The Way Back (Champions of the Crystal Book 4)

Chapter 6: Buried Secrets

The air in the tunnel was cooling rapidly, Scotty noticed, wondering if that signified the end of the work shift. The guards were certainly tiring. He wondered why they hadn't been relieved. Hadn't Mara said something about a labor shortage? That could be a great advantage.

Sure enough, the guards called a halt to the work, and the water bearers arrived, this time with food and pallets too. Scotty resigned himself to another night on a hard, cold floor, and gave up his pickax to a guard reluctantly. The guards retired, shepherding the water bearers out, and soon all was silent as the exhausted workers dropped onto their pallets.

Scotty knew from his previous night's reconnoiter that the tunnel entrance was guarded by a huge, ferocious-looking creature that was evidently the reptilian equivalent of a watchdog. He had nothing to tempt it or drug it with, and nothing he could make into a weapon. His hunt for air shafts had been disappointing, too. This tunnel was far more primitive than the Stanosians needed to be. They obviously didn't care about the workers inside it and didn't want their labor directed away from the main goal—whatever that was.

When most of the workers were deeply asleep—at least Scotty surmised they were, judging by the vigorous snoring going on around him—he looked around for Toren. The guards always left them one light, far up the shaft but enough to turn the pitch blackness into a gray gloom.

"You'd be wise to get your sleep while you can," Toren's low voice said as he settled down beside Scotty. He had to nudge an undersized Stanosian out of the way to do it, but he met with no protest.

"I'd rather be briefed."

"No, you wouldn't," Toren said. "Were you joking about the Fifth Fleet?"

Scotty hated to quash the reluctant hope in his ally's voice, but he owed him the truth. "Sort of. They are on their way to Stanos' coordinates, but since we're out of phase I doubt they'll be able to reach us. I'm supposed to be finding and knocking out whatever they used to make the shift."

"That's going to be a problem," Toren said. "Do you know what we're digging for?"

"Something called k'brith, whatever that is."

"It's a crystalline formation. It's found mostly in ancient volcanic deposits in the bedrock," Toren said.

"Crystal? Not like särad crystal?"

"My partner, Airie, didn't have enough crystal sensitivity to qualify for the Wayfarer Candidate Program, but she could sense this stuff. So it must be similar. But it can't be the grade necessary for Homeworld's operations or they would have mined it centuries ago."

"How...how did she die?"

"Varla interrogated her to death." Toren's voice was tightly controlled, but Scotty could hear his helpless rage nonetheless. "I was there. She did me first, but I didn't know enough about särad crystal. So then she made me watch while she interrogated Airie. She was trying to find out how similar k'brith is. But Airie was quite clear that it couldn't be used for travel, as the Wayfarers use it, so I still don't know what Varla plans."

"I do," Scotty said. "She's got the Guardian. I bet she's trying to find out if k'brith works the same way as the Great Crystal does."

"We better hope it doesn't," Toren murmured.

"We have to get out of here before she can find out," Scotty said. "We're not very far from the palace, are we?"

"Distance in the desert can be deceiving," Toren said. "But I think we're fairly close, yes. See that seepage over there? The palace is built on a big aquifer. Our planetary scans from orbit showed a network of caves and water right under it and for about three kilometers around. I think we're within that range, and that seepage is from the same aquifer. But that doesn't help us with the first step: getting out of this tunnel."