Happenstance Found (Books of Umber #1) (2 page)

“So intriguing,” Umber said. He sniffed the scroll and peered into one of its rolled ends. “Do you know who that fellow was, who spoke to us just now?”

Hap shrugged. “I don’t even know who
I
am.”

One of Umber’s eyebrows vaulted high. “That is
also
intriguing. Well, let’s have a read.” Slipping a finger under the edge of the parchment, he broke the wax seal. He unrolled the scroll and gazed at it for a while, with his lips moving now and then, mouthing words. Hints of emotion flickered over his face. He seemed amused, then surprised, and gradually went pale. He licked his lips as if his mouth had gone dry.

“What does it say?” Hap asked, craning his neck.

“If you don’t mind, I won’t tell you right now,” Umber said. “I’d like some time to …” His voice faltered, and he stared at the parchment again.

“What?” said Hap. “Is something wrong?”

Umber pinched the note at opposite corners, holding it with the nails of his thumb and forefinger. “Curious. The parchment feels warm. Almost too hot to hold.” Wisps of smoke streamed from the paper. Umber blew on it, but the note abruptly burst into flame. He squeaked and dropped the parchment. It turned white-hot and disintegrated into ash before it touched the ground.

Umber stared at the snowy remains. “Well, there’s a trick. I have to learn that one.” He used the edge of his hands to sweep the ashes into a pile. He scooped them, along with the broken seal, into an empty envelope that he extracted from one of his pockets. After he tucked the envelope away, his gaze fell on Hap again. Something had shaken his high spirits momentarily, but the smile soon came back.

“Well, Hap. I don’t think we have a choice about this. You’d better come with us. We can’t leave you alone in this tomb of a city. Is that all right with you? Will you come with me?” Umber stood and extended a hand to Hap.

Hap took a deep breath. He looked at Umber’s pleasant, almost giddy, face and the kind hazel eyes that crinkled at the corners. “I don’t know what else to do,” Hap said. He clasped Umber’s hand just as a deep rumbling shook the room and dust and rock started to rain down.

CHAPTER
2

The shaking stopped a few heartbeats
later. Umber coughed and used his fingers to comb a pebble from his hair. “Just a tremor,” he said. “Nothing to fear. We’ve felt a few since we arrived. Not as strong as that one, though. Come on.” He led Hap through the archway, where the others waited.

“Did you feel that?” asked Oates.

“No, Oates,” Umber said gravely. “All of my senses suddenly departed me, leaving me unable to detect an earthquake.” Sophie laughed, but dropped her brown-eyed gaze when Hap looked her way.

Hap stared at his new surroundings. Until that moment, all he consciously remembered was what he’d seen in the plain little chamber. Now as he looked around, the fountain of knowledge bubbled to life again and eagerly supplied the names for the strange sights before him.

There was a long, wide tunnel, crudely hacked from porous rock. The roof was so low that Oates had to move in a perpetual crouch. On each side the rock had been gouged away to uncover doors, windows, and alleys. Hap peered into the gloom and saw other, narrower tunnels intersecting this one, creating a—he waited for the word to come—
maze
in the stone.

“Do you know where we are, Hap?” Umber said.

Hap shook his head. “You called it the buried city.”

“Yes, but it has another name: Alzumar. Sophie, why don’t you tell Hap about it?”

The girl saw Hap looking at her and hid her damaged arm behind her back. “That’s all right,” she said, so softly it was hard to hear. “You do it, please.”

Umber smiled at her and nodded. “Of course, dear. Hap, Alzumar was the wonder of its age, centuries ago; a thriving city of dazzling wealth, peopled by artisans who imported precious metals and jewels from the corners of the world and wrought them into all manner of glorious things. Kings and queens still wear crowns and wave scepters that were crafted here. But sadly, its founders built Alzumar in an ill-fated location—in a valley, at the foot of a volcano called Mount Ignis. Do you know what a volcano is, Hap?”

Hap waited for the knowledge to come. “A mountain of fire,” he replied. The moment he said the words, a stronger tremor shook the underground city, echoing down the intersecting tunnels. Somewhere out of sight, a chunk of rock fell.

“We should get out,” said Oates, eyeing the rough-hewn ceiling.

“I suppose,” Umber said, pulling a loose thread from his vest.

Oates raised a finger and jabbed it Umber’s way. “Hold on—you’re wasting time on purpose! You’re keeping us here because you want to see that worm.”

Umber pretended to cough, but Hap saw him cover his grin with one hand. “Well, I was hoping to catch a glimpse. But I don’t think the beast is here after all.”

“It
is
here,” Hap said. He bit his lip when the others spun their heads his way. “Something’s here, anyway. It’s big. With a lot of legs.”

