Chapter 28

28.
         There were hands all over him, poking, prodding, curious hands without the hint of threat in their touch. But in this dark tunnel, without light or visibility, anything could be frightening, a foreign sound, an odd texture, anything. But something as real as the touch of another hand, that was a different realm of fright entirely.
         Tristian, to his credit, didn't scream even though the sensation of hands running over his clothes, almost clinical in their detachment, gave him creeping feelings that he could barely control. To his credit, he didn't shout. Near him he could Michelle give a hicupping sort of scream, the sound of someone trying not to shriek and only partially succeeding. Johan had fallen oddly silent, or maybe Tristian just had stopped hearing him, so great was his near panic.
         And he did panic. Event had piled on event and in this eerie circumstances, something had to give. Somethinig shifted in his head even as a hand brushed up against his cheek and it was like the conditioning gave him radar. His hand lashed out, apparently blindly but he felt it strike bone and cartilage. There was a crushing crunching noise and something wet smeared his hand and he heard a strangled squeak as something fell back and hit the wall heavily. His hand felt slick. Tristian felt sick. He used the forward momentum of that strike to throw himself further down the tunnel, not knowing where he was going, not knowing even why he was doing it. Instinct propelled him. His elbow was in front of him and he struck something hard, shifting his weight and slamming it bodily against the wall. There was a small crack and a hand brushed against his shoulder, tightening briefly in what seemed to be a grip but might have been reflexive but he didn't care. Shoved to the side like the rest, his mystery intruder's identity remained unknown as Tristian searched for some sort of light, something familiar to latch onto that would ease his swiftly growing panic. The dark made his eyes hurt, he was straining so hard to see something but he couldn't even get the vague shapes that he knew were there because he could hear them. He could hear them. Dancing around, trying to get out of his way, they didn't even give him the luxury of having glowing eyes. But he could sense them.
         Solid fact eventually stopped him. You can't run through a corner and he sensed the wall right before he ran into it. His speed being what it was, he still hit it, though he had managed to turn right before he skidded into it. His shoulder bruised and aching, he slid down the wall, trying to scramble to his feet, the shock of the pain sending sense into his head. Think clearly, dammit! Don't panic! It took him a second to realize what he should have done and he hoped he hadn't run too far away.
         "Michelle!" he shouted, hearing his voice ricochet off the walls, flinging itself around aimlessly. "Make some light! Now!"
         He could still hear her stuttering shouts, frozen panic and hoped that something he had said had gotten through to her. There was someone breathing heavily near him and he hoped it was Johan, or else he had a problem. Back pinned against the wall, hearing footsteps slipping toward him, he hoped something happened soon, before this got even more out of hand then it was now.
         It did. Blue flared like a holocaust and he closed his eyes and turned his head, still seeing blue through his eyelids, feeling it soaring against his skin, finally getting a sense of what magic was. Magic was power and in the hands of the wrong mentality, it could be dangerous. He could feel it filling him, enveloping him, sliding into him like a switchbladed knife. The intensity made him want to scream but there weren't even words in him for a wordless cry.
         Others had no problem with that. The tunnel was suddenly filled the sounds of squeals and shouts, some painful, some anguished. Anyone who lived down here had to be susceptible to bright lights and Michelle had provided that in spades. Unfortunately those who lived on the surface also found the light she created to be painful as well.
         "Get . . . away from me!" he heard her voice call out, striking him just as much as the light was. He wanted to go help her but he couldn't move, the light was sticking him to the wall, the light was taking him to pieces. Tristian felt that if he opened his eyes somehow and stared at his hand, he would see the individual bones laid out for him. This had to stop. It was too much, he couldn't take it anymore.
         Sheer force of will propelled him forward, just as blind as before, except he was swimming in a blue sea, fighting in a current of magic, his breath coming from lungs that felt like they were being jackhammered by invisible forces. There was a howling noise in his ear that he used to associate with passing out and he gritted his teeth and kept moving. Just keep moving. There wasn't any choice. There was the sound of feet moving away from him, bodies slamming into him and past him like he was greased. There weren't interested in touching him anymore. Tristian wasn't interested in them.
         In this slow time, he didn't even realize he was running into him he slammed into someone moving perpendicular to his motion. They both streamed sideways into the wall, clutching at each other blindly, trying to fight their way to the surface of this blue quicksand.
         "Michelle . . ." he heard himself saying and from the rawness in his voice he must have been shouting it at the top of his lungs. It didn't feel that way. It felt like a whisper. "Stop . . . stop . . ."
