The Councillor tried to recover himself. “You are always welcome.” The woman unnerved him.
“And you seem to have forgotten greater matters in your pursuit of a mere smidgen of sewage. Your son has traveled far and, if I’m not mistaken, succeeded in his mission. Am I right?”
Petronio felt relieved. At last there was someone to plead his cause. “My lady, I did as you said.” Quickly, he related the events of the preceding night, leaving out his encounter with Flinty but stressing how well negotiations had gone.
When he’d finished, Fenestra turned to his father and waited.
“I suppose congratulations are in order.” The words were reluctant, grudging.
“Would that you praised your son more highly!” Fenestra hissed. “He has parlayed on our behalf with a man who would happily have had your boy flayed alive if he didn’t like the cut of his cloth! Trust me, I know what Julius Flint is made of!”
Petronio felt the warmth of her praise. This was more like it.
Lady Fenestra continued, “We have put out bait in the form of gleaming treasure, and your commander has stepped into the snare. He is ours now! The plan shall succeed. In five days, your little island country shall be utterly changed.”
All thoughts of hunger fled from Petronio as an idea formed in his mind.
“May I speak further?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There might be a way to bring our sewer muck out from whatever infested rat hole he’s hidden in.” That was it. He had their attention now. Even his father couldn’t help but look up at him.
Petronio surprised himself with the perfection of this solution. “My lady mentioned bait. The boy has a younger sister, whom he adores. Your men should arrest her.”
“A four-year-old girl!” protested Grasp, with no clue as to which direction his son’s mind was moving.
But Fenestra clapped her hands together. “On my word, young Petronio Grasp. That is —”
“Workable!” interrupted Petronio. “Firstly, it keeps the family quiet. There’ll be no blabbing about plots against the King.” He paused, relishing for a moment their rapt attention. “Then put the little girl in the cells beneath this house and wait for the worm to come out of its hole. When he does, promise me this, Father!” He was the one in control now, not asking but making a statement of final intent. “I let him go before. But this time, as the slimy squit wriggles on the hook, he’s all mine!”
19• DEEP DOWN
There was no point fighting gravity. As he shot through space, Ark could dimly make out the forms of Mucum and Joe ahead of him, plunging like helpless babies with only thin umbilical cords to connect them to the real world. While trying to quell the rising tide of nausea and panic, he thought of his family. Shiv and his mother and father were farther away than ever. He was going where few Dendrans had dared. And it wasn’t where he was supposed to be!
He’d expected to remain in blackness, but the tube around him now glowed softly green, with brighter sparks flashing as he whistled past. Joe had mentioned a phosphorescent fungus that grew lower down along the walls of these massive, hollow tree roots. Ark was grateful even for this echo of the far sun. The fungus spread above him in yellow lines scribbling away at the shadows. Who would have thought lightning could be grown?
“This is serious!” whooped Mucum, as he zipped down the smooth-worn slope. He quickly worked out that his suit was engineered with this exact journey in mind. The trick was to go with it, bending your body into the curves, hitting the turns, and using your butt to bounce off and accelerate out and down.
There was a loud splash and all three of them were suddenly underwater.
Ark was last to crash into the gleaming pool. Every nerve in his body went taut and his lungs worked overtime, grabbing at the air. He was drowning, imprisoned in some contraption dreamed up by a species of underworld nutter. The visor in his helmet began to steam up as he hyperventilated.
“Help!” he screamed, the sound swallowed inside his suit.
Joe floated up to him and grabbed Ark by the shoulders. He moved his right hand up and down in the water in slow motion, his goggled eyes willing Ark to look.
Ark got the message. He tried to slow his breathing. Trust that the insect boatmen were working the bellows at the other end. Slowly, the mist cleared from his visor. Ark moved his hands forward experimentally. The rubber suit acted like warm grease, slipping him easily through the chilly depths. It was like being in an enormous cruck pool.
He realized this was the water table, where the tree drank its fill and nature pumped the liquid of life high into the estate. As he began to relax, Ark watched a shoal of shimmering red ovalfish glide by, thin as paper, with eyes on either side of their heads.
