The Progeny of Able (The Burrow of London Series Book 1) Page 22

  The dam was old and had already been leaking from countless fissures, so, when the explosion shook it, all of its strength finally gave out with a thunderous, relieved whoosh.

  The world spun about them like a stew. Foxes, Shadow Foxes debris from the dam flung about the water, carrying them down to the valley below. With gathering momentum the water tore through the great graveyard picking up headstones, coffins and countless numbers of the dead. Roe tried to find the surface and eventually broke through as the torrent of water flung them back and forth following the path of the small stream. He searched for the others and called out to no avail.

  It didn't take long but when the flood reached the island of stairs, it broke and dissipated into the cave leaving damp mounds of destruction in its wake.

  All was stillness and Roe gazed out across the path of destruction created by the water's passing. Little remained of the graveyard along this course. It was as if a great hand had wiped the surface clean and all that remained was a long muddy stain littered with the bodies of the dead. He started looking amongst the muck for the others and was on the verge of giving up hope, after pulling up the twelfth dead Shadow Fox when he heard a sound further up the Valley.

  “Roe!” Mercia screamed with a smile. “You see! Improvising!”

  The entire remaining group rose over a ridge and joined him.

  “You shouldn't have jumped last, mate,” Daegal said. “We all grabbed hold of a large and very buoyant coffin. It was a pretty fun ride, actually”

  Mercia gave Roe a nuzzle on the base of the neck.

  “I saw you when the wall exploded. You were flying amongst a world of hurt. I thought it was the end for you.”

  Scarlett watched them, then started up the stairs once again.

  “Come on. I think we've done enough damage down here,” she said.

  They all turned to look at the destruction that the breaking of the dam had caused and heard a wheeze of a voice far above them.

  “See, I told you. The dead are feeling restless!”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Shadow Fox?” Eorl asked, with a cough. “Never heard of such a thing in all my life. Nor have I seen my shadow, now that you mention it, since I was a pup.”

  “How long ago was that?” Roe asked, helping the old fox to help himself out the door.

  “I have no idea. All that I know is that it was with you.” Eorl showed a gummy smile, while poking Roe with a shaky paw, then patted him on the back. “You've aged a bit better than I have.”

  “I think you've mistaken me for another fox,” Roe replied looking to see if the others were listening.

  “No, it was you. You are the only living fox I have ever pondered behind these dead doors. I'll not have another chance...to see you, that is. This is it. So I have to ask. Could you give an old fox one final blessing, Roe?”

  The others were occupied shaking out their equipment near the stairs as Roe and Eorl approached the exit door.

  Hesitantly and feeling slightly silly, Roe lifted his head and rubbed the top of Eorl's with the underside of his jaw. Eorl shivered for a moment then slumped to the ground with a sigh.

  “Did you kill him?” Mercia asked, making final adjustments to her saddlebags as she trotted by.

  Eorl answered for him with a preposterously long snore, then a hiccuping wheeze and another snore.

  “I think if we try to move him he might break,” Mercia said.

  “He looks comfortable enough,” Scarlett added. “But we should pull that lever on the wall to close up shop on the way out.”

  Spencer couldn't exit quickly enough, still shaken by the ferocity of his brethren Shadow Foxes. He kept close to Mercia until they were well beyond the door and the reach of the jawed exit.

  “I heard that, Roe. How did he know your name? None of us told him,” Scarlett said as she passed, leaving him alone with Eorl.

  Taking one last look at the pile of ancient fox on the floor beside him he couldn't help but ask himself that same question.

  Putting the charred femur in his mouth, he levered it down hard and with a loud clunk. A system of gears, levers, and weights set into the wall around the door, began to grind to life. Flakes of dried oil spat down around Roe as he turned one last time towards Eorl.

  “Maybe my parents knew him,” he said, tempted to speak further with the old guardian.

  A flash of incisors from outside brought his attention back to the jaws clamping the way shut.

