by A. L. Knorr
“Good. We need to go off-road and on foot, and the ground is treacherous there.”
My skin prickled as my mind caught like a minnow in a net on what Ryan had said about the sign we were to watch for. I lifted my eyes to the hulking shape in the distance, towering over the smear of city lights below and blocking out the stars like a menacing black hole.
“Vesuviano?” I asked with a croak. “As in... the volcano that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum?”
“Yes,” Ryan replied smoothly, the certainty in his tone coming in clearly through the cell phone’s speakers. I felt like someone had laid a lead blanket over my shoulders. What were we walking into?
“Il Cono is an affectionate term for Mount Vesuvius,” Ryan continued. “They’ve gone inside the volcano.”
Nineteen
Il Cono
Tomio put the Mount Vesuvius Observatory location into the GPS on his phone and set it up where I could see it. We were a long way from the mountain top. The ice cream shop gaffe had cost us. According to the GPS, it would take us over an hour to reach the Observatory, but it was the wee hours of morning and the roads were quiet.
Driving fast through the narrow residential streets of Naples was treacherous and risky, even at night. Parked cars jutted into the street, the occasional car or scooter loomed suddenly around blind corners, street animals ran across the road at the last second, narrowly avoiding tires, and hairpin corners were frequent and confusing to read, even with directions. But once we were back on a main road, I pushed the Fiat to the speed limit of ninety kilometres per hour, then crept over one-hundred, then to one-twenty.
At one-thirty, Tomio said, “I get it, but let’s try not to get pulled over, eh, speedy Canadian?”
I slowed the Fiat to one-ten, hoping the Italian cops gave that much leeway. We had to slow again when we reached the town of Portici and pick our way through a confusing mass of one-way streets, dead-ends not marked by the GPS, and the occasional cluster of partiers on the corners of small and dirty piazzas. When the road began to climb, things grew quiet again. Apartment buildings became farmhouses and streetlights grew infrequent until they ended all together. Darkness swallowed the Fiat save for two circles of light illuminating the dirt road in front of us. The city dropped away and grew small. The temperature gauge on the car’s dashboard indicated we’d lost three degrees Celsius since we’d left the city limits. I dropped the car into third gear to keep momentum as we climbed, the engine working hard as mud-holes and washboard rolled by underneath us.
The SP140 was narrower, rougher and windier than the SP18 and I had to slow the vehicle to forty just to manage the potholes and ridges. Thick trees lined the roadway on one side, while a steep slope dropped off to our left. The glow of Naples appeared in the rear-view mirror, then vanished altogether.
The forest grew sparse, then patchy. A swath of stars against a duvet of blue-black infinity opened overhead, taking my breath away. The moon bobbed into view as we curved around the backside of Vesuvius, hanging like an ornament on an invisible line, casting shadows behind the scrubby bushes and hillocks as it washed the rough terrain with cold, white light.
Tomio leaned forward as the observatory sign loomed. I slowed the Fiat further, creeping along until the copse of trees Ryan mentioned came into view. The rest-stop’s narrow entrance would be easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there.
Piloting the Fiat into the rest stop, we were swallowed by the shadows of scrubby evergreens. Our headlights swung across the rest stop as I pulled the car into a parking space, bouncing off the chrome of a pretty, black Giulietta. There was no sign of Ryan.
Tomio and I let out a synchronized exhale as I turned the Fiat’s engine off. A lonely wind whistled around the rest stop, though we were protected enough not to feel it as we got out of the car. Tomio opened the car’s rear door and grabbed the backpack from behind the passenger’s seat.
Ryan materialized from the entrance for a walking trail leading past the rest-stop’s toilet facilities. His black jacket, jeans and sneakers made him look like a floating head and pair of hands.
He greeted us with a beckoning motion. “Let’s go. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
I locked the car and pocketed the keys, following Tomio to the trailhead. “How far?”
“Only a little over three kilometers but over rough, exposed ground.” He eyed our black clothing with approval. “We can’t use hand-lights, so watch your step.”
