Chapter 17

Gregor's supper consisted entirely of raw fish as he gave his small ration of bread and meat to Boots. Temp, Howard, and Ares did the same, and she seemed satisfied. Giving a big yawn, she said, "We shut eyes?"

"Yeah, we shut eyes, Boots," Gregor said, and she snuggled up next to him on the floor.

Howard, ghost-white except for the purplish bruise that stained his jaw, insisted on steering so that Mareth could get some rest. Temp went on watch with Zap for light.

Before the rest went to sleep, Twitchtip spoke up. "We're getting close now. I can smell rats ahead."

"What of the serpents?" asked Mareth. "Do they still sleep?"

"Yes, but it won't be long before they surface. And they are deadly," said Twitchtip.

It really wasn't the last conversation Gregor wanted to hear before he went to bed. Rats...serpents...deadly...especially when he was already preoccupied by words like rager...killing...Bane. He could not get his mind to settle down. He went in and out of a sort of doze, never really losing consciousness, so he was the first one to rouse when Temp sounded the alarm.

"Going, the shiners are, gone!" he croaked.

Gregor sat up and opened his eyes and saw...nothing. It was pitch-black. He could hear Howard fumbling around behind him, muttering, "Conniving, vile creatures!"

He flipped on the flashlight he always kept right next to his bed. Everyone was stirring now.

"What is it? What has happened?" Mareth asked, springing to his feet.

"The shiners have deserted!" Howard said, getting a torch lit.

"Deserted? They were bound for the entire journey!" said Mareth.

"By what? Their honor? They have none. Their word? Equally worthless! The shiners are bound only by their stomachs, and as we cannot satisfy those, they have broken with us!" said Howard.

"But where could they go?" asked Gregor. It was days and days back to where they'd first hooked up with the bugs.

"They'll go to the rats," Twitchtip said flatly. "They'll receive food and safe passage home in exchange for information on our whereabouts." She looked around at their dismayed faces. "On the good side, we won't have to listen to them whine anymore."

For an instant, everyone else was too startled to speak. Twitchtip had made a joke! Then, everybody — humans, bats, roach, rat — laughed. If there was one thing they all could agree on, it was how annoying the fireflies had been.

"Yes," agreed Luxa. "That will be a blessing." She and Twitchtip eyed each other. "It is a shame you did not get to eat them, though."

"Oh, shiners taste nasty," said Twitchtip. "I only threatened them to shut them up."

"Well, no one shall miss them, but they have left us with more trouble," said Mareth. "How holds the fuel, Howard?" Howard shook his head. "Not well. Much of it was in the other boat. We will get to the Labyrinth, but we will not have many more hours of light after that."

Light...life...the words were interchangeable to the humans down here.

"I have life — I mean, light! I have light, too!" said Gregor.

"You have the greatest task ahead of you, Overlander," said Howard. "You must keep your light."

"Well, I will, some of it. But I could spread it around. Wait a minute!" Gregor dumped out his bag. There were four flashlights, counting the one he slept with, plus his mini one from Mrs. Cormaci, and a lot of good batteries. He'd used the flashlights very sparingly on the trip since the fireflies were on. There was also that roll of duct tape.

"Hey, Luxa, give me your arm! Not the sword one!" he said. Luxa held out her arm curiously. Gregor placed a flashlight on her forearm so it would shine out over the top of her hand. Then he wrapped duct tape around and around, securing the flashlight to her sleeve, but leaving the on/off switch clear. "There! That way you won't have to hold it, and you won't lose it, either." Luxa flipped the flashlight on and shone it about. "Oh, yes, Gregor. This will work well."

Gregor fixed up Howard and Mareth with flashlights, too, then attached one to his own arm. He had to use his sword arm, though, since the other was so wrecked from the squid.

There was a rustling, and a little hand reached up and patted his stomach. "Me, too, Ge-go. Boots have light, too!"

"Sorry, Boots, I'm out of flashlights. Oh, hang on," he said. He took the mini flashlight and taped it onto her sleeve.

Very pleased, Boots hurried over to the cockroach. "Boots have light, too, Temp!"

"Okay, but you've got to turn it off. Save the light, right?" Gregor said, flipping off her switch. He said it to Boots, but the others, who had also been flashing around their beams, guiltily turned them off. Gregor smiled. He could tell they all thought the flashlights were pretty cool.

He only had about six spare batteries. The Underlanders insisted that he keep them, and he didn't put up much of an argument. Howard was right about Gregor being the guy who had to take down the Bane, and that sure wasn't going to happen in the dark, with him relying on echolocation.

