But things were not to turn out that way.
“No!” Willow said for the fourth time, and Boy worried about what Valerian might do to her.
“No,” she said. “You can’t just take someone else’s horse!”
But Valerian did nothing. It almost seemed he was soft with Willow. Boy watched, amazed, as she argued in the persistent snowfall outside the village stable.
“I have no money left!” shouted Valerian. “We must get back to the City and there is no other way.”
Finally Boy at least managed to get them to have their argument inside. In the stable they saw why they had found no trace of the driver-his cart had gone and so had the beast.
But they could make out the shapes and smell of two young horses.
“These people have nothing!” cried Willow. “You can’t take their horses from them!”
“And if I don’t, I’ll be dead,” Valerian said, but it seemed there was less strength in his words than there might have been. Boy wondered if his arm was affecting him. At times he seemed delirious with pain.
“That’s not their concern, is it?” Willow said.
“No,” said Valerian, sounding exhausted. “No, it’s mine.”
He stared into Willow’s eyes and there was a standoff. Boy held his breath, and in the silence of the snowstorm they heard an angry cry.
It came from the direction of the church.
Boy stuck his head through the door and just as quickly pulled it back in.
“They’ve found our mess!” he hissed. “In the church! There’s at least three of them and they’re coming this way!”
Valerian looked at Willow.
“When this is all over I’ll come back and buy them a dozen horses,” he said. “I promise!”
Boy grabbed her arm.
“Willow! Come on!”
It would never even have occurred to Boy that it might be wrong to steal the horses. In the way he’d grown up first on his own and then with Valerian, he’d learnt that if you needed something, and you could get it without getting caught, you took it. Willow thought differently, and he could tell she was very serious about it.
“Willow!” he cried again. “We must!”
“All right!” she said at last. “Do it! But you have to promise! A dozen horses!”
“Yes, yes,” Valerian said. “Come!”
Boy pulled the stable door open to find a group of four or five villagers.
They were large men, and their burning torches and pitchforks and scythes looked ghastly in the darkness and the swirling snow.
Boy backed into the barn, trying to think fast but failing.
“Now!” Valerian called.
He spurred his horse forward, but when the animal came close to its masters it stopped. One of the villagers put his hand up to the horse’s cheek and whispered to it. The horse rose on its back legs and let out a loud whinny. Valerian slipped from the horse’s back and fell into the thin straw on the stable floor.
As he hit the ground he howled with pain and then blacked out.
Two men stepped forward, and Boy saw the cart driver behind them. Another villager lowered an old but sturdy pitchfork at Boy, pointing its three prongs at his throat. The man was strong and broad, with a weather-worn, dirty face.
“Now,” he said, “my fine City boy, what have you done to our church?”
“I?” said Boy.
The villager swung the pitchfork, hitting Boy across the side of the head with the handle. Willow rushed over as he fell next to Valerian.
“You’ve killed him!” she screamed.
The man spat in the straw.
“Not yet,” he said. “He’s breathing yet.”
With relief Willow saw it was true. She looked about her. Boy and Valerian both lay, out cold, in the foul-smelling straw of a barn in a village miles away from the City. Around her stood a gang bent on revenge, and she knew there was nothing she could do.
Dawn rose on the morning of December 30, but Boy and Willow did not see the day break. Valerian did not see anything.
Boy had come round from the blow to his head quite soon, and immediately been sick in the straw. He put his hand to his head, and felt blood and broken skin. He had a murderous headache.
The villagers had escorted Willow and Boy back to the church, and had carried Valerian none too gently with them.
They took them to the hole in the church floor, Gad Beebe’s place of interment. Seeing it again, Willow was shocked by what they had done, the violation they had caused.
“You did this?” grunted a man with sunken cheeks.
Boy was too fearful to speak after his last try. Willow couldn’t see that there was any point in denying it, but couldn’t bring herself to admit to it either.
Then Pitchfork Man spoke.
“What are we going to do with them?”
“Kill them now,” said one.
“We ought to send for the Watch,” said a taller man, who seemed nervous.
“That will take days,” said Pitchfork. “Let’s drown them in the millrace.”
“It’s frozen, you fool! It’ll take hours to make a hole big enough.”
And so they argued, and eventually decided to lock their prisoners in the crypt while they decided what to do.
The sunken-cheeked man pushed Boy and Willow ahead of him, waving his scythe. At the far end of the church, in a corner of the nave, was a low archway. Four steps led down from it to a metal grille.
Sunken Cheeks unlocked the gate to the underworld.
