Fresh air, yeah, right. Not fresh enough to get rid of the poisonous gas that was killing all the miners. I then noticed something else weird. Throughout all the tunnels, the walls looked the same. They were made of solid, craggy rock that had been chiseled out by hand. But here it was different. Along one side of the tunnel were round, stone columns. They were wide too, maybe three feet in diameter, and looked to me like big ancient columns from Greek ruins.
“The miners uncovered these by accident many years ago,” Alder said. “They are the foundation of the Bedoowan palace.”
Whoa! That meant we were directly under the fortress!
“The Bedoowan do not know that the Milago have tunneled under their palace,” Alder added. “If they did, they would have closed this tunnel off and killed some miners in punishment.”
There must have been about twenty of these pillars and they were roughly ten yards apart. I saw off to the side, between two of the stone pillars, another tunnel. Actually it was more like a small recess, because just inside it was a ladder. Obviously this ladder led up into the palace. Gulp.
“No one knows why this secret entrance was created,” said Alder as we climbed out of the ore car. “It is older than any of the miners who are alive today.”
I stood at the bottom of the ladder and looked up. I then looked back at the others. It was show time.
“Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page,” I said. “Our plan is to get to the cell where they’re keeping Uncle Press as quietly as possible. If this becomes a fight, we’ll lose.” I said this while looking straight at Loor. She looked away from me. I knew she agreed, but it was killing her.
“Alder,” I said. “Can you get us to the cell area?”
“Yes, I think so,” was his answer.
“You think or you know?” I didn’t want anything left to chance.
“I know,” came his more confident reply.
“Good,” I said.
“But it is not going to be as easy to get back unnoticed,” he added.
“And that is when we fight,” said Loor.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said, and turned for the ladder. Jeez, she had a one-track mind. It wasn’t until I got halfway up the ladder that I realized I didn’t want to be the first one up. What was I thinking? I had no idea what might be waiting for me on top. But it was too late now; we weren’t about to change places while dangling in the air. So I continued to climb and ended up on a dark shelf of stone. The ceiling was also stone and it was so low that I couldn’t stand up straight. The others quickly joined me.
“Now what?” I asked.
Alder knew exactly where to go. He walked a few feet along the stone ledge and then raised his hands. I looked to see that above him was a wooden door. A trapdoor! Alder pushed it up easily, then hoisted himself through it. Loor was next. She easily pulled herself up. It wasn’t as easy for me. Not only was I shorter, but I had the pack on. I stood below the open trapdoor looking up and said, “Uh, excuse me? Little help, please?”
Loor and Alder both reached down, grabbed my outstretched hands and hoisted me up as easily as if I were a child. We were now in another dark room.
“This leads to a storage room off the kitchen,” Alder whispered. I figured that since he was whispering, we were getting close to where we might come across some Bedoowan.
Alder led us across the small room and then felt along one of the walls. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for until he found it. There was a small notch carved into the stone. Alder stuck his fingers in and pulled. Suddenly, the wall opened up as if it were a door! We quickly went through and Alder closed the secret door behind us. When I looked back, I saw that once it was closed, you could barely see the seam where the door was. The wall was smooth, as if it were made out of plaster. That seemed weird. Everything I had seen so far on Denduron was crude and rough. This wall seemed almost modern.
I looked around to see that we were in a storage room. There were baskets of food and rough, burlap bags full of stuff. There were also stacks and stacks of earthen pots. I was hit with a bunch of new smells. For the last several hours I had been smelling that nasty, sweet smell in the mines. But now I got the definite aroma of cooking food. I had no idea what it was, but it was making my mouth water. All I could think of was how my house smelled at Thanksgiving. My stomach rumbled. So did Loor’s, I’m glad to say.
On the far wall was a wooden door. Alder crept quietly to it and gently eased it open. Instantly, the sounds of banging pots and sizzling food filled the room, like a busy restaurant kitchen. Again my stomach rumbled. I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible because this was torture. Alder waved for us to come and look. Loor and I joined him at the door and peered out. What I saw gave me a total shock.
This was a busy kitchen. Several cooks scurried around carrying large, succulent roast turkeys cooked to a golden brown. Other cooks were peeling vegetables and cutting potatoes on large wooden tables. Others were stirring pots of fragrant soups that bubbled on fiery stoves. But that wasn’t the shocking thing. What surprised me was how modern this kitchen was. Believe me, by our standards it was still pretty ancient looking, but not compared to what I’d seen so far on Denduron. The pots were crudely shaped and hammered out of black metal; the ovens were made of stone with fires burning inside. The chefs slid the turkeys and other roasts in and out of these ovens with long paddles. Their other utensils didn’t exactly look as if they came from the mall. They were crudely made and very simple but still, this setup was light years ahead of anything the Milago had.
