Crown Phoenix: Night Watchman Express Page 37

Chapter 10

  The Hanging Cage

  eil could scarcely believe that the guards hadn’t seen them. He felt that, at any moment, the men would creep up behind him, clutching their spears. When Riki grabbed his arm, it took everything he had not to shout with fear.

  Riki pointed out the mountain. It had a well-marked trail winding up the side, which was obviously used by the guards to get up to the tunnel. The path led right to the dark recess in the mountainside.

  Riki immediately darted to the path and began to climb, leaving some muddy footprints in the dust. Neil scrambled up the rocks after her. Behind him, he could hear the faint echo of the guards arguing. Neil couldn’t catch all the words, but it sounded like one was accusing the other of cheating at dice.

  They ascended steadily, pausing only to catch their breath. Neil gasped for air, but Riki only allowed him a few seconds’ rest. “Sunrise will start before we know it” she whispered. He just nodded, knowing that she was right.

  At last, the path ended. In front of them was the large, dark opening. It was indeed an entrance to a cave, or at least a tunnel.

  Riki plunged, climbed into the opening. Neil paused, looking back over the valley, at the lagoon separating them from the palace, the jungle and Riki’s own house.

  She tugged on his sleeve and he followed her into the tunnel. The stone walls swallowed the echoes of the gamblers’ quarrel in an instant.

  In the tunnel, it was silent except for the sound of a steady drip-drip of water that sluiced down from the top of the mountain. The hole was pitch dark as well, until Riki struck a match and a small point of light flared up. “Ooooh, look at this!” She turned and stared at the walls. “What a great place to play Army or Pirates – Yowch!” She dropped the match and blew on her fingers.

  “Try it again,” Neil advised, “but this time, actually light a torch instead of trying to see everything by match-light.”

  “Good idea.” Riki was probably too excited to argue.

  He heard her rustle in her bag for a moment, and the point of light flared again. This time Neil was able to see the length of the tunnel for some yards; however, he couldn’t make out where it actually ended.

  “Isn’t this amazing!” Riki said. She held up the flaming brand and waved it around, craning her neck to see as much as she could. “What do you know? There is sand underfoot. We could run races in here. I think I’d win, too. We could spend the night too, of course. Bit soggy, though. This is going to be my new spot. I christen it – Riki’s tunnel.”

  “Great name,” Neil couldn’t help saying. “Original. How did you ever come up with that one?” He unwound his shirt, put it back on, and tried to wipe his muddy glasses on one sleeve.

  She ignored him and began to walk away, thrusting her torch into any dark crannies. “Let’s see where it goes!”

  “Hey! Your bag!” She ignored him. He picked up the abandoned object and followed her.

  The drip grew louder, followed by a trickle. We must be going right through the mountain, Neil thought. Despite his blasé attitude, he couldn’t help being as excited as Riki. After all, how many times in his life would he get to explore a forbidden tunnel in the heart of a mountain?

  “This is great!” Riki whooped.

  “Shh,” Neil cautioned her. “Those guards might follow us in any minute.”

  “Oh, they won’t,” Riki said with supreme confidence, and she stopped. “Neil? What’s that?” A thin wail suddenly echoed down the walls of the stone passage. This was followed by a loud, long hiss. “Neil!” Riki screamed, dropped the torch, and threw herself into his arms. The light promptly went out.

  He thrust her away. Silence returned, punctuated only by the dripping water, and the high wail started again. The dreadful sound made the hair on Neil’s neck prickle. “What – uh – um –” he gabbled, and managed to get a grip on himself. “Let’s light that torch again. Let go of my arm, would you?” Shaking her off, he managed to work matches out of the bag and light one. Holding it to the wooden brand serving as their torch, he saw that his hands were shaking.

  “But what was that?” She clamped her hands around his elbow again.

  “Well, how should I know?” he snapped. “Come on, we can’t just stay here!”

  “But I don’t want to go any further!”

  “Suit yourself. I’m moving on.” He got up, slung the bag on his back and dragged Riki, whose feet were sliding in the sand on the floor. She still hadn’t let go of his arm. He shook her again. “Riki, stop it! You said you wanted to be an explorer and have adventures – well, this is one! At least be brave!”

  She swallowed and let go. “Very well,” she whispered and let go of his arm, although she stayed close to him.

  He felt annoyed, more at himself for being frightened than at her. What kind of a rescuer was he? The last thing he wanted to do was to keep walking through that dripping, wailing tunnel; in fact, he desired nothing more than to run back to Riki’s house, hide in his own bed and wait for morning. Idiot, he said to himself. Coward. Lily-liver.