Boy and Willow hesitated, but when he lowered the tip of his scythe at them they slunk into the dark. Beyond the grille a dozen more steps curved around, taking them back under the body of the church itself. At the bottom, they stopped in complete darkness.
There was a noise like a scuttling animal, then a flash of sparks behind them-a burning torch had been thrown down the stairs so there was light to carry Valerian down.
He was dumped roughly on the floor.
“Heavy, he is,” said one, and they left. The nervous one turned and bent to take the torch back with them.
“Please!” said Willow. “Please leave us some light!” She tried to make herself sound as pitiful as possible, but that wasn’t hard. The man looked at her and was reminded of his own daughter sleeping safely in her bed in the farmhouse.
Without a word he handed her the torch and followed his friend back up the curving steps to the church.
Boy rushed after him, but the gate was already shut and locked.
“Please,” he begged through the metal grille of the crypt entrance, “please can we have a blanket for Valerian?”
Their footsteps disappeared up the four stone steps and they were gone.
The crypt was a cramped room with a vaulted ceiling low above their heads, which made it feel as if they were sitting inside a treasure chest. In the center stood a large stone sarcophagus, and along each of the longer walls were three cists capped with headstones commemorating the person whose bones lay inside.
On one of the shorter walls was an iron bracket, and Willow put the torch there so that they could see a little better. Boy returned from the metal grille at the top of the steps.
“It’s not good,” he said. “It’s locked tight.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not like they need to stop people getting out of here, is it?”
“No,” said Willow. “It’s to stop people getting in. To stop them…”
“Stealing bodies,” said Boy, finishing what she could not.
“Boy,” cried Willow suddenly, “what are we doing? What have we got into?”
“You, you mean,” said Boy. “I was always a part of this. Whatever he does, I do. You had a choice.”
Willow looked at Valerian.
“Let’s see what we can do for him.”
They lifted his head and folded the wide collar of his coat out, then rested his head back on it. His arm was worse. There was a distinctly unpleasant smell coming from it. They pulled his coat tight around him.
“Where’s that last bottle?” said Willow.
Boy fished in Valerian’s pockets and pulled out the last of Kepler’s potion.
Lifting Valerian’s head again, they tipped a small amount of the thin green liquid into his mouth.
Automatically he swallowed, coughing.
Boy sniffed the liquid before shoving the cork back. He pulled a face. As Willow was busy trying to lower Valerian’s head, a burning curiosity came over him. Holding his nose, he took a small swig of the stuff.
He choked but swallowed. Immediately fire spread through his body. The taste was awful, but it was soon replaced by a wonderful feeling of strength and power and lightness. He felt better than he had in days, in ages.
His body no longer ached. He felt no hunger, no pain, no fear. He looked at the bottle in his hand and then at Valerian, who already showed signs of stirring.
Willow turned round to Boy. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.” He smiled at her. He was amazed to feel calm, confident, even glad.
“Well,” he said, “what are we going to do?”
Willow crumpled. “What can we do?” she wailed. “We’re locked in a stone hole, under a church, in a god-forsaken village miles from home. Valerian has two days left unless maybe we find the book, and we still have no idea where it is!”
She stopped.
“Don’t we?” said a voice behind her.
Valerian looked up at them from the stones. He raised himself on one arm, then lifted himself back to his feet. Willow was amazed by this, but Boy knew the secret of Kepler’s green liquid.
“Boy!” said Valerian, fishing in his pocket. “Where’s my bottle?”
“Here,” said Boy, bringing it to him. “We just fed you a little of it. We thought it might help.” He couldn’t hide the smile on his face as he saw Valerian on his feet again, and as Valerian took the bottle back from him with his good arm, he smiled back.
Boy felt good, strong and happy.
Valerian looked at the bottle. It was half empty.
“You were right,” he said, “but there is little left. Still, it is time we were about things.”
He put a hand out to Boy’s cheek for a moment, then seemed to remember himself and instantly pulled it back. It happened so fast that Boy wondered if he’d imagined it.
“But what can we do?” said Willow.
Valerian turned to her, his bad arm swinging loosely at his side.
“Come now, Willow, it’s not like you to be weak! It’s usually the boy here.”
Boy laughed. He didn’t even mind Valerian making fun of him. He felt good and that was all.
Valerian began to circle the crypt. He prowled, a smile growing on his face.
“There is more to this church than we know,” he said. “There has to be-it is far too big a place for a tiny hole of a village like Linden.”
He rested his hand on top of the sarcophagus.