  “More likely his senile memory has mistaken me for another fox. Enjoy the night, Eorl.”

  He grabbed the tooth wedge and kicked the door closed behind him. He was sure he heard the distant howl of a Shadow Fox as it closed. Running up and down the wavy marble tongue, he slid the tooth home and dove out of the mouth with a roll just as the jaws snapped closed behind him.

  *

  “I heard that Gremian was keeping his canines and Shadow Foxes in a secret place,” Daegal said, as the pack of them ran back through the black tunnel. “I guess we found it.”

  “It means there must be another entrance into the graveyard.” Mercia said.

  “Probably through his family crypt,” Scarlett added. “He has no respect for the dead or the living but is too superstitious to cross Eorl.”

  They continued past the tunnel leading to Viradec's Spine, knowing there was no way out in that direction, and left the dark grandeur of the grieving road as soon as a service burrow forked up and to the left. Narrow and rough hewn, the path twisted in a judder over the exposed bedrock. Soon they started to hear the soft sound of running water from the walls around them.

  “Let's stop here,” Roe said, as they came across a hidden alcove garnished with a small spring fed pool at its back. “I don't know about the rest of you, but I would like to clean some of this graveyard off me.”

  Everyone removed their packs and jumped in without debate, except for Scarlett who stood equally as filthy to the side.

  “I have a plan I would like to propose.” She said, nodding to Mercia, then looking at the rest.

  “As long as it involves me sleeping for an hour or two, then I don't care what it is,” Daegal said, attempting to clean a black stain from the fur around his shoulder.

  “It does, in fact.” Scarlett responded. “It would be foolish for Roe to enter the palace and, as you realized when we met on the shore of Ursula's Island, I can become invisible when need be. So, I think I should break into the palace and find Acey. Alone.”

  Mercia scoffed at her boast and lazily spat some water over her shoulder.

  “Besides, I have met him before with my mother and I know he loathes anything and anyone that has to do with the Inari. Daegal, I think you know why. He is an old-fashioned type of fox, conflicted between honour and his duty to the regime and will need to be approached with, shall we say, a vintage decorum.” She looked at Mercia and continued. “Besides I wouldn't trust Spencer's safety to anyone else but you. That's why I will go alone and will use the one remaining parachute to land from the maintenance tunnel above the rotunda mosaic onto the roof of the palace.”

  Mercia looked to Spencer, who was splashing himself clean in the water, then shrugged her shoulders in a feigned indifference. Her growing affection for the little Shadow Fox meant she too would like to see him safely home.

  “None of what you've said answers why you don't want to take a bath,” Daegal pipped in.

  “Mercia, let me break apart one of your sticks of dynamite.”

  Mercia gave her a brief but possessive stare, then smiled and waved her paw in a relaxed blessing. Scarlett quickly snapped one in half between her teeth, dumped the black silt on the ground, and started to roll around in it.

  The others watched bemused until she rose from the dark cloud, looking like a dusty black ghost.

  “I'll be in and out like a dream and we can rendezvous back at the island,” she said, looking to Roe with a gleaming white smile. “Trust me, the palace won't know what hit them.”

/>   Roe looked to Daegal, who returned his gaze with a lazy shrug, already beginning to fall asleep, then to Mercia who was splitting her focus between scrubbing herself, licking a scratch on Spencer's foreleg, and listening to Scarlett.

  “All right, Scarlett,” Roe said, realizing she was asking his permission more than anyone else's. “We are going to help get you on that roof, though.”

  *

  Along with the countless primary arterial thoroughfares, the Greater Burrow of London had even more service tunnels. It would take an entire life to learn half of them, thought Roe. Fortunately Daegal and Mercia had spent their entire lives using them and they quickly led the group on a dizzying journey crossing into several larger burrows and back down numerous nondescript holes. Occasionally they would pass another fox or Shadow Fox on a similar journey and nothing would be said. Journeying through the labyrinth usually meant you were up to something secret or illegal and the foxes who used it felt complicit in their endeavours.

