Secret of the Giants' Staircase (10 page)

“
Everything's
out of place,” Owen pointed out.

He was right. It would be easier to track Parvel if the house were neat and in perfect order. Then there would be disturbances, ways to see where someone had passed by. Here, though, with everything in complete disorder….

Wait
. That was it.

“Not everything is out of place,” Jesse said, going back to the smaller dining hall.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Owen grumbled, following him.

“Look at this room,” Jesse said, standing in the doorway. “What's wrong with it? What's different than every other room we've been in?”

Owen elbowed his way past and looked in. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “Furniture chopped up, stuff thrown around, no treasure anywhere…it looks exactly the same as every other room.”

“The rug,” Jesse offered helpfully. “What's wrong with it?”

“It's dead.” Owen got on his knees and put his ear to the bear's snout. “He doesn't know where your friends are either,” he reported.

“Doesn't anything about it seem odd?” Jesse pressed.

“Just tell me already,” Owen said. “You and Nero are both the same. Always trying to get me to play your little logic games. I joined the Youth Guard to get
away
from school.”

Jesse gave up. “There are cards scattered all over the room, but not on the rug. And the other rugs and carpets in the building are torn and thrown to the side. This one is laying neatly on the floor…almost like it's hiding something.”

That was all Owen needed. He pulled up on the bear's paw. The rug lifted, and with it, a heavy wooden door in the floorboards.

For a moment, Jesse just stared. They had found the entrance to the Lidian tunnels!

Owen pushed the door open all the way, letting it slam backward to the floor. “Looks safe to me,” he said. “Let's go!”

“We are
not
going down there without a light,” Jesse said firmly, pushing the door back down. He felt strange, being the responsible one. He usually left that job to Silas and Parvel.

Jesse lit a small oil lamp from the kitchen—the glow was faint, but exactly what they needed. A torch would create too much light.
We don't want to attract attention to ourselves. Who knows what we'll find down those steps?

“I'll take that,” Owen said, snatching the lamp, almost blowing out the flame in the process. “I want to go first.”

He ran back to the dining hall and sat on the edge of the hole created by the trapdoor, swinging his legs into the dark. “I'm going to jump.”

“There's a ladder,” Jesse said, pointing to its dim outline against the wall.

“Oh,” Owen said. He sounded almost disappointed. Still, he grabbed onto the ladder and started to climb down, holding the rungs with one hand and the lamp with the other.

“Are you afraid of anything?” Jesse asked.

Owen seemed to think about that. “Let's see…tests in school.” He went deeper into the shaft. “My aunt's cooking.” A pause, and Jesse was afraid he had disappeared until he added, “And grubs. Hate those things.”

Jesse climbed down after him, shutting the door behind them and testing for the bottom with his staff as he went. There was a strange rancid smell in the air. Somehow, he was sure he had smelled it before.

When he reached the bottom, he took a few steps to the left, and something crunched under his feet. Owen jerked around, and the light fell on the ground for a few seconds.

Crushed glass. Why is there glass underground?

“It's just an old wine cellar,” Owen said, shining the lamp on the walls, where wooden racks hung, some splintered, some intact.

That would explain the glass…and the smell
. It was exactly the same as the smell of Roddy's Haunt, the abandoned tavern they had found in the capital of District Two.

“There must be something…” Jesse began. He stopped, looking at the ground again. “Owen, shine the light on the floor, please.” He did, and Jesse pointed. “See? Right underneath the ladder, the glass has been ground into powder. Because—”

“A lot of people have walked on it,” Owen finished, following the trail of pulverized glass, which led to the back corner of the wine cellar.

“There's a staircase!” Owen crowed. Only a few steps were visible before they turned into darkness.

Of course
. The tunnels, if they existed, would have to be much farther down than one level underneath the city streets. “Should we take it?” Jesse asked, knowing right away what Owen's answer would be.

