n.o.body said anything. I was sure they all had the same concerns I did.

Finally Loor uttered a soft, insistent, "Hurry."

"Hands in the boat," I commanded. "Stay low."

I made a best guess as to where the opening to the sea might be. I was fooling myself. I had no clue. I turned the tiller away from the wall and gunned it. I figured we were either going to get out, or crash trying.

We crashed.

A few seconds after we got up to speed, we hit something. Hard. The bow hit on the right side, and flipped the boat over. We were all dumped into the water. My first thought before getting wet was:Loor can't swim.

I went under with no idea of which way was up. The only clue was the hum of the boat's engine. I kicked my legs and broke the surface, shouting, "Loor!" My scream came back to me as an odd echo. I quickly realized that I had come up underneath the capsized boat.

"Is anybody here?" I called.

"Saangi," sputtered the acolyte. She sounded scared. "Loor cannot swim."

"I know. Is she under here?"

There was no answer, which meant no.

"I'm going out," I said, and didn't wait for her to acknowledge. I kept one hand on the boat, ducked underwater, and pulled myself out. When I resurfaced, I heard thrashing in the water.

"Loor!" I yelled.

"Here!" came a welcome voice. There was a slight, fearful quiver in it, though, which for Loor was the same as gut-clenching panic in anybody else. She was floundering. I pushed off into the darkness in the direction of the splashing. It only took a second to reach her. I wrapped an arm around her chest and flipped her over on her back. She trusted me. She relaxed.

"Alder!" I called out.

"Here!" the knight yelled. "I am holding the boat with Saangi."

I kicked toward his voice and reached forward with my free hand. Soon I felt the hard metal skin of the overturned boat. I pulled Loor up to it and made sure she was holding on.

"I am all right," she said.

There wasn't time to rest or discuss what had happened. "We've got to swim for it," I said. "Which way?" Alder asked.

I tried to figure out where the wall was that we had hit. We didn't want to go that way. I looked around, though I wasn't sure why. It was pitch black. There was nothing to see. As it turned out, I was wrong. Therewa.s.something to see. Hovering just beneath the water, a few yards away from us, was a light. Saangi saw it too.

"What is that?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe that's what we hit."

The little bit of light helped me get my bearings. I let go of the boat and swam toward it. I kept my eyes focused on the strip of light. It seemed to be floating only a few inches beneath the surface. As I got closer I began to sense that this light was part of something much larger. It was so incredibly dark that I couldn't make out any real form, except for right around the light. I got to it and touched it. The light was embedded in something solid, and it was big-much bigger than the light itself. I brought my nose closer to the light to see that it was actually behind what seemed to be a gla.s.s window. The window rose above the water, though the light was still beneath the surface. I put my nose closer to this mysterious window, and came face-to-face with a Ghee warrior! AdeadGhee warrior.

"Ahhh!" I screamed in surprise, and pushed away. "What is it?" Alder asked.

I had swum quickly back to the boat in a panic. I clung to the side, trying to catch my breath and calm down. It didn't take long for me to realize what I had seen.

"It's a dygo," I said. "There's a Ghee inside. I-I think he's dead."

"It must be one of the dygos that drilled through the ceiling of the cavern," Alder said. "The rising water must have pushed it in here."

n.o.body said anything for a moment. I think we were all trying to process the information. It was Loor who first put our thoughts into words.

"It is our last hope," she said.

"Can you open it from the outside?" I asked. "Without flooding it?"

"We will have to try," Loor said. "I will need help to get there."

I instantly swept my arm around Loor and pushed off of the boat, headed for the crippled dygo. Saangi and Alder swam right behind. In seconds the four of us were hanging onto the silver sphere.

"The hatch is on the other side," Loor said.

We all carefully moved hand over hand around the floating orb until Loor said, "Stop. The hatch is underwater."

"We have to spin it," I said.

It wasn't easy. Though the dygo was floating, it was big and clumsy. It wasn't until Alder went to the far side and pulled down while we pushed up, that the section of the sphere that held the door broke out of the water. Loor ran her hands across the surface, which was no easy thing since the only light we had was the dim glow that came from the window. A few agonizing seconds later I heard the welcome sound of a latch being released and the hatch being raised. She had done it!

"Careful!" I said. "We don't want to flood it."

We maneuvered the dygo so the open hatch was directly on top. Alder came up from the back side and pulled the hatch fully open. It instantly hit the rocky ceiling. We only had a few feet to maneuver.

"Saangi first," Loor said.

Saangi didn't hesitate. She pulled herself up and slipped inside the dygo, head first. Loor slid in next. I was about to enter when Loor said, "Wait!"

