Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) (21 page)

She tilted her head to look up into the water chute, but not
one beam of light shown down from the castle above. Reaching down into a small
pouch at her waist, she grabbed a tiny pinch of Snapper. She had only brought a
small handful of it with her, and needed to make it last. Raising her arm in
the air, she snapped her fingers, and a small spark sprang out, lighting up the
tunnel for a brief moment.

That one spark told her exactly what she needed to know.
There was a wooden slab covering up the stone chimney a few feet above her
head. She jumped up and tried to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Grabbing
ahold of one of the stones that was jutting out of the wall, she lifted herself
up so that she could grab onto the lip that lied between the stone and the
wood.

Feeling around, she discovered where the problem was. A
metal locked had been installed on one side, keeping it bolted in place. Norabel
slowly lowered herself back to the ground and reached for the pouch around her
waist once more. She undid the strings that tied it to her dress, and then
lifted herself up again. She poured a little of the Snapper around the rim near
the lock, and then stuffed the rest of the pouch in the area directly
underneath it. Taking one pinch of the Snapper in her hands, she lit the pouch
and quickly dropped down to the bottom of the tunnel, backing up a few feet and
plugging her ears.

A moment later, she heard the sound of sizzling, and then a
loud bang followed after. She stayed hidden further back in the tunnel, waiting
to hear the sounds of anyone coming to investigate. When all was silent, she
carefully crouched back over to the stone chimney. Looking up, she saw a small
hole in the wood. It didn’t look like much, but when she pushed on it, the
wooden slab gave way.

Carefully inching it over to the side, she got her footing
on the rocks and hoisted herself up so she could poke her head out. Looking
around, she saw that she was in an underground corridor of some kind. There
were no torches or candles on the walls. In fact, there was nothing in the
room, except for the stone well she was still inside of, and a single door at
the end of the hall. The only light in the corridor came from a small, narrow
hole that had been cut out of the stone at the very top of the wall, just above
ground level. The moonlight streaming in from this window was the only thing
allowing her to see.

Moving slowly, Norabel hoisted herself up and out of the
hole. She had to take a minute to regain her breath, for she had placed a
little too much strain on her lungs. When she felt she was ready again, she
went to the wooden slab and placed it back over the well, just in case someone
should come down to check on it.

By her feet, she found the metal lock that she had blown
off. Bending down to pick it up, she saw that it looked perfectly normal except
for a hair-line crack in the thin metal. She clicked it closed and it stayed
that way. Then, giving it a little tug, it came open again. An idea struck her
that she might use this lock to her advantage. She thought back to what she had
seen the night before in the kitchens. There was a north-facing door that had
been bolted up with a chain, as if no one used that entrance anymore. She
remembered there was also a ring of keys hanging on the wall not too far away.
If she could make her way to the kitchens, she could replace the lock on the
door with the busted one, giving everyone the illusion that the door was locked
up nice and tight, when it would really just come open with a little shove.

Pocketing the metal lock, she started to move forward in the
corridor. Testing the door that stood at the end, she breathed a sigh of relief
when it turned in her hand. A crack of torchlight came through the entrance,
and she stopped and listened for any sound. Hearing none, she poked her head
through.

She now found herself in a hallway that had many doors on
either side, and several torches lighting the way. Thinking back to what the
guys had told her, she figured that this was probably part of their barracks. She
just hoped that it was too early in the night for them to be returning back
here.

Holding her breath, she stepped out into the hallway and
softly closed the door behind her. Then, racing ahead, she came to a turn in
the corridor. The hallway branched out in several more directions, probably
leading towards more barracks, but one of them led to a stairwell that ran up
and out of the underground portion of the castle.

Norabel felt a pang of pity for the men that had to sleep
down here. Sleeping underground was like sleeping in a dungeon. In fact, she
wouldn’t have been surprised if that’s what it had been before they turned them
into barracks.

