Pride-commander Kralaford urged Hakansa onwards at a quicker pace than he knew was wise. The fighting beasts of the Pride were not bred for prolonged swiftness, and as he reached the crest of the valley where the river Siceria lay, he could hear Hakansa's breath labouring. Sir Hogan and Sir Beddingvale, along with the remaining messengers, reached the crest behind him, and their own steeds were similarly rasping in parched displeasure.

 The morning's journey had taken them north and east, and as they had passed through the ranch lands, the sun had risen. It turned the eastern sky a burning orange as they skirting the tragasaur herds, whose members stood clumped together, unmoving and night somnolent.

A half hour later they had reached the ghost of the Sanctuary road, snaking up into hills, where the ground was scarred by bands of rock. The hills grew steeper, the rock becoming more prominent, rising in heavy slabs, shaped by the Siceria over centuries into the echoing cataracts of the deeps. The rising sun made rainbows in the clouds of spray thrown up by the unseen falls, and glinted off the wide river in the valley below. Sir Kralaford tracked the Siceria's course southwards, noting the numerous farms lying on its east and west banks, enclosed by their crescent shaped kernik orchards, their waters still high after the rains.

The deeps bridge lay somewhere ahead, beyond the rising hills, and he was sure it was the path his son's kidnappers would have taken, but a feeling of uncertainty gnawed at him. If it was the obvious route of escape, would it be the one they would take? What if they had turned back north in the night and joined the Force road where it crossed the Rhebus? He chided himself for not following their trail more cautiously, even though he knew that he had not had the time for such care.

He could see the distant figures of riders in the valley below; knights of Dolphus Chapter carrying out their search of the farms. The sight of them reassured him that his decision had been correct. All the crossing places remaining on the Siceria, the Rhebus, and the Faulker, were occupied by farms or ranches, and they would all be searched and their inhabitants questioned. No one could have passed them without being seen or heard.

Hakansa's breathing had slowed, and with a word of command, Sir Kralaford urged him on, up into the hills, and the bridge over the deeps.

His son's kidnappers would soon be found, and they would be punished.

* * * * *

As Tahlia and Grifford followed her down the sloping passageway, Dak was beset by new doubts. Not at what she was doing, those doubts had never left her, and still beat at her with every step. The realisation was falling on her though, that the access tunnels were vast, and she was not absolutely certain they would all slope directly down to the waste reservoir. What if they sloped out to the shield bastions, and then back like a zig-zag shot game, or ended in a deep sump chamber where the outflow was accessed from a different corridor? They could be lost for days trying to find the right path down. She was too scared of Grifford's reaction to voice her concerns, and she could feel her heart thumping faster and faster with every step they took downwards, until they came to a junction where she was forced to make her first decision.

The junction was a simple one. The corridor ahead continued to curve away in the right direction, but it also sloped upwards. There was an archway on their left, and the corridor beyond sloped down so steeply the floor was stepped. That would take them both down and inwards, so it was the obvious one to take. The logic of that answer calmed her inside, and she felt her heartbeat slow a little, and her stomach untie itself from the knot it had bound itself into. She went down the stairs, and the others followed in silence.

* * *

As they continued their descent, Grifford felt an unfamiliar apprehension growing inside him. It was not the fear of what lay ahead, but something was beginning to gnaw at his senses, and he could not figure out the cause of his growing discomfort until his sister spoke.

"It is so quiet down here."

And that was it. Grifford had grown up in the fortress, with its constant background hum of noise from its thousands of inhabitants. There was always the sound of arms training from the barracks, and the clanging of metal being beaten rising from the Workshops. Even in the peace of the gardens there was always the sound of birdsong and the distant calling of madriel from the plains below, but in the tunnels beneath the fortress there was nothing but echoing quiet.

When they had first set off, the only sound had been the heavy thud of Grifford and Dak's boots, until Grifford had taken his off and ordered her to do the same.

"You make too much noise," he had said. "Vlambra will hear us coming from a kilometre away."

The Engineer had obeyed instantly, so now the only sound was the faint trickling of water in the sewerage pipes behind the walls, and the near silence was giving Grifford's senses a keen edge.

The Engineer girl didn't help. She seemed to lack any kind of confidence, and dithered at each junction they came to. He was not happy at having to follow her choices. After a while though, he had to concede that she seemed to know what she was doing. Only once did they come to a dead end, where the passage they were following ended in a room of pipes and valves, with a large cylindrical tank in its centre. There had been no other way out of the room, so they had back tracked, climbing upwards into a different passageway.

The girl seemed to grow even more agitated as they climbed, and Grifford had scowled at her meekness. She must have seen, because her simple face darkened, and she had looked as though she were about to cry. Grifford had shaken his head, and continued to follow her.

Eventually, they found a long spiral stair leading downwards. The air in the stairway was chill, and the Engineer girl put her hand on the metal wall that enclosed it.

"We are now beside the fortress' primary reservoir core," she said. "We are getting close."

