Empress of the Underworld (8 page)

“Well, I like that!” Wash snapped. “She goes waltzing off on a mission all by herself when she wouldn't go with us!”

“I'd like to see that prince,” Sarah said grimly. “I bet he's a lulu.”

“What do you mean by that?” Reb asked in surprise.

“I mean, I bet everything I've got against a hat pin that he's a good-looking dude. I can't think of any other reason why she'd go.”

“Oh, don't be too hard on her, Sarah,” Dave said. He reached out his hand and took the letter, then scratched his head. “It is a little bit mysterious, though. Let's go find out more about this Prince Lothar and this place called the Underworld. Doesn't sound healthy to me.”

They made their way to where Zohar sat before the fire watching some meat roasting. Josh read him the letter, then asked, “Do you know anybody named Lothar?”

“No, but the Underworld not a good place.”

The Sleepers exchanged troubled glances. “You know about it, Zohar?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what's the matter with it?” Sarah demanded.

“Yes, and where is it?” Wash asked. “Is it really underground?”

Zohar gave them a strange look. “I never there, but we lose people. The empress, she make slaves of everyone she gets.”

“Slaves?” Josh asked sharply. “What happens to them?”

Zohar shrugged his massive shoulders. “They go underground. Never know anybody to come up.”

“Well, that doesn't sound good,” Dave said ruefully. He looked at Zohar. “What about this Lothar? Does anyone know what he looks like?”

Zohar questioned all his people but found out nothing.

“So we don't know what he looks like or where they've gone, and we don't know why she went,” Jake said. He looked around impatiently. “We should have just tied her and made her go with us!”

“Too late to talk about what we should've done,” Josh said wearily. “What we've got to talk about is what we
can
do.”

“We'll have to go after her,” Sarah said.

Josh looked at Zohar. “Can you take us there?”

Zohar shook his head. “We wait for Goél's word. Place is hidden underground. Nobody knows how to get there.”

This bit of information dismayed Josh. He ran his hand through his auburn hair and looked despondent. “I wish Goél would come. I don't know what to do.”

Dave was very practical. “There's really nothing to do but wait, Josh. We can't go tearing off into the jungle, not knowing where we're going.”

“Dave's right,” Sarah said. “We'll just have to wait.” She looked down at her tattered clothes. “One thing we can do is get rested and get into better outfits.”

“That's right,” Reb said. “I don't want to be tackling a whole kingdom without something to fight with.”

In the end, the Sleepers forced themselves to rest a great deal. The hunting had been good, so the food strengthened them. A week went by and then another. Still no word from Abbey—or from Goél.

Josh almost worried himself sick.

Sarah said, “You've got to learn to wait, Josh. I know it's hard. But soon the time for action will come, and you've got to be fresh.”

Josh forced himself to grin. “Why is it that you're always right and I'm always wrong?”

“That's not true. I've been wrong lots of times, and you're nearly always right, Josh. It's just that you're feeling this responsibility. You've had it ever since we came to this place. It'd be hard on anybody.”

Josh shrugged his shoulders. “You're right, of course. We'll just have to wait. I'll stuff myself and sleep, and sooner or later we'll get a message. Then we can go.”

That very night Josh lay on his cot, tossing and turning. It was warm, and he found great difficulty in going to sleep. He looked across the room where the moonlight
was filtering through the window. It illuminated the still forms of the other boys, all of them dead to the world.

Why can't I go to sleep like that?
Josh thought.
It's miserable staying awake like this. I'll try counting sheep.
He counted up to two thousand sheep, then thought,
That's no good. I'll try counting dinosaurs. T-Rexes, maybe.
This was no better. It only brought back memories of when he'd barely escaped with his life from the teeth of such monsters in the land of the cavemen.

Finally he did drift off, but it was not into a sound sleep. Images flitted through his mind, some of which he could not identify. Many of them were from past adventures he'd had with the other Sleepers. Once he saw the Snakepeople—beings that had upright bodies but heads like serpents, their fangs glistening with poison. He wakened, rolled over, and forced that image from his mind. Sleep would not come again for a long time.