As Gregor was about to turn off his own flashlight, something caught his eye. For days they had been in a huge void, with no land in sight except for that deadly island. Now he could see towering rock walls flanking them on either side. They must be in some kind of channel.

Twitchtip's nose was going like crazy. "We will be there in minutes. And Photos Glow-Glow and Zap have done their work. The rats are waiting for us."

"Can you tell how many?" asked Luxa.

"Forty-seven," Twitchtip said without a pause. "They are waiting in the tunnels above the Tankard."

"What's the Tankard?" asked Gregor.

"It's a round, large shaft, very deep, half-filled with water. The serpents sleep on its floor," said Twitchtip.

"So, the serpents are some kind of fish?" said Gregor.

"No, they breathe air. But they can sleep underwater for long periods," said Howard.

Gregor thought of alligators. They could sleep underwater, too. He hoped these weren't giant alligators — the regular-sized ones were scary enough.

"I can smell it!" Twitchtip said. She rose up on her back feet, leaning her front feet on the bow. "I can smell the Bane!"

Up until that moment, Gregor had been secretly half-hoping they'd gotten the whole thing wrong. That maybe the Bane was like a fairy tale or a myth or something, and the rats had just been planting the rumor it was around. But if Twitchtip could smell it...

"Are you sure?" asked Gregor. "I mean, how do you know it's the Bane and not another rat?"

"I can smell its whiteness," said Twitchtip. "Only a flash, here and there. It's deep in the Labyrinth, and there are many layers of stone between us. But it's definitely there."

Gregor felt the need to move. He paced up and down the four-foot strip of floor that was available to him. "Okay, so what's the plan? I mean, what do we do when we get to this Tanker?"

"Tankard," said Howard. "There are several entrances to the Labyrinth in the tunnels above the Tankard. Our original plan involved secretly slipping into one of them and tracking down the Bane on foot. But this was before the shiners turned on us."

"So much for Plan A. What's Plan B?" asked Gregor. There was a long pause. "Come on, everybody has a Plan B!"

"In all fairness to the council, Overlander, coming up with any plan that brought us this far was difficult," said Mareth. "In the Underland, in the event that a plan fails, we usually have two options to fall back on: We may fight or flee."

"Flee?" Ahead lay rat-filled tunnels. Behind lay the Waterway with nowhere to land except that island teeming with flesh-eating insects. "There's nowhere to flee!" said Gregor.

"That makes our decision simpler," said Howard. He began to pass out swords.

"Twitchtip, which entrance betters our chance of survival?" asked Mareth.

"There's one at the far end of the Tankard. It's right at the waterline. No rat's been in it for years. It may be forgotten, or it may hold some danger that keeps the rats away from it, although I can't detect what that would be," said the rat.

"Can you direct us once we enter the Tankard?" asked Mareth.

"We are already here," said Twitchtip. Gregor flipped on his flashlight, and the others followed suit. They were floating across what appeared to be a giant, round pool. The surface was as smooth and unbroken as a mirror. There were no beaches; the water went straight up to stone walls on all sides. Tunnel openings dotted the walls, some almost concealed by the waterline; others, hundreds of feet up. In many of them, Gregor could see a large rat.

No one moved. Not the rats. Not the visitors. An eerie silence surrounded them. Then there was a slight scraping sound from above.

Splash! Something landed off to their right, causing a fountain of water to spray into the air. Splash! Splash! The rats were tipping boulders out of the tunnels and sending them hurtling to the water below.

"Well, that's weak. None of the rocks are even getting near us," said Gregor. It was true; the boulders were missing them by a mile. He felt a little better, knowing the rats were launching such a worthless attack.

Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash!

Luxa frowned. "Something is wrong here."

Mareth nodded. "Yes, it is not like the gnawers to waste their energies on futile attacks." Howard's eyes widened, and he began waving his arms frantically. "Get the boat up! Fliers! Get the boat up now!"

Twitchtip sprang up at almost the same time. "They're waking! They're waking! Fly!"

And that's when Gregor put it all together. The rats weren't trying to sink their boat with the rocks — they were trying to wake the serpents! Aurora and Andromeda latched on to the front ropes; Ares got his claws around the two loops in the back. They lifted the boat out of the water, spinning it in a circle as they rose.

"Where fly we?" came from all three bats.

"Twitchtip, where lies the tunnel?" asked Mareth.

"Stop spinning the boat so fast and I'll tell you!" said the rat. The bats maintained a slower circle, and Twitchtip indicated a tunnel opening opposite the channel they'd come in by. "There! The one shaped like an arch!"

