Chapter 5: Five

"Four is an unlucky number," Tiger said, as they coalesced into a group.

Ada looked up at him, her face severe. "Four has always been lucky to me."

They explored together, touching the walls to see if there were gaps or tricks, shining the lantern on anything that sparked their curiosity.

"Where have you been all these years?" Ada asked.

Rose looked over at her. "I've been..." Then she scratched at her face a little and trailed off into thought. "Well, I've been here, and..."

After a moment of silence, Gus touched her shoulder again. "You don't have to tell us if you don't want to. It's okay."

"Ever since Leaf died I've been... lost. Very lost. I'm not sure where I was. There were a lot of trees and..." Rose said.

"I'm happy to have you back," Gus said.

The small animals paid little attention to them as they passed, but Rose kept looking around, eyes big and wide. A bird splashed her as it dived from a tall leafy plant into the green-tinged water.

They continued to press the walls they could reach, checking for new doors.

A rock moved out of the wall and opened a door into a dark room that sparkled with water. Rose stumbled into the room in front of them. It slowly lit up around her as she tried to right herself.

Gus moved forward to grab her, and the dark room glittered like gems as the door to it slammed shut in front of them, cutting them off from her.

He slammed into the rock wall. It was hard and unmoving, not responding to his fists as he hit it. And that was all they could hear, because the gentle drip drip sound from the room Rose had fallen into was entirely gone. Nor could they hear her. It was as if she had fallen into a void beyond their reach and no longer existed in their world.

Gus curled over as he gave up.

"It will be fine. Rose is a survivor," Tiger said, and put a hand on Gus's back.

"She survived whatever happened in the fight that took her power," Ada said.

"Exactly," Gus muttered. "She's just a normal human now."

But he wasn't going to press the point. What would that do?

Instead he moved with Tiger's hand and stood up straight.

"Where to next?" Gus asked.

He needn't have asked. Another door opened in the rock wall.

They grabbed each other's hands as they walked through, so no one would get lost. Behind them the door slowly closed with an unpleasant grinding sound. But beyond them was heat and light, and the faint sound of people's voices, getting louder as they walked further on.

The path curved around.

"Does anyone feel like we're walking in circles?" Tiger asked.

"There is a myth that says this place spirals inwards, and the throne room is the exact centre-point," Ada said. "This could be a sign that that's true."

The sound of human voices became louder. They turned another rounded corner and the path in front of them became lit with lanterns. Gus took the opportunity to snuff out his own lantern, so as to preserve it for later in the journey. And, finally, they followed another curve into a wide marketplace, lit up bright and warm with fires and the heat of human bodies.

*

They slowly moved into the crowd. There were people everywhere, wearing all sorts of things, clothes from every culture that had made up the land up top and some Gus had never seen before. Rich, bright things or dark ensembles or layered rags, but everything seemed so deeply cared for. And there were not-quite-people there, too, monstrous looking beasts with the bodies of humans and the heads of other animals, and bird-creatures flying about with fish faces, and even more that he couldn't see behind the masses of bodies moving; but they weren't the violent beasts he had to fight top-side, so he moved his hand away from where it was resting on the top of his sword and tried to relax into the warmth.

There were stalls selling beautiful trinkets and stalls selling strange foods. Signs offering massages and dance classes and framed art. And the art samples were beautiful, if grotesque.

Gus started to wander toward one of the stalls, interested in its wares, until Tiger hooked an arm around his waist to drag him back to the middle of the path.

"You can't buy anything here," Tiger said.

"Maybe I could. You don't know what currencies they take," Gus said.

"Don't try to bring anything from here home," Ada said. "Who knows if it would survive the trip back up or just turn into ashes in your hand on resurfacing above. And any food should taste like ashes in your mouth, according to myth, so I wouldn't eat it, either, if I were you."

"But it smells so good," Gus protested.

And it did smell good. It smelled like warmth and home and a childhood better than his childhood, like a beautiful childhood fantasy. Like the warmth of grapes ripe for picking and the brilliance of a beautiful sunset over the shore and the twilight between the trees. He didn't understand how anything could smell like that, but it did, and it was wonderful.

