you work out what it does if you have enough time? Break it, somehow?’
She clicked her tongue. ‘Go find something else to look at and let me work. I’ll let you know.’
If she couldn’t work it out, they could always try the loud and reckless route of breaking through the shutters. When he raised the lantern to them, he couldn’t see any carved letters like on the door.
Behind him, Ilarion said, ‘There was a dragon in here.’
‘What?’
The man stood in a pool of lantern light, staring at the one rough wall, the muscles of his face slack and forlorn.
‘A long time ago, they kept a dragon in here. Look.’ Ilarion pointed to the floor, then traced long lines between it and the wall. Gouges ran along the path he traced. ‘They dragged a dragon out of this room and into another one, then collapsed the entrance behind it.’ Then he pointed out similar marks on the ceiling and the walls of the barracks. ‘It was a big dragon. Very big, and likely very old to have reached that size. It looks like they ran out of room for it.’
Janu stepped away from Divya to take a closer look at the marks. ‘Why would you keep a dragon somewhere like this?’
Ilarion scowled. ‘If you’re scared of it, and you don’t want it to escape. Ushuene says that the first dragon bound was an adult, and it was a struggle to bind him. If the bond was weak as a result, Critobulus likely chose to keep it imprisoned for his own safety. In fact, this can’t be any other dragon. With the size it is, it hatched well before anyone attempted a binding.’
‘Do you think Critobulus bound it to himself?’
Ilarion nodded. ‘He doesn’t seem the type to give someone else power before himself, does he?’
Joining them, Heketas said, ‘It would explain where he goes off to when he disappears down here. He must have a way to get to it still.’
If only they had a convenient blood trail to follow – a big dragon must take a lot of feeding. Nothing leapt at at Janu when he examined the floor, though. They all spread out over the room, trying to find a way through the filled-in section of wall. Janu didn’t fancy trying to dig through it, not without knowing how deep it went, and not while any sound of digging would alert the floors above.
When no more clues presented themselves, Janu decided to risk a look inside the barracks. Heketas might have been clueless in his day, but one of the recent guards might have known something, might have left some hint behind.
The dust on the doorknob made a greasy film on his fingertips when he pulled it, and the air that greeted him hung thick with its dry scent. As Heketas had said, it was abandoned. The flickering light of Janu’s lantern picked out the bare frames of old bunks, empty chairs and empty tables. A blackened fireplace stood in one corner, but it too boasted a thick coat of dust.
Janu picked his way around the room with care. A staircase led out of sight by the far wall, and he didn’t want to risk anyone upstairs hearing his movements. He shaded the lantern in that direction just in case. Nothing else stood out to him. No one had left any convenient ledgers or slates out in the open, and he couldn’t see any trunks ready to be rummaged through. A fair amount of graffiti cluttered blank spots on the walls, but they were just the standard fare – names, gossip, crude jokes and drawings.
Someone spoke back in the main room, so he stepped out of the barracks and shut the door behind him. Galnai crouched in one corner, the others converging around her.
‘What have you found?’ he asked.
She furrowed her brow. ‘Maybe nothing. There are some marks here that don’t make much sense unless a door opened here.’ She traced the marks with her fingers. They seemed to go into the rock – or around a hidden corner.
In his head, Janu measured where the door might stand if Galnai’s marks picked out one side of the frame. ‘Can we try to pry it open?’ No obvious gaps presented themselves. When he rapped his knuckles against it, it sounded just like any other patch of stone would sound – not hollow at all.
Without waiting, he pulled a chisel from his tool pouch and knelt next to the mark Galnai had pointed out to test for a gap. Instead of striking solid stone like he expected, it sank in up to the handle. Either side of it still looked like an unbroken stretch of wall. Still, it didn’t budge when he tried levering it open, so he drew it up the gap, wiggling it from side to side to test for any hinges or catches.
Halfway up, resistance fell away, and the chisel slipped into a bigger gap to the left. Janu reached his fingers in and felt around. It was just a hollow section of door with nothing in it – perhaps a handle. He gave it an experimental tug and the whole door swing outwards, its edge suddenly obvious. Lighter than he had expected, it swung fast enough that he lost his grip and it slammed into Galnai’s knee. She jumped up in surprise, but a satisfied smile pulled at her face.
Ahead of them stretched a long corridor, its end lost beyond the range of their candlelight. Somewhere down there was a dragon. If they were unlucky, they would find Critobulus too.
Only one way to find out, Janu thought, and stepped through.