“Listen!” he said. “Listen! Can you hear it? Listen!” hissed Valerian, wobbling slightly on his feet. “No! Look!”
He pointed at the wall of the crypt, the short wall opposite the one where Willow had placed the torch.
There again were those mysterious words.
Non omnem videt molitor aquam molam praeterfluentem.
“The miller…?” began Boy.
“… sees not all the water that goes by his mill,” finished Willow.
“And outside the churchyard, there stands… Boy! What?”
“A mill!” he said confidently.
“Exactly!” declared Valerian.
“I don’t understand,” cried Willow. “What does it mean?”
“It means,” said Valerian, “it means it is more than a motto! Place your ears to the sarcophagus and listen!”
“The-the what?” asked Boy.
“The sarcophagus, Boy! You do know what a sarcophagus is, don’t you? From your Greek! Eater-of-bodies. Flesh-eater. Sarco-phagus.”
Boy looked blankly at him.
“The stone coffin, Boy!”
Willow stood on tiptoe to put her ear flat against the lid of the sarcophagus.
“I thought I heard something as I lay on the floor. It’s faint, but you can hear it better through that.”
Boy ran over to Willow. It was true; you didn’t even have to put your head close to the stone box to hear the sound of water flowing somewhere underneath.
“Valerian!” Willow said. “Valerian! Look! Is this…?”
She was staring at a pattern engraved in the lid of the coffin.
“Yes. The pattern that Kepler had dug into his cellar floor, repeated here on the lid of this supposed grave!”
Indeed, the lid of the sarcophagus was deeply cut with a manic pattern of lines crossing, recrossing, intersecting and splitting. Without remembering exactly, Willow could recognize it.
“What is it?” Boy asked.
“These marks,” she said. “It’s what the doctor had dug into his floor and filled with water. Water that flowed by the aid of a machine. And above it on the wall were those words.”
She pointed.
“Ah!” Boy said. “The mill outside-not all of the water goes past it. Some goes here. So the miller…”
“… sees not all the water that…”
“Exactly!” cried Valerian. He stared at them, a little mad, a little proud, waiting for the moment to deliver his final piece of wisdom.
“See that long line that comes out of the pattern, straight down the length of the sarcophagus lid?”
They nodded.
“What would you say that is, at the end of it? That symbol?”
There was a circle with short lines radiating out from it.
“It’s a mill wheel!” said Boy.
“Just so!” said Valerian. “Now, you two, lift the lid and let’s be away from here!”
Willow turned to him.
“I am not dealing with any more corpses,” she said. “Is that clear? I’ve had enough!”
Valerian smiled at her infuriatingly.
“But there will be no corpse inside here,” he said, tapping the lid. “There will be no bones, no flesh, no decomposing material of any sort whatsoever. There will be simply a way back to the City.”
“You’re mad,” she said.
“I thought Kepler was mad,” Valerian said, “but I was wrong. I should have realized sooner what we were looking at in his cellar. This is a map. It is a map of the ancient canals under the City. And this is our way back.”
“There are no canals in the City,” said Boy.
“Not in the City, under it,” snapped Valerian. “Under the City is an ancient network of canals. They were once exposed to the sky but were slowly bridged, then built over and rebuilt over, until only the rumor of them remains. I myself explored a tiny fraction of them one evil day when I was a student. I quickly became lost. It took me a day to find my way out and I never dared go back.
“It is said they feed into the river, or that the river feeds into them. Few know where their entrances lie. And now I believe we have found one, here, in this stinking village. The millrace must run underground and join the canals!”
Valerian fetched the torch from the wall.
“Hurry! There is no time to be lost.”
“But we don’t even know if you’re right,” protested Willow. “There may be nothing inside here at all.”
“I am right,” said Valerian. “And you two must open the lid. I cannot. Hurry!”
Willow looked at Boy, and Boy looked at Valerian, who glared at him so that he jumped and started to try to shift the heavy stone lid. It didn’t budge.
“Wait!” said Valerian. “We ought to copy this map.”
He tapped the lid once more.
“I have some paper!” said Boy proudly, and pulled a leaf of folded parchment from his pocket. Delighted at being useful for once, he smiled as Valerian took it from him.
“Boy, you astound me! What is this? Have you been studying at last, or…?”
Valerian stopped.
“Where did you get this?” he said.
“It’s mine!” said Boy, wishing he had left it in his pocket.
It was the paper he’d found on the viewing table of the camera obscura in the Tower room, the one with his name at the top and the strange words and symbols underneath.
