She found him looking up at a terrified pup, dangling from the ceiling portion of a broken pillar, several dozen tail-lengths in the air.
“He's going to fall and there isn't much we can do about it,” Roe said, looking around for any way to reach the pup.
“Yes, we can. We can catch him.”
“Try to catch him, Scarlett, and you'll both be dead from a height like that”
“Hey you!” Scarlett yelled at the small form ignoring Roe. “Hold on. We may have a way to help you.”
Scarlett ran as fast as she could, retrieved their pack and supplies and returned just as the pup began to dangle from his tiring claws.
“We have one of Spencer's parachutes! He gave it to Mercia and she clearly thought it might be of some use to us,” she said urgently, pulling the fabric out of the bag.
“All right...all right...it would be better if we had a few more foxes, but if we attach the lines to that marble stump we may just be able to reach beneath him,” Roe said, quickly tying a shallow knot, hoping that if it gave under the weight it would first break the bulk of the dangerous drop.
They spread out, holding the fabric between the three points, creating a large white triangle. One which barely reached beneath the pup.
Just as they got a good grip between their jaws and planted their feet and weight away from the pillar the pup let out a yelp, and silently fell. He dropped for what seemed an eternity floating and flopping in a soft ball of red. He hit hard but landed on his feet as all foxes instinctively do and the force tore the ropes free, forcing Scarlett and Roe to fall away from each other and fling the poor pup back into the air. The height was harmless this time, however, and he landed back on the parachute, collapsing to his side and curling into a small ball of terror.
Roe and Scarlett quickly recovered and approached the little pup, slowly and carefully.
“Don't worry. You are safe now. What's your name?” Scarlett asked, placing a paw on his lower back.
“Shelny,” he answered, his panicked breathing relaxing slightly.
“That must have been terrifying, Shelny” Scarlett continued. “When you are ready, we'd like to hear how you got up there. I'm sure it is an amazing story.”
“Not really,” Shelny said, rolling over, getting up, the turmoil of the past moments passing quickly away, as it so often does in the young. “I was walking along, looking for mushrooms in one of the wilderness burrows, and I saw a really good one at the bottom of a shallow well. I crawled in and as soon as I grabbed the mushroom, the ground vanished and everything went black. I was falling in the dark, but when I could see again I quickly grabbed this pillar.”
“Well, you should be proud of yourself for managing to hold on. And look at the place you've discovered.”
“Seems quite a coincidence that he should fall in just when we have arrived,” Roe whispered in her ear.
“Maybe,” she said continuing to smile at the younger fox. “But this may be a common occurrence, for all we know. A fox lands here, finds no way out, and starves to death, joining all of the other dead already here. Or doesn't survive the fall at all.”
“So, Shelny , where is this mushroom?” Roe asked with a broad smile. “Even if it smashed to pieces it would still make good eating.”
Shelny looked at Roe and the briefest flash of hatred passed over his face. Hatred or the remembrance of his terrifying fall, Roe couldn't tell.
“I don't know,” Shelny answered, looking around him. “It should be here. You are right. It looked like a tasty one. Unless?...Yeah, I think I spat it out. Who knows where it is now.”
“I see. Too bad,” Roe responded.
“You'll have to come with us now, Shelny. We dropped in here as well, in a way, now we need find a way out, too. Hopefully, together, we'll find it three times as fast.”
After collecting their gear and repacking the parachute, which had sustained the impact without tearing, they lit their navigating candle again and found their way back to the canal, continuing to walk along its length.
Shelny was silent and explored ahead of them.
“There is something about him, Scarlett. He seems familiar and he isn't bothered by all of the dead bodies at all. When I was a pup, it was difficult for me to see the dead, even if it was only a glimpse from afar or a snout protruding from an open casket.”
“Roe, I know the circumstances look suspicious, but he is just a little one, so I don't see that we really have much choice. Besides, you were raised in relative peace and tranquillity in the country, not in the Burrow where death has become familiar even to the very young. What would you have us do, abandon him to the dead city?”
“No, of course not, just tread carefully. It will come to me - where I've seen him before.”
They gave Shelny one of their dried rats to chew, which he did with enthusiasm.
Many tributaries joined the main canal, disappearing into the wall of the City on their mysterious journey to other suburbs or lost areas of the Burrow. Some, however, linked immediately to a stately home, with smaller boats that could be drifted from a private boat launch.
“So much wealth everywhere. Everyone seems to have had a place to live and access to good clean fresh water,” Scarlett said, as they crossed another short bridge, spanning an access canal which fed directly to the front door of a large palace.
“I'm sure they had their poor as well. Perhaps they were better at distributing their wealth but with such riches there are always the poor on the other side of the window.”
“Hey!” Shelny yelled, having crawled up the side of a nearby house, perching from a narrow ledge.
“Shelny, don't you think you've had enough heights for today?”
Looking at the young pup, clinging like a spider, it came to Roe in a rush where he'd seen him before. In the prisoner pits. At each fight the same form would dangle and swing from a rope above him, revelling in the carnage below. Shelny was in fact Rinan, the youngest son of Gremian.
