Empress of the Underworld (14 page)

Abbey sputtered, “I-I-I was once, but I'll never serve you.”

The empress drew a small knife with a jewel-encrusted blade from beneath her clothing. “Hold her fast,” she told the guards.

At once Abbey was held in iron hands.

Still gripping the girl's chin, the empress placed the cold blade on her cheek. “If I slice your cheek, it'll make a terrible scar. Then you won't be beautiful anymore, will
you?” She smiled as Abbey's eyes grew blank with terror. “Perhaps you have a choice to make. You'll either help me, or I will scar your face so terribly that no one will find you beautiful ever again.”

She laughed aloud at the panic in Abbey's eyes. “I see that frightened you. Think about it then. You can have your beauty and serve me, or not serve me and be scarred for life. Which will it be? Take her away!”

Abbey was pulled away by the guards, and as she and Beren were hurried down the hall, Beren said, “Don't give up, Abbey. We still have Goél on our side.”

13

A Crazy Dream

I
n the retaining room, the Sleepers surrounded Beren and Abbey.

As soon as Sarah looked at the girl, she cried, “You're all right again! Look, look at her eyes!”

Josh crowded close and saw that indeed Abbey's eyes were clear. “You're right,” he exclaimed. He reached out and took both of Abbey's hands, saying, “Welcome home.”

Abbey looked around, and tears came into her eyes. “I'm sorry that I said such awful things. I don't know what got into me.”

“Never mind all that!” Reb cried. He gave Abbey a squeeze, wrapping his long arms around her. “You're back, and that's all that counts. Makes me want to give a Rebel yell!”

The others greeted Abbey warmly too, but then Beren said, “I know you're glad to have your friend back. Very rarely can anyone escape the coils of the empress.”

“But what are you
doing
here?” Dave asked. “How did you get captured? What have you been up to?”

Beren began explaining how he'd had a visit from Goél, and immediately all the Sleepers were excited.

“Well, if Goél's on the job,” Wash said grinning, his white teeth shining against his black face, “then we're all right.”

“Well, not exactly all right
yet,”
Josh said, looking around. “We're still in prison.”

“Aw, we've been in jail before,” said Reb.

“Well, we haven't been in a jail quite as far underground as this one,” Dave murmured. “Anybody got any ideas?”

“Yeah, Beren. You know this place,” Josh urged. “Is there any way out of here?”

Beren leaned against the wall, tapped it. “Solid stone. Can't dig out through there.” He looked through the barred steel door and said thoughtfully, “They've got enough guards out there to stop us. To tell the truth, I just don't know what to think.”

“Well, we'll think of something,” Josh said.

He tried to sound cheerful, but later he drew Sarah off to one side. She was the one he always chose to share his thoughts with. He'd learned he could say what he wanted to her—even confess that he was afraid.

He said as much now as they sat whispering. “You know, I'm trying to put on a pretty good act, but how in the world we're going to get out of here, I don't know.”

Sarah took his hand. It was a natural action, and she smiled at him. “I can remember a time when you wouldn't admit being afraid.”

Josh grinned. “That's what having a friend is—having somebody you can tell that you're afraid. I never thought you'd be the one. The first time I met you, I wouldn't have said that.”

“You think about that time?”

“Sure do. I thought you were so pretty. The prettiest girl I'd ever seen, and I was so bashful all I could do was try to act tough.”

“I thought you were awful,” Sarah confessed. She giggled slightly. “I'd never seen a boy so puffed up with himself, or at least that's what it looked like.”

“Good to have a friend, isn't it? Someone to tell everything to. Everybody ought to have at least one friend.”

After a while a guard brought their food in a big black kettle with a wire handle and set it down. “Enjoy it.” He grinned. “It might be your last meal.”

When the door clanged shut, Sarah got up and began portioning out the food.

As Reb ate his, he said, “This is awful! What I wouldn't give for a mess of possum and greens!”

Abbey stared at him. “Well,
that
sounds awful!”

“Awful? There's nothing better than that,” Reb protested. “Unless it's some pigs' feet or chitlins.”

“What's chitlins?” Abbey asked.

“Don't ask,” Wash said. “You don't want to know!” He took his plate and tasted his food. “Well, I guess it'll keep body and soul together. Sure would like a quarter pounder or a hot dog, though!”

After they'd eaten, Beren said, “I've got a feeling that if we're going to get out of here, it'd better be quick. I don't think Fareena had anything nice in store for us.”

“As a matter of fact,” Josh said, “you think she's going to execute us, don't you?”

“I think she will. She's been after me for a long time. Now it looks like we're all in the same boat.”

They talked about various plans, none of them likely to succeed. The cell was gloomy and dank, and somehow the gloom communicated itself to all of them. Time passed slowly. There was no clock, no television, nothing to mark its passage. This seemed to make everyone even more depressed.

“If we were up on top, at least we could tell night from day,” Jake protested. “Now I don't even know if it's midnight or high noon.” Jake was ordinarily fairly optimistic, but he looked gloomy now and had no encouragement to give.

They never knew how much time passed. Food was brought but not regularly. Sometimes they'd grow very
hungry; other times it seemed like only a couple of hours between meals. Hopelessness began to settle in on them.

Beren, strangely enough, was the most cheerful of them all. Perhaps he had had a harder life since his family had been deposed. But more than likely the reason was his recent visit with Goél.

Over and over he told the story of Goél's visit, and at first it cheered the others. After a while, though, he saw that they were growing more depressed, and discouragement began to get to him too. He began to think more and more that he'd just had a dream.