I saw a device that looked like a dumbwaiter. The chefs placed platters of sumptuous, steaming food into a hole in the wall, then pulled on a rope that raised the small elevator and its cargo up into the palace. They even had running water! I saw iron sinks with hand pumps that produced clean, fresh water. Unbelievable. The Bedoowan had running water while the Milago had disgusting sewerholes in their crude huts!
It was then that I noticed the kitchen workers. As they went busily about their chores, they had a different look than anyone else I had seen on Denduron. Their features were all very small and delicate, like perfect dolls. Everything about them was small. Their hands, their feet, and even their height. Their eyes were different too. They slanted down, which gave them kind of an Asian feel. They all wore outfits like we had on, but theirs were white. But the thing that jumped out the most about them was their skin. It, too, was pure white. I don’t mean pale-skinned like the Milago, I mean white. Believe it or not, it wasn’t creepy. In some strange way, they were beautiful people. They just happened to look like porcelain dolls.
Alder must have been reading my mind because he whispered, “The workers in the palace are not Bedoowan. They are brought from a place across the ocean called ‘Nova.’”
“Why don’t they use the Milago to do their work?” I asked. “They make them do everything else.”
“Because they do not want the Milago to see how well they live,” answered Alder with a trace of venom. “They are afraid it would cause unrest.”
That was an understatement. If I were a Milago and saw this I’d be downright pissed. Heck, I was getting pissed anyway. And hungry. Those turkeys smelled good.
“Look,” said Loor as she pointed across the kitchen.
Standing in the doorway was a guy who was definitely not from Nova. He was so big that he filled the opening. He wore the same kind of clothes we had on and stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the kitchen. Around his waist was a leather belt from which dangled a nasty-looking club. I could feel Alder tense up.
“It is a Bedoowan knight,” he whispered. “I do not like this. The knights never come to the kitchens. He must be looking for something.”
“You think they know we’re here?” I asked nervously.
“I do not know,” answered Alder. “But if he catches us, we are finished before we even begin.”
The knight stepped into the kitchen and slowly walked around to survey things. The
Novans paid no attention to him and he didn’t acknowledge them either. His eyes slowly scanned the room, taking everything in. We were trapped. In a few moments he would certainly enter this closet and find us.
Alder said nervously, “We should go back to the mines. We can wait until he’s gone and then return.”
“There isn’t time,” snapped Loor. “When he enters the door, we will overpower him and throw him into the mine.”
That wasn’t a good idea either. We weren’t about to kill the guy; at least I wasn’t about to. And he’d be sure to wake up and sound some kind of alarm. And who knew what the Novans would do if a knight entered their pantry and never came out? No, beating up on the guy wasn’t the answer. I quickly pulled off my pack and dug into one of the side pouches, looking for a better solution.
“What are you doing?” demanded Loor.
“I’ve got an idea,” I answered. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll do it your way.”
I found what I was looking for and quickly moved back to the door. The knight was only a few yards away. There wasn’t much time. He looked into a large pot of soup and reached in to take a taste, the slob. That’s when I took my shot.
The thing I pulled out was the laser pointer you sent. I clicked it on and aimed the red beam at the pot of soup. From where we were it was easy to see the red laser dot against the black pot. I could only hope that the knight saw it too. He pulled his hand out of the pot and started to suck on his finger to taste the soup, but still he didn’t see the laser. Alder and Loor watched the scene over my shoulder. Of course, they had no idea what this laser thing was, but now wasn’t the time to ask.
I jiggled the beam a little so that the red dot danced on the pot. The knight stood there sucking on his tasty finger. He was just about to reach back into the pot for a double dip…when he saw it. He looked at the jumping dot curiously, without even taking his finger out of his mouth. The idiot. Then I slowly moved the dot off of the pot and let it travel across the stove. The knight, with his finger still in his mouth, followed it. This was like the game I play with Marley and a flashlight. I’d shine the beam on the floor and Marley would jump at it. The poor dog never got the idea that the spot of light wasn’t something she could get her paws on. But that didn’t stop her from trying.
That’s exactly what happened with the knight. I slowly moved the red laser dot over loaves of bread, past bubbling pots, across wooden tables, down along the floor and back up on the wall. The curious knight never took his eye off of it. He followed the magical red light like, well, like a dog following a flashlight beam. What he didn’t realize, is that I was moving him farther and farther away from us.