Joe beckoned the two boys to follow and swam toward what appeared to be a tunnel opening. They clambered through into a shallower pool, half filled with silt.
Above the trio’s heads, a million fronds hung from the roof like frail curtains. They were way below the earth by now, a place of far tales. An occasional glint winked back at them from the roof of the giant root — evidence of ore, according to Joe.
There was a hiss of escaping air as Joe undid the seal on his helmet. Ark copied the Rootshooter’s movements, glad to be able to breathe normally again. He heard the churning ripples of deep water and the constant plop of the dripping walls.
“We should be safe fer about an hour. Leave yow helmets and breathin’ lines behind and follow me. Yas?” Joe was all business now, in his element.
Mucum beamed, full of himself as he plonked his helmet down. “That was … out of this wood! You know, I’d swap jobs with them lot any day.”
Ark shook his head, incredulous.
“Glad you’re having so much fun.”
“If you’ve got any memory left in that bonce of yours, you might recall it was your idea to climb down that Diana-forsaken ladder in the first place.”
“We had no choice. Anyhow, we’re not exactly saving the country down here!”
“You sound like a moaning grandma sometimes. Lighten up!”
“Speakin’ o’ light,” interrupted Joe, “these are fer yow.” Joe handed each of the boys a cloudy glass bottle. “Shake ’em hard, but only if yow need to. We’ve enough to see by fer now.” Joe set off up the phosphor-coated passage. “Follow me close and stay in the center.”
The squidgy silt reminded Ark of … what was it? Oh yeah … the stuff they worked with every day. He sniffed. The smell was different, loamy. It made him think of fallen leaves and last year’s mulch pile in the corner of the scaffields. They were a long way from the sunshine now. His eyes picked up the increasing glitter of the roof and floor. Copper? Tin? Iron? Ark had no idea.
Joe had explained about the natural seams that the roots of every tree sought out. All the miners had to do was follow.
“But this is just one root system?”
“Yas!”
Mucum’s mind began to boggle, trying to work it out. “And there’s like … thousands of trees!”
“Yas!”
“So, what? There are others like you?” The thought of endless women Rootshooters fluttering their eyes at him gave Mucum the horrors.
“Yas!” A slow smile spread across Joe’s face. “This ’ere’s just one way in the many. Them roots is tangled together like breathin’ tubes, as if the trees war all one big family! If yow wants, you could cross the ‘ole country without ever comin’ up into a divin’ station, let alone goin’ up top! Why, Oi’ve got kin out west and south, all workin’ diff’rent systems!”
As above, so below, thought Ark. Arborium had just got a lot bigger.
They continued down the main root. The plants overhead dripped with life, shocks of vibrant green in the fungal illumination. Every so often, side passages led off both left and right, bringing with them a cold chill that sent goose bumps marching up and down the boys’ skin.
“Don’t move,” hissed Joe suddenly, his frame coming to a standstill.
&
nbsp; The boys almost collided with him. What now?
“Up ahead …,” Joe whispered. “Slow now. Back up, quiet loike. I don’t think we’ll be mining any ore today….”
Ark heard a soft scraping sound directly ahead and coming in their direction. He motioned to Mucum. They both did as Joe suggested, taking one step backward, then another, hoping not to trip up, trying to make out the source of the noise.
“Could be a little one. If yow get the chance, aim for the mouth.” Joe had his harpoon raised.
“This ain’t like some kinda game with yer Rootshooter buddies?” asked Mucum hopefully.
Joe threw back a sharp stare, all bumbling friendliness vanished in an instant.
“No. Right. Jes’ askin’.”
They retreated toward the nearest side passage as the slithering grew louder and the walls of the root began to shake.
Something big was coming their way. Ark’s mind went into overtime. Maybe Joe was wrong. It sounded more like a roof collapse or even a tree fall. It happened occasionally despite all emergency engineering. Trees were alive. They grew old. They died. And when the massive trunk slammed down into the forest, Diana help any who had not made it out in time. Whole neighborhoods could vanish in seconds, leaving a gap in the map, a part of Arborium gone forever. If this tree fell, it would lift up the roots and anyone stuck inside them. They’d be tumbled about like fish in a cruck pool.