“It is not yours,” shouted Valerian. “It is about you.”
He turned and looked at Willow.
“Here,” he said. “I have a stub of charcoal. Use the reverse of the paper to copy the map. Do it well!”
So by the flickering torchlight Willow set about trying to copy the lines onto the back of the paper, using a piece of soft charcoal that kept on breaking.
“I can’t see!” she complained, but she kept at it.
“You’ve missed a bit,” said Boy. “Look, there! And that line joins that one, not that one.”
“You do it if you’re so-”
“Boy will not do it,” said Valerian, holding the torch. “You will. You’ll be quicker and neater.”
But it was hard to concentrate with Valerian glaring at her.
“Hurry!” he said. “God knows how long those thugs will be away for.”
“They’re just people,” said Willow. “We offended them. They’re angry. Perhaps if we had just asked to-”
“To what?” interrupted Valerian. “Asked to smash a hole in the floor of their church and dig up the remains of one of the local gentry? I think you should concentrate on what you’re doing.”
“There!” said Willow. “I’ve finished.”
“Are you sure?” said Valerian, comparing the engraved lines with the drawing Willow had made.
“Yes,” said Willow, but she was not sure. She was not even convinced there was anything under the lid of the sarcophagus apart from decaying bodies.
“Then come on, put your backs into it. Don’t take it right off-we must cover our tracks when we leave.”
But if Willow was not convinced, Boy certainly was. He still felt strong after the slug from the bottle. He had never felt so confident in his life, and had never felt he understood Valerian so well. It was as though some of master’s power was inside him.
“Come on, Willow. I need your help,” he said, putting his back against the lid and beginning to shove.
“Do it together!” urged Valerian. “On my mark! Now!” They both gave a shove and the stone lid not only moved but slid right off the sarcophagus and smashed to the stone floor of the crypt, where it shattered.
The sound echoed around the small vault. They began to panic, casting anxious glances back up the steps. Valerian leant over into the hole they had uncovered and smiled. There was a series of iron rungs let into the shaft that dropped down into the darkness. Now they could not only hear the sound of running water, they could smell its dankness.
“So much for covering our tracks,” said Valerian, looking at the broken lid. “Still, we have a map, and if they follow, they won’t have.”
“Why did they put us down here if they knew there was this way out?” asked Boy.
“Well, obviously they didn’t know,” said Valerian. “It’s my guess this is some secret of the Beebe family. But we don’t have time to debate it. They’ll come sooner or later, and the torch won’t last for more than an hour or two. Let’s go.”
He took a pull on the vial. As he lowered his head, he saw Boy staring at him.
“What is it, Boy?”
“I-I was just thinking, wondering whether it would be a good idea if Willow and I had… a little of that… to help us.”
“How dare you! No! What a suggestion! This is for my arm. Anyway, it’s not good for you. Too much can… That’s not your business. Take the torch and get down that hole, Boy, before I decide to leave you here.”
Boy tried to hide his disappointment and did as he was bid.
“You next, Willow.”
And then Valerian swung his long legs up onto the ledge of the shaft and placed his feet on the rungs. The light from the torch had already stopped swinging about beneath him.
Valerian was glad the bottom was not far. He had little idea how he would have managed if he’d had to climb down a ladder with only one hand for more than a few feet. As it was it was difficult enough, but quite soon he had reached the bottom and stepped off to find Boy and Willow waiting for him.
“Look!” said Boy. “Boats!”
They were in a cavern, standing on a jetty made of iron and wood, which clung to the wall of the chamber. There was the river flowing slowly and steadily past them in the darkness, and tied to the jetty were several boats of a strange sort. They were flat-bottomed and had no oars, but each had a short pole lying in its bottom.
“I wonder when anyone last came this way,” said Willow. “It feels so forgotten.”
It was true. The whole place seemed to have been untouched for many years. The rust on the iron rungs had been undisturbed. The landing stage was rotting in places, and they had to tread carefully to avoid the weaker parts of the platform, but the boats bobbed gently in the current, as if happy to see someone after years of abandonment in the darkness. They chose the one that seemed to be the sturdiest.
“Let’s be gone,” said Valerian.
The boat, once untied, seemed keen to take them off down the tunnel that led from the chamber, and only leaked a little. Willow sat at the front with the torch, Valerian sat in the middle with the map, giving orders, and Boy crouched in the back, holding the pole and steering them away from the walls. There was little need to propel them forward-the current was enough to keep them moving at a decent speed. Once or twice Boy gave an extra push, but he rocked the boat so badly it made them feel unsafe.