  After an hour and a half they reached a bricked-up arch with the bustle of a city coming from behind it. The maintenance tunnel continued above them and was reached by climbing metal rungs set into the wall. It was never used, other than by naughty young pups on a dare, as the structure itself was not trusted and the drop from the ceiling to the rotunda floor was lethal.

  “I'm not being funny,” said Daegal, looking above. “but I think the safest thing for all of you will be if I wait here.”

  “Yes!” everyone said at once, realizing that a fox of Daegal's size might very well take them and the entire rotunda ceiling down in a rain of cracked skulls and broken tiles.

  “But I can be of service to you in reaching that first rung,” he said, lowering his back.

  One by one they hopped onto the furry step and Daegal gave them a helpful heave up the wall to the first rusty metal loop. It was awkward for a fox to climb the vertical rungs but, by hooking their paws over and down, they had soon climbed high enough to reach a point where the arch of the wall beneath them levelled out into a navigable curve. They found themselves trotting carefully, always mindful of the dangerous distance to the ground beneath them.

  The tunnel ended without warning at a circular ledge. Roe would have been pushed over by the others if Scarlett hadn't bit him hard on the back of the neck in order to pull him back to safety.

  “Thanks,” he said breathing heavily.

  “It looks like the Inari aren't the only ones who've got your back, Roe,” she said, before taking the lead and snaking around the ledge.

  “Sorry, Roe,” Mercia whispered. “I've never been up here before.”

  “Let's go,” he said with some urgency, “before she jumps without our help.”

  They had entered above the Grand Entrance and needed to follow the ledge around the rotunda until it brought them above the palace. Roe looked below him and could see that Gremian had doubled the number of Shadow Foxes in front of the building. These looked similar to those from the graves, larger and more savage than their friends from Shadowfall. Roe wondered if Gremian was intentionally breeding them that way. Trotting as silently as possible, they all hoped the distance they were above the ground would be enough to deaden their paw falls.

  Scarlett had come to a stop and was looking over the ledge with a determined expression.

  “We are too close to the centre and the edge of the palace roof is several tail-lengths away,” she said, with a calculating look.

  Spencer tugged on Scarlett's tail and indicated that she should take off her pack. He then carefully pulled out the parachute and lowered the pack portion over the ledge which he swung a few times as it dangled below.

  “He thinks we should swing you towards the roof.” Mercia said.

  “It's a good idea, Spencer, but I don't think it will work this time,” Mercia continued, giving the small fox an encouraging smile. “With her weight the chute might tear in our jaws, sending her down to those guards below.”

  “I'll toss you towards the roof if you trust my strength enough to breach that gap,” Roe said

  “No I don't trust you,” she said, “but I do believe you are strong.”

  Spencer had begun wrapping the chute back up with a dejected look on his face before Mercia gave him a playful nip.

  “Spencer, swinging her would have gotten the attention of those guards playing dice,” she said pointing towards a pair of soldiers on the roof. She turned towards Scarlett and continued,“You'll have to make quick work of them before they raise the alarm. One bark will have all those Shadow Foxes below on you in minutes.

  “That all depends on how well Roe can aim,” Scarlett replied, putting her paws back through the loops on her pack.

  Spencer suddenly gave an excited yelp, startling the others. Having had a new idea he eagerly pulled his scythe from the bag strapped across his back, then indicated that Scarlett should cut the parachute lines once she was close enough to the roof of the palace. This would give her a weapon and an element of surprise as she pounced.

  “Okay, that's a good idea Spencer,” Scarlett said with a smirk. “I'll meet you back at home. You listen to Mercia and do what she says.”

  He nodded and snuggled back up to his new sister fox.

  “Be careful,” Mercia said before backing the pair of them away to make room.