"What's the matter?" I asked.

I was holding on to the edge of the open doorway. My answer came in the form of a cold hand that was laid across mine. It was the hand of the dead Ghee warrior. Loor and Saangi were pushing him up and out of the dygo.

"There isn't enough room," Loor said.

"Are you sure?" I asked. I wanted to be respectful.

"He was a Ghee," Loor said. "He died in battle. This is how it must be."

I pulled the body of the fallen warrior up and out of the craft, while Loor and Saangi pushed. It wasn't easy, for all sorts of reasons. He was heavy, and he was dead. I tried not to be too grossed out by the whole thing. I think I was too far gone for that. We finally got the body clear of the hatch. I pushed him away and the fallen warrior floated off into the darkness, never knowing that his sacrifice may have saved our lives.

"Hurry, Pendragon," Alder said. "We are nearly out of room."

Alder was holding the hatch, but he couldn't open it all the way, because we were getting closer to the ceiling as the water rose relentlessly. There was only about a foot-wide opening now. In a few seconds the hatch would be forced practically closed and the opening wouldn't be wide enough for us to get through. I dove for it and went in headfirst, falling into Saangi's lap.

"C'mon!" I shouted back to Alder.

Alder snaked around the hatch, dropped his feet and legs inside, then fell the rest of the way in. No sooner did he fall inside than the hatch was forced closed by the ceiling overhead. Saangi reached up and sealed it tight.

"Done!" she shouted.

Loor reached for the console and flipped a switch that lit up the interior. We could see! We were a jumble of arms and legs and bodies on top of one another, trying to figure out where to go. I was happy to see that this dygo was larger than the one Loor and I had driven before. It wasn't exactly s.p.a.cious, but there were four seats, two in front and two behind. At that moment, however, it was on its side.

Loor took charge. "Saangi, next to me," she ordered. "Pendragon, Alder, to the rear." She was already moving herself around to get into the driver's seat, which is not easy to do sideways. After an awkward minute of maneuvering, we were all in our seats but still lying on our sides. Loor worked busily to power up the dygo.

"Does this work like a submarine?" I asked.

"No," Loor said. "We must sink to the bottom."

I didn't like the sound of that, but Loor seemed to know what she was doing. She toggled a few switches, and I heard what sounded like a burst of air bubbles being released. I could feel that we were sinking. Loor must have been taking on water so that we would drop down. Gulp. As we sank, the sphere gradually righted itself. We were heads up!

"I'm turning off the inside lights," Loor said.

A moment later we were back in black. It didn't last long. Loor hit the switch that turned on the outside lights. I felt like I was back in the hauler submarine on Cloral, with Spader. There wasn't much to see through the windshield, though. The water was too murky. No sooner had I gotten used to the sensation of floating in this big sphere than we gently landed on the bottom.

"We're treads down, right?" I asked.

Loor gave me a quick look, as if to say, "Give me a break."

She hit the throttle and the dygo crawled forward. It didn't feel much different from when we were on dry land. We had an un.o.bstructed view through the windshield in front, which meant that the drill was behind us.

"Ido not know which way to go," Loor said.

"We've got to find the stairs," I replied. "Keep going until we hit a wall, then we'll follow it like we were trying to do on the surface."

Loor pushed the sphere forward. We crawled along slowly. It wouldn't be smart to crash into a wall. A minute later the headlights reflected off a rocky surface directly in front. We had found the wall.

"Excellent," I said. "Let's go right. Keep the wall in sight. Eventually we have to hit the stairs."

Loor carefully moved the dygo along. She turned the whole sphere so that the window faced the wall, but the treads were ninety degrees the other way. We were actually moving sideways. For the first time I began to think we actually had a chance of getting out of this. We had been moving along slowly for a few minutes when suddenly the wall disappeared, and we were faced with nothing but water. "This is it!" Saangi exclaimed.

Loor spun the dygo so the window faced the direction of the treads. She was about to turn the whole vehicle so we could move forward into the opening, when I realized something.

"Stop!" I shouted.

"What is the matter?" Loor asked.

"Can we look down from here?" I asked.

Loor spun the sphere back so the window faced the open water. She then tilted the whole sphere so the window gave us a view down. What we saw made each of our hearts beat a little faster.

"That was almost a very big mistake," Alder said.

What we saw wasanothing. The stone floor did not continue. It ended. We were not in front of the stairs. We were on the exact opposite side. It was the edge of the platform where we had launched the boat for Kidik Island. If we had gone forward, we would have toppled off the edge and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. We all let out nervous, relieved breaths.