Time crawled on, and it looked as if the Seven Sleepers had reached the end of their career.

Jake pulled the ragged blanket around his shoulders, shivering against the clammy cold. Finally he dropped off to sleep, but it was not a sound sleep. It was filled with the dreams that had been coming to him lately.

Sometimes he'd dream that he was back at Disneyland in Oldworld, on one of the fantastic rides there. Other times he seemed to be in Atlanta, watching the Braves play baseball. Those were the good dreams.

At other times, however, awful dreams would come. Sometimes he dreamed of the Snakepeople, who almost killed them when they'd first come to Nuworld. Sometimes he dreamed of the cave people and of the T-Rexes that had almost gobbled them up. Nightmarish dreams.

This time those dreams faded away finally, and he somehow thought he was lying in a pleasant field filled with flowers and grass. The sun was warm on his face. That dream was pleasant, and he lay there soaking it up, knowing it was a dream, longing to truly see the blue sky, to smell the freshly plowed earth. To get out of this hole where he was buried alive.

He stirred restlessly, and another dream came to him. This was not like any of the others. He could not make heads or tails of it. Finally it passed, and he continued to sleep fitfully.

But the dream came again, exactly the same. Three times that happened, and then he woke up with a start.

Some of the others were awake and moving around, and Jake sat up and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “What a crazy thing!”

“What is it? You been having bad dreams?” Wash asked.

“Sure have. Bad ones and good ones and one real lulu.” He screwed up his face in thought and went over to get a drink of water. It was tepid and rank, but he drank it anyway. Then he turned and said, “That was a nutty dream. I wonder why I dream things that don't make any sense?”

Josh was bored out of his skull with the silence and with the monotony of their imprisonment. “OK, tell us about it,” he said.

“First let me tell you about some of the others.” Jake quickly told them about his earlier dreams, then shook his head. “Those make a little sense—those I've dreamed before. But that last one—and I dreamed it three times.”

“You dreamed it three times? The same dream?” Beren said.

“Yes. What about it?”

“Among our people, we believe that such a dream has meaning.”

“Well, this one doesn't make any sense. But I did dream it three times—exactly the same, every time.”

“Tell it,” Beren insisted. He leaned forward. “Maybe it does mean something.”

Jake shrugged. “Well, I'll tell you about it, but it doesn't make any sense. It was real short, didn't last any
time. The first thing I saw was a table. Just a table sitting there, and I was looking at it. It looked like that one right there.”

Jake motioned toward the single table that occupied the center of the room. “And it was a crazy thing. It seemed to turn into a door, and it swung open, and I stepped inside… how many of you saw that movie
The Wizard of Oz?
Yeah, all of you saw it.”

“
I
never saw it.” Mat sniffed. “What is it?”

“Oh, it's about this girl that gets sucked up into a tornado and taken to a fantasyland somewhere. But the thing about it is that one minute she's in a black-and-white world and the next minute she steps out into a world of color, blue skies, and green grass. Everything's beautiful. And it happened in just a moment's time.”

“That was my favorite part.” Sarah sighed.

“So anyhow, the table seemed to turn into a door, and I went through it, and everything was filled with color.”

Josh waited, then said, “Is that all?”

“That's all. Nutty, isn't it?”

“Maybe not,” Beren mused. “Obviously the dream has something to do with a table. You say it looked like this one.”

“Just like it. Four legs and a top. What can a table look like?” Jake protested.

Beren's face grew solemn. He walked over to the table, reached down, touched it.

The others grew quiet, watching him silently.

Beren turned to face them. “For some reason, I think this table has something to do with a way out of here.”

“You mean, you think it's a real door?” Josh asked, excitement rising in his voice.

“I can't think of anything else the dream could mean. Let's examine every splinter of this table.”

They spent a great deal of time touching the table, looking for something different about it, until Reb said in despair, “It looks like a plain old table to me. I can't see that it's any door.”

Beren said, “I don't see anything different about it either.” He dropped his head, stood there thoughtfully, and then suddenly said, “Let's move this table! Grab hold of it.”

Volka reached over and with one hand plucked up the table as if it were made of balsa wood.

Beren fell to his knees. “Maybe,” he said, “it's something
under
the table. Wait a minute!”

The others crowded around.

“What is it?” Josh dropped to his knees beside Beren. “What did you find?”

“Look at this!” Beren said with excitement. “There's a line here—on the floor. This floor isn't solid. Here—help clean some of this dust and dirt away.”

They worked frantically for a moment, and slowly an outline appeared.

Beren looked up, his eyes gleaming. “You know what I think? I think this is a trapdoor. If we can get it open, it'll lead to one of the passageways, and we can get out of here.”

“But there's no handle, and it's made of stone,” Josh observed. He tried to get a grip with his fingernails. “I can't get hold of it.”

They all tried, and finally Mat growled, “Fat lot of good a trapdoor'll do us if we can't get it open.”

Tam said, “Wait—we've each got eating utensils! Everybody get out what you've got.”

There was a scurry as all of them grabbed their knives and forks.

Then Tam said, “Let's all stick the tip of our knife
blades right in this crack. Maybe we can raise it up just a little bit.”

“Right,” Beren said. “If we can just break it loose, I think Volka could get it.”

Each one thrust the tip of his knife into the fine crack, but nothing happened.

Then Dave cried, “I think I saw it move, though. Put in the forks too. And everybody pull up hard.”