CHAPTER FORTY FLOOD OF INFORMATION
SECRET TUNNELS
TUNELE SECRETE
brAN CASTLE
Once inside the passageway, I grabbed the lantern from Thomas and played the light around the space, spinning slowly.
Words were hard to come by as I studied the walls.
Instead of another forgotten tunnel far beneath the castle halls, this passage ended in a perfectly square stone room.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered in carved cross patterns a bit smaller than my hand.
Jewels and tiles glinted in the lamplight.
There were more riches in the glimmering mosaic than I’d ever seen.
It reminded me of ancient temples where magnificent painters had spent a lifetime capturing each detail.
What purpose such a chamber served here in Vlad Dracula’s former fortress was beyond me.
Perhaps this was a secret meeting place of the Order of the Dragon.
It certainly had a Crusader aura about it.
I did not think it was another chamber of death.
I walked toward the nearest wall and traced the outer ridge of stone. Each and every cross was identical. I scanned the chamber, surprised to see algae growing in patches along the top and bottom corners of the room.
“This is… incredible.”
“Incredibly suspect. Look there.” Thomas pointed to another carved Roman numeral, XI. “Will you read that poem?”
“Yes, give me a moment to find it.”
Thomas slowly rotated in place, taking in as much of the damp stone chamber as possible. I opened Poezii Despre Moarte and scanned the poem correlating to the passage we were now in. I had no idea how to decipher it the way Radu had done, nor any clue what doom might be waiting for us here.
“Well?” he asked. “Is there anything more to it?”
“No. It’s the same verse from earlier,” I said. “‘Lords weep, ladies cry / Down the road, say good-bye. / Land shifts and caves dwell. / Deep in earth, warm as Hell. / Water seeps cold, deep, and fast. / Within its walls you will not last.’”
In the exact center of the room, a stone table stood about four feet high and was covered in more of the same cross carvings. A pang of anxiety struck as if it were a chime in my chest, but I breathed through the nerves. The table was likely an altar used for sacrifices.
Knowing to whom the castle had belonged conjured ghastly images of torture. How many people had been brutalized in the name of war here? How many boyars tortured and maimed for the sake of creating a peaceful nation? There were no winners during times of war. All suffered.
“I’m almost certain there’s a tapestry in the servants’ corridor that depicts a chamber like this one,” I said, cringing at how loudly my voice echoed. “The walls in that image seemed as if they were covered in blood, though.”
Thomas glanced in my direction. An expression that could almost be interpreted as fear crossed his face before he blinked it away. “Covered in blood, or filled with it?”
I conjured up a mental image of the artwork, the downward drips.
“Raining with blood, actually.” My lip involuntarily curled at the distinction. “I didn’t study it too closely.”
He moved across the room and pried an egg-size ruby from the wall, tilting it one way and then the next. It reminded me of a giant drop of crystallized blood.
“You should put that ba—”
A series of clicks and groans erupted as if a monstrous clock gear had been brought to life.
Confusion, then panic, flickered across Thomas’s face.
He tried shoving the ruby back in place, but the walls were now shaking and rumbling like giants waking from a long slumber.
Bits of rock crumbled around the area he’d taken the precious stone from, ensuring the piece would no longer fit as it once had.
I slowly backed away from the altar, barely missing a round stone that popped as if it were a cork from the wall next to me. Another cylindrical rock burst from the wall, then another.
“Perhaps now would be a fine time for us to leave, Wadsworth. No need to stand around while the ceiling caves in.”
I glared at my friend. “Brilliant deduction, Cresswell.”
Without waiting for a response, I turned and was running for the passage, Thomas on my heels, when he grabbed me about the waist and yanked me back toward him.
A steel door dropped from the ceiling like a guillotine, severing us from the world, sealing us in with a loud, reverberating crash.
It nearly sliced my body in half. I shook so hard Thomas’s arms trembled.
“Oh… we cannot get buried alive, Thomas!” I charged the door, first pounding it with my fists and then running my fingers along the smooth surface, searching for any latch to free us.
Nothing. There was no handle or lock. No mechanism to release it.
