When we got to the top of the steps I had to sit down. My head was throbbing now as well as my arm. I remembered reading somewhere that when it comes to starting a dangerous, perhaps even lethal infection, nothing but the bite of a rabid animal beats one from a supposedly healthy human… and how was I to know how healthy Petra had been after years of commerce （my mind balked at the idea of actual congress） with Elden? I imagined I could feel her poison coursing up my arm to the shoulder, and from there to my heart. Telling myself I was full of shit didn’t help much.
Leah gave me a few moments to sit with Radar anxiously nuzzling the side of my face, then pointed to the reservoir of the lantern. It was almost empty, and the glow from the walls had gone with the death of Elden and the retreat of Gogmagog. Her point was clear—if we didn’t want to have to stumble our way out in the dark, we had to move.
We were about halfway up the steep incline leading to the huge chamber with its ring of twelve passages when the lantern guttered and went out. Leah sighed, then gripped my good hand. We walked slowly on. The dark was unpleasant, but with the hum and the whispering voices gone, it wasn’t so bad. The pain in my arm was. The bite hadn’t clotted; I could feel warm blood in my palm and between my fingers. Radar sniffed it and whined. I thought of Iota dying from the nick of a poisoned knife. Like the memory of my flesh hanging from Petra’s pointed teeth, it wasn’t anything I wanted to think about, but was helpless not to.
Leah stopped and pointed. I realized I could see her point because now there was light in the passage again. Not the sick green light from those strange half-glass, half-stone walls but a warm yellow glow, waxing and waning. As it brightened Radar ran toward it, barking her head off.
“No!” I shouted. That made my headache worse. “Stay, girl!”
She paid no attention, and those weren’t the furious, terrified barks she’d voiced in the dark universe we’d left behind （but not far enough, it would never be far enough）。 These were excited barks. And something was coming out of the growing glow. Jumping out of it.
Radar went flat, tail and rump wagging, and the Snab leaped onto her back. Following it was a swarm of fireflies.
“The lord of small things,” I said. “I’ll be damned.”
The fireflies—there had to have been at least a thousand—formed an incandescent cloud over my dog and the big red cricket on her back, and the two of them were beautiful in their low and shifting light. Radar rose, I think at some command from her rider that wasn’t meant for human ears. She started up the inclined floor. The fireflies headed back that way, swirling over them.
Leah squeezed my hand. We followed the fireflies.
11
Eris was waiting in the cathedral-sized room with the twelve passages. The Snab had brought a battalion of fireflies to us, but had left a platoon to keep Eris from being in total darkness. When we emerged, she ran to me and hugged me. When I stiffened in pain, she drew back and looked at the makeshift bandage, soaked with blood and still dripping.
“High gods, what happened to you?” Then she looked at Leah, and gasped. “Oh, my lady!”
“Too much to tell.” Thinking it might be too much to tell ever. “Why are you here? Why did you come back?”
“The Snab led me. And brought light. As you see. You need medical attention, both of you, and Freed is far too ill.”
It will have to be Claudia, then, I thought. Claudia will know what to do. If anything can be done.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “I am so sick of being underground.”
I looked at the red cricket on Radar’s back. It looked back at me, those small black eyes giving it a singularly solemn aspect. “Lead on, Sir Snab, if you would be so kind.”
And so it did.
12
Several people were crowded into the clothes storage room when we finally came out. The fireflies streamed away over their heads in a banner of light. Jaya was there, and Percival, and several others from my time of incarceration in Deep Maleen, but I don’t remember which ones. By then I was growing increasingly woozy, and my headache was so bad that it seemed to have materialized into a pulsing white ball of pain hanging about three inches in front of my eyes. The only two things I remember clearly are that the Snab was no longer on Radar’s back, and Percival looked better. It was impossible to say how, given that white ball of pain in front of me and the bone-deep throb in my torn arm, but he did. I was sure of it. Our greeters knelt at the sight of the princess, and raised their hands to their lowered brows.