Down in the stone, where age and cold were one and the same and neither seemed much concerned with the living – down in the vast caverns, the old closes, the small cracks that held centuries – water ran, thick and limey with minerals. Trickling through columns that seemed purpose-built, but revealed more of chaos as they became more regular, as they multiplied into ridged swaths of meaningless walls, the water had cleared only awkward paths, hesitant to even its own passage. But it trickled and it ran, and it everywhere moved and made things seem to move, in the dark where nothing lived.
These paths had been found ages ago, by people then forgotten, and probably again, by people entirely unknown, and unknown generations after, but once, the Ainjir came. These caves the Ainjir called sacred, but their children no longer knew what sacred meant, and that didn’t really change the caves at all. They were neither sacred nor not sacred, but cared very little for the small giants too big for cracks and too small for caverns. The people loved the water, but the water only flowed, and trickled, and ran.
The town had been built on top of these, and the palace on top of the town, and that remained for a while, but then came the city and with it the widening and knowing of paths through the caves. Then somebody killed a king, and knowing the paths was strictly regulated – but still known. And eventually came the Academy, which started somewhere else, but soon found the unknown caves, which the known caves always knew about but the people had never.
And they found these caves good for storing cheese.
Also wine, and roots (and in the case of the palace, secrets and dead people), but the caverns under the Academy were less roomy and less well-known, and other than whether they could hold up the buildings put on top of them, the people didn’t really bother to look into them that much.
So the four little cadets, in their grey uniforms, huddled in quiet part of the loud caverns that hadn’t seen cheese in ages, with a shuttered lantern, were seconds from being lost to time forever with each passing, shuddering breath.
They had almost turned deaf to the sound of water, which was always everywhere even if no water could be seen or felt, when a loud echoing crack caused them all the jump.
“Virtue’s Tits, what the fuck was that?” Odhrán gasped, dropping into a shaky whisper.
It was laughter.
“We’re gonna fuckin’ die,” Glasan moaned quietly, hardly aware he had had said it.
“We’re not gonna fuckin’ die,” Taig said, with far more vehement certainty than he felt.
By then, the echoing laughter had gotten close, and the sound of drops had given way to what were clearly somewhat irregular and incautious footsteps.
“This could still be a trap, though,” Taig said, fully validating Dominicus’ often-tested faith that he wasn’t the stupidest bastard of a cadet one could room with.
Taig was the one who made them whisper and creep, and insisted that despite the cold and the absolute pitch darkness they only travel with a minimum of light, and once they had reached their meeting place, stand shuddering in total darkness. Maybe he was a credulous fool. He wasn’t a total idiot.
They saw the warm light of a simple torch turn the walls yellow-orange, a blinding phenomenon to them, well before they saw Dominicus Galen and Esras Cole round the corner of their hiding place. They walked quietly, but loosely, shoulders bumping more often than strictly necessary as they stepped around rocks or puddles, looking for sure footing. Somehow, Galen had managed to convince Cole to carry the torch, an astonishing fact, but perhaps slightly less astonishing than the fact Cole was there at all.
Natural deference had caused the little bundle of cadets to fall silent in the presence of one who clearly (and often emphasized by himself, on his own behalf) outranked them considerably, until Taig, voice slightly cracking, blurted, “Galen, what the fuck?”
Dominicus Galen looked up at him with such precise attention, it was perhaps only the psychic cushion of the other three cadets behind him that allowed him to live. Then the fucker actually smiled.
“Taig. Hello.”
“What are you doing there?” Esras Cole, clearly not actually addressing those beneath his notice, asked, holding the torch forward to fill their uncomfortably cramped alcove with light.
The smallest cadet, a sandy-haired, baile-breith, Muirgheas, was actually shaking from cold, his left side streaked with wet from a slow drip from the ceiling landing squarely between neck and collar. He was ranked eighty-fifth. His friends called him Murry, and less friends, just ‘Ass’.
“We’re…” Taig stuttered, when Galen opted to say nothing, “We’re hid- laying low. Like… like, like you should be doing, too!”
Esras Cole laughed a broad, loud, laugh. “What, we’re not even to the dangerous part yet.”
“Are not you cold?” Galen said, appearing to be actually concerned. Murry blushingly shoved his way out of the water.
“I’m not,” Cole said in a low tone, looking at Galen, who punched him swiftly in the chest. Rather than crumpling, Esras Cole just chuckled, switching the torch to his other hand as if worried Galen might burn himself the next time he punched him. Galen became preoccupied with straightening his own jacket.