Crickets and other night insects chirruped to one another as Tomio and I followed Ryan along the path leading to the toilets. Before we reached them, Ryan stepped off the path and into the trees, picking his way through until we emerged above the tree line.
It wasn’t cold, but the wind threw grit against our legs and occasionally picked it up and threw it into our faces. Naples was a finger of dense but distant light to the west. It fell away as we climbed up and across the face of the mountain, leaving a smattering of lights visible from farmyards and country homes nestled in the valley around the back of Vesuvius National Park. The borders of the park were easy to make out, and the scar of the SP140, but that dropped away too.
Twenty minutes into the hike it felt like we were on a different planet. A lonely one, with no civilization or animal life at all. Even the insects were quiet up here. The terrain was dry, rocky, and loose; all the makings of a sprained ankle if one wasn’t careful.
“You’ve been here before, obviously,” Tomio said as we kept up with Ryan as best we could. He dodged treacherous spots and skirted loose scrapes of dirt the way only someone who’d done this trek—perhaps multiple times—could have. Tomio and I quickly learned that the safest thing to do was to literally step where he stepped. I brought up the rear and had to strain my ears to hear Ryan’s answer over the increasingly rough wind.
“Nero brought me here before I left the country. No one is allowed to stray off the volcano’s walking path so no one ever comes back here. The way inside is a tight squeeze initially, so I hope you’re not claustrophobic.”
“Isn’t it dangerous?” I asked. “I’ve never been inside a volcano but it doesn’t seem like a great place for, you know, creatures who need oxygen to live.”
“There is oxygen inside thanks to multiple vents and suction, and it’s not as hot as you might think, at least where Nero will be taking them. If you descend further, yes, it’ll get too hot for a natural, and toxic.” Ryan bracketed one side of his mouth as he explained over his shoulder, never taking a misstep as we scrambled over the alien terrain.
Even scrubby grasses were few and far between now, and the soil was so dark and sandy it was like walking on finely crushed ebony. Moon and starlight cast small pointed shadows across the ground, helping our eyes pick out obstacles.
“Why here?” I asked, shielding the side of my face as the wind lifted a sheet of grit to pepper our clothing and exposed skin.
Ryan gave a private, sour laugh I could barely hear. “Nero has a flair for the dramatic, as you’ll see, and so must Dante, if he agreed to this. What better place to feel the contrast between your natural and your supernatural self than above a hot, lava lake that will kill you in one moment and be swimmable in the next?”
My mind went to Gage as a cold prickle of fear traced up my back like a witch’s finger. What would they do with Gage if they successfully made the transfer?
“Hurry,” I said, trying to swallow down rising panic. My fire inadvertently sent power down my legs without me consciously commanding it to. I put my hands against Tomio’s back and pushed. He surged forward and did the same to Ryan.
I knew from reading the tourism brochures the city of Naples produced, that Vesuvius was always in danger of erupting. The last major one had happened in 1944. It blew my mind that Italy still allowed people to make their homes around its base, even with the incredibly fertile farmland the volcano produced. In spite of popular belief, the pamphlet had read, volcanic eruptions were not a fast process. A buildup of increasingly heav
y smoke and ash happens before any lava is actually spewed, as happened in 1998. Even for fire magi, a volcano wasn’t a friendly place to be, yet here we were heading toward a vent. I couldn’t decide if this was something I would ever tell my parents about or not, but to make that decision, we had to survive first.
No ash or smoke had been seen issuing from Vesuvius in recent years, and in fact the only thing to stain the blue sky over Naples was smog from the city itself. Still, the volcano was only one unpredictable aspect of this task, Nero was the other.
A sharp cliff looming against the sky seemed to appear out of nowhere, jolting me out of my thoughts and bringing me to a sudden halt. Ryan and Tomio had apparently not been lost in their thoughts as badly as me, and were swallowed up by the near impenetrable black shadow beneath the cliff.