Time. Who had any idea how time was passing as they sailed along in the long straight tunnel?
Distance. They had no more idea about how far they had traveled than they had about how long they’d been going. What had seemed so easy to start with began to seem a surreal voyage from nowhere to nowhere. The tunnel was apparently endless.
As they went, Valerian’s drugs began to wear off and the pain grew again in his arm. With it he began to remember the desperate nature of his situation.
So what if he made it back to the City? He knew what waited for him on New Year’s Eve, wherever he was. For the ten thousandth time he wondered if there was any way out that he hadn’t considered before. Maybe there was something staring him right in the face that he hadn’t seen. But fifteen years is a long time to think and he had no more ideas.
They drifted on in the gloom, the torch sputtering, showing signs that it would soon fail.
It was not much warmer in the underground canal than it had been in the crypt, or in the church, or in the snowstorm itself. It was airless too. Despite the flowing water there was a powerful smell of dampness and decay. Once or twice their faces were brushed by dripping fronds and unseen tentacles, maybe the roots of plants hanging from the bricked vault of the low tunnel. The sound of splashes from the prow of the boat fell dead against the claustrophobic walls.
Boy began to feel his joy slip from him.
He could see little but Willow by the light of the torch. What had he brought her into? This life with the madman who was his master. He was possibly a murderer, whose life was now forfeit over something that had happened fifteen years before. Valerian had thrown it all away for one night with a woman who had rejected him.
Nothing made sense, especially not this stupidly straight tunnel.
“Boy,” said Willow quietly, “I’m scared.”
“It’s all right,” Boy said. “It’s-”
And then Willow shrieked and dropped the torch into the canal, where it was extinguished at once with a short hiss.
“Willow!” called Boy. “Are you all right?”
“Something hit me! I’m sorry-oh, I’m sorry!”
“Are you all right?” Boy asked again.
“Yes, but what will we do now? We can’t see where we’re going!”
“What does it matter anyway?” said Boy. “We’re only going one way, and that’s forward. I don’t know what else to do.”
“But we could be down here forever,” cried Willow.
The darkness was total, and still they floated on.
Valerian barely seemed to have noticed. Boy now gently eased himself into the bottom of the boat from his perch on the stern, and Willow, somewhat hysterical, felt her way back toward Valerian and curled up at his feet.
Then she sat up. “I’ve still got a bit of a candle,” she called to Boy.
“But we’ve no way of lighting it,” he said miserably.
They fell silent again, and so they went, Boy and Willow half numbed by the cold and half asleep, and Valerian in some strange place where the pain and the last of the drugs had taken him.
Had they had any idea how time was passing they might have guessed that it was now well past midday on the day before New Year’s Eve.
Had they had any idea of how far they had traveled, they might have known that they were indeed back in the City or, at least, beneath it.
Valerian was right. Valerian was always right. They were in the maze of underground canals that lay far from sight and far from knowledge, forgotten and corrupt, while the City sprawled above.
They had drifted into the canal system proper, where the current had become more gentle. Had they had any light to see by, they would have been able to make out ruined doorways and steps, landing stages and blocked-in windows, where once a thriving business life had been conducted along the waterways of the City. Now the only life came from the water itself, gurgling and slurping its way toward various hidden gutters where it rushed unseen into the pestilent river that bisected the City itself.
Boy was half awake now. Despite his exhaustion, his fear would not allow him to sleep for long. Valerian was unconscious again, Willow whimpering in her sleep like a disturbed dog at his feet. So it was only Boy who knew what happened when the boat suddenly struck something in the dark and came to a halt.
Slowly, he put both hands out into the darkness. The boat was resting against a low wall on his left. He could hear the sound of wood on wood in front of him. On the other the side of the boat he felt another prow under his fingers. Ah! The boat had hit another one moored at a landing point.
“Valerian!” he called as loudly as he dared. “Willow! Wake up!”
He felt around the wall and found a crevice between two of the stones. He dug his fingers in and found it did not take much effort to keep their boat against the side. Keeping careful hold, he called, “Wake up! I think we might be able to get out. We’re at some sort of jetty again. We’re somewhere at last.”
“What is it?” came Valerian’s voice from the darkness. “Where are we? Why is it dark?”
“The torch went out,” said Boy. There was no need for Valerian to know that Willow had dropped it. “It went out ages ago.”
“Where are we?” said Willow.
“What difference does it make?” asked Boy. “It’s dark everywhere.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Willow. “Look there!”
