29 | Crossroads
As relieved as Eli is to return to chambers where life once dwelled, he’s warier than ever about stepping into another room with monsters.
Once Klia attempts to drag him through the archway of the library, he keeps a tighter hold on her hand, hindering her from running ahead of him. It is likewise dark in this other section—Eli wonders how the people who once lived here lit all their hallways and chambers, a great many candles and torches, he suspects, or magic—the sunlight from the broken ceiling of the library does not reach this far. Eli glances back at what may be the last scrap of pure light for a time to come, and steps carefully past the carved archway.
After all this, half-expects something to leap at them in the dark, or for a locked door to present itself—he is already nervous from losing the strange little glass orb—but they are in another wide chamber, patterned with cobblestones, ceiling reaching high into the depths of the stone. Humming in consideration, he steps down the three stone stairs leading to the floor of the chamber, loosening his hold on Klia’s hand, aware immediately of the new issue.
There are many walkways out of this strange hall, none of which bear a good indication of where they should go. Eli wonders if it was once a school of sorts, to house such a massive library.
At their level, Eli finds it impossible to determine their location. Going upward toward the surface should be better, shouldn’t it? But they have lost track of the Unknowns, and perhaps they are now below them, if only in a different direction.
Either way, none of the tunnels appear to slope either up or down.
Klia stands in the center of the room, thin fingers fisting in the hem of Eli’s shirt, head spinning toward each of the dozen paths. He doesn’t believe she’ll pick up on the correct one. She digs her toe into one of the carvings along the bottom of the floor. Eli frowns, then turns back to the library, staring into the dust motes catching the last rays of sunlight.
Much of the shelving is empty, but not all of it.
I wonder…
“Klia, come back,” he calls, hearing her scamper after as he drops his bag just inside the library door, heading to the closest shelf.
She leans on his leg a little, looking up at him. Poking at the nearest scroll her little arms can reach, she jumps when the ancient paper crinkles.
“Let’s look through these carefully,” Eli tells her. “Perhaps there is something here left that resembles a map.”
Her eyes light up, and she goes rifling through the next set of shelving while Eli filters through the scrolls he can reach. The ones higher up look even more damaged by the ravages of time—this place must have been long abandoned, even before the mutation of the Order. Out of the corner of his eye, he keeps Klia within sight, even when she starts climbing the shelves to get a better look.
“Don’t go any higher than that,” Eli tells her once she’s five shelves up. “You’ll fall and break your neck.”
She gives him a look Abner often gave Eli when he was too overbearing, and Eli makes it back at her.
“Get back down,” he tells her again, and she rolls her eyes before doing as he says.
He hates to waste too much time searching, but there are precious few scrolls here as it is, even fewer books, and it doesn’t take them more than the better part of an hour to inspect the ones they can. Eli curses whoever took all these manuscripts as he returns with Klia to the center of the chamber with all the pathways. He glares at the many doors, wandering around them, gazing as far in as he dares, the faintly glimmering bees in his hand. He finds them all mostly identical and giving no indication of a better way to go.
Arm aching, he sits in the center of the room and glares bitterly. Nothing in his memories of his son is going to help with this. These are the confusing tunnels of an ancient race. He has no one to help him but himself, and this he feels is becoming less and less reliable.
Klia sits beside him and leans her head on his shoulder.
What would you do, Lyra? In this situation, she would be as lost as he is. He was more the warrior, a strategist in his younger decades. She was clever, but no cleverer than he when it comes to such things as this.
Flicking at the floor carving Klia was toeing at earlier, he squints at the runes. Perhaps they are not runes, as he thought, not quite resembling the language written all over these chambers. They are more recognizable symbols. Brushing dust from the one beneath them, he finds a circle with twelve dots, each lined up with the corresponding hallway. Not precisely helpful. With his eyes, Eli follows the line on the floor directly from the dot straight before him to the door across from them.
The dust is not quite even.
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Leaning forward, he brushes away layers of gray silt, uncovering another carving. A flower. He does not think it correlates particularly to the rune carved into his hand by the magic, but his heart leaps anyhow. Rising, he scrapes away the dust and uncovers more and more of them, correlating to each doorway. Some, he cannot make out, too faded and damaged by time, or unfamiliar no matter how he stares at them. Some, are more recognizable. Waved lines like water, a curved shape as an axe blade alongside a more obvious dagger, something which perhaps might be a cart, and a sun. This last one, Eli stares at for a long while.
Does it lead toward the surface, toward sunlight? He glances at the indicated tunnel. Then, he returns to the first tunnel he realized. A flower. This place having been built long before the change in the Order, he doubts it has any association. Instead, he considers what an underground culture would indicate with such a symbol. A marketplace, perhaps. More likely, however they managed—through magic or other means—to grow food.
Eli knows little of the Unknown monsters they are tracking, but they are overtaken by the overgrown magic as anything else. He pictures vividly the flowers sprouting from their skin, the vines and the soil falling from their wounds. Perhaps they would go toward the water, but Eli assumes that is the aqueduct, and they left that pace. Where else would such flower monsters be drawn in a place such as this? Among their options, perhaps where other living things once grew.