         Whether because of him or not, it did indeed stop. The world drained of all color for a moment and became a black and white photograph. The grey face of Johan stared at him, the contrast making him seem even more drained than before.
         Gradually color leached back into his world and Tristian moved, trying to get back into a standing position for the second time. He felt like he had hurt the other side of his body now, but that might just be because his entire body ached. Shaking his head to clear the last bits of blue from it, he looked for Michelle.
         Johan was already staring at her. Curled up against the wall, looking like she was trying to blend herself into it, her eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Her hands were drawn around herself, clutching fistfuls of the cloth from her robes, trying to wrap it closer to her body. It was a standing fetal position. Her body glowed with the outline of blue, probably a personal shield to prevent anyone from touching her.
         ". . . just get away . . ." she mouthed, her voice hardly in existence.
         "Michelle, it's all right . . ." Tristian said softly, thouhgh he felt very far from all right. He didn't even know if she was hearing him or not.
         "Ah . . . what did she do . . ." Johan asked, his voice a little weak, but recovering. He seemed shaken by what he had experienced, but other than that he was unharmed. Nobody had been hurt, Tristian reflected, unless they were like him and had run headfirst into the wall. That had not been one of his brighter idea, he had to admit. In fact, he should have told Michelle to make a brighter light right away instead of panicking and striking out blindly like he had done. The creatures, whatever they had been, had done nothing even remotely hostile. Mostly they just seemed curious.
         "There's light and then there's light I guess . . ." Tristian replied, trying to inject some humor into the situation. He was moving closer to Michelle, who hadn't responded to his entreaty at all, merely had seemed to drawn further into herself. "Michelle . . ." he called again, trying to place a hand on her shoulder, figuring a friendly touch might reassure her. That hand meant a mild shock when it brushed against the blue frame that outlined her body. Drawing his hand back sharply, he shook it a bit to get the blood flowing back into it, biting his lip to keep from shouting in surprise.
         "Oh . . . my . . ." she said and seemed to quiver a bit, opening her eyes and staring around. Her pupils had shrunk to a single point, and her face was pale. Looking at Tristian, she started to uncurl and step away from the wall, gradually and cautiously. "Are they gone?" He had never seen her look so frightened, even when the Dark Riders had gone after them in the royal bedroom.
         "Yeah, they are," he answered a bit grimmer than he had intended, glancing at Johan for confirmation. The man had made his way down the tunnel farther to check and nodded.
         "Ah, oh my . . . that was just . . ." and she shuddered a bit, still trying to regain her lost composure, "creepy. I've never experienced anything like that."
         "I've never experienced anything like that light show you provided for us," Tristian told her.
         She gave a sheepish smile at that. "Yeah, sorry about that, I got a little panicked and overdid it. If you're not paying attention, there's a chance that you might draw too much magic and well, stuff like that happens. Fortunately I was only causing some light."
         "Well whatever you did, it seems to have done the trick," Tristian observed. "Those things ran away as fast as they could."
         "Good," Michelle replied and she shivered again. "I'm not in a hurry to meet those again." She gave a little laugh at that. "All that we've been through and this is the place where I finally start to crack." She pushed a wayward strand of hair out of her face. "It's all downhill from here."
         "I hope not," Tristian responded. Johan was bending down near where he had been before, where he had claimed he had seen a body. Crossing over to where he was, Tristian bent down to see what he was staring at.
         "Is this what you saw before?" he asked the other man.
         Johan's eyes narrowed as he looked at it. "I thought so." In the rock itself there appeared to be embedded a clear rectangular crystal, inside of which there seemed to be a person, laying on his back, hands at his sides, eyes closed gently. Tristian couldn't tell if the person was dead or not, though judging by the pallor of his skin, he seemed to be still among the living.
         "But wait . . ." Johan murmured and then stood up and moved past Tristian, nearly running into Michelle as he moved farther down the tunnel back the way they had come. "Ah," he said as he bent down again, brushing his hand across the coarse dust of the wall "This is the one I saw before."
         "There's another one over here," Michelle said, having moved a little farther down, to where the tunnel turned a sharp corner again. "A woman, this time." Her light floated closer to the crystal set in the rock, and she peered at it, trying to discern meaning from the unknown.
         "It's like a tomb," Johan said, standing up and rubbing his arms as if cold. "But they don't seem to be dead."