Umber gave a happy squeal and clapped his hands. “Wonderful! You actually
saw
the worm?”

“I heard it,” said Hap. “Just before you got here.”

“Now I’m sure we should go,” said Oates, turning to look over his shoulder.

“It sounded … scary,” Hap said.

“I should think so!” Umber rubbed his palms together. “Still, I suppose Oates is right. These quakes do rattle the nerves. We’ll go—but who knows, perhaps the worm will pop up before we reach the light of day. If we’re lucky.”

They walked down the craggy tunnel. The glow of Sophie’s lamp washed over half-exposed walls. Hap saw parts of columns and hints of friezes with images of men and women dancing and leaping.

“Hap, I didn’t tell you about the terrible fate of Alzumar,” Umber said. “When Ignis erupted, tons of ash fell, filling the valley to the brim and burying the city. Some folk managed to escape, but many were trapped here, along with Alzumar’s legendary wealth. The whole city was hidden under solid ash, intact but entombed. Before long, men returned to recapture the gold and jewels. They excavated the streets and tunneled into the doorways. It took hundreds of years, but finally almost every byway had been explored, and most of the wealth was found again. Still, people came searching for more. But sometime in the last fifty years, something else made its home here.”

“The worm?” asked Hap.

Umber nodded. “The
tyrant worm
, to be precise. Alzumar is a perfect lair for a creature that can’t stand the light of day. Quite a few fortune-seekers have met their doom in the tyrant worm’s jaws. It’s a legendary man-eater.”

Hap stared. “So why do you want to see it?”

Oates snorted. “Because he’s crazy, that’s why. He’ll go to the end of the world to get a peek at a monster.”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” Umber said. “I’ve heard the tyrant worm described as a cross between a dragon and a centipede. I’m beside myself with curiosity, Hap. How long is it? I’ve heard a hundred feet or more. And is it true that it’s blind, and finds its prey by sound alone?” Umber’s face was radiant, and he waved his hands in the air as he spoke. He would have gone on, but Sophie cut him off.

“Listen!” she cried.

They stopped walking. Umber put a hand to his ear. His mouth was reduced to a tiny, puckered circle. From somewhere in the distance, meager sounds wandered down the tunnel: soft thumps, like fingers drumming on stone.

Hap squinted so his keen sight better pierced the gloom, and he saw the worm—part of its long body, at least. Hundreds of paces away, well beyond the flickering yellow light that the lamp cast, the creature was crossing the main tunnel, going from alley to alley. It was immense, with a round body that nearly touched the stone roof, propped up on pair after pair of short, churning legs.

“It’s there,” he said.

“You can see it?” Umber whispered, tugging at Hap’s sleeve.

Hap nodded. At first he’d felt relieved that the worm wasn’t coming directly at them—perhaps it didn’t know they were there. But the hairs on his arms stood when he remembered how, when he heard it pass before, it sounded as if the creature was dragging its body while its clawed feet raked the stone. Not this time, though. Now it moved in stealth, with its body raised on its multitude of legs. The claws were retracted, so that only the leathery pads of each foot touched the stone and every step was muffled.

Umber tugged again. “What does it look like? What is it doing?”

“I don’t see the head. Just the body. It’s like a … serpent with a thousand legs,” Hap said. “And I think it’s hunting us.” He heard movement behind him, and when he’d turned around, the lamp was on the ground and Sophie had strung an arrow in her bow. The weapon had been cleverly designed so that the metal prongs at the end of her wrist slid into holes drilled in the bow. She aimed the arrow down the main passage.

“It’s not coming right at us,” Hap said. He pointed. “It’s crossing over, that way. I think it will come at us from the side, to surprise us.” The creature was still sliding across the intersection. Hap thought it would never end. But finally the body tapered. Every pair of legs grew smaller until he finally saw a slender tail with a barbed and lethal point.

“How can you see that, boy? I can’t see a thing!” said Oates.

“We’re being stalked! Isn’t it exciting?” cried Umber.

“Should we run?” asked Sophie.

“Oh, let’s move toward the exit, by all means,” Umber replied, grinning. “If it pounces, we’ll just dodge into one of those narrow doorways, easy as pie!”

Oates looked at Hap and shook his head gravely. “Umber’s out of his mind. Get used to it.”

Oates led the way with his spear pointing right, where the worm might lunge out. Hap glimpsed down the dark alleys and byways that they passed, where more hints of lost buildings were revealed. At the far end of the corridor he saw a tiny rectangle of bright light.
The sun,
his growing knowledge informed him.

Umber tugged Oates’s arm from behind. “Slow down—I need to get a look at it!”

The rectangle of light was blotted from sight as the worm shot out from another crossroad ahead of them. It plunged down the opposite byway, blocking their path. Hap caught a glimpse of a monstrous head. The reptilian hide kept sliding by, propelled by endless pairs of lizard legs.