"How does it smell to you?" Gus asked.

"Like..." Tiger's words trailed off as he looked around the market, his eyes wanting. "Like the food of childhood. Does it smell like that to you?"

"Yes," Gus said.

"And like my mother's hands. Like all the women in the house. The sky on a clear morning." Tiger's eyes were slightly damp as he looked off into the distance.

"What about you, Ada?" Gus asked.

Her face was blank as she said, "It smells like death."

That spoiled the mood.

They passed a fortune teller who looked as beautiful as a painting, and found an area with seating with many wooden tables and bench seats, curtained off from some mysterious thing behind it with large patterned sheets. Groups of people were sitting down to each strange foods, some of which still wriggled in their hands, and talked and laughing.

"Maybe we can sit," Gus said.

"I don't think that's wise," Ada said. "Don't get seduced by your desire to rest."

"If we don't talk to the people here, or at least listen in on what they say, how will we ever know how to find the thing we want to find? We can't just go off myths and old rumours. The people that exist here would know more than anyone who hasn't been here," Gus said.

Tiger grinned. "Always reasonable."

"Fine," Ada huffed out.

They found a table near to a fire pit and sat.

The people at one table over were talking about some kind of tournament. The nearest of them, a tall masculine figure with a head like a bull, wiped at the wet edges of a tall glass – some sort of glamorous drink of brilliant green and sparkling gold, topped off with an olive that looked like an eye. Or... no, it really was an eye, bobbing about the top next to chunks of ice. The man sipped his drink and put it back down, that eye bobbing about the whole time. He said something about a queen of pigs, the most monstrous of the minor lords below. And then one of his companions said something about a fish monster that makes doors being more terrifying to encounter. And then another cut in about the monster of the shadow realm, and then Gus realised they were arguing over which of the immortals that ruled the world below (submitting only to their great overlord) could win in a fight.

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He smothered his laugh in his hand.

He had heard, many times, such talk in taverns at home above. Once he remembered eavesdropping from a darkened archway in Mary Louise's establishment, trying not to leave as those he'd seen working at sensible jobs tried to argue over whether he or Lord Henry would win in an all out brawl, an argument that came to no conclusion because Mary Louise came out with a dishrag and threatened to throw them all out if they kept on with such nonsense.

Better than arguments who would win between Gus and Rose, as if he would ever fight her, or he and Tiger, as if they would ever not have each other's backs. Or arguments over who would win between Rose and Leaf and the dark-haired stranger that arrived years ago, a question he had only had answered for him a few hours earlier when he saw her alive and she told him Leaf was dead, but the stranger was not.

Gus began to wish he had his own glamorous, disgusting cocktail to nurse as the maudlin mood took over him.

He looked up instead of letting himself wallow. The fortune teller from the stall opposite them was speaking in a low hum to anyone who would listen, though the crowd kept walking past. She caught his eyes and moved forward, as if in a trance.

"The changeover," she said. "The changeover comes."

"She's a strange one," Tiger said.

Gus looked away, so as not to encourage her. There was movement behind the curtains at the edge of the seated area. He could see the movement of shoes, as well as bare feet and hooves below the end of the curtain. Straw on the ground was kicked up as people went. Perhaps that was an area for the people selling goods and foods to walk about without getting in the way of the customers. Perhaps it was where people went to hide away for romantic liaisons instead.

The curtains rustled. For a moment he thought he saw the glimmer of eyes like dark gems between the curtains and thought of the man he met at the beginning of his journey down. His breath caught.

Tiger jostled his shoulder. "Where did you go in your head? I can't hear anything interesting over here, but if you can..."

Gus focused on the table next to theirs again, and that strange drink. The glass was almost empty and the eye was gone.

On another table a long-legged spider crawled up over the edge and then between the slats.

In the distance, soldiers in old-fashioned plate armour whispered to each other.

He let the conversations around him wash over him for a while, then turned back to his companions.

"Do you want to hear my conclusions here, or while we move away from the area?" Gus asked.

Ada's hands were clenched on her thighs. "I am anxious to move deeper in and away from here."