Gregor caught it in his flashlight beam. It was only about six feet high, and you could've swum right into it. "But it's half under water! Does it even have a floor?"

"Further in. Look, this is no time to be picky," snapped Twitchtip. "The serpents are —!" Bam! Something hit the side of the boat, ripping away a chunk of it. They were knocked sideways. The bats barely managed to hang on.

Gregor thought one of the rats' rocks had made contact. Then he saw it. "Oh!" he gasped. "Oh, geez!"

His first thought was, "So, I guess they're not extinct after all." He meant dinosaurs, but that wasn't quite right. Dinosaurs had the ability to walk on land. This creature propelled itself with flippers. Some kind of aquatic reptile then, but as old as the dinosaurs. And as big as the biggest skeletons he'd seen at the museum in New York City. Its body was a flattened oval. A whiplike tail beat the water, causing waves to roll across the calm pool. The neck was at least thirty feet long, and atop its sinuous, scaly pink length was a bullet-shaped head. There were indentations where eyes might have been, somewhere in its evolution, but they were long gone. What use were eyes to it down here? Its mouth opened, letting loose a low howl that chilled Gregor right down to his DNA. And then his light hit the teeth. Hundreds and hundreds of teeth in three rows headed their way. Crunch! Another piece of the boat was gone!

"Abandon ship!" Mareth choked out.

Gregor was impressed he'd managed to form a coherent sentence at all. He grabbed up Boots and his pack in one swoop and stumbled for Ares.

"On the count of three, everyone jumps!" called Mareth.

Gregor realized he meant "jumps off the side of the boat." It was the only way the bats could catch them. He scrambled up onto the edge.

"One — two — three!" Gregor felt his legs pushing off the boat, and then it was gone, but almost immediately Ares was under them. The bat dipped and swerved, and Temp landed behind them. The poor roach was shaking like a leaf. Well, who wasn't? Temp began nudging him in the back with his head. Gregor turned and saw the roach had a sword in his mouth.

"Oh, man, thanks, Temp!" Gregor said, grabbing the hilt with his good hand. He hadn't even thought to bring it. Some warrior.

Everyone's flashlight was on high beam now, which was good, since the single torch that had been lit had just hit the water with a sizzle. A prehistoric nightmare unfolded before them. Half a dozen serpents had broken the surface of the pool, and Gregor had a bad feeling that more were coming. They were swinging their heads and tails through the air, trying to take down whatever they could find. Since they had no eyes, Gregor guessed they had some other direction system. Maybe even echolocation.

There was no chance of fighting them. It was all Gregor could do to cling to Ares's back while the bat dodged the heads and tails frantically. He caught glimpses of Mareth and Howard on Andromeda, Luxa on Aurora...but wait a minute! Where was Twitchtip? Gregor heard a shriek and saw poor Twitchtip dangling by the tail from a serpent's mouth.

"Go, Ares!" he cried, and the bat flew straight for the rat. Gregor lifted his sword to attack when a tail caught Ares broadside and sent them hurtling into the air. Boots flew from his arms. "Boots! No!" he screamed. "Ares! Get her, Ares!" But the bat caught him first.

"Luxa has her!" the bat cried, before Gregor could flip out. "Luxa has her and Temp!"

"Get in the tunnels!" Howard shouted as Andromeda whizzed by. "The tunnels!" He was sitting upright on the bat, trying to hold on to an unconscious, bloody Mareth.

Twenty-foot-high waves were rolling across the pool now, smashing into the rock walls. Rats who had not moved quickly enough into their tunnels were screaming in the serpents' mouths. The air was filled with drenching splashes from the impact of the reptiles' tails.

Gregor felt Ares dive. They went straight into the waves, and for a moment he was submerged. When they came up, he was coughing and bewildered. He could feel his bat struggling under the weight of something. They rose in the air, jerking this way and that, as Ares dodged the numerous snapping mouths. Then the bat rocketed toward a stone wall, dipped, and they were inside a tunnel.

Ares dropped his burden and collapsed. Gregor rolled off his back and hit the floor with a thud. There was light behind them in the tunnel. Howard was rapidly working over Mareth on the ground, while Andromeda hung over them. One of Mareth's pant legs was soaked in blood. In front of him, Gregor saw the shuddering heap of wet fur that was Twitchtip. Blood poured from her nose, which appeared to have been smashed in, and oozed from the stump that had been her tail.

There was a sound at the front of the tunnel, and Gregor aimed his flashlight beam, hoping to see Aurora come in with Luxa, Boots, and Temp.

Instead, shooting down the tunnel at them were three rows of bared teeth.