“What do you mean ‘dangerous part yet’,” Odhrán asked.
“Don’t scare them,” Galen scolded.
Esras Cole shrugged. “There are dangerous parts.”
“You are full of shit,” Galen said patiently.
Once again, rather than immediately perpetrating violence to demonstrate his unquestionable superiority, as he probably would have done for any of the huddled mass (at least in public), Esras Cole smiled.
“Well, I am the only reason we made it down here at all, so I wonder how you can be so sure.”
This gave Galen pause, but for only a moment. He opened his mouth to say something; Cole grinned aggressively. Dominicus Galen coughed as if choking.
“Shut up,” Galen said.
“Is that what I should do with my m—”
“Experience,” Galen said decisively, turning towards the huddle. “I brought him because he knows the tunnels.”
It was so exceedingly strange to hear Dominicus Galen, so very far outside every conceivable measure or contest relevant to Academy life, say the he ‘brought’ Esras Cole, star and ultimate bogeyman of every conceivable measure or contest relevant to Academy life, that this stopped all conversation.
The four looked at Esras Cole, who seemed content to pretend they didn’t exist in favour of whatever running battle he seemed to have going with Dominicus Galen. Which at least tracked for Taig, as one would have to be an utter fool to ever take one’s eyes off Galen in battle. He would fucking kill you. By accident, probably. Because he didn’t realize you were so weak as to be killable.
Weirdly, Taig felt a little of the tension in his chest ease. At least if they were with these two, it seemed unlikely they would be jumped and beaten by Second Years. Or, truly at least, they would stand a fighting chance if they were jumped and beaten by Second Years.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Galen snapped at them, their heads swivelling to him like wheat towards the cutting scythe. “Are we going to handle this ghost… thing or will you be staring all night?
He pre-emptively tapped Cole’s chest with a closed fist in threat, to which Cole only grinned.
“Yes,” Esras Cole said, finally acknowledging the four, “I have much better things to do. And get back to doing.”
This time Galen looked at Cole, expression inscrutable to the other cadets but seeming pleasant enough to Cole.
“Lead the way,” Cole said, when Taig and the others failed to move.
Despite the torch, the four carefully opened the shutter to create a beam of light for the path before them. Clustering close together (and carefully away from the walls) they followed the path suggested to them by the Second Years during the fireside story. This being their second time (if one didn’t count successfully escaping the grasping dead by running in absolute fear of their lives) didn’t seem to lend them much confidence in the path.
A few steps behind, Galen and Cole engaged in murmured conversation, almost unintelligible except that Galen seemed to like to tell Cole to be quiet often, and Cole liked to ignore him.
Stung, Taig reflected Galen probably would have forcibly insisted if it were him, but maybe, he too was measuring his behaviour in hopes of gaining favour with a top ten cadet. However useless that might be.
“…in the story,” Galen’s voice rose enough for the others to hear, “the cadet is betrayed by his fellow cadets into the caves.”
“Stupid,” Cole reflected.
“It’s not,” Murry piped up, and having survived this first venture, continued in a raised whisper. “It’s his patron – his patron is convinced to test him, since he’s not normal cadet.”
“What do you mean, normal?” Odhrán hissed. “Because he’s an outsider – he’s talented, but not sophisticated, like the noble cadets. It isn’t a test, it’s a way of clearing him out of the way if he’s not going to learn how to play the game.”
“I only meant you’d trust your patron – if someone took you under their wing, you would trust them. And his superior officer betrays him.”
“I dunno,” Glasan offered, “I don’t know that it was clear the other cadets meant to kill him.”
“It was clear to his lover,” Taig said. “She saw it – so it must have been obvious.”
“Well, that undersells the blacksmith girl,” Odhrán objected. “She’s supposed to be really clever.”
“She’s stupid enough to believe in ghosts,” Glasan shot back.
“So are you,” Galen said, temporarily halting the argument.
“Well, it’s not that we believe exactly…” Taig said.
“We’re not that dumb,” Glasan said, faltering as he noticed the intensity with which Taig was staring at him, and the stony gaze of Galen behind him, “not… that… believing in things… is dumb.”
“It is,” Esras Cole said.
“Curses, though,” Murry interjected, who had always had a nose for impending bloodshed, “I mean, that’s just kind of reasonable, isn’t it? It’s not like there’s… well, good and back luck, and you know…”
“The girl follows him into the caves to try to stop the plan to murder her lover,” Galen said, excessively evenly.