“Scarlett!” was all Roe managed before the young fox heaved on a heavy metal lever causing the two sides of the bridge to groan and fall beneath him.
Scarlett had been slightly ahead, and had managed to jump to safety, but Roe was in the centre and fell into the gap. The bridge was a trapdoor made to trash an intruder before he gained access to the house.
“Roe!” Scarlett yelled from the ledge, giving the falling fox a brief view of her head before being swept away.
“Oh god!” Rinan said, eyeing Scarlett carefully. “The bridge was rigged. It must have been on the verge of collapsing and all it took was one fox too many.”
Scarlett looked distraught, having turned away from Rinan by Roe's call, just as Rinan had pulled the lever to release the bridge.
“I have seen this type of bridge before. In one of my mother's architectural books. They were rigged to collapse on an intruder but weren't necessarily built to kill but to lock the criminal away. We just need to find where he has fallen to,” Scarlett said, looking around her.
She called into the hole several times, but heard nothing in response. Running into the house she passed a family of dead foxes, sitting around a table, eating their immortal meal, a stain of food on their empty plates. She hoped she would find a basement with a passage that might lead to a containment chamber.
She emerged without success and sat for a moment ignoring Shelny, trying to think. She could feel a panic beginning to rise but suppressed it trying to breath calmly.
A few minutes past and Shelny started to pace around impatiently.
“I don't like it here, Scarlett, can't we leave soon?”
“Be quiet Shelny! We are not leaving here without Roe, dead or alive. How can you be so indifferent to a fox that just saved your life?”
An angry expression gathered on the little pup's face, a look which Scarlett wasn't sure how to interpret.
“If you want to find your way out now, then be my guest, but you will be doing it on your own.”
“Fine, Scarlett. You are right. I'll wait,” Rinan answered through clenched and sucking teeth.
*
Roe fell for a long time, into darkness, into a dream. The air rushing past him became still and he was floating again. Stars appeared one by one around him and began to shift in unending streaks of light, until an orb of brightness surrounded him. Through it, an electric voice whispered, fuzzy like radio static.
“Roe...we have failed...you have failed...again and again...there is so little...so little time...yet you have all the time...all the time...in...the...universe...we shall take you...you shall find us...you shall find...the...Art.”
Darkness hit the light like a falling slab of slate, cutting off the voice. Roe hit a soft bank and rolled onto a moss covered chamber floor built from rounded grey rocks. He eventually awoke and the last thing he remembered was Scarlett's face peering over the ledge, her sharp scar cutting across her look of despair.
He got up and paced quickly around the cramped space, finding an iron door on one side which appeared to be securely locked. Testing several of the rocks lining the chamber, he hoped to find a triggering mechanism which would show a way out or a loose stone which he could use to break through the door. The mortar, however, was as strong as the day it was layered in.
“I have to find a way out,” Roe said to the damp air. “Scarlett didn't see what that little prick did and I couldn't warn her in time.”
Rinan, was by far the cutest but also the cruellest of the sons of Gremian. He had reached a legendary status in his childish violence and was known throughout the Burrow as the brother to avoid at all costs. If you were a fox, and were in the same room as Rinan, it meant you were either a relative or you were being executed.
The most memorable of his evil accomplishments was the day he had tied a hundred shadow pups and their parents together and lead them up the arch of the central rotunda. He had jumped over a gap in the walkway without warning causing the first Shadow Fox to fall behind him. Since they were attached, the first pulled the second who pulled the third until each fell and the ones behind knew there was nothing they could do but watch the impending approach of death. Rinan sat, calmly considering the scene, calmly dissecting it in his mind, for the ten minutes it took all hundred shadow pups and parents to fall.
The thought of who Scarlett was with inspired him to work harder to find a way out. He struggled with a few more rocks, and began to work himself into a sweat. At one point, pulling hard on a stone, he slipped in his grip and cut across his Orva brand, with his own claw. A small amount of blood began to drip into the wound.
“Great,” he said to himself, “an infected cut is all I need.”
He tried to clean off the gathering blood, but needed to lean against the iron door in order to get a good angle. With the lightest pressure the door swung easily open on rusty but still functioning hinges.
Roe fell into a long passage, lined with many other metal doors, presumably leading to other prison cells and other houses above.
He got up and started to trot down the path, fighting a gentle but cool breeze. He laughed as the tunnel started to incline upwards and was happy that he had been alone at the moment he discovered the door was, in fact, unlocked.
Chapter Sixteen
“I'm afraid the explosion took out the eastern half of the palace kitchen and, unfortunately, your new chef was in it,” Isen said nervously to the back of Gremian's patchy head.
Gremian swung the sword he had been practising with, releasing it into the air in an arc which ended with a metal thunk, settling it into a wooden rack full of other weaponry.
Isen had found the supreme councillor in the training room, and it had taken nearly half an hour of watching Gremian repeatedly stab a dead canine in the heart before being noticed.
The Supreme Councillor had given up bathing over the past weeks, and his fur stuck together in large clumps between the gaps of which scabs had begun to form; the first signs of the onset of mange. His sparse tail was matted and oily and glued to his skin.