Then he fell into one of those modes where he knew he was dreaming and could not separate himself from the dream. He tried to wake up but could not. Sweat popped out on his forehead, and he writhed and tossed on his bunk.

In the dream he was in a cave of total blackness. He was crawling along on his hands and knees. The dream seemed so real that he could feel the sharp stones bite into the palms of his hands and cut into his knees. He had never liked dark, closed spaces, and such fear came over him that he wanted to call out.

Faster and faster he scrambled, trying to find his way out. There were many turns and twists. And each time he thought he was almost out and would soon see a light, always there was only darkness. It was like being buried alive. He struggled on forever, it seemed.

Then finally, far up ahead, he saw movement and a
faint flickering. With a glad cry, he scuttled forward. The tunnel enlarged, and he yelled, “Hello, anybody there?”

But when he came to the light, he saw a sight that froze his blood. He saw figures all chained together by their ankles, swinging axes at the solid rock. Their faces were dull and their eyes lifeless. They looked like the zombies he had seen in movies back in Oldworld. The sight frightened him so badly that he cried aloud and ran down a side passage. He seemed to be running to the center of the earth.

Then he saw another light. He started running toward it as fast as he could. This time the light was brighter, and he now could see two figures, one clothed in white and one clothed in black.

“Help! Help me!” he shouted. He stumbled forward, then was shocked to realize that the figure in white was Abbey.

“Abbey! Help me!” he cried. “I'm lost!”

But Abbey did not even look at him. It was as if she had not heard. She was dressed in a fine white dress, and she wore jewels on her fingers and in her hair. There was something frightening about the emptiness in her face.

“She looks like those slaves. What's
wrong
with her?” Josh asked in agony. “Abbey!” he cried out. “Wake up!”

And then the figure dressed in black turned to him. It was a woman. She had green eyes that glittered as they fixed themselves on him. She reached down slowly with her long white fingers and clutched the large green stone that hung at her breast.

“You must know the truth,” she said and smiled. There was something terrible in her smile.

Josh stopped abruptly. Somehow in his dream he felt the power of the green stone reach out to him like the empress's long finger. It touched him, and he felt himself
grow cold. Then he felt the power of the strange woman grasp him with an icy fist.

And he knew why Abbey looked so blank, her eyes so dead. She was in the power of this mysterious evil woman.

With a wild cry, Josh threw himself backward and ran into the darkness of the tunnel, and the voice of the woman in black came after him. “We will have you. We will have all of the Sleepers.”

Josh had never been so frightened in his life. He yelled and suddenly opened his eyes.

Dave and Reb and Jake and Wash were standing over him.

“What's the matter, Josh? You having a nightmare?” Reb asked anxiously.

They were all holding him down, and Josh realized he was trembling. He took a deep breath and nodded. “It's OK. You can let me up now.”

When he sat up on the bed, Wash said, “Boy, that must have been the granddaddy of nightmares! I never heard anybody scream like you did.”

“What was it?” Jake demanded. “You eat something that didn't agree with you?”

But Dave was looking into Josh's face. “What is it, Josh? It's more than just a bad dream, isn't it?”

Josh drew his hand across his face. “I think it is. I think it tells us something about what has happened to Abbey. Listen, and I'll tell you about the dream.”

The four stood around him as Josh described his dream. He could see it as clearly as if it were before him. When he ended, his voice was not steady.

“Abbey looked dead. Her eyes had no life in them. And whoever that woman was, she was out to get me too.” He hesitated, then reached over and pulled a cloth from the pocket of his pants lying on the floor. He wiped
his face with it. “I think I met the Empress of the Underworld, and I think Abbey's in worse trouble than any of us thought.”

Dave stared at Josh, then looked around the circle. When he spoke, it was to say, “Well, that complicates things, doesn't it?”

“What do you mean, Dave?” Reb inquired.

“I mean, we heard from Zohar that once someone goes to that place called the Underworld, they never come back. So when we hear from Abbey, what do we do? Go after her?”

Josh stared at him. “We'll have to.”