He was already climbing down the stairs, and Jesse joined him.
Down to find Parvel, Silas and Rae
. At least, Jesse hoped so. He had to acknowledge what they were doing: creeping, weaponless, to a passage beneath a haunted city.
We could easily become two of the vanished
.

No. Not me. I've challenged death before and come out alive
, Jesse reminded himself. But, although his words were confident, he had to force himself to take the first few steps below the lost city of Lidia.

Of all the things Jesse expected to find in the underground tunnels, an ankle-deep layer of water was not one of them.

“Tunnels below the city?” Owen asked skeptically, jerking the lamp around to inspect the room at the bottom of the steps. The sudden movements were starting to make Jesse dizzy. “More like a sewer.”

“No, it's clean water,” Jesse said, studying it in the dim light of the oil lamp. “I think.”

Already his boots were soaked, except for the two small patches that Rae had sewn. She did good work. Thinking about Rae gave Jesse enough courage to keep going into the darkness.

“I would fire that shipbuilder,” Owen grumbled. “I could do better work than this.”

The walls of the tunnel were stone, held together with some kind of sticky black pitch. Jesse wondered how long it took the Lidians to build the tunnels. They seemed to go on for a long way. If the Lidians had indeed used them to escape the siege, they would have to at least go past the walls of the city.

“Hey, look,” Owen said, stopping after only a few watery steps. He pointed up. There, wrapping around the top of the stone like a border, was the familiar glowing stone that Jesse had come to associate with District Two.

Jesse took a step forward and craned his neck. Instead of being cramped, like the mines in the Suspicion Mountains, the ceilings of these tunnels were high and perfectly formed, supported here and there by graceful pillars.
Nothing but the best for the Lidians
. He squinted.
And is that—?

“Well, that's a nice decoration,” Owen said, jerking the lamp away suddenly and heading farther down the tunnel.

“Wait,” Jesse whispered, motioning him back. “I think I see something written on the border.”

Owen sighed and trudged back. “I was hoping you wouldn't notice. Shouldn't we get going in case the giants come?”

“They're probably outside of the city, where these tunnels lead,” Jesse reasoned. He thought of the stories that told of giants crushing a farmer's cart with one careless step. “They'd have to crawl to get through these tunnels, so they couldn't stay here for long. But we'll keep our voices low, just in case,” he added. No need to take unnecessary risks.

He turned his attention back to the border. Since the words were high on the wall, it was difficult to read them, but the letters themselves were crisp and clear even after hundreds of years underground.

Not all who vanish are truly lost.

Not all that is missing is gone.

Some melt away like the morning frost.

Some will return come the dawn.

 

Those who dare to pay the cost

Will shout this from the sky:

Not all who vanish are truly lost,

The Noble Hill will never die!

 

 

“That's what they thought,” Owen muttered. “Sure looks dead to me.”

“No civilization lasts forever,” Jesse said, shrugging. “Someday, even our capital, Terenid, and other Amarian cities will look like Lidia.”

“Then who lived here before us?” Owen asked. “Before Amarias?”

Jesse thought about it. He had learned some history in school, but none of it ever went back past the reign of Marias, the first king, who named his kingdom after himself. “I don't know,” he admitted.

He looked again at the poem. He had heard one of the lines before, and recently: ‘Not all that is missing is gone.' Then he remembered.
Margo
. She had quoted it as a proverb of the Kin.
I wonder where she heard it?

As usual, that subject no longer held Owen's attention. He had scrambled over to the opposite wall. “Look, more writing,” he said, pointing just over his head.

There, words and letters had been gouged out, and Jesse was only able to make out part of the inscription. The farther down the inscription, the more letters were missing.

Thre g v the r all

For Li ia's cal

S n of Ama as

Lidi son

Son of Wes l d

J in as o

Th r sa if ce

O gr es pr

eals t e key.

To L a' we l

nd t y

 

“Strange,” Jesse said. “These words were painted, not carved—as if they were added later…and in a hurry.” He touched a letter and a piece of paint flaked away. “Time has not been kind to this inscription. Look how much is missing.”

