After what seemed like an eternity, Gregor felt Ares coasting in for a landing. They settled down on the bank of a lazy, shallow river. Gregor hopped off and onto something soft and spongy. He reached down to investigate, and his hand came up filled with a grayish-green, leafy vine. Plants! Plants grew down here without the help of the gaslight the Underlanders used.
"How does this grow without the light?" he asked Vikus, holding out a handful of the stuff.
"It has light," said Vikus, pointing into the river. "There is fire from the earth." Gregor peered into the water and saw tiny jets of light shooting out of the river bottom. Fish darted in and out of a variety of plant-life. The long vines of certain plants crept onto the banks.
"Oh, they're like miniature volcanoes," thought Gregor.
"This river runs through Regalia as well. Our cattle live off the plants, but they are unfit for humans to eat," said Solovet.
Gregor had been eating beef jerky all morning without wondering what the cows ate. He could probably spend years in the Underland figuring out how it worked. Not that he wanted to.
Cockroaches who were fishing along the banks had a quick exchange with Temp and Tick and pulled several large fish out of the river with their mouths. Mareth cleaned them and set them on the torches to grill.
Gregor set Boots down to stretch her legs and asked the cockroaches to keep an eye on her. They ran up and down the bank steering her away from the water and letting her ride on their backs. Word of her arrival spread quickly, and soon dozens of bugs appeared. They settled down just to watch "the princess."
When the food was cooked, Vikus made a point of inviting Temp and Tick to join them. "It is time," he said in response to Henry's frown. "It is time those of the prophecy became of one journey, of one purpose, of one mind. All are equal here." Temp and Tick still sat off to the side, behind Boots, but they ate with everyone else.
"It is not far now," said Vikus, pointing at a small tunnel. "One could make it shortly even on foot."
"To my dad?" asked Gregor.
"No, to the spinners. We must persuade two to join us on the quest," said Vikus.
"Oh, yeah. The spinners," said Gregor. He hoped they were more into the trip than the roaches had been.
They were just finishing up the meal when all five bats jerked their heads up. "Rats!" hissed Ares, and everyone started moving.
Except for Temp and Tick, all the roaches vanished into the shallow tunnels that led away from the river-bank.
Vikus thrust Boots into Gregor's backpack and shoved them toward the tunnel he had pointed out earlier. "Run!" he ordered. Gregor tried to object, but Vikus cut him off. "Run, Gregor! The rest of us are expendable; you are not!"
The old man vaulted onto his bat and joined the other Underlanders in the air just as a squad of six rats stampeded onto the riverbank. The leader, a gnarled gray rat with a diagonal scar across his face, pointed at Gregor and hissed, "Kill him!"
Stranded on the riverbank without a weapon, Gregor had no .choice but to sprint for the mouth of the tunnel. Temp and Tick scurried after him. He glanced back for a second and saw Vikus knock the scarred rat into the river with the hilt of his sword. The other Underlanders, blades flashing, were attacking the five remaining rats.
"Run, Gregor!" ordered Solovet in a rough voice so unlike the quiet one he was used to.
"Make haste, make you, make haste!" urged Temp and Tick.
Using his flashlight, Gregor started down the tunnel. It was just high enough that he could run upright. He realized he had lost Temp and Tick somewhere and turned back to see the entire tunnel, floor to ceiling, filling up with roaches. They weren't attacking the rats. They were using their bodies to form a barricade that would be nearly impossible to penetrate.
"Oh, no," thought Gregor. "They're just going to let themselves be killed!" He turned back to help them, but the roaches nearest him insisted, "Run! Run with the princess!"
They were right: He had to go. He had to get Boots out of there. He had to save his dad. Maybe he even had to save the Underland from the rats, he didn't know. But right now he could no more get through the fifty-foot wall of cockroaches to fight the rats than the rats could get to him.
He took off down the tunnel, setting a pace he thought he could maintain for half an hour.
Chapter 16
He ripped his face off the sticky ropes, and it felt like someone had yanked strips of adhesive tape off his skin. "Ow!" he said. He freed his flashlight arm, but the other remained enmeshed in the web. Boots was on his back, so she hadn't got caught.
"Hello!" he called. "Is anyone there? Hello!" He shone the flashlight around, but all he could see was web.
"I am Gregor the Overlander. I come in peace," he said. I come in peace. Where'd he get that? Probably from some old movie. "Anybody home?"
He felt a light tugging on his sandals and looked down. A huge spider was wrapping his feet together with a steady stream of silk.