The Missing Monarch

by Rachelle Mccalla

  Shaking his head, he darted across the throne room, tripping down the shallow stairs that led to a back hallway. If he turned left, he’d end up back at the front of the palace. Turning right instead, he ducked into a chamber that was mostly used for storage, the wooden wall panels camouflaging the secret door in the corner. Further obscured by a stack of tables that nearly blocked the way, the door itself had no knob, but was opened by sliding the framework of the jamb out of the way, each piece in ordered succession, like a massive brain-teaser puzzle.

  Thad pulled one of the flashlights from a cargo pocket, and held the light steady between his teeth while he slid the panels to the side. As soon as the door settled back in place behind him, gravity would close the jamb back around it, as though the way had never been opened to the tiny room beyond.

  There was nothing there to give anyone who made it that far any indication that there might be more to the space than stale, forgotten air. Certainly nothing to hint that the side wall could be pushed back just far enough to reveal a small handle on the floor, which, when pulled, raised a trapdoor. And no one would ever guess that from that trapdoor, stone steps led down in darkness to an ancient tunnel under the sea.

  * * *

  Monica held the wooden jamb just far enough to the side so that, blinking with one eye at the crack, she could see Thad shuffling in the beam of his flashlight in a tiny room on the other side. Knowing he didn’t want her coming with him, but determined to see their mission through to the end, she’d decided to follow him.

  He never had to know she was behind him. As long as he didn’t need her help, she wouldn’t let on that she was there. But the burning in her heart told her she had to come. For one thing, there was no way she could possibly sleep knowing what Thad was up to. And besides that, Octavian had given her the mission to retrieve the scepter, just as much as he’d given it to Thad.

  Peter’s life depended on the scepter. So she had no choice but to follow Thad, even though there was every chance he’d be furious with her if he found out she’d gone against his wishes.

  His wishes didn’t matter. All that mattered was the scepter, and getting Peter back, safe and sound. So she watched Thad, taking great care not to make the slightest sound that would give away her presence.

  What was he doing, shoving at the wall? What was that he tugged at on the floor? Monica wondered if she’d be able to open the secret doors he’d passed through, but there was no way she could find out until he was gone. If he realized she was following him, he’d only send her back. They’d only end up wasting time.

  And they didn’t have time to waste.

  * * *

  Thad settled the trapdoor back into place above his head. He then pushed hard on the levered hinge that would move the wall above back over the handle of the trapdoor, effectively disguising his escape route. There would be nothing to give away where he’d gone. It would be as though he had passed straight through the thick stone walls and disappeared.

  He turned his attention to the steps, which bent in a narrow trail downward, their steep descent almost ladderlike in places, as the tunnel descended to a level far beneath the sea.

  Of course, when this tunnel had been first carved hundreds of years before, the sea hadn’t been there. The king’s castle that sat now in ruins on the Island of Dorsi had originally been built at the tip of a peninsula. But violent storms and ravaging waves had long before washed away the sandy shores, carving out waterways along the slender strip of land, leaving an archipelago of islands stretching out beyond the city of Sardis.

  The storms and waves hadn’t touched the tunnel, chiseled, as it was, through stolid stone beneath the bottom of the sea.

  All the upheaval had, however, shifted the tunnel’s path in places, so that the corridor, once an even meter wide by nearly two meters high, jutted in on itself, nearly blocking its own way at times, so that Thad had to turn sideways to squeeze through or duck to crawl under low-dipping ledges, shuffling nearly on his knees.

  He was scooting along this way, crawling several body lengths ahead with his flashlight in his teeth, reminding himself that he’d gotten over his claustrophobia years before, when he heard a hollow boom behind him, and froze.

  It could be the sea. He’d spotted trickling water between the blocks here and there, and stepped through puddles and over trails of lime and distilled salt where water had slowly oozed, filling in its own path with sediment behind it.

  There was nothing to say the archaic channel wouldn’t be breached by the sea at any moment, filled with water like an aqueduct, drowning anyone unfortunate enough to be caught inside.

  Certainly it was possible—Thad found it remarkable that it hadn’t already happened years before. The only reason the tunnel had survived this long was that no one knew about it, and no one used it. Had he disturbed it enough with his shuffling along that the stones above him were starting to crack?

  If he had, it was likely too late to escape going backward. And there wasn’t nearly enough time to make it out the other end, not if water started gushing in behind him.

  No, all there was left was to soldier steadily onward, regardless of how hopeless the situation was. It wasn’t as though any of it mattered anyway. Even if he found the scepter, even if he brought it safely back, there was no reason to believe he could use it to get his son back.

  There were really only two choices left to him: to give up completely or to keep crawling, no matter how endless the tunnel seemed.

  He stopped, and the cold stone bit into his knees uncomfortably. The chill of the subterranean rocks crept its way up his arms with a dull ache.