“Nice of her,” Cole replied.
“Because he wouldn’t listen to her,” Galen added.
“Uh…” Taig halted, the ragtag bunch behind him drawing up to his back. They faced a fork. “It’s… right, isn’t it?”
“Look at the walls,” Esras Cole said, pushing past the group to touch the stone on the left wall.
Taig, the only one brave enough at the moment, shuffled forward to lean in and look closely. “Tool marks?”
“There used to be reason to know the paths down here,” Esras Cole said, his voice an uncomfortably close and comfortingly deep rumble as he looked with piercing eyes still clear, but darkened by the torchlight, into Taig’s face. “They no more wanted to get lost than you do.”
Taig swallowed. “Uh… yeah, it’s the left then.”
“And we should dim our lantern,” Cole said, stepping away to plunge the torch into a pool that had formed in a divot by the wall. “Just let the light fall downward, on the path. And be quieter.”
Glasan and Odhrán struggled with the sticky shutter, but soon there was one downward sloped beam, focused narrowly on the ground, for them to follow on the leftward path.
“So what happens to our doomed lover?” Cole asked in that low tone that made Taig slightly shivery now that he had been close to it. He wasn’t even interested in men, it was just... hard not to shiver.
“Well,” Murry talk-whispered, voice shaky either from cold, fear, or the struggle to find the right volume that wouldn’t get them jumped or cursed or killed or between Cole and Galen or whatever it was they were actually afraid of. He wasn’t quite sure anymore.
“Well, she heads down into the caves, but doesn’t know her way around, and she loses her cadet. Soon, though, she can hear the sound of fighting, and fearing he is under attack she starts to run, but it echoes through the caverns making her more and more lost. And she hears screaming and crying in pain so she runs faster, and she’s getting more and more lost. And soon all she can hear is breathing, fast and ragged, the sound of a dying man, and she starts to pray. She prays for her gods to help her find her love before it’s too late, because she can heal him, she learned the arts, but the breathing only gets louder and louder and never nearer, and she runs and runs, and finally she realizes that the breathing she thought was her lovers’ is gone, and all she can hear is her own – he is dead, and she is lost, and neither of them will ever return from the caves beneath the Academy Tower. So she calls on the gods to curse them, and curse her, and let her wander and wander until she finds the cadets who murdered her lover and murder them herself.”
For a few quiet moments, they heard nothing but the quiet running water and the scratches of their own footsteps.
“This isn’t under the Tower.”
“W-what?” somebody among the four asked, but it was too dark to really tell who.
So Esras Cole repeated himself. “This isn’t under the Tower. You would never get anywhere near that. This is actually closer to the library. Really between that and the Second Year dormitories. It doesn’t connect to anything or go anywhere, or you would have been caught the first time you snuck in before you got twenty paces.”
“You don’t get caught,” Dominicus Galen replied incredulously.
“I am not a fool.”
“Arguable,” Galen replied, “but that explains why the Second Years lured you here.”
“Yes,” Cole said tersely, “I suppose it does that.”
“But are they here again?” Galen asked.
“What?” Glasan asked.
“Doubt it,” Cole replied. “They’re mean but they’re also lazy.”
“Galen, are you saying it was the Second Years who touched us when we came down here the first time?” Taig asked.
“Probably.”
“No way,” Odhrán insisted. “It was cold. The hand. It was cold, and clammy and… and…”
“It felt like a skeleton hand,” Glasan said.
“Like this?”
“AH FUCK….uh… no.”
“Can you fake it?” Murry asked.
“What about this?” Odhrán said.
“No… I mean, that feels like a hand.”
“Do you think they’ve just… got a skeleton hand?”
“Stop it,” Galen said, though to whom, it wasn’t certain.
“Possible,” Esras Cole said with a disproportionately heavy sigh. “I would also believe them capable of grave robbing.”
“But did people die down here? Do you think there’s dead people down here?” By the tone of the fear, that was probably Odhrán, but possibly Murry.
“Assuredly,” Cole said. “Dumb First Year cadets who rose to the bait and never made it back out.”
“Why are you having us be so careful, then?” Galen snapped. “Is there no danger but stupidity, or is there danger?”
“Stupidity is enough, but sure, there’s danger,” Cole said. “We’re getting near something… either where the Second Years got in or maybe some other kind of opening.”
After a moment of silence, in which their beam of light failed to move forward, Cole added, “The sound changed.”
