She stepped boldly into the library, but he was nowhere to be seen. She had observed him entering the library, hadn’t she? Here was his taper as proof. Vanishing was usually her trick and the absurdity made her want to chuckle, but she swallowed it back.
She hid herself behind a big leather armchair in a dark corner to see if Professor Josston reappeared, but she’d barely gotten herself situated when she heard what must be the house’s front door opening and closing. She’d made a serious miscalculation about the amount of night time activity in the house.
She dared not leave her hiding spot, and was glad she hadn’t when someone entered the library. She peered around the chair, and in the dim light took in the wide shoulders and serious expression of Mr. Cade Harlowe, his face etched in shadows. He glanced over his shoulder as if to ensure he had not been followed, then did something very curious. He stepped over to one of the bookcases and reached up to a dragon sculpture on one of the shelves. He twisted its tail. This was followed by a distinct snick. He then pushed the bookcase, and it swung open silently on well-greased hinges and tracks. He stepped through the opening and the bookcase moved smoothly back into place leaving no evidence of his passing except for a stray wisp of air current. Now she knew how the professor had vanished. A hidden room or corridor behind the bookcase.
Just what were he and his student up to?
She smiled. There was only one way to find out.
UNDERGROUND
Karigan allowed several minutes to pass before she left her concealment. She made right for the dragon sculpture, its bronze surface aged to a dark patina. It crouched with wings partially unfurled and sinuous neck curving so that it seemed to gaze directly at her with shadowed eyes, almost daring her to touch it.
She took a deep breath, reached for the tail, and turned it as she’d seen Cade Harlowe do. The snick made her jump. It sounded so much louder when she did it that she feared it would awaken the entire household and bring Mirriam running. It did not, but she understood Cade Harlowe’s impulse to check over his shoulder.
A gentle push of the bookcase was all it took to swing it open. The space beyond was dimly lit with a wall lamp, but she took her taper with her just in case and passed through the opening into a cupboard of a space just large enough for the bookcase to move and for her to stand in. When the bookcase swept closed behind her, her heart pounded—it was difficult to breathe—too like the sarcophagus in which she’d so recently been sealed.
She steadied herself with deep inhalations. There was no lack of air, just nerves too tautly strung in this tiny, closed space. How would she get back out? She saw no mechanism for unlocking the bookcase. She shrugged, telling herself she was going forward, anyway, not retreating, and the way forward was clear, a door outlined by the lamplight.
She lifted the latch and opened it, cool air exhaling into the little room. The lamp sketched out stone steps descending into blackness. Three unlit tapers sat on the top step, but she bypassed them and ignited hers. Closing the door behind her, she began a spiraling journey downward.
She plunged down and down on rough cut stone steps, the air growing increasingly damp. She felt she must surpass even the house’s foundation before she reached the bottom, her bad leg quivering from the strain of bearing her own weight with each step down.
In a small chamber at the bottom she found another door, this one much older-looking and ironbound, yet when she tried it, it opened as easily as the others with no groan of ancient hinges. Hoping she’d finally found where the professor and Cade Harlowe had snuck away to, she stepped boldly across the threshold into a dark space dense with silence of which she could make no sense.
She brightened her taper, and even then the scene mystified her. The path before her was like a cobblestone street, and along its sides were dusty shop fronts, hitching posts, troughs. Rubble filled the spaces between and behind the buildings. Hefty beams and brick and masonry arches supported the earthen ceiling above.
“Gods,” she murmured, her voice clamorous in the silent world.
Mill City must have been built right over the remains of this old city, she thought, or at least part of it. These stone and timber structures were more like what she was accustomed to in her own time than the brick of Mill City. She limped over to one shop front, her slippers raising puffs of dust, and used the tail end of her shawl to rub grime from the rippled glass. Her light revealed little of the interior but the rough plank floor riddled with debris and a table with a chair pulled slightly away as if its occupant might return at any moment. A plate and tankard draped in cobwebs also waited.
Karigan shivered and backed away. A sign hung askew from one hook over the door, drawing her eye. The sign of the Cock and Hen.
The Cock and . . . ? No! She almost dropped her taper. This could not be possible. The Cock and Hen was in the lower quarter of Sacor City. But there could be no mistake—this was the Cock and Hen, a disreputable inn in a rough neighborhood that nevertheless brewed the finest darkest ale in the city. She knew the sign—and the ale—well, and now she began to recognize the rest of the exterior, even as out of place as it looked underground.
Mill City had been built on top of Sacor City, or at least part of it. That was the only conclusion she could come to. The street she now stood on was the Winding Way. The revelation that her city lay buried beneath the foundations of another sent her reeling. She sat on the edge of a trough, oblivious to the dirt smudging her nightgown. “I can’t be seeing this.” Passing her hand over her eyes did nothing to change the scene before her.