"At least we know where we are," I said. "We need to go in the opposite direction."

Loor spun the dygo sphere a hundred and eighty degrees, lined up the treads, and followed the compa.s.s thing on the instrument panel to send us in the opposite direction. We still had to move slowly because visibility wasn't great "What kind of air supply does this thing have?" I asked.

"There is no air supply," Loor said. "The vents are closed to keep out the water. When we use up the air, we suffocate."

"Oh. Just checking." I suddenly felt more urgency to find the stairs.

While Loor drove, Saangi worked the headlights. She could direct them to scan in several directions. After driving for a few more moments, Saangi announced, "There!"

Up ahead and above us, we saw what looked like the top edge of an opening. We were pa.s.sing out of the launch area, hopefully into the cavern at the base of the grand stairway. Loor pressed on. Alder and I leaned forward, desperate to see something that would tell us where we were.

"Look to the left," I said to Saangi. "That's the direction the stairs would be if-there!"

Through the floating particles, we could make out the bottom of the giant staircase. We had made it! We didn't celebrate. We were still far from safe. Loor turned the dygo. Saangi scanned the stairs with the light until she found one of the ramps that cut through the steps. Loor directed the vehicle toward the ramp and in no time we were climbing up. The treads were on a steep angle, but Loor kept the sphere upright so it felt kind of like rising in an escalator.

I want to say that I was relieved, and I was. But all we had done was get to the next hurdle. There was plenty more to worry about, not the least of which was the time bomb that was ticking beneath us. Had the floodgates collapsed? Were we going to find that Kidik was flooded? I didn't know how much air we had left in the dygo, but I didn't think it would be enough to get us to the surface. I was already feeling the effects of the air running out. It was harder to get a breath. All we could do was keep moving, and hope.

We climbed the stairs, higher and higher. I was trying to calculate how deep we had been underwater, which would be a good indication of when we should break the surface. That is, if there was a surface to break.

A minute into our climb, the windshield of the dygo cleared. We were out of the water. Kidik was still dry. It meant the floodgates hadn't been destroyed yet. Loor instantly opened the vents, and Saangi cracked open the hatch to let air rush in. Man, it tasted sweet. I didn't mind that it was tunnel air. I took in a huge lungful. I exchanged a smile with Alder. We had come so close to disaster, but were still going. As Loor said, if we were alive, we were not done.

When we reached the top of the stairs, we were met with more good news. The lights of Kidik were still burning. Only the lights at the bottom of the stairs had gone dark, probably because they were underwater. Up here, we could still see. At least for now. Loor drove the dygo away from the top of the stairs and stopped the vehicle on the edge of the main street. n.o.body said it, but we all needed to get out, if only for a few seconds. We needed to get our bearings back. Saangi pushed open the hatch, and we all crawled out of the vehicle that had saved our lives. It felt good to be on solid ground again, even if it was in a deserted city miles underground. I stretched my legs, enjoying the feeling of standing on two feet.

"They were here," Loor said.

"Who was?" I asked.

She was looking at the ground. Sure enough, the fine sandy ground was covered with footprints that hadn't been there when we came in. There looked to be thousands of them.

"The Batu invasion made it to Kidik," Loor declared.

"Where do you think they are now?" Alder asked.

"Fleeing for the surface, I hope," Loor said. "If they saw the rising water, they may have realized the danger."

"So they might survive this after all?" Saangi asked.

My first thought was that Saangi was right. The thousands of Batu who came down into the underground might have dodged a very big, wet bullet. It all depended on where they were, and how much longer the floodgates would hold. If they survived, Saint Dane would lose.

That was my first thought.

My second thought was that we were still in the depths and a time bomb was ticking. I was about to point that out when the ground rumbled. It felt like a short, sharp earthquake. We looked at one another. Our sense of victory was short lived.

"Could that be?" Alder asked.

Another short earthquake rumbled the ground. This one was so strong, it nearly knocked me off my feet. "Back in the dygo!" Loor shouted.

We all ran for the vehicle. As we were about to climb in, a building that was thirty yards in front of us exploded. It was as if an atomic water bomb had blown up beneath it. A huge blast of water shot up into the air, much like what had happened when the main building on Kidik Island had exploded.

"They're starting to go!" I exclaimed.

On cue two more buildings exploded, sending rock and sand and water everywhere. We were pelted with debris. This was the beginning of the end for the underground. The southern gates were giving way. There must have been so much force surging through those first collapsing gates that the tunnels couldn't contain it. There was more water than s.p.a.ce for it to go, so it found its own way.