fist. “You gotta be kidding me! All this way for nothing?”
Sniffing the air as she turned a slow circle, Ashley laid a hand on his arm. “You notice something?”
Walter took in a deep breath. “Fresh air?”
She moved his arm downward, casting Excalibur’s glow on the floor. Several dime-sized holes pierced the rock around their feet. “Air vents?” she asked.
He bent over and inserted the tip of the sword into one of the holes. “Think anything down there is organic?”
“Could be,” she said, rubbing her shoe on the floor. “There are likely to be carbon molecules, maybe some microorganisms.” She looked back at him. “Why?”
He tightened his grip on the hilt. “Stand back. Let’s see what happens with a little burst.”
“Just a little one!” she warned. “We don’t want to get zapped ourselves.”
“Just enough to widen it so I can see what’s down there.” The beam’s energy trickled into the hole. Veins of light crawled along the rocky floor like cracks in ice, zigzagging under their feet.
After a few seconds, he turned off the beam, leaving only the blade’s glow to light the chamber. He knelt and peered through the hole, now the size of a golf ball. “It’s too dark down there.”
Ashley stooped and listened. “Can you hear anything?”
“Just a crunching sound, like someone chewing on rocks.”
When she laid her palm on the floor, a tingling sensation ran along her skin. “That’s not chewing!” She grabbed his arm and pulled. “Quick! Up the stairs!”
The floor crumbled, and they plummeted into the void, but their plunge lasted only a fraction of a second. Their shoes hit solid rock again just several feet below. Fresh air breezed upward, drying their perspiration. The air swept past the original floor level, now just out of reach above their heads.
“That was a gut-buster!” Walter said.
Ashley, her hair flying around her eyes as the air breezed past, laid a hand on her abdomen. “I think my gut turned a flip.”
Still holding the sword, he directed the light downward. “There’s a trapdoor here with lots of holes in it, like a wooden grating.”
“That’s where the air’s coming from. It must be a vent for something underneath.”
Walter poked his fingers into the gap around the door and lifted. With a quiet creak, the wood panel swung upward, and he let it fall to the other side. “I see a light down there.”
“Point the sword over here,” Ashley said. “There’s some kind of line at my feet.”
He moved the energy field, illuminating an old rope that began in a coil near the door, passed under Ashley’s tennis shoes, and wound around a thick stalagmite behind her. “Someone’s climbed down this way before,” he noted.
She stooped and rubbed her hand along the frayed rope. “Not recently is my guess, but it might hold.”
“I’m going in.” He slid Excalibur into his back scabbard, dimming the air vent chamber, and tossed the coil into the opening. “Keep your hand on the rope. I’ll give it three tugs when I get to the bottom.”
She looked into the hole. “Going down should be easy, but have you ever climbed up a rope? It looks pretty far.”
“Lots of times in gym class. Billy and I had this cranky Phys Ed teacher. He screamed so loud, it sounded like a pit bull barking at us. We shinnied that rope in a heartbeat.” Walter looped the line around his waist. “How about you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not very good at going up, but I think I could if I had to.”
Taking up the rope’s slack, Walter pulled his sleeves over his palms, then, bracing his feet against the edge of the open hatch, he leaned backwards over the hole and pushed away, spending the rope through his protected hands as he dropped.
While hanging on to the taut rope, Ashley peered through the hole again. A dim light from somewhere underneath kept Walter illuminated as he reeled downward into the nebulous world below. After a few seconds, he disappeared in the shadows. The rope wiggled a few times, but it stayed tight, like a fishing line trolling in deep water.
She drummed her fingers on the floor. What could be taking so long? That rope couldn’t have been longer than forty feet or so.
“Worried about him, dear child?”
Ashley gulped and swung her head from side to side. She ducked low and whispered, “Who are you? Where are you?”
“Just regard me as a friend, a very old friend.”
She peeked behind the stalagmite. “Why can’t I see you?”