Page 75 of The Catacomb King
He was running out of the Lake cavern, his eyes wild. He was carrying Elke. Her bug-body was so round that he had to wrap his arms all the way around her, like she was an enormous stuffed animal or a sack of potatoes.
Then he spotted me.
“GO!” he screamed. “GO!”
I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know why he was telling me to leave right after he’d tried to sacrifice me to his wild god. He’d tried todrownme. He’dheld me underwater.
He tucked Elke behind the stalagmite throne to protect her. He threw one final wild-eyed look at me. And then, when he was satisfied that Calix was dragging me out of the throne room to safety, he turned and charged for his father and the Vizeking.
He vanished into the back cavern.
And then Calix had me out of the throne room. He was urging me through the catacombs. “Where are we going?” I gasped.
“East.”
“East is that way.”
Calix slowed. He looked at me angrily. “No, it’s not. We entered from this direction.”
Two seconds into my rescue and he was already telling me I was wrong? “The catacombs move. The tunnels, I mean. I’m telling you, east is that way.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Okay. Take us east.”
I led him as eastward as I could, feeling out the shifts in the earth. Calix followed behind me, jumpy and unhappy. I was on high alert, shaking all over, moving forward on blind autopilot, my lungs still jerking. I kept swiveling, trying to see in all directions at once, prepared for someone to try to get me back into the Lake — or perhaps for the opposite, for someone to recognize me and help us. I didn’t know.
I didn’t know anything anymore.
I couldn’t believe that Hades and Calix had both meant the things they’d said to me. Calix that he would rescue me. Hades that he would murder me.
But I knew at once when we’d reached the place Calix was looking for. An enormous shaft had been drilled through the ceiling. The shaft wasn’t like the Gestörbunlund’s catacombs at all; it was more like the pipe-shaft I’d had the chaosgötten dig. The earth beneath it was dusted with rubble. The sun beamed down like the moonlight over the Lake’s reverse waterfall. A rope-and-pulley system, lined with harnesses, dangled from the shaft.
Calix began to strap me into one of the harnesses. I could have done it myself, but I let him. It was easier. “Did you… dig this?” The shaft was huge. We were relatively close to the surface here, but still, it had to go up a hundred feet.
“Sure did.”
“And brought all those War Police down?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
He paused mid-cinch. “To save you,” he said, as though it should be obvious. “Don’t you remember? I told you I would.”
Despite myself, something in my stomach melted. For years I’d wanted Calix to say something like that to me.
But the rational part of my mind — the engineer’s mind — couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong with his story.
“Yeah, but why would the War Police care that I’d been kidnapped? Your soldiers came all the way from Corcagia. They must have been ordered by the Body.”
“I petitioned.”
“Calix.” I tried to rotate in the harness to look at him. He was already hoisting me up with the rope-and-pulley. “Calix, stop, I’m trying to talk to you.”
“There’s no time.”
“I’ve been here for three days, I can take two minutes to have a conversation. Calix, the Body doesn’t answer petitions that quickly. Commissioning the War Police like that should take years. And besides, the chaosgötten kidnap a woman every quarter-century, and the Body’s never done anything about it. Why do they care now?”
“Because of me. I have influence through the diplomat’s college.”
