Chapter 6: Below

I hit something soft and wet and stopped.

For a second I couldn't tell which way was up.

Then I rolled onto my side and threw up.

The ground under me was warm and spongy, like the inside of a mattress.

I got up on my hands and knees and waited for the room to stop moving.

It was dark. Not black dark. There was light coming from somewhere, low and orange, like a fire under a door.

"Draven."

My voice didn't carry. The space was too big and too full of soft things.

"Draven."

Something moved ten feet to my left.

"Here."

He sounded bad. Worse than I felt.

I crawled toward the sound until my hand found his shoulder.

He was on his back in the muck, one arm bent wrong at the elbow.

He was crying. Not loud. Just tears running down into his hair.

"My arm," he said.

I looked at it. It wasn't broken. It was dislocated, maybe, or just wrenched.

I sat back on my heels and looked around.

The light was coming from a wall about fifty feet away.

There was a door in it. A real one, wood and iron, with a bar across it.

I got up and walked over.

The door was set into the wall at an angle, and the light came around its edges.

I put my hand on it and it was warm.

"Can you open it," Draven said from behind me.

"I don't know yet."

I lifted the bar. It came up easy, like it had been oiled.

The door swung out and cold air came in.

I stood in the doorway and looked.

There was a corridor on the other side. Stone floor, stone walls, torches in brackets.

Not Hall stone. Older. Rougher.

At the end of the corridor I could see a light that was steady and white.

I stood there for a second and breathed it in.

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