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I pulled my backpack off, grabbed the flashlight, and shone it into the tunnel. Water dripped from the ceiling and ran down the walls before following the downward slope toward the lake I couldn’t see or smell. The rocks were slick and shiny, and I had a suspicion going down face first would only end in me faceplanting on the shelf. But it wasn’t like I could go down backward. I needed to be seeing where I was going.
“Are you really sure you want to do this?” Lugh said, peering over my shoulder in the narrow confines of the tunnel.
“I’m really sure Idon’twant to do this,” I replied. “But I really don’t want to back away now only to find out later it was the right goddamn lake.”
Lugh nodded and glanced at Cynwrig. “You’ll keep the tunnel secure?”
“I have no intentions of losing her to earth and stone, Lugh, you can be sure of that.”
“Good.” Lugh sat behind me and braced his feet against the wall either side of me, then disconnected the short rope that bound us all and tied on another longer one. “Ready when you are, Beth.”
I tucked the flashlight into my caving suit to use when I reached the next cavern, then, before I could think about it too much, carefully edged into the tunnel’s narrow entrance. It was tight.Realtight. My shoulders scraped the rough, wet walls, but thankfully the suit took the brunt of it even if I was likely to end up with bruises tomorrow. The bigger problem was the steepness of the slick descent, which made trying to get any sort of traction—even with gloves on—difficult. The only thing preventing me from toppling forward was the tension on the rope Lugh was carefully feeding out.
The deeper I crawled into the narrow space, the closer the walls pressed. Each breath was a harsh rasp of fear that echoed all around me, feeding my nerves and heightening the tension. About halfway down there was a semi-collapse, and while I knew it had to be secure given Cynwrig would have mentioned it otherwise, I nevertheless took extra time to squeeze sideways through the narrow gap. I seriously hoped there wasn’t anything nasty waiting up ahead, because I was going to be in no state to deal with it.
Eventually, the tunnel widened enough that I could wriggle through without scraping my shoulders and hips. Air stirred gently past my nose, though it was flat and stale, containing no life or sound. A few yards on, the unyielding weight of stone gave way to a feeling of space and a deep, dark emptiness.
I retrieved my flashlight and slowly climbed to my feet. The bright beam pierced the darkness, dancing across the dark water that lay below the platform and gleaming off the stalactites high above.
“I’m out of the tunnel,” I said, hopefully loud enough for the two men behind me to hear. The noise echoed through the still darkness, and in the distance, something stirred. Something that didn’t quite feel right.
My knives didn’t react, but my fear levels nevertheless ratcheted up.
“And?” came Lugh’s faint response.
“There’s definitely a lake.” I swept the light across the water again. At the very edges of its reach there was an odd, almost box-like shape poking out of the water. “There is something here, but I’m not close enough to see what. How much rope have I got to play with?”
“Still a fair bit, but don’t you dare unclip if we run out,” came his distant reply.
“I won’t.” Mainly because if I did somehow manage to damage myself, it was the only means they had of retrieval.
“Also remember that the earth is dead where you are,” Cynwrig said. “If something goes wrong, you need to get back into the tunnel before I can help you.”
“Understood. I’ll be careful.”
More so than normal, given the creeping sense of wrongness.
I flexed my fingers, then warily moved to the right, following the three-foot-wide ledge that hugged the wall and sloped down to the lake. My footsteps echoed softly, and my light continued to dance across the still water, gleaming off little waves that lapped at the edge— The thought froze.
Why were there waves?
The air wasn’t still here, but it also wasn’t anywhere near enough to be causing waves. At all.
I swept the light across it again. There was nothing to see, nothing to explain the movement in the water. I glanced toward the shape, but it wasn’t any clearer than before, even though I was now much closer.
I shivered, torn between the desire to retreat and the need to confirm whether that shape matched what I’d seen in my dream. Right now, I very much suspected it wouldn’t, if only because it appeared far bigger than the chest I’d seen and there were no luminous skeletal fingers crawling around it. But I couldn’t leave on a suspicion. Besides, it was possible the fingers would only appear once I tried to open the chest, just as they had when we’d found the sword.
I continued on, but I’d only gone a few more yards when a gentle shudder ran through the stone under my feet. I stopped immediately, my heart a sharp tattoo of sound that echoed across the silence. The shudder was not repeated, and there were no signs of cracks or fissures or anything else that might explain the brief movement. There was nothing. My gaze went back to the water. Those waves were getting stronger...
I retreated a step and then stopped again. I couldn’t leave until I knew for sure what lay ahead. The last thing I needed was to leave now, only to discover at a later point that thiswaswhat I’d seen in my dream. One journey through the shitty tunnels was more than enough. There was no way I was going to do it all over again.
But I also couldn’t risk continuing without some means of protecting myself.
I held the torch with my teeth, directing its beam over the water toward the still undefined shape, then unzipped the caving suit and half shrugged out of it so I could reach my knives. Once I had them both, I shrugged back into the suit, zipped everything back up, and continued on, the flashlight’s thin barrel pressed against the hilt of the knife in my right hand. Its light made the blade glow an eerie silver blue that somehow jarred against the surrounding weight of darkness.
I finally hit the reach of the rope. I was briefly tempted to disconnect and move on, but quickly slapped that stupid thought right out of my head. I was far enough away from the tunnel’s exit that they probably wouldn’t hear me now if I did get into trouble, but it remained my sole link to them, and I wasn’t about to lose it.
I shone the light across the water again. It still barely caressed the edges of shape—which was damnably odd given how much closer I now was—but the sheer size of the thing was evident, and it definitely wasn’t a chest or an island. In fact, it appeared to be the top of some sort of stone structure—an arch of some kind, perhaps. One that was more squarish than rounded.