Going up the stairwell, she came to another door. She was
even more hesitant to open this one, for no doubt it would lead her into the
main portion of the castle where anyone could see her. Sure, she had walked
around up there perfectly fine yesterday, but things would be different if she
was found without an officer escorting her.

However, opening up the door, she was a little surprised to
see that there was a short room in front of her, with four steps leading up to
another doorway. Stepping inside, she looked to this new entrance in front of
her. Why would they make a separate segment just for this, she wondered. Why
not make the stairs reach all the way up to this second door? Unless this room
was more than just another stairwell.

There were two Pax banners draped down both walls of the
stairwell, and Norabel pushed one of them off to the side to see if anything
was hidden underneath. She ran her palms across the stone, searching for any
cracks or depressions in the wall, but found none. Turning to the other banner,
she pushed it aside as well. At once she noticed an engraving that had been
chiseled into the wall. It read:
Rodion, Lord of Breccan.

Norabel recognized the name. Rodion had been the ruler of
Breccan fifty years ago. It was his son that was killed when Amias took over
the kingdom and enforced his peace. It was probably why the Pax had decided to
cover the wall with their flags.

But why engrave this in the wall here? Wasn’t there another
place in the castle where past lords and heroes could be remembered? Of course,
Amias would have probably destroyed something like that, but it still left the
problem of why this was here.

Searching her brain, she knew that her grandfather must have
told her a story that would help illuminate the matter. She thought about every
Jotham story she was ever told, every legend and myth and hero’s poem. Suddenly
something sparked in her mind. It was a verse to a song that her grandfather
used to sing. It went:

And though they all in battle fall,

They keep the wall through every call.

It was a song of remembrance about the lords and kings of
Galerance past. Norabel had never understood that line, and she never had the
chance to ask her grandfather about it. She knew that every call referred to
shifts on a watch. First call was at nightfall and second call was at
midnight. Yet, it didn’t make sense to her that people as important as lords
and kings would be assigned to watch the walls. That was usually given to foot
soldiers. But what if the song wasn’t referring to the actual walls around the
village? What if it referred to the walls of the castle?

They keep the wall through every call.

Could it mean that they were buried there—in the wall?

She carefully spread her hands out along the stones,
smoothing her palms over it to feel every bump. At the edge of one of the
stones, she noticed a small crack. She blew on it, and a more visible line
appeared. There was definitely something behind there. Looking around her, she
tried to find anything that might help her to pry it open. There was a torch
mounted on the wall, and she reached up for it, hoping to use it for leverage.

Dropping it on the floor, she snuffed out the flame so that
the metal spires on the top were easily accessible. Then she jammed the edges
of it into the crack in the wall, trying to force it open. The wall didn’t
budge, so she reached up for the torch’s wall mount to give her more support to
push off of. The second she grabbed ahold of the mount, it came down a few
inches, catching her off guard. At first she thought she might have broken it,
but looking back to the wall, she saw that it had opened a few inches. The
torch mount must have acted as the door’s handle.

Throwing her whole body into it, she tried to push the stone
door open further. It didn’t want to move easily, but she was able to open it
just wide enough so that she could fit through. Before going inside, she took
the torch that she had snuffed out and lit it again with the one on the
opposite wall. Slipping inside, she let the Pax banner cover the doorway behind
her, hopefully drawing any attention away from her secret passage.

When she squeezed herself inside, she found she was in an
extremely narrow passage way that sloped upwards in a long arch. Even for a
person as small as her, she found that she would have to walk sideways in order
to get by.

Waving her torch, she found something else. There was a tall
metal box embedded into the wall. But not a box, more like a coffin. It was
simply adorned, but bore Rodion’s name on the top. Looking further down the
narrow passage, she noticed that there was another one of these boxes jutting
out of the wall a few yards ahead.

Suddenly Norabel’s head felt wobbly, and her legs grew weak.
She was walking inside of a tomb! All of the dead lords of Breccan must have
been buried inside these very walls!