"Good," said Grifford.

The near silence was still getting to him, but there was something else that he could not get out of his mind. It was the thought of his baby brother, trapped down here away from the sun.

Someone was going to pay for that act of treachery.

* * *

The stair came out through a door, high in the wall of a square room. Standing with Grifford and Dak on the narrow walkway beyond the door, Tahlia peered down, but the floor was lost to sight far below. A wide pipe entered the room in the ceiling above their heads and dropped down through its centre, supported by heavy gantries. Metal stairs ran in between them, hugging the walls in a square spiral.

The higher walkways were well lit by the bright blue lights, but the stair below seemed to disappear into darkness, and the room was filled with the tang of wet metal.

"I think that this is the start of the old sector," said Dak.

"Go on then," said Grifford, but Dak hesitated.

"Are you not sure?" asked Tahlia.

"I believe that I am sure," said Dak. "But it is dangerous beyond here."

"Fine!" said Grifford, and pushed his way past her onto the head of the stairs. "I'll lead from here."

They continued downwards, Grifford with his sword drawn, and Dak close behind him, her eyes wide. Tahlia stayed at the back with an arrow nocked on her bow string, watching the darkness below her as she carefully felt the way down the stairs with her feet. She slowly became aware of the sounds of water from below, though she could still see the room's floor.

That was because the room had no floor.

Instead it opened out through the roof of a still greater chamber, and Tahlia stopped to gaze in wonder at the size of it. It was a cavern carved out of the rock of Klinberg's hill, and she could not see the bottom of it, or the farthest reaches of its walls. Vast metal columns rose out of the darkness below and reached up to the ceiling, where they split, arching outwards and joining to form a massive vault. The chamber beneath it was filled with pipes and open causeways, where water ran, falling sluggishly from one to the other. There were more metal walkways running among the pipes and causeways, and though they were set with lights, their blue glow was widely spaced and did little to clear the darkness away.

The broad pipe they had followed down the centre of the room ended below them, over a cylindrical tank. Its top was open, and it was full of dark water, from which a foul smell rose, and where a large paddle turned on an axle, churning at the filthy liquid. The stairs descended to a round walkway that circled the tank, and as they climbed down towards it, there came a gushing sound from above. A lump of brown water fell from the open end of the wide pipe they had circled down, churning the fetid liquid in the tank below, and adding its stink to the air.

Tahlia pressed her hand to her mouth. Dak coughed, her face turned pale, and she bent over the railing's edge and was sick. When she was done, she sank to her knees and continued to retch noisily. Grifford's face remained impassive as he stood breathing shallowly through his mouth, until he hissed at her to be quiet.

Dak clasped a hand over her mouth and nose, but continued to retch.

"Let us get away from here," said Tahlia, her own stomach starting to rebel.

Dak pulled herself up by the walkway's railing, and with her hand still clamped over her mouth, led them around to where a stair fell downwards, away from the tank. Once they were below its rim, the stench lessened, but the whole cavern still stunk with a haze of waste. The stair led to a platform where a bridge spanned an open causeway. The water running below them was a dirty grey colour, but did not stink as foully as the water in the tank above. It reminded Tahlia more of the smell of a fresh scrubbed floor, rather than the smell of the latrine.

Grifford crouched at the platform's edge, carefully studying the scene beyond its lip, where the grey water slipped and cascaded into another unseen sloping causeway. Tahlia stood beside him and followed his gaze as he staredinto the massive open cavern, at the maze of pipes and walkways below.

"Where could Vlambra be hiding?" she said to herself.

"If he is even here!" said Grifford.

"This place certainly stinks. He is here somewhere. I am sure of it."

Dak came to stand beside them. Her face was still pale, but at least she has stopped making those revolting heaving noises.

"The smell is not so bad here," she croaked, wiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand.

Tahlia narrowed her eyes, and peered down into the chamber's shadows.

"Yes, and Vlambra said he would have to stay where it stank. Where is the most vile smelling place down here?"

Dak frowned in though.

"My guess would be directly over the waste reservoir. It is where all these pipes and causeways will be going."

She pointed into the darkness, and Tahlia looked downwards. There was little else to be seen from their new vantage except that, because they had moved from behind one of the supporting columns, they could see a tower in the centre of the chamber, rising up to touch the cavern roof. Its rounded surface was covered in hundreds of small pipes, which curled about and joined together in bundles, before reaching out across the open space, suspended beneath walkways or clinging to the larger waste pipes. There were also walkways joined to the tower, and others circling about it.

"What is that?" asked Grifford.

"I do not know," said Dak. "But those pipes are the same as those that supply the fortress with its heat and its light and its water.

"Can we get inside there?" asked Tahlia.

"I do not know," said Dak again. "Why are you asking?"

"Because we need to get down without being seen."

Tahlia looked down into the chamber, at the blue lights that made deep shadows out of everything. Vlambra could be hidden in any of them. She studied the maze of pipes and walkways, and though the shadows made them baffling, and the empty space below was dizzying, she thought she could see a path to the tower.