“That would explain the bad spelling,” Owen said. “I was having a hard time reading it.”

Jesse was already trying to fill in the missing words. “I can see ‘Lidia' a few times,” he muttered. “That must be ‘Amarias.' The first line probably has the word ‘their'….”

“I don't believe this,” Owen said, grabbing Jesse's arms. “Remember, we went down a trapdoor into a secret tunnel so we could rescue your friends—not to stare at a musty old poem
again
.”

“But it might be important,” Jesse protested.

“It's a poem. I don't care what it's about. It's boring.” Owen dragged Jesse into the tunnel. He marched straight down it, while Jesse stopped to look in the arched rooms that led off the main tunnel on either side.

Strange
. There was a faint light coming from one of the side rooms.
More glowing stone?
Jesse slogged through the water and peered in.

“Forget poetry. I'd rather find a ghost guarding a room full of treasure, or an old bridge across a pit of snakes—”

“Or a Lidian prison,” Jesse suggested.

“With bones for the bars,” Owen added.

“No,” Jesse said, grabbing Owen's arm and pulling him back to the side room. “I was being serious.”

There were four prisoners sitting on benches, their arms and ankles chained to the wall. The flickering torches showed that their bodies were limp and slumped in different positions. For one terrible moment, Jesse was afraid they were dead.

Then he saw their chests moving, and he started to breathe again himself. “Asleep,” he said, noticing the same fearful expression on Owen's face.

“Oh,” Owen said, stepping into the room. The water was lower here, and they managed to cross over to the prisoners without waking them.

Now Jesse could see the details of the prisoner's faces. To his relief, Parvel, Rae and Silas were all among them. The last was a boy Jesse immediately recognized from the picture in the Forbidden Book, down to the feathers tucked behind his ear.

“Barnaby,” Owen whispered, grinning. “I knew he was still alive.” He turned to Jesse. “Should we wake them?”

Something screeched in Jesse's ear. He jumped back instinctively, looking all around. There, peering out from behind Barnaby's thick, curly hair, was a small black bird.

“Hello, Zora,” Owen said, reaching out to touch the bird. She pecked at his hand, and he jerked it back. “Nice to see you too.”

“I am going to kill that bird,” Rae muttered, slowly stretching her arms as far as they could go in the chains. Then she opened her eyes. “Jesse?”

“Jesse!” Parvel exclaimed, his sleepy eyes widening in surprise. “Thank God you're alive.”

Silas, as usual, was the last to wake, and did not look happy. “But he's here, and that's something you should probably
not
be thanking your God for.”

Never had Silas' dry, sensible comments sounded so good.

“We wondered when you were going to show up,” Rae grumbled. “Any hope of breaking us out of here?”

“I can rip these chains right off the wall,” Owen offered, jumping up on the bench and yanking at the metal plate that bolted the chains to the stone. In the process, he managed to jerk Rae's arms backward.

“Who is he?” she asked Jesse, not amused by Owen's antics.

“One of the squad members we've been looking for,” Jesse said. “I see you've met another one.” He nodded at Barnaby. “I'm Jesse.”

“Barnaby,” he said, “but you already know that. You met my family.”

There was a trace of disgust in his voice, and Jesse wondered how much of their conversation Parvel had told him.

“Unless you want to join us in this prison, I suggest you leave,” Parvel said. “They check on us every now and then. The intervals vary—these Westlunders do not seem to be the organized, methodical types.”

“Wait, the Westlunders?” Jesse asked, confused. “They're the ones who brought you here?” Parvel nodded. “How did they get down here? They're giants…right?”

“In a way,” Silas said. “They're taller than any of us, but not by much. We couldn't understand them, but they didn't seem very happy that we had been wandering around the city.”

Owen jumped down from the bench, giving up his plan of wrenching the chains off the wall. “So, where are the keys?” he asked, looking around.

“They keep them in a jar in the middle of the room with a sign that says, ‘Here, prisoners, escape!'” Barnaby put in.

