Page 29 of The Catacomb King
When I reached the far end and found the entrance to yet another tunnel, I turned and faced Hades.
He was, of course, still staring at me. This time, he wasn’t even embarrassed at being caught.
“You don’t need to keep looking at me like I have two heads,” I said. “All I did was walk. Where next? I suppose we’re walking over lava this time? Or thorns?”
He worked his jaw a moment. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he pointed. “That way.”
“You’re not going to grab my arm and drag me along like a piece of rope?”
“Not unless you want me to,” he said hotly. Then he sighed. “No, I’m sorry. You’re right, I’ve been dragging you around like a dog on a leash. It didn’t occur to me that you’d be able to navigate around here. I can lead you if you’d like, but if you prefer to walk yourself, you can. Just tell me what you want.”
“I don’t know where we’re going.”
“I’ll tell you.”
Why did I feel like we were having a conversation about something else?
The tunnels were cold. To my annoyance, I missed the warmth of his hand on my arm. But I wasn’t about to get jerked around when I could be in charge. “Okay.”
I walked into the tunnel. He walked behind me. I was vividly aware of his heat at my back, his blue gaze prickling on the nape of my neck. But his voice was normal when he told me, “Lefthere,” and, “Keep going straight.” Only once did he touch me, when I tripped and he caught me, almost chivalrously, by the elbow. I shook him off.
Even though I didn’t know where we were going, I knew immediately when we’d gotten there.
We were in the biggest chamber I’d seen so far. It was bigger even than the throne room and the lake chamber, although the ceiling was not so high. There were no candles, and the bioluminescent fungus was sparse. But we had to be relatively close to the surface, because the ceiling was thinner here, almost webbed-looking, and faint white sunlight — which meant it was daytime; how long had I been underground? My stomach grumbled furiously at the sudden thought of how long I’d gone without food, and Hades raised his eyebrows but said nothing — the sunlight shot through the webbed ceiling like needles.
Oh, how I missed the sky.
Under the light, an enormous, almost flat hollow was set into the ground at our feet. The hollow had to be twice as large as my village.
I knew at once what it was. I’d spent too long poring over old engineering textbooks and my own schematics not to know.
It was a reservoir.
And it was empty.
“The drought,” I breathed. “Of course. You said all those godlings, they’re dying of thirst.” Somehow it had never occurred to me that the underworld might be impacted by the drought. After all, the land across the border appeared to operate according to a completely different ecosystem. The sun moved differently, the grass grew year-round, the dew always sat on the blades…
But it was true, I realized, that in all the time I had been going to the land above the underworld, it had not rained. Not once.
“Yes,” Hades said. “I have heard that it often rains at different times on our side of the border than on the Lümerlund side” — and I thought of old stories from the farmhands’ books, tales of storm-clouds on the underworld side while the sky over human heads was blue as bluebells, and the rain over the underworld struck the invisible barrier between worlds as though it were striking glass — “but itissupposed to rain here, you know. The rain trickles through the earth above our heads” — he pointed — “and water also seeps up from underneath. Usually, anyway. It collects here, in the reservoir. We use it as drinking water and bathing water, and we irrigate our fields with it.”
“Fields?”
“Mushroom fields.”
Gods, I would love to see that. I caught myself. No, I didn’t want to see any stupid mushroom fields, I wanted to go home.
Still, I was fascinated. “The ceiling,” I said. The spiderweb fissures shot through with sunlight were beautiful, but… “It’s not supposed to be that cracked, is it?”
“Correct.”
“It’s dried out.”
Hades didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“How long has it been since it rained?”
“Eleven months and twenty-six days.”
