guess from them words what I was seeing, for the bars went on for ever, it seemed like. You wouldn’t of thought there was so much iron in all the world. In between them was loose stones, with planks of wood set kind of like the rungs on a ladder, and that was what we walked on.
We was come at last to the end of our journey, or our traversing as Sky called it. Up ahead of us there was a solid mass of ferns that stood up tall as trees. Sky didn’t stop, or slow down even, but slipped between the big green fans like she was stepping through a curtain. I seen some more of that brown stone out of the corner of my eye, towering up way past the tops of our heads and then bending over us in a shape like the curve of a bow. We passed on by like we was going in through a great big doorway.
And now, all at once, we was in the dark. Not green dark like in a forest glade, but black dark like a moonless night. At the same time, the sound of Sky’s feet on the ground got big and hollow with echoes that come back to us on every hand.
The suddenness of it unsettled me. I reached out with my hand to see if I could get some sense of the place we was in. My fingers’ tips brushed hard coldness. I got the sense then that the stone was piled up over us to some considerable height, and that we was going into the ground.
Sky slowed down somewhat at this point. She had no choice, there being no light at all to see by. I could hear breathing from just by me that I thought must be Cup’s, for Mole’s breath was harsh and loud and could not be mistook.
“Where are we?” I asked. I knowed it was not good sense to rile Sky up again, her hands being so heavy and her temper so short, but the dark cowed my spirit. I wanted to break the silence to prove it could be broke.
“The crucible,” Cup said.
“Shut your mouth, Cup,” says Sky. “Just because he asks, that don’t mean you got to answer.”
A light was shining from a place that was in front of us and off to the right. It was faint and scattered, so I thought for a moment my eyes might be making it by theirselves, the way solid dark makes you do. But then Sky bent her steps in that direction. If she seen it too, it had got to be real.
When the light was almost right in front of us, she stopped. It was no clearer this close up, but only a kind of a lighter stain splashed across the dark. Something moved in front of us, and I heard a sound like feet scuffing on stone.
“What’s them that come?” said a gruff voice, none too clearly.
“You was asleep, Egg,” says Sky.
“No, I wasn’t. Give answer now. What’s them that come?”
“You was fucking well asleep, and you’ll take an extra watch for it, you horse-faced bastard. It’s me, Sky, and hope to be saved.”
“It’s me, Cup,” says Cup from behind me. “And hope to be saved.”
“It’s Mole,” says Mole. “Hope to be saved.”
“Plus this on my back,” says Sky, “that we found when we was hunting for something else. Now let us by.”
Some curtain or fall of cloth was pulled aside, and the light was full in my eyes. I flinched from it a little, though it wasn’t bright. It was just a lit oil lamp, hanging in a kind of a doorway. There was a wall there that you could not see at all in the dark. It was wove from wicker, close-set and cross-plaited through big wooden stakes that went up into the dark. I was sore puzzled by it, for a wicker wall would not defend against anything. You might as well not have no wall at all.
When we stepped through, we come among more lights, and then a lot more. We was in a wider space now. I would say a hallway, except there never was one this big. The ceiling was an arch way over our heads, the wall was the same stone I seen outside, and the ground was crossed by more of them metal bands that led the way before us. There was a reek in the air that was thick and sour