“What’s this?” I heard Tomio ask as the shadow swallowed me as well. I reached out a hand to feel his back. The wind immediately stopped its battering of our clothes and hair.
“It’s a remnant of a much older volcano called Somma,” Ryan replied, his voice hushed now that the wind had been cut off. “It collapsed after the Pompeii event, and now it cradles the Vesuvius cone. See?” He pointed to the shadow of a concave curve arching toward the sky, which was cut off at the top like someone had sliced across it with an ax.
“Do we have to climb that?” I asked.
“Nope. The vent is in the side of the old Somma.”
I felt more than saw Ryan gesture that the vent was ahead of us, but I couldn’t see anything now that the moonlight was behind the cliff face.
It was impossible to run here, with fire-power or without it. The ground was a treasonous conglomerate of razor-sharp rocks and shifting rubble. We needed to brace one hand against the cliff to the right of us just to pass along the seam without falling down. I longed to light a hand-torch, but I knew that was out of the question. If the dastardly deed was already done and we were too late, there was a chance we could meet Nero and Dante as they emerged.
Pain sliced into my left ankle as a rock rolled beneath my sneaker and I turned my foot, hopping at the last second to prevent a sprain. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth against the pain. It passed quickly without Tomio or Ryan realizing how close I’d come to injuring myself.
Ten minutes of this treacherous walking in the windless dark and my armpits and lower back were soaked with sweat. I longed for solid ground beneath my feet, and a light to see what lay ahead.
A faint sulfuric smell reached my nostrils, the first fume I’d detected since this pursuit had begun. I was about to ask about it when Ryan stopped and held up a hand. He pressed himself against the cliff wall to let us see what was ahead.
I had to strain to make it out, but my eyes had adjusted enough to see a narrow crack in the cliff face ahead. My heart fell into my shoes as I realized how much Ryan had downplayed the size of our entrance. Entering Vesuvius meant getting down on hands and knees, maybe even crawling on our bellies, underneath many tons of volcanic rock.
Without even stopping to warn us about what we’d encounter once we did get inside, Ryan gracefully dropped to his hands and knees in front of the crack and crawled in.
Tomio, who’d been so nervous to swim under the wall in the cistern underneath Naples, appeared to have zero qualms about tackling this particular obstacle.
“Wait,” I hissed, then bit my lip when Tomio didn’t pause, but shuffled into the crack behind Ryan. A second later and I felt completely and utterly abandoned.
Taking a big breath of outdoor air and trying not to think about the fact that it might be my last, I stuck my head inside the crack and went totally blind. My ears and my sanity latched onto the sound of Tomio and Ryan moving up ahead of me in the hellish blackness. I had to move forward, that was all I could do.
We’re coming Gage, I thought. Hold on.
Closing my eyes since they were no good to me for the moment anyway, I began to crawl forward through the outer crust of one of the most dangerous volcanoes on earth.
Twenty
Into The Furnace
Army crawling on my elbows, the clinking almost musical sound of hardened cinders moving beneath me echoed off the walls of the tube we’d entered. Desperate for light, I had to restrain myself from sending fire into my hand to illuminate my fingertips. Surely I would not be visible inside this pitch dark tunnel. How long was it anyway? Still, it wasn’t worth the risk. If Ryan wasn’t doing it up ahead, then I shouldn’t either.
I could hear the sound of my own breathing as the tunnel narrowed and pressed down from overhead. I bumped my head three times on the hardened magma above before I finally learned to keep my face close to the floor. Dust particles went up my nose as I pressed my lips together to keep from inhaling it fully. The sound of Ryan and Tomio scraping along ahead of me in the dark and occasionally uttering a quiet grunt—probably as they bumped their own body parts against the walls like I’d been doing—actually kept me from going into panic mode.
