Leah didn’t hesitate. She sprinted into the tunnel. I followed. The green glass floor in this passage tilted down more steeply. If the incline had been even a bit more severe, I think we would have lost our footing. Leah increased her lead. She was fleet of foot; I was the galoot who could only be allowed to play first base.
“Leah, wait!”
But she didn’t. I ran as fast as the inclined floor would allow. Radar, lower to the ground and with four legs instead of two, did better. The hum began to fade, as if somewhere a hand was turning down the volume on a gigantic amplifier. That was a relief. The green glow from the walls also faded. What replaced it was a fainter light that brightened—slightly—as we came to the mouth of the passage.
What I saw there, even after everything I’d experienced, was all but impossible to believe. The mind rebelled against what the eyes reported. The room of many passages had been enormous, but this underground chamber was far bigger. And how could it be a chamber when above me was a night sky littered with pulsing yellowish stars? That was where the light was coming from.
This can’t be, I thought, then realized that yes, it could. Hadn’t I already come out into another world, after descending another set of stairs? I had come out in the world of Empis. Now here was a third.
More stairs circled a colossal shaft that had been driven into solid rock. Leah was descending them, running full-out. At the bottom, five hundred or more feet below, I could see the Flight Killer’s palanquin, the gold-threaded purple curtains closed. The four men who had carried it were cringing against the curved wall and looking up at those alien stars. They had to be strong men to have carried Flight Killer all this way, and brave, but from where I stood with Radar beside me, they looked small and terrified.
In the center of the stone floor was a huge derrick easily a hundred yards high. It was not unlike those I’d seen at construction sites in my hometown, but this one appeared to have been constructed of wood, and looked weirdly like a gibbet. The jointed mast and supporting boom formed a perfect triangle. The load hook was attached not to the well-cap I’d imagined when I imagined the Dark Well but to a gigantic hinged hatch that pulsed with a sickly green light.
Standing near it in his purple caftan-like robe, the golden crown of the Galliens absurdly askew on his straggling white hair, was the Flight Killer.
“Leah!” I screamed. “Wait!”
She gave no sign that she heard—she might have been as deaf as Claudia. Down this final circle of stairs she ran under the dim light of nightmarish stars shining from another universe. I ran after her, drawing Mr. Bowditch’s gun as I went.
7
The men who had carried the palanquin started up the stairs to meet her. She stood with her legs apart in fighting stance, and drew her sword. Radar was barking hysterically, either in terror of this awful place I was sure we’d never leave, or because she understood the men were threatening Leah. Maybe both. Flight Killer peered up and the crown tumbled from his head. He picked it up, but what came from under the purple robe wasn’t an arm. I didn’t see what it was （or didn’t want to）， and at that moment I didn’t care. I had to get to Leah if I could, but I already recognized that I wouldn’t be in time to save her from Flight Killer’s bearers. They were too close, the range was too long for the revolver, and she was in the way.
She braced the hilt of the sword against her stomach. I heard the one in the lead shout something. He was waving his arms as he climbed, the other three behind him. I caught Nah, nah! but not any of the rest. She didn’t have to smite him; in his panic he ran on her sword without slowing. It went in to the hilt and came out on the other side in a spray of blood. He tilted toward the drop. She tried to yank her sword free, but it wouldn’t come. Her choice was simple and stark: let go and live or hold on and follow the man over the side. She let go. The impaled man fell a hundred or more feet from where Leah had skewered him and crashed down not far from the palanquin he’d helped to carry. He might have been promised gold, or women, an estate in the countryside, or all three. What he’d gotten was death.
The other three came on. I ran faster, disregarding the very real possibility of stumbling—maybe over my dog—and taking a mortal fall. I saw I was still not going to be in time. They were going to get to her first and now she had only the dagger to defend herself with. She drew it and put her back to the wall, ready to fight to the death.
Only there was no fight and no death. Even the man she’d killed probably had no intention of engaging her—Nah, nah was what he’d been shouting just before the impalement. These fellows had had enough. All they wanted was to get the hell out. They ran past her without a look.