Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

Ree climbed gingerly down into it. Rusting steel rungs had been set into the shaft, so people had once come down into the sewers. That helped. He wasn’t the first. And there would be some way to get around down there. It couldn’t be all vertical tunnels and precipitously small shafts.

He hoped there were no guards on the outlets.

Ree listened for anything that might mean an attack. All he heard was water, dripping, trickling, and gurgling. He smelled more than water, even though last night’s rain would have washed a lot of the worst away.

Once there had been spells on these drains, cleaning them so that only water flowed out at the end of them, spells to turn everything else into heavy dark mulch the farmers bought for their fields. Ree remembered watching them trade for the mulch at last summer’s fair. Now everything went out to the river, although work gangs had built weirs to catch the worst of the solid stuff.

The rungs ended, leaving Ree’s feet dangling. He used his hands to lower himself to the bottom rung, and stretched. His feet touched solid ground.

He sighed and let go. “Bit of a drop at the bottom,” he said. And realized Jem wasn’t there. He had got in the habit of talking to Jem. Of relating his actions to him. Even when he went out alone to hunt, he would come home and tell Jem everything.

Home . . . when had Jem’s crash pad become home?

But it wasn’t the place. It was because Jem was there. But Jem wasn’t here. Jem would never be here again. And that was as it should be. Ree had no right to risk Jem, no right to—

He cut the thought off, and listened and peered into the darkness.

This part of the drain was quiet. Ree saw and smelled nothing animal. If there were Changefish in the water, he had no way to tell.

With no real idea which way to go, Ree decided to follow the flow of the water. There was a walkway along the side of the drain that must have been built so workmen could get in without having to walk in the water.

He walked in silence, senses straining for a hint of danger. There was none. Once, he heard animal squabbling far off. Whatever made it, it was too far distant to be a danger to him.

When drains joined the one he was in, narrow bridges crossed the channels.

He crossed them, following his drain and the water, hoping that it would lead to an outlet that would take him out of the city, away from Jacona. If he had not been always listening, sniffing for danger, it would have been an easy walk.

He did not know how long he walked, or how far. Darkness and the constant sounds of water played tricks on his senses, making it seem that he had been walking forever, and sometimes like no time at all had passed. Apart from the bridges where new drains joined his, everything was all the same.

Finally, the darkness began to lift. Ree hurried toward gray, eager to be out of the never-ending blackness. Soon, light glinted off the water, the chilly white light of moonlight. Ree hurried toward the light. Then stopped.

There was something there, at the grate waiting for him. Something big. As he drew closer, his heart started pounding. A hobgoblin had been tethered to the iron grate that sealed the drains. It looked looked partly like a snake and mostly like too many teeth. Its head swung back and forth at the end of its tether as it tried to reach him.

Ree gulped. He jumped back. His claws all came out. But he thought of himself—of how the soldiers would kill him on sight. And he did not want to do that to another hobgoblin. Whose fault was it, if he had chanced to be near a snake, when the changes came? It had not asked to become a hobgoblin, any more than Ree had.

“You don’t have to hurt me,” he said, and his voice came out small and frightened. “You’re like me. I’m like you. I mean you no harm.”

Slowly, he stepped toward the thing, toward the grate. The eyes, amid the teeth, glinted, he thought, with a hint of understanding.

He thought he was safe and then the creature launched. Ree just managed to jump out of reach, flatten himself against the wall, while the thing’s too-sharp, too-many teeth closed near his bare arm.

“Why—” Ree yelled.

“You are nothing like me, kitten-rat boy. Snakes eat the likes of you,” the creature spoke, hissingly, through its many teeth. “And my life is spared because I’m important and I can kill the likes of you . . . vermin.”

Ree was pinned against the dank wall. Moving either way would bring him within reach of the thing’s teeth. He could not go out. He could not go back. He could rush toward death or stay here till he starved.

He would never see Jem again. Ree flinched from the thought, because it was stupid. He would never see Jem again anyway.

Just then he heard a scream. He turned, at the same time the snake creature did.

Jem stood in the tunnel, away from the snake’s reach. He had a crossbow. And he was screaming, a scream of rage through clenched teeth, as he pulled the string back on the bow.