“How long is this thing?” shouted Oates.

Umber shook his head, amazed. “Hundreds of feet. Look—I think it’s circling us, cutting us off in every direction! Brilliant! I’ll bet it comes from behind next. Ha! I was right!”

The head of the worm emerged from an alley just a few strides to their rear and poised there. The strange face was covered by scaly armor. Spiny whiskers, each longer than a man’s arm, bristled from both sides of the head. There was a thin line where its mouth was clamped tight, topped by a row of holes that might have been nostrils or ears. There were no eyes that Hap could see, only an odd domed structure like a beetle’s shell on its forehead. The two legs nearest the head were thick and powerful, with five wicked claws at the end of its fingers.

There was a moment of shocked silence, until Sophie gasped aloud. The thin horizontal line on the worm’s face cracked apart, the whiskers folded flat against the head, and the mouth opened with a roar. Row upon row of jagged teeth lined its jaws. The cavernous throat could swallow any of them in a single gulp. The tongue was slick and pale with plum-colored veins.

The legs of the worm churned like the oars on a galley, propelling it forward. The mouth snapped with terrible speed, and the teeth clashed so hard, Hap thought they would crack into pieces. Oates seized Sophie and Umber by the shoulders and pushed them through the nearest doorway before plunging in behind them. Hap bent his legs and sprang after them in a broad leap that carried him into the room, just ahead of the gnashing jaws.

“You’re a nimble one, aren’t you?” said Umber as Hap straightened out of the froglike stance in which he’d landed. Oates and Sophie shook with fear from the narrow escape, but Umber grinned wider than ever. As the raging creature hammered its head against the door, he looked at it like a beloved pet. The heavy blocks of stone on either side of the threshold shook but did not budge, even when the worm turned sideways and tried to squeeze inside. Hap was glad to see that the head was too bulky to slip through.

“It can’t get in, so we’re perfectly safe. We’ll just wait it out here,” Umber said.

“Wait it out like that fellow did?” grumbled Oates. He jabbed his thumb toward the corner of the room. Hap saw the slumping remains of some earlier fortune-seeker, now just a skeleton in a moldy tunic, with a rusted sword and shield at his side. The skull grinned from inside a battered helmet.

“Not necessarily,” said Umber. “It’s called optimism, people. Try it, I beg. Here’s the secret: Everyone, stop talking and don’t move. It’s said that the worm hunts by sound, not sight. In time it should lose interest and go. If not, I have the means to knock it out, remember?” He patted a bulging pocket in his vest. “But let’s try the silent treatment first.”

“Should I douse the lamp, Lord Umber?” Sophie whispered. Umber shook his head and tapped his lip. They stood perfectly still, scarcely breathing aloud. Hap looked around the room, which wasn’t so different from the one where he’d been found. Aside from the ancient corpse it was barren, stripped of valuables long ago. There was another doorway at the other end, thankfully just as narrow as the one that held the tyrant worm at bay.

Hap felt a tap at his shoulder. Umber pointed at the worm’s head, where something odd was happening. The shell on the creature’s forehead opened in the middle like shutters, and something emerged from the dark hole inside. It was a moist, twitching, globular thing, drooping at the end of a long stalk. As Hap watched, a black disc appeared within the globe and spread like oil on water. He heard Umber draw a quick excited breath.

Hap’s blood turned cold as the globe swiveled left and right before facing their small group. The black circle expanded and contracted, and Hap knew it was
seeing
them, bringing them into focus. The worm hissed.

“You said it couldn’t see!” shouted Oates, forgetting Umber’s instruction to be silent. He shook a fist. “We all heard it, Umber! You specifically said, it couldn’t see!”

“I know—isn’t it wonderful to learn something new?” Umber laughed. He reached into a pocket and drew out a bottle made of red glass and sealed with wax and cork. A dark liquid sloshed inside. “I hate to do it, really, but we have to put this specimen to sleep for a while.”

He cocked the vial over one shoulder and threw it toward the threshold. It struck the ground under the jaw of the beast, and a purple cloud billowed up from the shattered glass. The worm shook its head. It drew in a great breath and sneezed. Hap put his elbow across his face as a spray of noxious liquid spattered the room. Sophie wiped her cheek with her sleeve and looked as if she was going to be ill.

“Don’t fight it, you beautiful creature,” Umber whispered to the worm. “Let sleep come.”

The dangling eye wavered, and the black circle shrank to a dot. The creature’s head slumped until it touched the floor, where it rocked back and forth. For a moment, Hap thought the creature was going to sleep, but it suddenly snapped its head up and hammered it against the sides of the door. It opened its mouth wide and roared, louder than thunder. Hap felt hot breath ruffle his hair.