Once his back was to us, I silently motioned to the others to get moving. They slowly but silently opened the pantry door and crept out into the kitchen. I was right on their tails, while still concentrating on holding the beam steady to keep the dumbfounded knight entertained. We quickly moved across the kitchen to the exit. The Novans didn’t even give us a second look. I was the last one out. My body was already out of the door, but I leaned back in, directing the beam. Then, I turned the laser off and couldn’t resist waiting one last second to see the befuddled knight’s reaction. It was perfect. He stood still for a moment, then started looking around frantically. Sheesh, even Marley wasn’t stupid enough to do that. I wanted to laugh out loud, but I couldn’t stay to enjoy the show. We had to get moving, so I followed the other two into the palace.
We had made it. We were in. The next step was to make our way to the cell where Uncle Press was being kept. Alder was already checking the map. All Loor and I could do was follow him and try to blend in. As it turned out, it wasn’t all that difficult. The palace was busy with Bedoowan people who all more or less looked and dressed like us. Yes, Loor’s skin was a bit darker than most, but not so much that she stood out. If no one recognized us for who we really were, we might just make it. As we made our way through the corridors, what I saw was not only surprising, it made an anger grow inside of me that I never thought possible.
The fortress was nothing like I expected. From the outside it looked like an ancient stone castle like they had in medieval times. I had seen pictures of those castles that still stood in England and the interiors were just as crudely simple as the exteriors. Here I expected to see corridors of stone and tiny cell-like rooms. I expected the floors to be of dirt and the light to come from windows or torches. You know, your basic Robin Hood–style castle. But this is not at all what we found inside the Bedoowan fortress.
The kitchen had been my first hint that all was not going to be what I thought. I’m telling you, Mark and Courtney, this place was beautiful! The walls were smooth and painted with light colors. Near the ceilings were elaborate decorative paintings done right on the walls. Some corridors had paintings of vines and flowers that stretched the whole length of the wall. Other corridors had paintings of people who were probably famous Bedoowans from the past. The ceilings were decorated with colorful chips of glass that were sculpted into beautiful patterns. The floors were all tiled with intricate marble work. And the place was totally clean. Every so often we’d pass one of the Novan servants on his hands and knees scrubbing the floors, or dusting the statues that stood on tables like this was some kind of museum.
Loor and I exchanged glances. We were both thinking the same thing. How could these people live in such elegance at the expense of the Milago people? I saw that Loor’s jaw was clenching. She was angry too.
We heard music coming from a room we were about to pass. As we went by I glanced in to see a small concert going on. Three musicians sat on chairs playing oddball instruments like I had never seen before. They were string instruments, but they were shaped like human forms. It was really bizarro. The music they played was sweet and soothing. Several Bedoowans lounged around listening on big, cushy pillows. Pillows! These people had pillows! And to top it all off, they had Novan servants scrambling around serving them fruit from large platters.
The more of the Bedoowan people I saw, the more I realized that they were a pretty soft bunch…except for the knights, of course. All the others had this kind of baby fat thing going on. The men, the women, even the kids…all looked as if they needed to hit the gym. I guess that’s what happens when you have nothing to do except lie around, eat stuff, and listen to lame music.
And here is the wildest thing. In every corridor along the walls there were thin glass tubes about the diameter of a nickel.
These tubes stretched the whole length of every corridor, and they gave off light! Light! They didn’t have electricity here, but they figured out some way to make artificial light! The bottom line is that these guys were incredibly advanced. By our standards they were still back in the dark ages, but compared to the Milago they were the Jetsons!
I was amazed at first, but my amazement was replaced by anger. The Milago were dying and living in squalor so that these people could get fat and live in such luxury. It was just flat wrong. The more I saw of how these people lived, the more determined I grew to get Uncle Press out of there so he could help the Milago even things out a little.
All the while I was taking in the rich surroundings, Alder had been leading us through the maze of corridors. The kitchen was on the lowest level of the palace. We had climbed one set of wide, circular stairs to the next level. According to the map, this was the level where the prisoners were kept. Finally we came to an area that was a little less fancy than the rest of the fortress. The walls didn’t have paintings on them and the floors and ceilings were bare. I guessed this was where they kept their prisoners, though it was still a lot nicer than where the Milago lived. At a turn in the corridor Alder motioned for us to stop. He took a cautious peek around the corner, then turned back to us.
“There is good news and bad news,” he said. “The cell where Press is being held is being guarded. That means he is still there.”
“Okay,” I said. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is t
hat there are six knights keeping guard.”
Uh-oh. I took a peek around the corner to see for myself. Alder was right. There were six guards there. And these weren’t fat and sassy Bedoowans, either. These were solid-looking knights. Each was dressed the same as we were and had the same club-weapons hanging from their belts as the knight in the kitchen. This was bad. There was no way we were getting past those guys. I snuck back to the other two, looked right at Loor and said, “Don’t even think about taking those guys on.”
“We must do something,” countered Loor. “Or this was all for nothing.”
Alder added, “And the equinox is fast approaching.”
The Merchant of Death Page 21