  No, giving up was no good. It was too painful.

  He pictured Monica standing on the oil platform, her tired eyes telling him she’d thought about retreating, her worn-out words repeating the mantra she’d no doubt recited countless times.

  I’ve traveled too far to turn around now.

  He tried out the words in a whisper. They fit just fine, exhaling with every sigh and grunt of effort, tripping off his tongue at a faster pace as the ceiling arched upward again, high enough for him to walk upright, and then to charge forward at something approximating a run.

  I’ve traveled too far to turn around now.

  * * *

  Monica had frozen when the trapdoor settled back into place with a loud boom.

  Thad had to have heard it, even if he was far ahead of her by now.

  His light had disappeared in the distance and, reluctant as she was to give her position away, she figured if she couldn’t see the beam of his torch, he wouldn’t be able to see hers, either.

  She clicked on her tiny flashlight and started moving as quickly as she dared. She didn’t want to catch up to Thaddeus, but neither did she want to give away her presence. Every so often she paused, listening, turning off her light and squinting ahead, trying to determine how close she’d come to her husband.

  A trickling drip of water met her ears, an unsettling reminder that the tunnel they journeyed through was very old, and apparently less than stable. Had she been foolish to follow Thaddeus? What if something happened to her?

  She thought about turning around. The warm bed in her palace suite had soft sheets and more than enough comfortable pillows.

  But where was Peter sleeping tonight?

  And how would she ever get him back if she didn’t keep going?

  Words echoed back to her through the tunnel, so familia
r she almost thought they’d come from inside her, instead of without.

  “I’ve traveled too far to turn around now.”

  She recognized that voice, and felt a tightening in her chest. Thad was up there, trudging onward, for Peter’s sake. She wasn’t sure precisely why she felt such a strong need to accompany him, but she wasn’t about to let him make the journey alone.

  * * *

  Whenever the tunnel passage allowed it, Thad kept to a steady jog. The narrow trail crept for miles under the archipelago, hand-chiseled through solid rock by hundreds of workers over the course of several decades. Though a marvelous feat of architecture, it wasn’t as long as some modern undersea tunnels, such as the one that connected London and Paris, or another he’d heard of in Japan. Unlike those, however, which were dozens of meters in diameter, wide enough to fit trains and large machinery, the tunnel that ran to the Island of Dorsi had been carved just wide enough to permit two average-sized adults to walk side by side.

  In that respect, it reminded him more of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the famous aqueduct-turned-escape-hatch that had been chiseled under Jerusalem around 700 BC, and still drew hordes of tourists every year. Knowing Hezekiah’s tunnel was both older and more heavily traveled made Thad feel slightly less foolhardy for attempting the underground trip alone.

  Unlike Hezekiah’s tunnel, however, the long passage to Dorsi had shifted over the years, and in places threatened to give way again. It had only three entrances: the opening in the palace, through which he’d entered, the distant exit on Dorsi, and a short spur on the Lydia mainland, which opened to a narrow cave on the sheer cliffs north of the Sardis marina. He passed the spur without hesitation. There was nothing for him to gain by going that way.

  As Thad plodded onward, he came to a section where the smooth floor of the tunnel was littered with smaller crumbling rocks.

  A smattering of pebbles rained down as his footfalls echoed against the floor.

  He slowed his pace. Above him, cracks crisscrossed the stones like fissures in a sheet of ice. He placed his fingers in one of the gaps. His whole hand slid in easily, but let out a yelp of surprise as the stones squeezed inward, applying gentle pressure on his fingers before releasing them like an exhaled sigh.

  Thad pulled his hand out quickly. The tunnel seemed to be shifting, almost like a living, breathing thing. It wasn’t rigid at all, but flexible, moaning and sighing with the pulse of the tide and the ocean waves far above. That, Thad realized, was likely the secret to its long survival. It wasn’t brittle. It gave under pressure, like an earthquake-proof building, engineered to sway instead of snap.

  Another crack inched its way upward toward the ceiling, and Thad felt the length of it, relieved to find no trace of moisture that would have indicated close proximity to the sea above. At least here the salt water wasn’t threatening to rush in. Most likely the tunnel ran under one of the islands at this point, instead of the sea.

  Deciding to test his theory on the flexibility of the tunnel walls, Thad wedged his fingers in the vertical chasm. Again, he felt the stone move inward, squeezing his fingers. This time, however, the pinch felt tighter, and he quickly tugged his fingers free before they could be smashed. To his relief, the stones shifted under the pressure from his hands, rather than crushing him. One of the large sections of stone moved to the side as he drew his hand back.

  Then a few more pebbles rained down.

  Thad stumbled backward as the stone he’d inadvertently dislodged shifted inward, the loosened rocks behind it giving way under hundreds of years of pressure. Thad watched in disbelief as the crumbling wall rained down.

