by Cadman, Dean
Neala had already set off towards the the main chamber when she called to Lusam. “Come on Mr Brains, let’s go find our bedrooms,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at him, and giving him a cheeky wink.
Mr Daffer certainly hadn't been exaggerating about the number of sleeping cells in that particular area of the underground structure. They had checked over a dozen rooms before they had to agree with Mr Daffer, that they were all pretty much the same as each other, and decided to take two rooms near the main chamber as he had suggested earlier. They did find a few locked cells, but most were open. Each cell consisted of a raised sleeping platform, where they could place the mattresses provided by Mr Daffer, a couple of hooks on the wall, and most had a small open chest to store clothes and other belongings at the side of the door. Luxurious it was not, but it was dry and surprisingly warm, considering the time of year, and the lack of any visible heat source.
Once they had placed the mattresses in their chosen cells, Lusam suggested taking a couple of extra lanterns from the main chamber, to hang on the hooks in their cells for later use. After hanging the first lantern Neala frowned slightly, she gestured towards the unlit lantern and said, “We'll have to ask Mr Daffer for some flint, so we can light these things, I guess.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Lusam replied with a mischievous grin. He looked at the lantern Neala had just hung up, and it suddenly burst into life with a slight pop, illuminating the room in a soft yellow glow. Neala literally fell off the bed with surprise as it magically lit itself, then she quickly turned to Lusam and thumped him on the arm.
“Ouch! What was that for?” he asked rubbing his arm.
“Don’t do things like that! You scared me half-to-death. I'm not used to seeing things like that happen. Try to give me some warning in future,” she said, still sitting on the floor. A moment later they both fell about in fits of laughter at each others' expense.
When he finally got his breath back from laughing so hard, he managed a half-hearted, “Sorry.”
“So you should be!” replied Neala, with no real conviction behind her words.
“We probably have at least a couple of hours left until Mr Daffer will call us for the evening meal. Maybe we should start your reading lessons? We could just start with the letters of the alphabet, so it will make it easier tomorrow when we start to sort through all those books,” Lusam suggested.
Although part of her was very apprehensive about trying to learn to read, in case she made a fool of herself in front of Lusam, another part of her was even more concerned that she might be useless in the task that faced them, especially if she didn’t at least try and learn to read. So with much more enthusiasm than she actually felt, she replied, “Okay, that sounds good. Let's go.” She stood up dusting off her trousers, and they both left the small room and headed back to the book room.
Lusam started by writing a single capital letter, and its associated lower case letter on a sheet of parchment. Then he repeated the process for each letter of the alphabet on a different piece of parchment. He thought this wouldn’t be a waste of parchment, as they could reuse each sheet to list the books of that corresponding letter, when they started sorting out the books tomorrow.
Lusam was surprised at how fast Neala memorized each letter of the alphabet, and was keen to praise her fast progress. Neala also seemed happy with the swift progress she was making, and the praise being rained down on her seemed to spur her on to even faster gains.
By the time Mr Daffer came downstairs to call them for the evening meal, Neala was naming the letters of the alphabet confidently, without many mistakes at all. “I hope you've both settled in well down here. I know it's not the most hospitable place, but if there's anything you need to make it more so, just let me know, and I'll do what I can,” Mr Daffer said, leading them back up the stairs towards the main shop.
“Actually, we were quite surprised how comfortably warm it is down there. I was planning to ask you where the heat came from, as I couldn’t see any reason for it to be that temperature?” asked Lusam, as they reached the first landing area.
“I'm afraid that’s one question I can’t answer for you. I have looked for the source of heat myself in the past, but it seems to come directly from the blocks of stone that make up the walls and floors themselves. What I found even stranger, was that in the summer months it actually gets cooler down there. Something seems to be keeping it at a constant temperature, so it never becomes too hot, or too cold. What that is, I have no idea. Feel free to have a look around and see if I missed any obvious source of heat, but I'm pretty sure there isn’t one.”
“That does sound strange,” agreed Lusam. “While I remember, would it be possible to get either some chalk or charcoal for tomorrow please? It would speed up the cataloguing of the books quite a bit I think.”
“Of course, I'll get you some after we eat, no problem at all.” Turning towards Neala, Mr Daffer then said, “In the meantime, Lucy has got your clean clothes back from the laundry in town, so you may wish to change back into them before dinner.”
“Thanks, I will. And thanks for the loan of these clothes too. Sorry, I may have got the trousers a little dirty on the backside though,” Neala said glaring at Lusam, who found it hard to keep a straight face, as the image of her falling off the bed flashed into his mind again.
“Oh, don’t worry, I'm sure they will be in the next batch that goes off to the laundry anyway,” replied Mr Daffer, as they entered the main shop area.
Early the following morning, Lusam and Neala went out to the bakery to get some breakfast with the money Mr Daffer had given them the night before. They didn’t spend long outside, and ate the freshly baked bread as they walked back to the shop. They wanted to make a good start that day, and catalogue as many of the books as they could. That way they could estimate how long the overall job might take them, just in case Mr Daffer happened to ask them later.