Nothing but a solid piece of steel that didn’t dent from the kicks I now assaulted it with.
“Thomas! Help!” I attempted to push it back up, but it was stuck firmly in the ground. Thomas tried shouldering it open while I continued kicking. It didn’t so much as ripple. Rubbing his arm, he took a few steps away to survey our situation.
“Well, at least this is the worst of our problems at the moment. Could be filled with snakes and spiders.”
“Why? Why would you utter those—”
A faint hissing started in the far corner. The noise grew louder, as if the chamber wall had been the only defense standing between us and whatever was on its way.
“What in the name of the queen is that?” I quickly drew away from the door.
The alarm in my voice pulled Thomas to me in a heartbeat.
He subtly shifted his body close to mine, ready to protect me from the menacing sound.
I latched on to his arm, knowing we’d face whatever was coming together. And then I saw it.
The trickle streaming down the wall.
I ran over to be sure of what I was seeing. “Water. Water is pouring in—”
More hissing erupted from holes in the floor, walls, and ceiling as liquid came gushing in on us. A hundred tiny cascading waterfalls poured white foamy water into the room. Within seconds, our ankles were covered. I stared, unblinking, at the floor. This couldn’t be happening.
“Look for a trapdoor!” I shouted over the noise of the downpour. “There’s got to be a lever or some way out of this chamber.”
I pulled my skirts up, then stooped low to the ground, hoping to locate an exit.
But of course there wasn’t one. There were only more crosses chiseled into the floor.
A mockery of whoever was unlucky enough to find themselves in this chamber of death.
Or perhaps it was a merciful way of saying we’d be seeing God soon enough. If one believed in that sort of thing.
This chamber cleansed those of their sins.
My mind went utterly blank for a moment. This was the worst fate I could imagine.
“Check the walls, Wadsworth.” Thomas shoved himself onto the table and ran his hands along the ceiling, searching for any kind of escape.
I sprang back into action. “I’m trying!”
Ice-cold water inched up to my knees. This was truly happening. We were not being buried alive, we were being drowned. My fear was nearly as cold as the water soaking my underskirts and almost as heavy to push through. If we were about to die, I’d not go easily.
Running back to the door, I searched a second time for a hidden latch, running my hands frantically over every possible surface. My skirts were weights dragging me down, but I couldn’t get out of them by myself.
Water reached past my thighs, making it difficult to move at all. Thomas jumped down into the rising pool, reaching me in seconds.
“Here, Audrey Rose. Stand on the altar.” Thomas took my hand, but I slipped out of his grasp. There had to be a way to unlock the door.
“I refuse to stand on a table and wait for a miracle—or, more likely, imminent death, Cresswell. Either help me remove my skirts, or stand back.”
“We’re about to die and this is your shameless request?”
“We most certainly are not going to perish here, Thomas.”
His eyes glistened with emotion. He truly thought there was no way out of this. My heart sank faster than my skirts as the water lapped at my waist. He was the master at seeing the impossible. If he were giving up, then we were…
“Thomas—” A memory of Professor Radu’s lecture slammed into my chest at the same time uncontrollable shudders took over our bodies.
“Feed the dragon!” I shouted, dodging a stream of water as another spigot opened above us.
Water was rushing in so fast it was now covering the altar. “That’s got to be the key!”
“Where is this mysterious dragon we need to feed, Wadsworth?”
“I-I—”
Thomas didn’t wait for a response. He scooped me into his arms and deposited me on the altar, dragging himself up a moment later.
More frigid water rained down on us as if we’d landed on an abandoned island in the middle of a monsoon.
At best, we had minutes before the water reached the ceiling.
My vision threatened to go black at the edges.
Being buried alive was always a scary thought; dying in a watery grave was something I never knew to fear.
Emotions rolled through me, crashing against my thoughts.
Hypothermia was close, its effects already clouding my mind.
Thomas’s lips were already turning a slight blue as he trembled beside me. If the water didn’t kill us, the cold certainly would. Where was the dragon? It had seemed like an inspired idea moments before…
Thomas pulled me toward him, lifting me up as the water reached my chin.
“S-stay w-with me, Wadsworth.”