That muttering was not water, but Dominicus Galen saying something to himself or possibly his gods in Midraeic. A shiver went through the four, sure that this was an invocation for protection against whatever was coming up, and not cursing the whole being of Esras Cole to his finest fallen hair.
“This is… this is close to where we felt it,” Taig said.
The light hesitatingly moved on.
It was impossible to tell from its tiny sliver whether the scenery changed, whether the room opened or the dynamics altered, but they could feel it in the air, which was at once looser and warmer around them.
“Shut the light,” Cole demanded.
With a tiny squeak, this last shred of visibility vanished. All six cadets sat in the dark for some moments, the four hesitant to even breathe too deeply.
“Open it,” Cole said, his voice, at normal speaking volume, like an echoing shout.
The shallow-roofed room slowly filled with light as Glasan eased each side of the shutters open. It wasn’t a large room, but compared to the close passageways it seemed like a vault; not just that, but the way the ceiling arched above them and the floor flattened out, it became clear this was a purposeful vault. Nothing but manmade, it was perhaps as large as two of their dormitory rooms pushed together, and – depressingly – the ceiling was higher. Passing by the four, still bunched and blinking around their lantern, Esras Cole walked to the opposite wall and touched it, before spinning on his heel and sitting on a ledge that seemed placed for just such a purpose.
“This is nice,” he said.
“The Second Years must use this place from time to time,” Galen said, passing to another of the walls where rested the remains of other torches by a deceptively still puddle, renewed by a steady stream of water down the wall and drained in its own mysterious, dark depths, surrounded by the dropped detritus of food and bits of cloth scattered along the edge of the wall.
“Do you think we passed it?” Taig asked.
Galen and Cole looked at the four cadets.
“The…uh…” Odhrán said, face colouring slightly but voice gaining strength as he went, “the chamber we were in was bigger. And had… more stuff.”
“Scary stuff,” Murry said, kicking at a desiccated piece of fruit. “I don’t feel like we walked enough.”
“I think we passed it,” Glasan said. “Must have. It was way different.”
Galen and Cole looked at each other.
Odhrán almost slapped the lantern out of Glasan’s hand, falling to his butt before it on the floor to shove the shutters closed.
“What—?”
“SHHHH,” he hissed, and all at once, the dark and the dripping water were the only things alive again.
Finally, they all heard it – very faintly, a rustling, a quiet set of shuffling steps, and gradually, whispering.
They could not hear or see one another, but even the thickest cadet would realize they were about to be fucked.
If it were the Second Years, there was going to be a fight that they would probably lose, or that would lead to them losing later, even if they escaped the beating now.
If it were any of the groundskeepers or servants or any of the people who actually had a right to be in the passages beneath Academy buildings, they would have their skin stripped off via a birch rod beating for the ages. The officers guaranteed blood for being in forbidden areas.
If it were the restless dead, well – presumably, that would be worse than anything, though they had precious little idea what that would entail exactly.
They suffered long seconds in the dark.
“…eard them talking about it, ‘swear. …little fucks…down here… that fucking kneeler…”
Fingers touched the edge of Galen’s palm, against the wall, then a hand was on Galen’s hand, then travelled up his arm, to chest, to shoulders, to seize the back of his neck and pull him forward, so that Cole’s hot breath landed just on his ear:
“Back, the rightward passage leads to the Second Year dorms, sound travels far down here but not always in the expected direction.”
“They’ll pass us?” Galen asked.
“Or they have already.”
“They’ll come back,” Galen said.
“Likely.”
It was hard to hear tone without his face to watch, and with the low breathiness of the quietest whisper they could manage, so maybe Dominicus felt the tension in his breath, or heard it in the way he swallowed. They were, in fact, fucked. The Second Years were presumably taking the path back to the entrance the First Years had found, which meant that narrow path would be blocked. Thanks to Cole, they had avoided bumbling into the path that would have put them beneath the Second Year dorms, and probably landed them already in the care of the medics. If the Second Years didn’t find them down the path to the entrance, they would double back, and probably check this well-known hiding place, in which they were cornered.
Dominicus wasn’t necessarily against confronting the Second Years if they doubled back to this area, and handling things with violence, but it wasn’t ideal. Certainly not for everyone else, who perhaps didn’t have quite the same relationship with the Second Year class or Academy officials. Anyway, the day had started off very nice.
“Let them pass us,” Dominicus whispered. He felt more than heard Cole’s question in the way Cole’s chin brushed his face. “Then we haunt them back.”