“Now I remember why I was glad you disappeared,” Owen said, making a face at him. Zora stuck her head out and cawed angrily. Owen quickly jerked back. “You too, Zora.”

“No sign of the Rider?” Jesse asked. “The one whose camp we found?”

“He died fighting,” Silas said grimly. “Used a knife to kill two of them before they brought him down. One of the giants speaks Amarian and told us this as they took us down, as a warning not to try to get away.”

Jesse was about to ask where the giants on guard duty slept when he noticed Silas was staring fixedly at the archway.

“Shh!” Jesse commanded Owen. He knew that expression. Silas heard something.“They're coming,” Silas said, as calmly and confidently as if he were talking about the weather.

Jesse trusted him, even though he didn't hear anything at all. With things like this, Silas was never wrong. A quick glance around the room told him that there was no other way out.
And there's no place to hide, unless there's another trap door somewhere.

“Come on,” Jesse hissed, bolting for the doorway. “Maybe we can outrun them.”

The good thing about giant footsteps, especially in a flooded tunnel, is that you can hear them from a long way off
, a detached part of Jesse's brain realized as he ran.

And, as soon as they stop, they'll be able to hear us.

Jesse sloshed through the watery halls as quickly as he could, but Owen was already out of sight.
We can't outrun them—at least, I can't
.

Suddenly, Jesse felt himself being jerked backward into an arched opening in the wall. The only thing that kept him from crying out was the fact that the hand wasn't a giant's. In fact, it was rather small.

He whirled around to face Owen, who was staring into the darkness of the main passageway. He had either blown out the oil lamp or dropped it in the watery tunnels. Only the dim light of the glowing stone allowed him to see at all. “We hide here and hope they don't find us,” he explained.

It took a few seconds for Jesse's eyes to adjust, before he looked around. Owen had dragged them into a short tunnel.

His heart started pounding harder. The tunnel was filled with figures wrapped in cloth, a chalky gray against the black stone. The bodies—he assumed they were bodies, for none of them moved—were lying in shallow outcroppings in the wall. A strip of glowing stone outlined each outcropping.

“Owen,” Jesse began, feeling his throat tighten up.

“Dead end,” Owen said, peering out the jagged entrance. The footsteps and voices were still coming. “And we're going to be the dead ones.”

“I think someone already stole that position from us,” Jesse managed.

“What are you…?” Owen's voice trailed off as he turned around. “Oh.”

That was all. Jesse expected him to get excited, to start talking about how skeletons were much more interesting than historical ruins. But he just stood there, looking at the remains of previous visitors to the tunnels.

That was fine with Jesse. After all, these bodies had once been living, breathing people just like them. Maybe they had met some kind of terrible death in these very tunnels. There was no way to know for sure.

He froze. The voices were right outside the tunnel now. From their tone, it sounded like they were angry about something.

But instead of reaching in a huge fist and pulling Jesse and Owen out of the tomb, the voices and footsteps began to fade, along with the orange torchlight.

Jesse didn't dare look out the opening at the giants. He didn't even move until well after the tunnel became silent again. “Should we go back to the prison?” he asked Owen.

But Owen was already getting a closer look at the bones. Apparently any momentary reverence he felt in the presence of the dead was gone. “I guess these folks won't betray us to the giants, eh?”

Jesse backed up, giving one last look to the main tunnel before he joined Owen to examine the bodies. They were of normal height—not Westlunders then. Each compartment held one body. Jesse did a quick count, pacing along the length of the hallway. There were fifteen compartments lining the shallow tunnel. Eleven were occupied.

One body had a brass compass at his side. Another was draped in a fancy red coat with a silk handkerchief poking out of the pocket. One had even been left with a fine, sturdy leather bag, the design of a falcon burned into it.

It must be some strange Westlund tradition of burying the dead
. Briefly, Jesse wondered which one was the Guard Rider who had camped in the ruins, but he decided not to try to find out.