I heard my clothing rip and felt a pull at my knee, and another at my right elbow a moment later. Something caught my hair and I had to reach up and back to untangle it, causing my shoulder and neck to cramp. It felt like we’d been crawling through this horrific tunnel for a day already. I lay my cheek against the ground and told myself everything was fine. Ryan knew exactly where he was going, and this tunnel would soon end and we’d be able to stand up like proper bipeds. I allowed no inner voice to interrupt, argue or question, just like a proper dictator.
How had we gotten ourselves here? Another surge of gratitude for Tomio rose in my breast. If I was feeling on the edge of a panic attack with him here, how could I have done this without him?
Somehow, I unlocked my mutinous muscles and kept going, squirming along like a little blind mole.
“Just a little further, Saxony,” Tomio half-whispered.
His words echoed so strangely down the tube that it sounded like he’d said them right beside both of my ears. I hadn’t been aware that he’d reached the end, but relief surged through my blood the way sunlight pours through a window when the blinds are pulled up. I increased my speed.
“Watch your head at the end, there’s a sharp rock jutting from the right side,” he said from somewhere in the darkness ahead.
Ryan whispered something I couldn’t hear and suddenly there was an illuminated pink hand glowing in the dark above me.
The diffused wash of red-tinged light lit the tunnel. It was no more than thirty inches wide. Pitch-black hardened cinders and broken magma littered the lava tube with refuse. A few sparkles caught my eye as Tomio’s hand-light caught flat edges and reflected.
When I reached the end and Tomio helped me to my feet, a new sound impinged my heightened senses. A prehistoric rumble from far below, soft but constant and menacing, like the steady snore of some huge dragon sleeping deep inside the earth.
A faint glow was visible ahead, but it was still so dark beyond Tomio’s hand that my eyes couldn’t pick out anything solid to fix themselves upon, which gave me vertigo. How was Gage faring in this suffocating, disorienting darkness? I reached out for Tomio to steady myself and got his forearm. He turned his hand up and grabbed my forearm back, like he knew exactly how I was feeling with all the blood tumbling down my body to find its proper place. He gave me a few moments to stabilize, then put out his hand-light and doffed the backpack to take out a bottle of water. We took turns drinking.
Ryan was a dark shape against a barely perceptible amber glow. A glow I realized was not coming from his body, but from something ahead and around a corner.
Since Ryan hadn’t protested Tomio’s hand-torch, I lit mine. My vision cleared. The illumination painted highlights and crescents of shadow across Tomio’s handsome features. His eyes looked enormous in his face, huge and black and full of wonder and excitement. He was... smiling. His dimple, usually soft and almost invisible, was a crater in his cheek.
“Are you enjoying this?” I half-squeaked as he turned to
follow Ryan.
He shushed me and crept along faster to catch up, shouldering the pack again. The ground was less treacherous here than inside the tube or outside the volcano, soft yet solid, like a layer of dust over uneven stone. A smell registered in my brain. I don’t know how long I’d been able to detect it before my mind gave it due attention. The odor grew thick as we journeyed deeper through the now large lava tube, and something happened inside my chest as a result. The temperature and humidity had both risen, making the air feel cloying and close, leaving a coating on my skin and inside my mouth and throat. But thirty seconds later the feeling passed, though I knew the atmosphere had only grown more toxic.
The smell was unpleasant. A mixture of gases like sulfur and methane. I knew with objective certainty that too long in here and a human would die, but not a mage. A mage could breathe this air for a long time before it affected them, just like Mehmet had alluded to. How was it Dante could even be in here? It was hot, but not so hot a natural couldn’t bear it, but surely he’d pass out from the fumes within a few minutes, if not sooner. Even if there were vents letting in a flow of air from outside, unless he was sitting right next to an intake, he would not benefit.
Ryan’s shape paused at the edge of a vertical black shadow—a cliff—and peered around the corner, then he slipped around it. Tomio followed him, and I followed Tomio.
We’d stepped out onto a wide, flat ledge and into a brighter amber glow. Ryan walked to the edge to look down. As Tomio joined him, he dropped his hand and his hand-light went out. I followed. My own light went out from pure amazement at the view before us.