“Where?” asked Valerian.
In the dark it was impossible to know where Willow was looking, but then Boy saw.
Away to one side of them was a speck of light in a distant tunnel. It seemed to be very far away.
“Can you get out of the boat?” Valerian said.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Boy.
“Either of you!” Valerian barked, and his voice echoed around them, finally dying away after many beats of their hearts. They were at the edge of some vast chamber, from across the far side of which came the faint light.
“I think I can,” said Willow, but Boy was already slithering over the side of the boat onto what turned out to be a quayside, long forgotten in this abandoned subterranean world.
“Find my hand,” said Willow, holding it out in the blackness.
Boy worked along the side of the quay, gripping the low edge of the boat, until his arm bumped into Willow’s.
“Take the rope,” she said, passing it to Boy, who, fumbling around, found an iron ring to tie it to.
He pulled Willow up, and then they both helped lift Valerian out.
Once on firm ground, he seemed to recover and take charge again.
“We may as well head for the light. Perhaps it is coming in from the outside.”
And so they walked.
It was like walking on a black night, lit only by a few stars. They could make out their destination clearly enough, but the ground under their feet not at all.
On more than one occasion they caught their boots on rough ground, and twice Willow was unlucky enough to walk into low stone bollards and fall over. It was an ancient square, which seemed to slope slightly uphill away from the canal, and with every step they could see more clearly that the light they were heading for was not daylight but artificial.
It was coming from a low archway in the corner of the square, and beyond it a series of smaller arches led into tiny tunnels, each half the height of an average man.
Boy and Willow hesitated, but Valerian strode through the entrance arch and then bent down at the opening of the small passage that now seemed to their eyes to be dazzling with light.
He jumped back.
The light wavered and then emerged from the hole. It was followed by a man.
“Valerian!” he gasped.
“Kepler!” spluttered Valerian.
The two men stood staring at each other.
Kepler was thin, and dwarfed by Valerian. His receding hair lay in black straggles scraped across his head. He wore small glasses of his own design and manufacture. He was dressed in a black frock coat and worn boots and his two gold teeth shone.
“What’s happened to your arm?” he said.
“Broken,” said Valerian. “I ran into Meade and his gang.”
“I warned you-”
“You warned me about a lot of things. But how are you here? The book! What about the book?”
“You would have done better to listen to me,” said Kepler, ignoring Valerian’s question. “If you had, you might not be in this mess.”
Boy and Willow were amazed by the light he was carrying. It was one of his own devices, without doubt. Slung over his shoulder on a wide canvas strap was a box with a brass handle protruding from it. From this, one of his special wires connected to a wooden handle with a glass ball on the end. It was this glass ball that was glowing with a strong yellow light. From time to time the light weakened and Kepler would wind the handle on the box furiously. As he did so the light would return to its full strength.
Kepler walked over to Boy and Willow and inspected them by the light.
“Boy I know. Who is this?”
“A girl. Of some use. She’s cleverer than Boy.”
Kepler grunted.
“What are you all doing here?”
“Listen!” said Valerian. “Have you found the book?” He grasped Kepler with his good hand.
Kepler sighed deeply.
“Alas, Valerian.” He sighed. “I have not.”
“But what were you doing in there?” asked Valerian, pointing at the small tunnel from which Kepler had emerged.
Kepler hesitated just a fraction before answering.
“That was my last attempt,” he said. “My investigations, on your behalf, led me down here. I was led to believe that the answer lay in these catacombs. It has not been easy. Finding a safe entrance to this world was hard enough. I succeeded, but now I have failed. I am sorry, Valerian. There can be no other way.”
“But the motto!” Valerian cried. “The Beebe motto led you down here?”
“Yes. The motto. That led me close. I learnt that the Beebes knew of the catacombs. The family were advisors to the Emperor for many years. They came and went from Linden to the Palace through the canals. I thought the book was hidden here. It was not. You will have to face your past and your future tomorrow night.”
Valerian raged, cursing himself, cursing Kepler and Boy, cursing life itself. Again and again he cried, “No!” It seemed there would be no end to his anguish, but at last he fell silent. His head dropped.
“There is no other way,” Kepler said eventually. “You know that. It is over after all.”
Valerian fell to his knees and did not move.
Boy put his hands to his head. What could he possibly say? Willow looked at Boy, then at Valerian.
“It can’t happen!” she cried. “You can’t give up!”
Valerian remained motionless as she wrapped her arms around his head.