Joe ducked down into the side passage, motioning the boys to crouch. The sound filled the main tunnel now, booming into their ears, crunching, slithering, sliding.
“It’s not a little one,” said Joe, sighing. “It’s trouble, all roight!” He took one of the cloudy glass bottles, shook it once, and threw it out into the main passage. There was a tinkling smash. Dim phosphor and shadows gave way to a bright swarm of intense light as a thousand glowflies relished their short-lived freedom.
Ark bit his tongue in shock, feeling the blood well into his mouth. Both he and Mucum looked up, and up again, trying to take in the scale of what they saw as their feet stuck like lichen to the spot.
A segmented monster with a bruised-purple pulsating skin squeezed and filled every inch of the tunnel, writhing and uncoiling toward them at high speed. On the end of what had to be its head was a mouth filled with gnashing teeth that wouldn’t look out of place in a sawmill. It had as much relation to a compost-munching worm as a mountain did to a pebble.
The monster briefly stopped, rearing over the three tiny figures, sensing vibrations. Anything that moved down here in its territory was alive. If the monster had lips, it would have licked them in anticipation. True to its name, the mealworm was hungry.
“I hope yow know some good prayers, boys!” whispered Joe through chattering teeth. “‘Cos otherwise, we’re trowly out of luck! “
20• A MEETING OF THE MINDS
Grandma Malikum, when she was still alive, loved to talk about death. “When you’re gone, what the ravens won’t take, the worms will have. Oh yes! They bury what’s left of you in the scaffields and what fine compost your tiny bones will make!” As she cackled, her whole face one big wrinkle of crumpled paper, the younger Ark shivered by the hearth, his mind filled with wriggly, segmented nasties.
Nothing to laugh about now. The glowflies threw every detail of the tunnel into sharp relief, from the zigzag of metallic ore cutting across the walls to the root fronds dangling like pond-weed from the roof. And there in front of them, the mealworm, squeezing through the twenty-foot-high tube, a pulsating monster with rotating teeth about to pulverize a trio of rather tasty little morsels.
Joe was busy muttering to himself in the split second before eternity came knocking.
Mucum merely stood there, goggle-eyed. A weapon. That’s what he needed. A dim memory suddenly made him reach down to the pouch on the left leg of his suit. Flipping fungus! His hands came up empty. The ride down must have loosened the flap. He turned to Ark.
Joe had had the same idea. “Give it over, boyo!” he shouted.
Ark obliged, ripping the harpoon from his rubber trouser leg and handing it over.
Mucum wondered if they were too late. The monster was so close that he could see the gobbets of slime trickling from its teeth.
But Joe was fast and his sight was true. He raised the shining tube, tucking it into his shoulder as his fingers closed around the trigger. “Come ’ere, yow big baba! Come and taste something sharp! I ‘ope it sticks in yow guts!” And as Joe focused, he pulled tight on the trigger.
Nothing. Or rather, only a click. “Hmm!” said Joe, as if it was a mere technical problem. “Could be the damp down ’ere. Ah well! That be that, then.”
“You what?” shouted Mucum. He couldn’t believe his ears. Their last chance gone and Joe was shrugging his shoulders. Death as an inconvenience. He was tempted to try and punch the creature’s lights out. Maybe not. His fists would simply be swallowed in that giant maw. Time to beat a hasty retreat. Using legs to sprint very, very fast. Screaming was also an option, though Mucum didn’t do screaming as a rule. This time, he’d make an exception. Only problem was that his legs were not cooperating, sticking him to the spot like a statue.
Ark thought of his family. He’d let them down. He’d let down the whole country, stuck here deep under the earth while an overgrown slug finished them off. He could smell the thing — a stink of earth and rot and dead rat.
He suddenly remembered the feather, but it was back by his warm moss bed in the Rootshooters’ place. Could he do without it? Could he make them all invisible, somehow? An image of a dusty, stained-glass figure appeared in his mind. This time, the Raven Queen’s eyes appeared to be alive, encouraging him to think of the impossible.
