“So,” he said. “You will go.”
It was not a question.
He let them in. The cage holding the bonebirds was covered by a sheet. On Berghast’s desk was a tray holding plates of bacon and sausage and boiled eggs and butter cakes, still steaming. They ate ravenously; Dr. Berghast watched without speaking; and when they were done he rose and took up a lighted lantern. With a strange key he unlocked the leftmost door on the easterly wall.
“Mr. Thorpe weakens,” he said gravely. “We must not delay.”
The door opened onto a flight of stairs, winding down into darkness. They were in the walls of Cairndale, descending, and then they were below the manor, and emerging into a dark underground tunnel. The air tasted sour, hard to breathe. The floor of the tunnel was slick with muck and some sort of watery runoff. Dr. Berghast lifted the lantern and, wordlessly, started walking. The tunnel, as far as the light would reach, seemed to go on in a straight line forever.
“Where are we going?” said Charlie. His voice echoed off up ahead, over and over.
“This tunnel leads under the loch, Charles. We are going to the island.”
Marlowe said, “But the loch is deep.”
“Yes, it is, child.” Berghast did not turn as he spoke, only led them swiftly onward. “Except where a singular ridge of rock connects the island to the shore. We are walking inside it now. Above you is solid water.”
Charlie swallowed. He thought of the weight of that water, pressing down on the roof of the tunnel, he thought of the rock splitting and caving in, and the roar of it.…
“Who made this tunnel?” asked Marlowe.
“The dead, child. As they made everything that comes down to us.”
They were quiet then and walked on. The only sound was the splash and scrape of their shoes, the low hiss of the candle swaying in its own wax.
At last the tunnel seemed to slope upward, just faintly, and the air sweetened, and then they had reached a second flight of stairs. Dr. Berghast led them up to an old door, which he unlocked, and on the other side of it Charlie saw, again, the ruins of the monastery. The gray daylight was fierce, painful, after the darkness below. Charlie squinted, grimacing. They were standing in an apse, in a little shelter, the door cleverly hidden from sight.
“Come,” said Dr. Berghast.
He led them through the tumbled stones and the long grass and outside, to the front of the time-ravaged building. And again, laboriously, he unlocked a heavy door, and swung the lantern high, and led them inside, out of the mist.
It might have been a kind of living quarters once, for the monks who had built the island: a long room, windowless, with shadowy little chambers on either end. Dr. Berghast led them swiftly to a broken wall in the back, ducked his head, slipped through. It was a narrow stairwell, carved out of the rock itself, curving downward to a kind of natural cavern.
The dim light within was blue. The first thing Charlie sensed was a kind of thrumming, like a low-grade electric current. There were roots punching up out of the rocky floor, climbing in tangles up the walls. There were stone arches holding the roof in place and in the center of the chamber was a deep stone cistern, tangled and overgrown. Steps on one side led down into it. Its surface looked dark, unreflective; then Charlie saw it was not water at all but a kind of coagulated sap, thickening there. From deep below the skin of the cistern glowed an eerie, startling blue light. The roots had grown into it, the way a tree’s roots will grow into a pool of water. Charlie caught his breath.
“The orsine,” said Dr. Berghast calmly, indicating the cistern. He held out a small old-fashioned knife. “You must cut through it, to the waters below.”
Charlie took the knife warily. “Where’s the glyphic?”
Berghast raised an arm. “Ah, Mr. Thorpe is here, all around you. All this is a part of him. That substance, sealing the orsine? It is a resin, from his roots. He is feeding off the orsine.”
“We’ve got to cut through it?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t it hurt him?”
“I imagine so.”
Marlowe took a step toward the orsine, then stopped. Something was happening with his little hands, where he held them out; they were shining, shining the same brilliant blue as the waters.
Dr. Berghast looked pleased. He set the lantern down at his feet and reached into his jacket and took out a roll of parchment. “This is a copy of the map,” he said, kneeling in the dust to open it. “You will recognize it from the wall in my study, perhaps. Come closer, Charles. It will be difficult to read, at first. But it will make sense when you are through the orsine. Here are the gray rooms, where you will enter. And here are the dead stairs, and here you see the beginning of the city.”