         "At least we hope so," Tristian said, brushing his legs off and standing up as well. Somehow he felt this was all tied into everything they had been going through so far but he wasn't sure how. The answers trickled just out of reach, maddeningly so. "But who are they and why are they here?" He brushed off some dust and stared down at the prone body, as if it might jump up and supply him with some answers. None were forthcoming.
         "Guys . . ." Michelle said, almost too quietly. Both men turned their heads to stare at her. Michelle had moved to the corner and was looking down the long tunnel that presumably led deeper into wherever this tunnel went. Her eyes were wide and the blue light splashed over her face. The ball of light she had created was out of sight and they could only see its effects. By the glint of the shadows it was casting, it was a distance from her and up in the air.
         "What is it?" Johan asked, moving next to Tristian and then past him.
         Michelle swallowed and licked her lips, like she was suddenly at a loss for words. "I think you both should come take a look at this."
         Glancing at each other, Johan and Tristian strode over to see what Michelle was talking about. What they saw nearly made their jaws drop in shock.
         The ceiling down this tunnel wasn't low like it had been previously. Instead it rose into the air, gracefully and arching, moving completely out of sight. Michelle's blue light floated about halfway up, pulsing contentedly, shimmering in azure waves. It cast the walls into shadows, making some things unclear. What it did shed light on was mindbending. The walls were lined with the same crystal blocks set into the rocks, hundred and perhaps thousands of them, at consistent intervals, each one containing a person. The blocks ran up the walls as far as their eyes could see and down the tunnel as far as they could see, probably even further.
         As they tried to take this in, Tristian noticed that it was deathly silent. Just like a tomb, Johan had said. He could see where the man had gotten this idea from. That's just what it felt like. Hallowed ground, placed here for reasons beyond their understanding.
         Or perhaps not. All three of them slowly made their way down the tunnel, a step at a time, trying to take it all in at once. Suddenly Johan stopped dead, backtracked a step and peered even closer at one of the crystal tombs. Pushing his face as close to the wall as he could, he stared intently for about a minute, maybe less, before making a small, strange sound.
         "I know him," he whispered. "Bring the light down here!" he shouted, the tone in his voice more forceful than ever before. Michelle was already bringing the light down to him and it settled into a position right above his shoulder, making everything as clear as it was going to be.
         "I know him," Johan said again and this time the voice was confident, if confused. Turning to face them without getting up, he said, "This man, he used . . . he used to buy things from my stand when I was in the city, used to always ask me when I'd be back, make requests . . . he . . . oh my . . ." Johan shook his head, not sure whether he should be believing this or not.
         "What happened to him?" Michelle asked quietly.
         Johan blinked. "I thought . . . I thought he had died when the city started to burn but . . ." and then with wide eyes he turned to Tristian. "There was no one in the city, Tristian. Remember? There was no one there."
         "I remember," Tristian said and his voice was filled with marvel and perhaps revulsion. What had happened to these people, how had they gotten here. This had to be what had happened to those who had been living in the city before the beasts had attacked it but there still too many holes to fill in. He started walking down the tunnel, staring up at the row upon row of people, laying in there, perhaps dreaming, perhaps oblivious to their world. Perhaps they were engaged in fantasies like what the fairies had done to them in the forest. Trying to take it all in, he found that even this had a hard time finding a place in his consciousness.
         Not looking where he was going, he almost ran into the creature that was standing quite calmly down the tunnel. Startled, he jumped back even as he heard Johan call out his name, probably in warning. Body tense, he readied himself for anything, even as he realized that the creature was merely regarding him silently.
         It was lanky but not as tall as you might think upon first glance. The skin was pale and the hair was draped to the shoulders, flat and waxen almost. The face framed by that hair was thin and graceful, the features smooth. It was dressed in a simple black set of clothing. The eyes were silent slits, clearly able to see, since he stared right at Tristian's face and almost gold in color. The hands were the most distinguishing feature, long and thin and supple, seemingly able to bend in far more places than the human hand might be able to bend.
         Tristian just stared at it and it just stared back at him. After a long silent moment, it nodded curtly and stepped closer to him. Down the tunnel he heard other footsteps and muted shouts of surprise from his comrades. There was a glimpse of blue out of the corner of his eye.
         "Michelle, no!" he heard Johan say.
         "I don't want them touching me," she snapped, tensely, her voice shaking.
         "They don't mean any harm," Johan told her, his voice slow and cautious. "They don't want to hurt us."