Eli cannot be certain of his theory, but he has very few other leads or ideas, and even less time to be sitting and considering. They have lost too many days as it is.
“You do not have any idea of which door to pick, do you little Bee?” he asks, watching her play with the petrified bug. Klia shakes her head, staring at the carving of a flower Eli is standing over.
Taking a long breath, he lets it out slowly and explains to her his thought process. She only gazes at him with little change in attitude or emotion, but he didn’t expect much else. He only wants her to understand why he is picking this tunnel, as he wishes for her to understand all other decisions he makes.
“I know it is not a perfect decision,” he mutters, staring into the dark of the walkway. “But I have no other ideas, and I believe this is a good enough decision. Hopefully, I am correct.”
She gets up and takes his hand tiredly, staring down the walkway then up at him expectantly. She trusts me. Eli doesn’t know what to make of it, or how to feel. He loves it but knows not if it is deserved. He may be leading them in the exact wrong direction and would know no better.
Retrieving his pack, Eli heads down the dark of the walkway, forsaking even the little bit of sunlight left. The bees afford them enough to see, and Klia continues to cling to his hand.
Barely what must be an hour into their walk, Klia goes still, footsteps falling silent, hand slipping out of his. Eli stumbles a little when he comes to a stop, exhausted and lost to his own thoughts.
“What is it?” he whispers, his voice a strange echo in the empty hallway.
She sucks in a shaky breath, and even in the dark, Eli can see her eyes turn up to him, pooling with ink as deep as the night sky.
It fades almost as quickly as it arrives—the darkness in her eyes—but Klia sucks in a sharp breath and grabs Eli by the hand, yanking him down the hallway. He follows without hesitation, not even needing to ask if she’s picked back up her brother’s heartbeat. Eli’s own heart jumps into his throat, for there will be danger wherever they find the boy.
But they will find him.
Eli knows little of what he expects to find and is half-concerned they will plow face-first into a bend in the tunnel, or one of the strange doors with no handles. There is scant light, even less so with Klia seeming to draw darkness about her, and he keeps her from running too quickly.
All at once, the air is thicker, heavy with moisture. When Eli puts a steadying hand along the tunnel wall, it returns damp. Water is a good thing—they are running low, to begin with, and Eli is always half hoping that any flow of an underground stream may be a way to lead back to the surface given the presence of so many rivers on these mountains. They splash through puddles, a spray of mist dripping down in a small waterfall from a crack in the ceiling of the walkway. It is fresh and bitter cold, and briefly shocks Eli out of any lingering exhaustion. Klia doesn’t appear to notice.
Then she yelps, and Eli realizes what’s happened with just enough time to scramble to a halt, keeping the girl from tumbling full force down the sudden set of steps in the dark. He nearly crashes to the ground doing so, but neither of them tumbles down.
Scrambling carefully back to her feet, Klia wipes at a new scratch on her knee through Eli’s long shirt and doesn’t seem terribly bothered.
“Easy now,” Eli says, taking them carefully down the mossy steps even as the girl picks back up on her tugging. She points out at something in the dark, but Eli can see not much of anything at all and hears only quite a bit of water. “I cannot see, girl.”
Not for the first time, he wishes they had that shimmering little orb, which would light their way if only Eli hummed to it. But there are only the faintly shimmering stones of insects in his hand, and he can barely see the steps beneath his feet. If he was not holding tight to Klia, he would lose her in a moment.
His boot is soaked, and he drags Klia back once more. Water drifts by, lapping quietly at the edges of the stone. Have they come back across the aqueduct? If so, he is worried for any drop in the floor as there was when they climbed out near that small tree, the same place he spoke with Thistle upon waking.
There is no light.
He looks down at Klia’s hand, her fair skin, but the way he can barely even see her where she stands alongside him. The barest outline of her face gazes up at him. Can she see me clearly? It is nearly as if she is drawing all sight from the room, though realistically Eli knows they are in the pitch dark of an underground cavern—even without what strange magic she possesses, he would still be unlikely to see.
“Klia,” he whispers, uncertain what might lurk in the dark, particularly since the girl seems to have found her brother once more. “Your magic makes it dark as night, doesn’t it?”
She doesn’t move or give any indication she comprehends his words, but when he squeezes her hand, she squeezes back.
“I know you want to find Thistle, but I need you to calm yourself down and let your magic fade for a little bit so I can see better.”
Momentarily, he wonders if she sees better in the dark than in the daylight, and stores that question away for when they are out of danger.
When nothing happens, he tucks the bees away into his pocket, utterly drowning them in darkness, and crouches before her, putting his hands on the shape of her shoulders in the dark.
“I know you are frightened. It is alright to be very frightened, I am as well. So, I need you to be brave and concentrate on your magic so I can see.”
Her hands hold onto the back of his where they grip her shoulders, and Eli sees.