‘Well, lad, you’re a sight for sore eyes and no mistake.’
I smiled and handed him his staff. ‘I’ve lots of things to tell you but it’ll have to wait till later. The guards could come looking for us at any moment. We’re going to try and escape down the buggane’s tunnels. It’s either that or back up the stairs to face Lizzie. And she controls the yeomen now.’
The Spook nodded. ‘Then we’ve little choice. We don’t know where the tunnels lead, so we might as well try up here,’ he said, pointing back to the dark entrance in the earth wall of his own cell.
I suddenly wondered why he hadn’t already made his escape down that tunnel. Locked in my cell earlier, I’d made the decision not to risk it. But I was still an apprentice and he was the Spook; he must have thought that it would be his only chance to escape before being tortured and killed. Had he lacked the strength and courage to face the tunnel alone? I had little time to dwell on that thought before Alice spoke again.
‘We do know where one of the tunnels leads,’ she said. ‘The one from the long room where the dogs fought – it leads to that hollow tree …’
‘But it’s surrounded by a bone-yard, Alice,’ I reminded her.
‘It’s very dangerous, but I might be able to find Lizzie’s secret path out. I’m prepared to try.’
‘Make a mistake and you’d be crushed to death in seconds, girl,’ the Spook said, shaking his head.
‘Ain’t any better option,’ Alice retorted. ‘Otherwise we’ll be travelling blind through the buggane’s tunnels.’
The Spook sighed, then nodded his agreement. ‘Right, you lead the way then …’
We left his cell and followed the passageway along; soon it widened out and there were dry stone flags under our feet. We helped ourselves to more wall lanterns; we’d need as much light as possible in the tunnel. As we approached the long room, we heard loud barks; the stench of death and animal faeces was overpowering. We saw that the three wolfhounds were still locked in their cages and Lord Barrule’s rotting body lay where it had fallen next to the throne.
‘We should let the dogs out,’ I said. ‘They haven’t been fed. It might be days before anybody bothers to do anything about them.’
‘Take care, lad,’ the Spook warned me. ‘They’ve been cruelly treated – who knows how they’ll react?’
Warily, we released them. But the dogs neither attacked us nor fought each other. A couple bounded out of the room immediately, but most just wandered about forlornly. Claw, Blood and Bone, however, were pleased to see me. It was good to pat them again and see their tales wagging with excitement; their joy brought a lump to my throat. They were starving and dirty, and I felt angry at the way they’d been treated, but at least the shaman’s power over them was broken and they were their old selves again. When we entered the tunnel at the end of the room, they followed us in.
I took the lead, Alice at my heels, and the Spook followed behind Adriana in case we were attacked from the rear. The tunnel was just earth, with no wooden supports like a mine, and the thought of that weight of soil above us was scary. We could easily be buried alive down here; segments of tunnel must collapse all the time. There were roots visible too; sometimes they were twisted like snakes and I had to keep telling myself that they weren’t moving.
The lanterns were very much more effective than the candle stub we’d used the first time I came down here with Alice and Lizzie, and it wasn’t long before we saw the first of the bones: they weren’t lying in large piles, as in the lair of a bone witch, but we never went more than twenty yards without catching a glimpse of some fragment of a human skeleton. Sometimes it was a skull half buried in the side wall of the tunnel, or a fragment of a leg or arm bone, or just a few fingers or toes. However, I did not sense any lingering spirits here; they were just remains. I paused beside an almost intact human foot; only the little toe was missing. To the left of it was a skull; a tree root had twisted its way in through the left eye-socket and emerged from the right before continuing down into the soil.
‘Why are there so many bones down here?’ I called back to the Spook. ‘Do they belong to prisoners who tried to escape from the cells?’
‘A few maybe,’ he replied. ‘But the buggane regurgitates some of the bones it’s swallowed after feeding.’
I shuddered, realizing that the foot and the skull had spent time in the buggane’s stomach.
For about five minutes we made good progress, but then we encountered a problem. There were thick tree roots ahead of us, completely blocking the main tunnel. Another tunnel went off at an angle, heading downwards. It was new and freshly dug; I didn’t like the look of it one bit.
‘This is the buggane’s doing,’ I said. ‘What now?’ ‘To reach the hollow tree we need to get past those roots somehow,’ Alice replied.
‘We could dig round it with our staffs but it’ll take ages. I know a better way,’ I said, turning to look past Alice and Adriana. ‘There are roots blocking our way!’ I shouted to the Spook. ‘Reverse back down the tunnel a bit. We need to give the dogs room to work. Claw! Blood! Bone!’
The dogs came squeezing past us eagerly as the others retreated. I dug at the earth beside the roots with my hands and pointed ahead. Soon the three wolfhounds were burrowing away enthusiastically, throwing earth backwards with their paws. In fact we got two tunnels instead of one because Claw worked to the left while Blood and Bone dug their own tunnel to the right.
The latter was the larger excavation, and the Spook and I widened it with the blades of our staffs until we could squeeze through.
At last we were moving again. I began to feel optimistic about escaping from the hollow tree. It was dangerous, but if anyone could find the secret way through the bone-yard it was Alice.
But soon we encountered another problem, this one much worse than before. We found the passage ahead completely blocked with hard-packed earth. Once again a new tunnel had been excavated by the buggane; one that headed sharply downhill.
The Spook crawled forward to join me, shaking his head. ‘We could try digging again, but the whole tunnel might have caved in behind,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it, lad. It’s almost as if we’re being herded like sheep. Forced downwards to where someone wants us to be.’