He stood a good head taller than me and was using his height to offer me extra time before I gulped water.
I wanted to cry, bury my face in his neck, and tell him how sorry I was that I had dragged him here, to this horrid tunnel on this ridiculous adventure.
Who cared if we were the ones to find the Impaler or the Order?
I should have brought my theories to the headmaster.
The royal guards should have been scouring these tunnels, not us.
“Thomas…” I spat water out, suddenly eager to unleash all my secrets. “L-listen, C-Cresswell,” I said between chattering teeth, “there’s something I-I have to tell you. I—”
“S-stop, Wadsworth. No l-last-minute confessions a-allowed. We’re going to get out of this.
” Water slid down my cheeks and I shook my head.
Thomas cupped my chin and looked fiercely into my eyes, his hands frozen.
“F-focus. Don’t give up. Use that alluring brain of yours to find Radu’s dragon and get us out of here. You can do this, Audrey Rose.”
“There are no such things as dragons!” I screamed, dropping my face onto his shoulder.
I was so cold I wanted to curl up and float away. I wanted the pain in my limbs to recede. I wanted to give up. I stared at the altar under our feet, eyes blurring with unshed tears as the shape beneath us swam into focus. We were standing on the solution.
A dragon nearly the entire size of the altar was carved onto its top. Its mouth was wide open, showing off teeth made of stone that appeared sharp enough to slice through skin.
“I found it!”
“H-how… f-fascinating,” Thomas said, his body and voice both wracked with shudders. “W-we have a table like this in our home in Bucharest. Except our dragon is less…s-sneering. I n-named him H-Henri.”
I cut a sharp glance in his direction. He was near convulsions.
I needed to move quickly. I wrestled out of his iron grip and tilted my head back as far as it would go, then took a deep breath and submerged myself.
I kicked toward the carving, not having to work too hard as my clothing acted as an anchor.
I shoved my finger into the dragon’s mouth and dragged it across the stone tooth, wincing as blood blossomed in the water.
My heart tapped out an anxious rhythm. Something gave way a little, the dragon’s teeth receding ever so slightly.
A trapdoor cracked open in the stone floor, allowing some water to escape, but not enough.
I tugged again but the teeth refused to give further.
Of course it couldn’t be that easy. Nothing ever was.
I needed to breathe. I tried kicking my way back to the surface, but my layers proved too heavy. Panic seeped in as I flailed underwater, air bubbles streaming out around me. I wanted to scream for help but couldn’t risk losing more air.
When I thought I’d come to the last of my breath, Thomas yanked me up, wiping soggy strands of hair from my face as I gasped and nearly vomited.
He made sure I was all right before swimming down to the trapdoor, trying to wrench it open.
I took a deep breath and followed, hoping our combined might would work. We twisted and tugged to no avail.
Thomas clutched my shaking hand in his own, and we kicked up toward the remaining air. As we broke its surface water rained down on us—now sloshing past our chins—and I caught the exact moment Thomas resigned himself to our doom.
He drew in a ragged breath, one that might have arisen from hypothermia setting in or from the realization that we were staring down our final moments.
I had never seen him without a plan before.
He fixed me with the kind of stare that seemed to memorize my every feature.
His thumbs caressed the apples of my cheeks.
Water covered my mouth and I lifted my face higher.
I knew this was it. These were the last moments of my life.
Regret filled me with immeasurable sorrow.
There was so much I hadn’t done, so much I’d left unsaid.
“Audrey Rose, I—” Panic raged behind his normally measured gaze. I could barely make out the garble of his words as the water rushed over my ears.
Straining to lift my face above the water, I gasped in a final gulp of air.
“Audrey Rose!”
Thomas’s plea was forgotten the second the room quaked.
A sharp crack echoed off the chamber walls as the ground beneath us split wide open.
He grabbed for me, shouting something I couldn’t hear over the deafening noise.
As quickly as the water burst out from the walls and ceiling, it tunneled down even faster in a giant whirlpool, yanking us along with it.
I reached for Thomas’s outstretched hand, screaming as water ripped us apart.
We were sucked into a hole that swept both our words and our bodies away.