         "I don't care," she said, her voice not sounding convinced, although the force of blue didn't increase. "Just don't let them touch me."
         Tristian stared back at the creature, staring at its face. There was one other feature than he hadn't seen on it. The ears, they were delicately pointed. Almost hidden by the hair, he hadn't seen them at first. Not dwarves, then. Not dwarves at all.
         "Elves," he found himself whispering and the thin lips quivered in what seemed to be the shape of a smile.
         "Good," it said to him and the voice was creaking and timeless. "You see, then. You start to see."
         "See what?" Tristian asked, confused.
         "The shapes," a voice behind him said and he turned, surprised. There were two others there, both moving closer but not trying to trap him. One of them reached a hand out and touched his face, like before, but gentler. Before had been a probe, a curious gesture. Now it was almost like confirmation, almost reverent.
         "The patterns," the one touching him said. "You see."
         "But yet you don't see," the first elf said to him. "You've come this far to find that you've been in the darkness all this time."
         "Tristian, what are they talking about?" Michelle asked, her voice strained. He could see the two of them coming toward him, their faces equally confused. Michelle's light surrounded her completely, keeping all the elves away from her.
         "I don't know," Tristian said. Looking around, he addressed the first elf. "What is this place, what are all these people doing here?"
         "Here? They sleep," the elf said. "They lay. They sleep."
         "If all else fails," the second elf said. Tristian was aware of more elves now, behind Johan and Michelle, almost a crowd of them. Where were they all coming from? What was going on?
         "If the darkness consumes the world, this will be the only safe darkness," the third elf murmured.
         Tristian narrowed his eyes. He was beginning to get the concept. "These people are here in case the Dark Riders win. So that not everyone dies." He glanced around, getting a better sense of the place. "I think I see."
         "You see this, but you do not see," the elf told him. All the other murmured something, perhaps agreement.
         "What am I not seeing?" Tristian asked, getting somewhat angry. These creatures were just talking in circles. "What is there that I have to see?"
         At his anger the elf backed away a few steps but its facial expression never changed. It contemplated him. "Long ago, you saw. Behind the pattern, behind the veil. Even when you did not think you saw, you perceived." It waved a hand in front of him, curled fingers swirling through the air, an obscure symbol. "Now you are blind but you can still see."
         "But what should I be seeing?" Tristian asked, his frustration getting the better of him. Stepping forward while he spoke, he reached out to grab the elf.
         Smoothly, it closed its claw like hand around his wrist, stopping him. The two of them regarded each other.
         "We can show you where to see," it told him, "but not how."
         "What are you . . ." and then it started dragging him along, tugging at first and then merely guiding once Tristian started walking along with it. Down the tunnel they went, together, Tristian following the lead of the elf. The brief protests of his friends behind him meant that the elves were pushing them along as well. He hoped that Michelle didn't do anything rash, but didn't say anything about it. Curiousity was getting the better of him now. He had to know.
         The elf spoke to him as they walked. "The Magents are in you, we can feel that. You share the same face. The same eyes. But you do not see the same."
         Tristian was aware of a cool breeze lapping against his face, a strong contrast to the stagnantly warm air of the tunnels. It also seemed to be getting brighter.
         "But there are things that you can see that they cannot. Certain things." The tunnel was definitely getting brighter now, and he blinked as the light increased. Getting wider as well, now two elves walked along with him comfortably. They said nothing but one occassionally reached out to touch him, as if to ascertain his existence fully.
         "We sealed ourselves from the world before the word was written," the elf told him, "sealed ourselves away because we felt we were the only ones who saw. Who knew. But even we cannot see all there is to be seen."
         "Where are you taking me?" Tristian asked, his head spinning from all the sight metaphors.
         "To the beginning," the elf said. "To where you may get your eyes back."
         The light was almost normal now, nearly blinding after the excursion into the tunnels. He couldn't see properly, the world a blur of colors. Like magic, all the colors blending together. The pressure of the elf's hand on his arm was steady but light, a feather brushing on his wrist. Unable to fully see straight, it was mostly leading him.
         The elf blinked at him as they rounded the last corner, strangely enough a downhill slant, not adding anything to its already cryptic speech. As it slowed down, it stately flatly, "We are here."
         "Okay but where is . . ." Tristian asked, or tried to. He stared straight ahead just as the blurred mess that was the world resolved itself into something coherent.
         And then he stopped.
         "My God," he whispered, barely hearing his own voice. And that was all he said.