"I think we can get to it from up here," she said.

"Let us go then," said Grifford.

"I will go first," said Tahlia. "Follow me and stay in the shadows.

She ran across the bridge, crouching low and staying in its centre. She heard Grifford and Dak following after, and she led them down, avoiding the lights where she could, and hurrying past them where she could not.

She followed the walkways, ducking beneath pipes whose undersides were hung with rachnid spikes, and over more open causeways, some slick and stinking, others dry and coated in old moss. The air felt damp and clammy, and there were parts where the moisture fell like rain to wet her skin. She tried not to think about the pipes above, from which the foul liquid fell. One of the walkways they crossed took them over a deep open tank, and though there was nothing flowing into it, scum coated water filled its bottom. As they passed above, something flopped in its depths, sending slow ripples across the water's surface that bounced back from the tank's metal sides.

"Are there things living down here?" asked Tahlia.

Dak was looking down curiously into the tank.

"Many things that my father has warned me of."

Tahlia stood unmoving at the walkway's centre, her hand instinctively drawing back the arrow on her bow. As she stood watching the darkness, a rebellious part of her brain started to question the wisdom of what she was doing. And why she was doing it. After all, it was not as though she had a great affection for her new born brother.

But that was not the point.

The simple fact was that someone had come into her home, and they had been behaving in an underhand fashion, and that, quite frankly, could not be tolerated.

Her thoughts were broken as something skittered along the handrail in front of her, before dropping onto the metal at her feet and disappearing over its edge. She jumped back and drew the arrow back to her eye, but the thing had gone before she had time to shoot.

"Probably just a rodent," she whispered. She glanced back down into the tank's darkness, but there was nothing moving except the slow bulging of the water's thick surface where the ripples were subsiding. "Come on."

When they reached the tower and followed the walkway running around its curved side, Tahlia could find no door, though there was a ladder set into its side, leading downwards. It was almost concealed by the thick bundles of pipes that clung to the metal wall on either side of it.

"Down?" said Grifford.

"Down," confirmed Tahlia as she tucked the arrow back away, and hooked her bow onto the side of its quiver.

"I will go first now," said Grifford, and Tahlia decided to let him have his way. He could hardly get lost on a ladder.

He slid his sword into its scabbard, swung himself onto the ladder, and began to climb downwards, his bare feet making no sound on its rungs. Dak followed after and Tahlia went next, though not before checking that her mother's hunting knife was close at hand in the pouch at her belt. The ladder passed more of the tower's encircling walkways, and they stopped at the first one to look for a door to its insides. It did not have one, and neither did the next, so after that they ignored them and continued their climb in silence. As they descended, Tahlia saw that the walls of the cavern were closing in, tapering to a place somewhere below them. Though she still could not see where their climb would end, the foul smell of the place was growing, and with it came the sound of a mass of churning water.

It seemed they would be climbing down for ever without end, until there was a sudden high pitched squeal from below. The sound was joined and multiplied by further squeals that batted at her eardrums in a relentless pulsing. The air about her was suddenly moving with the beat of small wings, as a dozen small black shapes flapped about them. Something caught in her hair and she closed her eyes tight when she felt wet wings slapping against her face. The thing could not get free, and pulled and tangled itself further in her hair until she grabbed it and yanked it loose, throwing it away from her. The creature flapped wetly away, its single high pitched squeal rapidly disappearing after the rest of the unknown flock. Tahlia wiped at her face where it was wet, and stunk of damp decay.

"What was that?" she hissed at Dak, who clung to the ladder below her, her head tucked between her hands. She did not reply, and Tahlia thought she had not been heard above the noise of churning water from below, but then Grifford called back up.

"There is some kind of nest down here."

"Can we get by?"

Grifford didn't reply, and when Tahlia peered down at him she saw him unmoving on the ladder, looking down into the darkness. She leant out herself to see what he was looking at, and then froze. Not far below them a wide parapet circled the tower, and below it the darkness had ended, replaced by a vast moving mass of liquid, its scummy surface reflecting the lights from above. The thick waste pipes, that had wended their way down through the chamber above, disappeared through its thick surface, and where they entered, the dark liquid boiled lazily and threw up waves of dirty foam.

Tahlia felt her grip tighten on the ladder, and her stomach flipped at the sight of the churning water, though it was not the sight of that which had made her brother freeze. The parapet below was well lit by bright blue lights positioned somewhere below them on the tower's curved wall. A shadow was being cast by those lights, and though it was long, and its head disappeared over the parapet's edge, it was clearly the shadow of a man. At first she could not see who cast it, but then the shadow's arm moved across the metal of the parapet's floor, and the shape seemed to grow longer as its caster walked away from the tower. Then she saw, strangely small and foreshortened, a man looking up at them, his hand capped over his eyes to keep out the glare of the lights.

There was a sword grasped in his other hand, and a look of nastiness on his face.