Earlier, Mr Daffer had given Lusam some chalk, and he had used it to carefully mark out the letters of the alphabet on the walls around the book room. They both picked up a few books at a time, and placed them on the floor in front of the corresponding first letter of the book's title. After several back-aching hours of bending over to pick up books, walking around the large room, and bending down to place the books on the floor again, they had maybe three hundred or so books laid out on the floor. Looking over at the gigantic pile of books that still remained, it was obvious this wasn’t going to be an easy, or fast job, Lusam thought to himself.
“We should ask Mr Daffer if he has a wheelbarrow that we could use later. We could load it up with a lot more books than we can carry by hand. It should make the work much easier, and much faster,” suggested Neala.
“That’s a great idea,” agreed Lusam, turning around and teasing her with, “Now who’s the smart one?” Neala's face flushed slightly, as she smiled back at him. “I think maybe I should start writing down some of these book titles now, before the piles get too high. Maybe you should take a break for a while?” he suggested, noticing how hot and sweaty her face had become, whilst carrying so much weight non-stop for hours. He certainly needed to take a break, but bravado would have kept him going if she had refused.
“If you insist, but I'm happy to keep going for a while longer,” she offered in reply.
“I don’t know about you, but all that fetching and carrying has made me quite hungry. Maybe you could go out and get us something to eat? I could come with you if you prefer, but it may be better if I stay here and start to catalogue these books, just in case Mr Daffer comes down here,” he said, gesturing towards the numerous piles of books, all now neatly stacked in alphabetical order.
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. It would be nice to get outside in the fresh air again for a while,” she replied, with much more enthusiasm than he had expected. “Okay, I won’t be too long,” she said. And with a spring in her step, she exited the room and headed back towards the main stairs.
<
br /> Lusam, with a slight groan, went over to the first pile of books and retrieved several of them, before heading back to his writing desk and recording their titles. As he began writing, he suddenly realised that they were going to need to use another part of the room, and they would also need another set of letters writing on the wall, to store the books that were already catalogued. He arranged the new area of the room while Neala was out getting their food, and continued to catalogue the books until she returned with lunch.
Neala came back with a variety of foods. She had also had managed to get some water bottles from somewhere, and even fill them with nice cool water. Very grateful for both, Lusam took his share and found an area to sit and eat his lunch, whilst thanking Neala for thinking about their water situation. After they ate lunch they both went back to work, stacking more books, then cataloguing them over and over until it was time to stop for the day. They were both very tired, but still decided they would go out for something to eat, before returning to their sleeping cells and falling asleep, warm and content.
The next few days followed the same pattern as the first, except now Neala would buy enough food at breakfast time to last them the rest of the day, saving them a trip out in the cold evenings. The time they saved, was now spent teaching Neala how to read and write. Lusam was impressed by the speed at which Neala had picked up the basics, and by the end of the first week, she could read simple sentences with little difficulty.
They had managed to get a wheelbarrow, of sorts, from Mr Daffer a few days earlier, and it had indeed made the job of moving and re-stacking the books much faster and easier for them both. The downside, however, was that Neala now had much more free time while Lusam was writing, and she was starting to get a little bored during the extended periods of inactivity.
“Would you mind if I went to explore this place for a bit, while you're doing that?” she asked Lusam hopefully.
“No, not at all. Just don’t get lost down here,” Lusam replied jokingly. He had been wondering earlier if Neala was beginning to get fed up of just standing around watching him, while he catalogued all the books; obviously she was a little. Exploring the underground chamber would be good for her, he thought to himself.
“Take your time. I'll be about an hour doing this pile,” he said, nodding towards the stack of books closest to him. “Oh, and one other thing,” he added.
“Yes?”
“Don’t you dare bring back any more books,” he said laughing.
Laughing right back she replied, “You can count on that!”
Neala picked up one of the spare lanterns and turned back to Lusam. “Do you mind?” she asked, nodding towards the lantern, which suddenly burst into life with a small popping sound. “Thanks,” she said, heading out of the room towards the main chamber.
“No problem,” he replied after her, before returning to the task at hand.
Neala had been secretly itching to explore the underground complex ever since they had first arrived. All those chambers, corridors and rooms must hold something of interest she mused to herself. Even if it was only a long forgotten coin or two. She stood in the main chamber, trying to decide how she could best explore this giant underground structure. She chose to start with the first corridor where their sleeping cells were situated. Although they had already looked inside a few of the cells down that corridor when they first arrived, they weren't really looking for anything other than a room to sleep in at the time. She also remembered several locked doors along that corridor, and after all, Mr Daffer had given them permission to explore the place. His exact words being: “Feel free to have a look around …” which Neala was more than happy to interpret as: search wherever you want.
After thirty minutes fruitlessly searching the open cells that ran the length of the corridor, she decided to turn her attention to the locked cells instead. Neala had already decided that if the locked cells contained anything Mr Daffer had obviously stored there she would stop, and not open any more locked doors, restricting her search to only the open cells.