Gus nodded, and stood. The other two followed. And then they walked around the tables and back near the centre of the road. The crowd was thinning out, but not so much that they stood out. Perhaps the night was wearing late. Hard to tell when there was no sky.

"There are twelve minor rulers to different sections of this place," Gus said.

"Twelve?" Ada asked. "I only heard four."

"It's possible there were twelve once but now there are only four. I can't say what I eavesdropped on was reliable. And they all serve under the one the people here call the Lord of the Underworld," Gus said.

"That strange lady at the fortune telling booth mentioned him," Tiger said.

"The butcher – I barely overheard him, they're so far away now and so many people in the way – kept mentioning him with fear in his voice. They all fear the Lord of the Underworld, their great ruler. And they fear a man who makes doors or gates and lives in a place that's wet. The terror of the deep and dark."

"Maybe those are the portals," Tiger said. "Or something like them."

Gus nodded. "It's possible. And a pig woman, or ruler of pigs, whose undead army can eat entire settlements when she fights. A beastly man who rules the realm of shades, the labouring mindless dead below. I didn't hear much of the fourth, the clown of the marketplace."

"They must be here, somewhere in the crowd," Tiger said. He looked around, as lost as Gus as to who that might be.

The people who argued next to their table had not talked of this clown when they talked of who would win in a fight. It was business owners muttering about him as they went about their work. Perhaps he was only a business leader in the area.

"And the lord above them is too terrifying for them to talk about in detail, I assume," Tiger said, rolling his eyes.

"And above even him," Ada said, her voice steady and quiet, "this world itself, capricious and overbearing, always searching for its perfect tyrant to rule this realm, never settling for more than 300 years at a time." She looked away. "But the marks of the past rulers remain here, even when they're gone from this place."

The crowd thinned out even more. Perhaps they were reaching the end of this widened road and heading toward thinner, deeper tunnels again. Gus looked around at some of the stall-holders behind them looking up like they were expecting rain and starting to pack up.

The fortune teller started to laugh.

And then the ground rumbled again, and one of the curtains caught on fire.

Gus looked back at the rush of heat. Behind them, someone near the curtain shrieked, and pulled off their scarf to bat at it until they put it out. A small moment of excitement.

Most of the people in the marketplace carried on with slowly winding their way through or slowly shutting down their stalls for the day, but Gus felt unsettled.

Another curtain set on fire, spontaneous combustion. Somebody screeched and ran between their trio, separating Gus from Tiger. The shopkeepers sped up their packing up, their movements panicked.

Gus turned around, overwhelmed by all the sights and sounds, the running crowd, the strange, wavering smells that drifted in and out of his senses.

Far down the road they were walking down, near the darkness of a deeper tunnel, an acrobat in clown makeup and a harlequin suit smiled a mysterious smile and posed. From behind them came two more acrobats, their faces covered by plaster masks. A faint music struck up.

Ada grabbed his arm. "You need to focus."

Gus turned to look at her face, lined with concern as ever. "I'll focus on you."

"If this place can't seduce you it will confuse you. You'll get turned around, walking in circles forever, and never get out." Her hand gripped his arm so tight it hurt.

"I know. I know."

Gus looked around, trying to find Tiger again in the crowd, but they were separated by a mass of people. The fortune teller went barrelling toward him, and Tiger caught her before she could fall straight into a fire.

Doors were opening up in the walls. The crowd ran and yelled all over the place.

"I need to know," Ada said. "I need to know how it first felt for you when your heart began to stop and your body froze in time."

"What?" He looked down at her beseeching face. It wasn't the time, not the time at all, but if she was asking now then he would answer. "I felt cold. And quiet. Things began to feel very quiet all the time."

She nodded, and let go.

He put a hand on her back and pushed her forward toward an open door, away from the heat and light. For a moment he was sure he saw the gleam of a dark gem in the crowd, and thought about pushing toward it.

And then Ada said, "Something pulls me. I have to see it," and rushed away from him, drawn in, for once, by something he didn't understand. She rushed through a door and then it slammed behind her.

And then someone else grabbed his elbow, and it really was the man he first met early in the cave, eyes as dark as the night, and he said, "Come with me and you'll be safe."

So Gus nodded and followed, because that had as much chance as anything else of being true.

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