  They crept forward, Riki’s eyes widening as the wail died away and was followed by the hissing sound. “Do you think it is a snake?” she whispered. “A big, poisonous one?”

  “Snakes don’t wail like that, nor at all, at least not in my country. And if it is, at least it’s some harmless animal and not a – waah!” He scrambled back and felt for the side of the tunnel. As he did so he lost his grip on the torch, which plummeted downward.

  Its dying light showed that they were on the very edge of a huge cliff. They were so close that if Neil had taken another step he would have gone over the side. In front of them, the path ended abruptly on a rocky overhang that stuck out a short distance above the wickedly sharp rocks on the beach far below them.

  “Neil! Are you all right? We almost took a dive there, didn’t we? Can you imagine if we had gone right over that cliff? Wonder if we would have survived. I bet I would have made it. You would have been squashed, though.”

  “We lost our light,” Neil interrupted her.

  “Oh, that. I packed another torch in the bag.”

  Neil nodded. “Good job,” he admitted. Thank goodness he hadn’t let that precious bag fall as well. For the umpteenth time, he lit a match (which promptly went out in the open air) moved back into the shelter of the tunnel and tried again, and lit the other brand. It flared up instantly and revealed the end of the tunnel. The dark passage stopped abruptly at the cliff and ended in the precarious ledge they stood on.

  The thin wail started again. Suddenly furious, Neil yelled back, “Shut up, can’t you? Just shut it!”

  Riki gasped. There was silence for a long moment, and below them a human voice said, “Neil? Neil, could that possibly be you?”

  He jumped. “Did you hear that voice?” he asked Riki. She just opened her eyes even wider and raised her hands in a hopeless, I-have-no-earthly-idea gesture.

  “Neil!” the voice repeated. “Down here!”

  “It’s coming from beneath us,” Neil said. Handing the torch to Riki, he got down on his stomach and peered over the ledge.

  He could make out something that he had only seen in his dreams, long ago. A long chain was tethered to the underside of the ledge. It hung down about twenty feet; a cage was suspended in midair by the huge chain. He could see two hands clutching the bars on the roof of the cage and a face that looked up at him.

  “Hold that torch over here, will you?” he said to Riki. She ignored him, and demanded, “Who is that? How does she know your name? Why is she in that cage? How did she get there?”

  Motioning her to be quiet, Neil said, “Mana?”

  “It is you!” In the gloom, her face tipped back, and she thrust one arm through the bars of the cage. “I didn’t know if you could ever find me or not. I am so glad that you’re here.”

  “And I’m so glad I’ve found you,” he said.

  “Well, I have been in better places,” she shot back in her normal, gover
ness voice.

  He grinned, feeling as though the world had just started to tip back to reality. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “Listen, Simon and Miriam were put on that train, I think. You know, the Express. I don’t know where they are now; I just sort of jumped into a boat and followed you here. Mana, what are we going to do now?”

  She shifted her hands in order to get a better grip on the bars. The movement caused the cage to shift and swing, so that she was hidden from view for a few moments. When the cage stopped swinging, she asked, “You have some idea of the political situation on Lampala?”

  “A little bit,” he said. “There’s a ruler called Atol, and he is in league with-”

  “Yes, forget all that for now,” Mana said, interrupting him. “The Glorious Corona is in a safe place, far from here,” she mused. “If only we could get hold of the Sacred Documents…”

  “Sacred documents – what are they?”

  “Papers inscribed with our laws,” Riki said, interrupting. “No one knows exactly where they’re kept. But, who is she? Who’s in the cage?” Riki held the torch out so hot embers burnt his neck.

  “Riki, stop!” Neil thundered without turning his head. “Stop asking questions and stop burning me!”

  “Is that a friend of yours?” Mana asked. Her voice, even at that distance, sounded amused.

  “I’m called Riki,” the girl announced. “I’m Neil’s best friend, and we’ll probably get married some day. Who are you?” she added.

  “Riki, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,” Mana said. “I’m certain that you have been a huge help to Neil already, since you are here. He’ll tell you all about me now, and about our other friends. Now, let me talk to Neil quickly, since the sun will be coming up soon.”

  Riki seemed to accept this and subsided. Neil called down again, “What can we do?”

  “Can you get me out of here?” Mana asked. “No, maybe not. What you’ll have to do is to get as much help as you can.”

  “But who can we ask?” Neil asked. “I don’t know anyone –”

  “You already know the right people,” Mana said. “You just have to convince them.”

  Neil pondered for a moment. He jumped and turned his head. “Someone’s coming down the tunnel!”

  Mana threw her head back and opened her mouth. A moment later he and Riki heard the same unearthly wail that had frightened them so badly in the passageway. There was an exclamation from within and a hurried scramble, followed by sounds of extremely sudden departure back down the mountain.