  “Are you ready?” Roe asked.

  “No,” she said. “But you might as well throw me anyway.”

  “I'm going to aim just behind the guards. There isn't much of a breeze, so you should float straight down.” He took a strong bite-hold onto her pack, then whispered through clenched teeth, “I'd like to get to know you a bit better, so get out and give me the chance.”

  “I'll be careful, Roe.” she responded gruffly, then continued softly, “there's more I'd like to know about you, too. Now throw me.”

  He gave himself one steadying swing and then tossed her as hard as he could over the ledge.

  She hung in the air for a moment and allowed herself to free fall longer than usual in order to clear the gap to the roof. Pulling on the cord, the parachute plumed above her, jerking her back. She whipped out the scythe and cut the lines before slowing completely and landed on all fours hard but silently behind the guards. Creeping quickly across the roof while her companions watched from their front row ring above, she thought about killing them but decided to do otherwise. Flipping the scythe, she caught the blade in her mouth and used the hard wooden handle to knock them unconscious. To the terror of the foxes above her, the parachute started to drift away from the roof towards the rotunda and the Shadow Foxes below. Fortunately, Scarlett saw this and, lunging as far over the edge of the building as she could, she managed to catch the white fabric on a single hooked claw before it floated out of reach.

  She pulled it back and stuffed it into her sack, then collapsed with a brief sigh, relieved not to be a flattened pile of fur below, or worse, a prisoner of the Shadow Guards. Looking up at the others, she waved that she was okay, then took up the bottle of booze standing beside the nearest unconscious fox and poured it over both guards and their garments. Even if they reported being attacked, which they probably wouldn't out of embarrassment, no one would believe them given how strongly they would smell of alcohol.

  The others continued to watch from above until she found an old ventilation grill, pried it open, and disappeared into the circular gap.

  “Don't worry,” Mercia said. “I'm sure she'll be fine.”

  Spencer shook his head with a smile, indicating that he wasn't worried about Scarlett at all.

  “I wasn't talking to you, pup. I was talking to him,” she said, indicating to Roe, before turning away, pushing Spencer in front of her along the ledge to safety.

  *

  The heating systems throughout the palace were no longer in use, as the power which delivered the heat had stopped functioning long ago. They were carved directly out of the stone and were caked in ages of ash, which only added to the black already soaked i
nto Scarlett's fur. She passed several more grills looking through them to get her bearings. She knew the layout of the castle well from the illustrations in several of her mother's books. At some period in the burrow's past the building had been the pride of the foxes, she was sure of it. Now it was the place foxes feared the most, and she was breaking into it.

  Nearly dizzy by the number of turns, dips and rises, she finally came to a grill which lead into a room she knew only too well. The great library.

  If the palace was the pride of London then the library was the pride of the palace. There was only one thing missing from the library, however. In all the stacks and stacks of shelves rising far above and in countless rows, there wasn't a single book. The library had been emptied long ago and the books presumably destroyed.

  She silently nudged the grill with her shoulder and felt it give with a slight rusty squeak. Giving it a harder push she hoped the cast iron was hinged above and that it wouldn't loudly land on the floor. It came free without warning and Scarlett fell through the opening, ungracefully landing, snout first on the tiles, but managed to catch the grill before it swung shut with a bang.

  She rolled onto all fours only to find herself crouching over a shadow vixen and fox passed out in a pile of hemp rope. Her first reaction was to stop breathing, and it wasn't until her own breath fell in rhythm with the others that she slowly crept away not starting to trot until she was far enough away that her paw-falls were consumed by the vast space.

  Navigating the dark labyrinth of stacks was easy since the foxes of the palace only travelled one way in and out and the evidence of their passing was clear to follow. On either side of her, the floor was piled thick with centuries of undisturbed dust and rubble. The way descended down a slight hill of exposed bedrock then turned suddenly and she found herself in a large room where the shelves were crammed full.