As the thought slithered through his mind, it was like a door opening to the brightest incandescent light.
By all rights, fleeing down the tunnel was the best option. But Ark did the opposite. He began to walk toward the monster, slowly, raising both arms as if in prayer.
For the mealworm, this was a novel reaction. A pair of globular eyes, on long thin stalks attached to the side of the head, swiveled around to study the two-legged creature stalking toward it. The boy held his hands out, palm upward to indicate the lack of weapons.
“What yow doin’?” Joe whispered, trying to pull Ark back. The boy was going to be guzzled!
“Ark!” cried Mucum, knowing he should grab his stupid fool of a friend but unable to even move.
Ark’s hands inched closer. Any moment now. There! Ark! a voice called. Although this time he didn’t think he heard it out loud. He shuddered as his fingers made contact. The surface of the worm was slimy, dripping, cold. But the boy did not recoil in disgust. Nor did that giant mouth open wide to suck him in. Time slowed to a slippery crawl, finally standing still. The boy and the beast were joined now, and a new sound emanated from the mealworm, filling the tunnel, reverberating into the darkness.
Joe was beyond surprised. “Why, boyo! Surely that ain’t the sound of purring!”
Ark answered mechanically, through the fog of his pounding head. “I know.” And he did. He was under the mealworm’s skin, could feel its unending trawl through dark passages, its lonely days and nights, its dull diet of mineral and earth, and its constant suffering from the parasites that lived under its skin, sucking away its blood until it could only gnash its teeth in pain and fury. “I know!” he said soothingly, understanding all that monstrous suffering.
The eyes on stalks momentarily softened, revealing in their dark depths a hidden intelligence. The two Dendrans and their Rootshooter guide were no longer its enemies.
Ark pulled his hands away. As the glowflies danced their last and the shadows deepened in the tunnel, the monster slowly retreated, shuffling backward awkwardly as if it were a guest who had turned up for dinner on the wrong day. It was over. They were safe.
“Diggin’ ore be dull compared to what yow just did!” Joe clapped Ark on the back.
“Did you see, Mucum? I did it!” The b
oy’s feet jiggled on the spot as if his body were filled glowflies.
“Good one,” said Mucum, unsure of what he’d just seen. “You … touched that thing?”
“Yes, and … I felt it! Everything! Every tunnel mapped out in that magnificent brain of hers. Dark, though. And lonely.” Ark’s face was a curious mix of smiles and tears. His voice ran at a hundred miles an hour. “We’re quits now? Yes? You with the rats, and me talking to a mealworm! Well, thinking, anyway. And it worked! Well …” Ark paused, not sure whether he could say it was all his doing. “Let’s go, eh. I’m starved!”
Joe, with his long legs, had to trot along to keep up with the new hero as Ark virtually leapt back along the passageway under the dim glow of the fungus.
“What’s got into you?” puffed Mucum as he tried to keep up.
“No idea!” Ark’s eyes were bright. “Lightening up!”
“Hmph,” grunted Mucum. “We were gonna be munchkins! Cheers.” Part of him felt grateful, part, jealous.
Ark was on a high. “I told you before, she really likes you! I can tell you that, thanks to my magical powers!” His eyes glittered with mischief.
“Yer what? Who you on about?”
“Flo!”
“Give it a rest, will yer?” Mucum growled.
“Never in a million years. ‘A right young pair!’ she said. I feel lurrvve in the air!” The thought of Flo’s big staring eyes suddenly gave him the giggles. “I dare you to give her a kiss! As soon as we get back!”
Mucum looked like thunder. “Look, right. Fair’s fair, you savin’ me life and all that. But give the subject a rest before I head-butt that conkers brain right out of yer skull!” This new, bouncy, chatty Ark was beginning to get on his nerves.
“Lookee in ’ere. This is where we grow’m little ’uns!” Joe pointed down a side passage. The phosphor dimly revealed an earthy tunnel, the floor littered with white bulbous shapes.
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