Walking ahead, she had the urge to cover her nose and mouth,
though she knew that there would be no smell coming from their bodies anymore. Still,
it was eerie walking among them, trying to squeeze past their coffins. She at
least tried to take comfort in the fact that, if all these men were still
alive, they would have been on her side, trying to fight the Pax.

Up ahead in the passage, the ground began to slope even more
steeply upwards. Norabel had to press her back to the wall as she walked in
order to stay upright. She reached another coffin and was sliding around it to
the other side, when she heard voices through the wall. She froze, recognizing
the commanding voice of Chief Auberon.

“You’re early,” he spoke.

She could hear another voice reply, but it was too soft to
make out the words.

“So Lorcan wasn’t lying when he said you were the best
horseman in Breccan.”

There was silence.

“Well done,” Auberon said. “You did good, Hunter.”

Norabel stopped breathing. Her heart began to stammer and
her head felt weak. Hunter was behind these walls! That’s all her mind could
comprehend. It didn’t matter that Auberon believed him to have done well in
something, and that this “something” was surely bad news for her and her
Harbinger team. When she heard his name, she suddenly realized how much she had
missed him. It was a strange sort of revelation that hit her. She imagined it
was like having your hearing taken away and then forgetting you could ever hear
in the first place until you heard a beautiful song years later, and it hurt to
realize what you had been missing this whole time.

She tried to quiet her thoughts and the blood racing through
her ears as the voices began to speak again.

“You look tired,” Auberon said.

Norabel pressed her ear to the stone wall and could barely
make out Hunter’s gentle, yet weary voice admit, “I’ve been riding since before
sun-up. I didn’t like to stop for too long.”

“You have a reason for wanting to get back so quickly?”

There was silence. Then someone spoke. She could not tell
what was being said, only that it was Hunter’s voice that said it.

Auberon’s smooth chuckle slipped through the walls. “Why
don’t you go and hit the pub then? You certainly deserve it.”

More silence. She thought she heard Hunter leave, and a part
of her wanted to get out of there and follow him to the pub, but she had a job
to do. She needed to find Auberon’s living quarters. She figured, by the
direction she had been travelling, that she was in the eastern portion of the
castle. And, judging by the interaction she just overheard, she was probably
standing in front of a meeting room of some kind.

Going further along the passage, she reasoned that she would
hit Auberon’s rooms eventually. Since he was the chief, the highest ranking
official in the castle, then he would have been given the same rooms as an old
Lord would have. If that was the case, then there might be some sort of
entrance linking this secret passage with those rooms in case of emergency.

She inched further up through the walls in the hopes of
finding it, and didn’t have to go too far before she spotted something up
ahead. There was a dim beam of light coming in through the stone. It wasn’t
blue like moonlight, but instead orange like that of a flame. She walked up to
it cautiously and saw that there was an irregular shaped hole cut into the
stone, almost like the grooves had been cut out for two fingers to slip inside.
Norabel pressed her eye to the hole and looked through. On the other side of
the wall there appeared to be a closet. She could make out the shapes of two
shirts hanging on either side of the hole, and in front of her the closet doors
were opened a crack, letting in the outside candlelight.

Sticking her two fingers inside the hole, she felt the stone
slab give way, quietly sliding into the closet, perhaps on a pair of stone
rollers. Bending down, she placed her torch on the ground of the stone
passageway and slipped inside the closet. She was about to open the doors up
wider, when suddenly she heard a lock turn.

Quickly she closed the doors around her so that only a crack
remained for her to look out of. She made sure to take shallow, quiet breaths
of air as she watched Chief Auberon enter into the bed-chamber. He was carrying
a small silver box in his hands. Walking over to a wooden table that had been
pushed up against the wall near his bed, he placed the metal box on top of it. He
paused and looked down at it, and she could have sworn she saw him give a
remorseful shake of his head before striding out of his room.