All her life she had grown up in the thieves' guild, and these locks were no match for her lock-picking skills. Almost at will the locks clicked open, one after another, only to reveal yet another empty room. The biggest prize she had found so far was a plate of fossilized food, and an old moth-eaten robe hanging from one of the hooks, but she wasn’t about to give up just yet. Several locked cells later, she actually came across a few coins left in the bottom of a small chest. Nothing much, only a few coppers, but at least it was better than nothing. Picking them up, she continued opening the locked doors and searching the remaining cells, but she didn’t find anything else of real value.
She was about to leave this corridor and try the next one along, when she realised Mr Daffer would probably remember that several of these cells once had locked doors. Even though he had, in a way, given them permission to search the structure, Neala didn’t really want him knowing she'd picked the locks on these doors, and decided she best relock the ones she had opened, before moving on to the next corridor.
Neala made her way back to the main chamber again, before taking the next corridor along. She worked her way along the new corridor, just as she had the first. She noticed that the stone floors in both corridors were well-worn down the centres. They must have seen centuries of foot traffic to show so much wear and tear, she thought to herself. After another thirty minutes, Neala finally reached the end of the second corridor, but with little more to show for her efforts, than she had found in the first set of cells.
When she reached the very end of the corridor, instead of a door like there had been in the first corridor, she was faced with a solid stone wall instead. Carved into the stone wall, was a huge five pointed star, but nothing much else. She stood there looking at the strange wall and her immediate surroundings for several more minutes, before deciding that it must be time to return to the book room to help Lusam. She could always restart her exploration tomorrow, she told herself as she headed back towards the main chamber.
Back in the book room, Lusam had only just finished cataloguing the last batch of books, and had just started fetching books from the main pile again, when Neala entered the room carrying her lantern.
“How did it go? Find anything interesting on your travels?” Lusam asked, putting a pile of books down and sorting through them.
“Well, I'm not sure really. There's a wall at the end of that second corridor with a star carved into it, but there's something strange about it, and I can’t quite put my finger on it,” she replied, with a thoughtful look on her face.
“A wall doesn’t sound very interesting to me,” Lusam laughed. “And here I was, hoping you were going to tell me you'd found a great treasure room, full of gold and gems, and we could stop moving books around and go live like kings and queens instead.”
“If only! Unless four copper coins and a stale sandwich counts as treasure I'm afraid we're still stuck with moving books, Your Highness,” she said, bowing deeply to him. Standing up from behind his writing desk he laughed at her dramatic bow, then suggested they sort out more books from the main pile before they took a break to eat. “Okay,” Neala replied, still deep in thought.
Several minutes passed, and Lusam noticed how quiet Neala had been since returning to the book room. He was about to ask her what was on her mind, when she suddenly dropped the pile of books she'd been carrying onto the floor, and blurted out, “Wait here, I'll be right back!”
She then grabbed a lit lantern and ran from the room without saying another word. Lusam was more than a little curious as to why Neala had just run away like that, and was just about to pick up a lantern himself and try to follow her, when she came running back into the room again, slightly out of breath.
“Come with me! I have something important to show you,” she said between breaths, and jogged back out of the room again, with Lusam following close behind her. Neala took him to the end of the second corridor where the stone wall sto
od, pointed and said, “Look, do you see it?”
“See what? All I see is a stone wall with a star carved into it, like you said.”
“That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but something didn’t seem quite right to me. In the corridor where we sleep, there is a room at the end of the hallway, not a wall.”
“Maybe they just didn’t want to build a room at the end of this corridor,” he suggested, looking at Neala as if she had gone a little crazy. “Yes, that was my first thought too, but in the book room while I was puzzling over what I had seen here, I realised something. Look at the floor. It's been well-worn all the way to the wall. If this wasn’t some kind of door that people had walked through a lot in the past, there wouldn’t be any signs of wear so close to the wall itself.”
Lusam looked at the floor, and had to admit, it did look like it had been worn down like the rest of the corridor behind them, but he couldn't see how the stone wall could possibly be opened.
“When I first came here, I noticed these round marks on the wall. Maybe pressing them opens the door?” Neala said, pointing to two small round indentations carved into the walls, one each side of the corridor, but too far apart for one person to press both at the same time.
“Maybe we should try it. You press the left one, I'll press the right and let’s see what happens,” suggested Lusam. They both pressed their thumbs to the mark, but nothing happened.
“So much for that theory,” said Lusam. “Wait! Isn't that another mark on the floor back there?” he said, pointing back down the corridor several paces.
Walking back to take a look, Neala agreed, “Yes, it looks the same to me, but how will it be possible to press all three at the same time?” “I'm not sure, let me think about this a minute. Assuming it's actually a door at all, and those indentations are in fact the way to open it …” His statement trailed off into nothing, as he thought about the possibility of this actually being a door. Looking around he couldn’t see any other obvious way to open the wall, so he decided to try a long shot, and use his mage-sight, just in case it was operated via magic. He was stunned to see not three indentations, but five. They had missed seeing the other two high up on the ceiling, which now glowed a bright green in the darkness, the same as the other three; five indentations, for the five pointed star.