“Come on!” she cried. “Boy, tell him.”
But Boy knew it was hopeless. Tears poured down his face as Kepler watched, motionless.
Finally Kepler spoke.
“We should go. Back to the City.”
No one answered.
“There is no point staying down here,” he said.
“Not for you three,” said Valerian. “You go. Leave me here.”
“We can’t leave you,” cried Boy.
“It may as well happen here as anywhere,” said Valerian. “There is no escaping it now. If I die here, at least no one will have to bury me.”
“No!” cried Boy. “Don’t give up!”
“I am not moving,” Valerian said. “Give me the last of the medicine, Boy. Kepler, do you have any more of these with you? No? Never mind. I shall not be moving far now.”
He sat against a wall and bowed his head.
“I can’t believe he’s giving up,” Willow said to Boy, but Boy did not answer.
Kepler came and crouched by Valerian.
“Valerian! Listen! You will do what I say. You will come with me.”
“I will not! The only reason I like you is because you never preach at me, so don’t start now. I am too ill and tired to move. I will stay here.”
Kepler got to his feet and gave his light another few cranks of the handle.
“Very well,” he said. “You leave me no alternative. I will not see you die in this way. I am going to mend your arm at least. I will take Boy, for help. The girl can stay with you.”
“But I don’t want to go!” cried Boy.
“And I don’t want to leave Boy!” cried Willow.
“You will both do as I say,” said Kepler, “for Valerian. I need Boy to help me carry things to mend his arm. Someone must stay with him.”
They argued awhile longer, but Kepler would not be dissuaded and eventually Boy and Willow agreed. Valerian watched it all-it seemed to have no effect on him now.
Kepler had brought some torches in case his light device stopped working. He handed one to Boy and set it burning with a chemical match.
Then they left Willow and Valerian with Kepler’s special light.
“Just turn the handle if it starts to fade,” Kepler told Willow. “We’ll be gone no more than a few hours.”
Then Boy and Kepler left for the boats.
As they went, Willow called after them, “Don’t be long!”
Her voice wavered in the darkness as they disappeared from view.
“Please.”
Kepler held the torch over the prow of the boat. He seemed not to need a map. Boy sat in the back of the boat and they generally followed the natural flow of the canal toward one of the river inlets, though they made two difficult turns. Boy was not sure he could find his way back to Willow and Valerian if Kepler was not with him.
“Doesn’t really take that long,” said Kepler over his shoulder. “You just have to know which way to go, or you could be in here forever.”
He laughed. It was not a nice laugh.
Kepler called out more directions and Boy obeyed.
“Did you know the girl well?” said Kepler.
What does he mean, “Did”? thought Boy.
“Willow’s a friend of mine,” he said. There was a note of surprise in his voice, as if he himself were only now realizing this. But it felt right saying it. “A good friend.”
“And bad about Valerian, too,” Kepler went on. “It can’t be helped though. It has to be like this.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Boy, shipping the pole into the boat. They drifted.
“That I found the book. Oh yes, I found it days ago, but when I saw-well, I knew I had to hide it again. I was just hiding it when you and Valerian and the girl arrived. That was your good fortune. If he had found it! Well. Shame they’ll have to die. Although I suppose the girl might find her way out. That’s why I left her the lamp, but otherwise…”
Boy felt himself go cold. Then fear and anger rushed through him. He was sitting in a boat with a madman. Kepler seemed to think Valerian was the enemy, and that he had to hide the book from him.
Kepler rambled on.
“I have known him a long time, but then he deserves no better after all he’s done. We will have to get along without him!”
He laughed again, then peered ahead into the gloom.
“A left coming up, I think. Yes. Boy? A left! A left!”
But Boy had another use for the pole. He took careful aim and swiped Kepler around the head with it. His aim was true and Kepler fell clean over the side into the water.
To Boy’s good fortune, the torch dropped inside the boat.
Boy started to push the boat hard against the current. He had to find his way back to Valerian. His master’s life depended on it, and Boy was not going to let him down.
“Valerian!” he called into the darkness. “I’m coming. I’m coming!”
Behind him, Kepler sank under the water for a moment, then, as the cold revived him, came spluttering to the surface.
“Boy!” He coughed. “Come back! Boy! You don’t understand! Come back!”
But he could only gasp the words, and Boy was already far away.
Boy hurried back to his master. Some strange power entered him, and he remembered without hesitation every turn he had made in the dark. The torch guttered on its side in the bottom of the boat, and the wood where it lay started to smolder, but Boy fixed his eyes on the tunnels ahead, until he was back at the quayside of the underground square.