  “What on earth was that?” Neil asked. “Did you actually make that noise?”

  “Just a little trick I know,” Mana said. “You can’t go back that way, though; that’s certain. You’ll have to climb down the cliff.”

  “Climb down the cliff!” Neil repeated.

  “I bet I could do it,” Riki said immediately. He ignored her.

  “There’s a series of rough steps cut into the wall,” Mana said, lifting one arm and pointing. “You’ll have to be very careful, though.”

  Neil turned his head and saw, cut into the cliff, a long descent hewed right into the rocks. The steps looked terribly steep and far apart, and he felt dizzy just looking at them. “Very well.” He licked dry lips. “I’ll do it.”

  “Me too!” Riki said.

  “Mana,” Neil asked, “are they feeding you? I mean, do you have everything you need?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, and one corner of her mouth lifted in a smile.

  He considered for a moment and looked over his shoulder at Riki. “What else did you bring in that bag?” he asked.

  She squatted down and began to rummage through it. “I told you. Cheese, and some crackers, and a stone bottle of water –”

  Neil grabbed the cheese and the water and looked over the ledge again. “I’m going to throw some supplies down,” he called. Of course, a slight breeze started at that instant, making the cage sway. Neil waited, forcing back his impatience, until the bamboo box was underneath him, and he dropped the cheese as carefully as he could. There was a slight thud as it hit the bars, and Mana hooked it with one hand and drew it into the cage.

  “Got it,” she said. The effort made her stop and cough.

  “Look out, this one’s trickier.” He craned one arm down and dropped the bottle as straight as he could. It dropped onto the cage and nearly rolled off, but she managed to catch it as well and pull it inside her prison.

  “Thank you, Neil,” she said. “I won’t deny that these are very welcome indeed.”

  Neil nodded. He reflected with fury that the guards were probably too nervous of the tunnel to give her proper food and water. Cowardly beasts! If he ever got big enough, he would pay them out for that; you could bet on it. “How about a blanket? Are you cold?”

  “Forget about that. You must leave now,” Mana called urgently.

  “Me first,” Riki said, who had been eyeing up the rough steps. She stepped onto the first one without any hesitation, and Neil, feeling a bit ashamed, followed her carefully.

  The world seemed to tilt beneath him as he stepped off the ledge. It seemed a dreadfully long gap to the first step. For one heart stopping moment Neil thought that he would slip and fall down onto the wicked, sharp rocks below him.

  A slim, brown hand curled around his ankle and stabilized him. Neil righted himself, but he hadn’t even the breath left to thank Riki.

  He discovered that there were rocks above the steps that jutted out at intervals to cling onto; probably they had been put there as handholds. Riki, in front of him, climbed down the stairs easily, humming to herself.

  The staircase, if you could call it that, took them past where Mana hung, twisting in the horrible cell that Atol had put her in.

  As they climbed down the steps past Mana, she waved and called something out to them. Neil, however, couldn’t hear what she said. The steps sloped away from where she was suspended, and the waves got louder as they climbed down towards the sea.

  There was no way of rescuing anyone from there, even if they had something to catch her with and haul her in, Neil reflected. They would have to find some other way.

  Don’t look down, don’t look down, he repeated to himself. The steps got narrower and steeper, as if the builders had become tired of hewing stone and skimped on their construction at the bottom, and he clung desperately to the little handles of rock cut into the cliff.

  The sky had begun to turn light pink by that time. Thank goodness they didn’t have to crawl through the hideous swamp again. He shuddered, thinking of the slimy things he had felt crawling over his feet in the muck.

  His foot missed a step and horror froze his heartbeat as he felt himself fall. There was no time to think that he was dead, however; he crashed onto a flat rock about a foot below him.

  “Ha, ha,” Riki jeered, pointing at him. She was standing on another rock a short distance away. “I didn’t fall at all. Hey, you look even dirtier now than the first time I saw you! Yuck, you have that mud all over your face! We’d better go swimming with our clothes on once we reach a sandy beach before anyone sees us like this.”

  Neil surreptitiously smelled one sleeve and agreed, although he would never admit it to her. “Come on,” he said, getting up. “I’m going to fall asleep unless we start moving right away.”

  “Me too,” Riki said. “And, I’m starving. I wish we had more of those crackers. In fact, I wish I had a plateful of Odjo’s sandwiches and mango rolls.”

  Neil, feeling his stomach rumble in response, could only nod. He turned away from the stone steps, and stopped dead.

  There, set into the cliff in the shape of a circle, was a series of twelve silver discs.