Dave Cooper had his share of courage, but he, like Josh and Sarah, had a fear of being in close places. He shook his head and said, “That would be a hard thing, Josh. I would rather go almost anywhere than down a hole in the ground like that.”

Josh nodded. “Me too, Dave. But she's one of the Seven. We'll have to go when she sends for us.”

A heaviness fell over the group, as all realized that sooner or later they would have to go into the Kingdom of the Underworld.

8

Reb Sets a Trap

I
wish you'd watch what you're doing, Wash,” Reb snapped irritably. “You left your stuff all over my bunk.”

Wash looked up from where he was sitting on his own cot, reading a small book. He was the mildest mannered of all the Sleepers, but now he glared at Reb. “You're a fine one to talk. You scatter your stuff around like a junkman!”

For a minute, Reb seemed ready to get up and go to war, then he chuckled. “If we have to wait much longer, we're going to start the Civil War all over again.” He walked over to the window and stared out. “I sure do hate this waiting,” he complained gloomily. “Sometimes I think we ought to just start out looking for that place—that Underworld.”

Wash had calmed down by now too. He put his book down and came over to stare out the window with Reb. Outside, the trees were swaying from a stiff breeze.

Looking at the thick forest, the smaller boy shook his head. “That wouldn't do any good. We could wander forever looking for the entrance to that underground city. It'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“I reckon so,” Reb admitted. “But I think Josh is about to lose his mind. He's worse than any of us.”

“That's because he's the leader,” Wash said. “He feels responsible.”

“Wasn't his fault Abigail wouldn't go with us.”

“No, it's not. But he thinks it is—and sometimes that's just as bad.”

Then Jake entered. “Got something to tell you,” he said.

“What is it, Jake?” Reb asked. “Did we get word from Abbey?”

“No, not that. But something's going on around here.”

“Going on? Like what?” Wash demanded.

Jake got the look on his face that both boys had learned to dislike. Jake was very smart, but he was also very difficult at times. When he knew something that none of the others did, he liked to stretch it out and let them wallow in their own ignorance, as he put it.

“If you wouldn't sleep so much,” the redheaded youngster said, “maybe you'd know as much as I do.”

“I don't sleep any more than you do,” Wash argued. “What are you talking about?”

Reb frowned. “Aw, he don't know anything, Wash. He just likes to show off.”

Jake straightened up. He was rather short anyway, and he resented Reb's tall stature. “That's all you know,” he taunted. “If you knew what I know, you'd be a lot smarter. And if you'd listen to me more, you'd know more.”

Reb slumped on his cot in disgust. “We know you can name all the capitals of the states, but that don't mean much—seeing that there ain't no states anymore. What is it this time?”

Jake teased them for a while but finally got serious. “I've been waking up at night for the last two nights. And you know that's not like me—I usually sleep pretty good.”

The other two grinned at each other, then Reb nodded. “That's the truth! You sleep like you're dead. Never knew anything to wake you up.”

“That's what bothers me.” Jake scratched his head and went over to the window. He looked out. “Last night and the night before last, in the middle of the night, I
thought I heard something. Well, I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't. So finally I got up and came over here to the window.” He turned around, and now his face was serious. “Somebody was out there sneaking around.”

“Probably one of Zohar's people. A guard, maybe.”

“No, it wasn't anyone like that.”

“How do you know?” Wash asked. “It was dark, and you couldn't see.”

“If you'd stay up once in a while at night, you'd know that there was a full moon and the stars were out. It was real bright. I could see good.”

Seeing the seriousness in Jake's face, Reb demanded, “Well, what did you see? Tell us about it.”

“It was kind of strange,” Jake admitted. “At first it was just kind of a shadow. Over there—right by that little grove of trees. I thought maybe it was a wild animal or a dog or something. But then I saw it was a man. He moved as if he was trying to hide. You know how it is when somebody does that. They don't just walk upright; they crouch over. Well, I watched him, and he moved around, and then he came over to the house. He came up under this window—and I guess he saw me. He took out running. He was a skinny sort of fellow. I couldn't see his face, but he made for the woods.”