He leapt from the boat and ran across the square, holding the torch in front of him.
“Valerian! Willow! Valerian! Valerian!”
Willow lifted her lamp high and scrambled to her feet as he arrived.
“Valerian! I know where the book is! I know!”
Now even Valerian was roused from his stupor.
Boy ran right to the entrance of the low tunnel where Kepler had emerged and pointed.
“The book’s in there! Kepler’s crazy! He was trying to hide it from us! I wouldn’t let him do that. I hit him! I can’t let you go, Valerian.”
Valerian almost leapt to his feet, despite his arm.
“Kepler…,” he murmured to himself. “Kepler! I was wrong to think the past was the past. I, of all people, should know that!”
He looked at Boy.
“You have done well,” he said, his eyes shining with a renewed power. “I am pleased with you.”
Boy stood, speechless.
“Now!” said Valerian. “Give me the light, Willow. I’m going inside.”
Valerian got down on his hands and knees, and shoving the lamp ahead of him, he crawled into the tunnel, moving along like a three-legged dog.
Boy turned to Willow.
“I think I’ve killed Kepler,” he said.
Willow said nothing. Boy did not stop, could not stop. The words tumbled from his mouth.
“He was just leaving you here to die with Valerian. I didn’t think. I just did it.”
“What did you do?” Willow asked.
“I hit him with the pole. He went into the water. I-”
“Boy…” She stopped, then held her hand out to him. “Let’s hope the book gives Valerian the answer he needs. Then it may have been worth it.”
Boy sat down. They leant against each other in the dank air and watched the flame of the torch flicker and spark. Its smoke twisted away to the low ceiling of the passage from which the many smaller tunnels led.
“It’s going out,” said Boy.
“No, it isn’t,” Willow said firmly. “It can’t be.”
But it was. They tried to turn the torch this way and that, to coax the flame back into life, but they only seemed to be making it worse. It went out, and they held each other, trying not to panic.
“He’ll be back soon,” said Boy. “Soon.”
Finally they heard a sound, and saw the light flooding the entrance.
Valerian emerged, triumphant. He backed out of the low tunnel, dragging something behind him. It was a huge book, vastly ancient and tattered beyond belief. There was a strange expression on Valerian’s face as he clutched it. Stronger than joy-it was joy and delight and rapture and hope combined. His eyes burned at Boy and Willow, and then at the thick tome grasped in his strong fingers.
At last the weight was too much for Valerian to hold in one hand and he put the book on the ground in front of him.
“Now let us see…,” he said, his voice quiet and strangely high.
He lifted the book so it balanced on its spine.
“Wind this infernal contraption for me, will you?” he said to Willow. She bent over the lantern. “Good. Now hold it there.”
Valerian let the book fall open, as if letting it choose which page it would show to him, what secrets it would impart to him.
Boy stared as Valerian flicked backward and forward through the pages searching for his answer. None of them moved, save for Valerian occasionally turning a page and Willow winding the light whenever it began to fail.
Valerian’s face drew closer to the book as he seemed to find what he was looking for. Or was it that the book was showing him what it wanted to show him?
Willow, holding the lamp, tried to read what she could, but the book was written in many different and strange languages, and she could only understand a few words.
Suddenly Valerian gripped the edges of the book so tightly Boy thought he might pull it apart. He leant closer, his hands shaking.
With fumbling fingers he delved deep into his coat pocket and pulled out a piece of paper-a piece of paper that Boy immediately recognized as the one Kepler had written about him, on the back of which Willow had copied the map.
Now Valerian began to pore over this paper as well as a certain page of the book, and a frown spread across his face and then vanished just as easily.
He looked up.
“Boy,” he said quietly, “I have my answer.”
“What-what is it, Valerian?” Boy asked.
“You. You are my answer,” Valerian said, grinning.
Willow, who had been silently trying to read the book over Valerian’s shoulder, suddenly gasped. She was not even trying to decipher the peculiar words anymore, but somehow there was knowledge in her head-a picture that filled her mind with horror.
“Boy!” she yelled. “He wants to kill you! Boy! Run!” The grin slipped from Valerian’s face as he swung his arm and punched Willow hard in the face. She dropped to the ground, spilling the light. She did not move.
Valerian turned to Boy.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” said Valerian smoothly, his voice calm. “Come here. There’s nothing wrong. Come closer.”
Boy took a quick, faltering glance at Willow’s still body on the stone flags, and then he turned and ran.