  At the last moment, he jumped away from the avalanche he’d triggered. But he wasn’t quite quick enough. Falling stones, ranging in size from marble to baseball, and some even larger, poured from the widening gap, quickly filling the narrow tunnel, burying him up to his chest.

  Dust filled his nostrils and coated his lips. He pinched his eyes shut. When he opened them, he realized his flashlight had been buried, as well. In the darkness every sound was amplified. The pattering of the last loosened stones gradually gave way to silence.

  Thad blinked, straining his eyes to see, but there was no light to aid his sight. His right arm, which held the flashlight, was completely buried. He’d pulled his left hand up toward the ceiling at the last minute, and now his hand rested above the pile of rocks.

  He was buried, the crush of stones so tight he struggled to breathe. Searching by feel with his one free hand, Thad explored the mound that all but covered him. The stones toward the top were large and heavy, and he shoved at the nearest one, feeling feeble as the angle of his arm permitted him to apply only the strength of his triceps and forearm muscles.

  Pushing at the rock, he managed to get it to budge just an inch before he gave up, panting. What had he done? Why had he stopped to inspect the side of the tunnel? Granted, he was an engineer, and the marvel of ancient handiwork had intrigued him, but he was supposed to be on a mission.

  He was supposed to claim the scepter.

  And now he was underground, buried under a pile of rocks from which he might never be able to work himself free, the cold of the stones already seeping past his skin, cramping his immobile limbs. He was stuck—buried, quite possibly forever. And even if he did manage to get free after days and days, Octavian would be long gone with Peter by then.

  What if he couldn’t work himself free? The tunnel was a secret known only to himself and his father. His father was in a coma and might never wake up—and if he did, he might not remember anything, certainly not such a trivial detail like the tunnel.

  Perhaps his family members would simply think he’d sneaked away again, off to some other corner of the earth, while all the time there he was beneath them, fighting for his breath in a tunnel that seemed more and more like a tomb.

  Monica, of course, would assume he’d failed her again.

  The thought pinched his heart even harder than the prognosis of being buried alive, left to die a slow death from cold and thirst. Monica would never know that he hadn’t meant to fail her, that he’d had every intention of trying to get her son back, even if the odds had been against him from the start.

  Monica would think he was a coward who had run away. She would never know how much she’d meant to him or how the memories of the love they’d shared had warmed him in the frozen north, keeping him safe through dark nights that lasted for months.

  He felt a tear trail its way down the dust on his cheek as he recalled the sight of her, sitting tense on the plane, hoping against hope that she’d get Peter back. What had she said then?

  The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

  Like the fissure in the stone, the words cracked through the hardened walls inside him. Did everything on earth, even under the earth, really belong to God? Could God really move mountains, even mountains made of fallen rocks?

  Thad rebelled against the thought. He’d put his trust in God before, praying daily that God would release him from the prison of the frozen north, that God would set him free from exile and return him to his family and everyone he loved.

  But God hadn’t budged.

  The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

  If that were true, God should have seen him, even on the oil rig north of Alaska, and answered his prayers. But God had remained silent.

  A cry for help rose inside him, but Thad pinched it back. What good would it do to pray now?
No one could hear him. Nothing could come of it.

  The pressure on his heart grew harder, but he told himself it was just from the stones. There was nothing to be gained by trusting God. There was absolutely nothing that could come from crying out for help. No one would hear him. To believe otherwise was as absurd as thinking that He really cared.

  God didn’t care, and there was no one to help him.

  So Thad kept his lips sealed shut.

  * * *

  Monica paused at the intersection, debating which way to go. No matter how closely she listened, she couldn’t hear Thad moving up ahead, nor could she detect any sign of his footprints on the solid stone floor. Perhaps she should turn around while she still knew the way? She’d seen at least one spur branching off from the main line. How many more paths bisected hers ahead? If she got lost in the tunnels she might never find her way out.

  Suddenly she heard a rumble like falling stones ahead, and instinctively she scrambled backward. The narrow tunnel was spooky enough. Hollow rattling and falling stones made it a thousand times worse.

  Pointing her flashlight back the way she came, she pondered turning around.

  After all, if the tunnel gave way and she was never heard from again, who would be there for Peter, assuming they ever got him back? The simple fact was, she didn’t like the tunnel, and any excuse to get out was good enough for her.

  And yet, Thad was up there somewhere, alone. He’d probably caused the rockfall she’d heard. What if it had closed off the path between her and him? Then there would be no point in moving forward again.

  She might as well turn and go back.

  Torn between moving onward and turning around, Monica stood still and prayed silently for God to guide her steps.

  How long she stood like that, exhausted from a full day, she wasn’t sure. It felt like a long time, and her prayer for guidance blended into prayers for Peter’s safety, and prayers for Thad, that God would keep him safe.