“Erlene? No bother,” Gremian began. “She served me a soup last night that burnt the roof of my mouth. I've been sucking on a blister all morning. She was good. Very good. A good chef is far more valuable than some bumbling advisor to the council, however, so you better have accomplished something by blowing up my cook.”
“Yes. I believe we have.” Isen replied, shaking slightly in his excitement. “Our...your cast iron orb...seems to be far more dangerous than we had originally thought.”
Gremian laughed and looked over his shoulder. “Indeed. Did I not try to warn you? So you came into contact with it?”
“It took some time, sir, and several foxes died before we learned that only the Shadow Foxes could approach the orb.”
“How? How did they die, Isen?” Gremian sat back on his haunches, focusing all of his attention upon his advisor now, his tongue weaving a slow arc between his jaws.
“We tied a rope to several prisoners, sir, and placed a pulley on the wall opposite the sphere. As we pulled they approached the sphere. At first they screamed, then they bled from their eyes and ears and finally they burst into flames. So, very painfully, my Lord Councillor. They died very painfully.”
“Good, Isen. The Shadow Foxes...interesting. They are not wholly of the Light, therefore they could approach the sphere without triggering its defence mechanism.
“Defence?” Isen asked, breathing heavily now, looking over his shoulder as if distracted.
“Yes, Isen to keep anyone from messing with it. So, what then?” Gremian returned to his sword, pulling it from the wood in a hail of splinters, and began to swing it at his advisor in a series of tight arcs.
With each swing Isen gasped but remained still and followed the path of the sword with his eyes. “I had the Shadow Foxes plant a few light charges around the chains. The explosion did nothing but create a large amount of smoke. Finally, we plastered the stone, where the chains connect to the wall, with enough dynamite to blast a new burrow. We lost several Shadow Foxes in the lighting of the fuses but the chains fell free. The energy around the orb dissipated fairly quickly and we were able to harness a team of canines to it and shift it out of the room.”
“And where did you take it?” Gremian asked, dancing around the still Isen, occassionally nipping off the end of a whisker or a bit of fur from his tail.
“That came to me in a moment of geniu...inspiration, sir. As we pulled it out of the temple, shall we call it, I finally realized where I had seen that image of the fox before...on the ceiling of the central rotunda. The entire room was an illustration, the sphere in a jaw beneath the image of Able.”
“The jaws of the vixen in the fountain, forever looking to her Able above,” Gremian finished for him, bringing the tip of his sword to the ground then leaning on the hilt.
“Exactly,” Isen replied, betraying a slight smile. “We took it to the rotunda, heaved it from above and as soon as it came close to the jaws of the vixen it snapped into place like a magnet. It spun like a bearing until the chains attached to it harnessed themselves over and around the face of the fountain vixen. Once it came to rest the power began to build again only it was different this time...” Isen's eyes drifted as he continued and became glossy, filled with longing and awe. “My lord, now it is the Light, as pure as virgin snow, unlike any Light the Burrow has seen in any living fox's lifetime, so strong...so powerful...and it continues to build. It has begun to pull and already groups of foxes are camping within its radiance.”
Gremian lounged to the side slightly, leaning on his sword, considering his advisor, then flipped the weapon back between his jaws and, in the same sweeping motion lopped off his servant's head. It hit the ground still smiling, still thinking of the sphere with longing.
“Yes, Isen, I have felt it. So, the cleansing has begun.”
*
The fire crackled and sputtered from the old oily wood Scarlett had gathered near the canal. Shelny had joined th
e curl of a thick hemp rope and lay sleeping on top of it. She could not see how the little fox could be so indifferent to the fate of Roe. Her frown turned to a sigh as she looked at the little bundle and she realized she had never really had a grasp upon what motivates the young. She had never had the opportunity to be a child.
After several hours of searching for Roe, she was beginning to accept the fact that he might have died. For some reason she couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't true and that his death was in fact an impossiblity.
They were in a circular piazza with a fountain of playing foxes at its centre. The canal ran along the outside edge, then disappeared into a circular arch carved from the stone into a pair of foxes biting each other's tails, one forever a mossy green and drowned in the waters of the canal, the other still shining a sandy white, flying above. She had built the fire in the hopes that enough light would shine into the tunnel to reveal what lay ahead. She had also needed a distraction of some sort from her search for Roe.
The water was dark and glassy and flowed silently through the burrow without the slightest ripple. It was fresh as well and did not have a stagnant smell as many of the canals on the surface did. She was leaning over, on the verge of taking another drink, when suddenly another fox joined her reflection from behind.
She twisted and instinctively bent low to the ground to make herself less of a target, but before she could bark, Roe had clamped his jaws on her snout.
“Don't make a sound,” he said after letting her go.
“Where have you been?” she whispered, without knowing why. “I was beginning to think I would never see you again.” She leaned in to give him a nuzzle but Roe unconsciously pushed her aside.
“Where is Shelny?” he said, looking over her head.
“Over there on that pile of...wait...he's gone. He was there a moment ago. Why would he wander off? He probably got bored of looking for you and decided to search for a way out on his own...We should look for him, Roe, he's only a pup.”
The Progeny of Able (The Burrow of London Series Book 1) Page 30