Destiny: Child Of Sky by Elizabeth Haydon

through the fireshadows, catching the light. A heavyset body slumped in the doorframe.
    •'Dropped something,“ he called down the well. "Sorry. Keep going."
    'Try to be quieter,“ the faraway voice echoed. "Someone will hear you."
    Achmed stepped back over the bound apprentice and took cover behind the second kiln's open door near the labyrinth of shadows where he knew more of the journeymen lurked.
    'Wouldn't want that," he said under his breath.
    A growl of anger erupted behind him. Achmed ducked and dodged the charging man's attack, knocking him unconscious with a blow to the head.
    -
    He crouched behind a wire rack, waiting, stilling his breathing until it was almost nonexistent. These opponents posed so little challenge that he turned his mind to avoiding the waste of supplies. He would wait, patient, until the remaining seven were all positioned in simultaneous view.
    One round for the rest of them, at the most two, he thought. Conserves disks that way.
    When Rhapsody first crawled into the tunnel she felt no harkening back to their passage along the Root at all. Unlike the dank darkness of Sagia's sheath, which was uneven in its height and full of stringy, hairlike minor roots called radix, the catacomb had been carefully and evenly tiled, more closely resembling one of the aqueducts in Canrif, part of the enormous ventilation and water-collection system Gwylliam had designed and built into the mountain. In addition, the warm glow of Daystar Clarion's flames, burning low and steady above the murky water through which she was crawling, made the tunnel walls shine as bright as day.
    She pushed all thoughts of confinement and depth out of her mind, concentrating instead on the ethereal light below the flames of the sword. So focused was she on the sword, so intent on keeping her panic in check, that she barely caught sight of the two glittering eyes in the distant darkness up ahead.
    As soon as she saw them she stopped; the flames of the sword, deeply bonded to her through her tie to elemental fire, roared to life with her excitement.
    A shriek of pain and fear echoed up the catacomb as the slave child, night blind from digging and living in the endless dark, covered his eyes and scurried away, sobbing in horror.
    Quickly Rhapsody sheathed the sword, dousing the light, feeling remorse for not realizing what dread the glowing radiance might be bringing to those who lived in this place of endless night.
    'It's all right,“ she called softly up the tunnel. "It's all right. I'm sorry."
    Only silence and the sound of trickling water answered her.
    Now blind herself, she felt along the died floor, conscious now of the rats that skittered along the edge of the tunnel, the snakes that swirled in the deepest parts of the flow, the worms. In the absence of the light the vermin began to return.
    The smooth skin of a snake that darted over her hand put her in mind of the sluglike, carnivorous larvae that infested the root of Sagia, calling forth a deep shudder from within her memory. Rhapsody swallowed and crawled forward, struggling to see in the absolute blackness. Ahead of her she heard scuffling movements, larger than rats, she thought, but perhaps not just large rats.
    Her internal bond to the sword, now housed in its scabbard of black ivory, seemed tentative, distant. Black ivory was an impenetrable material; no vibra tion passed through it, preventing anything held within a vessel made of the material from being scryed upon, an important measure of safety for the Ili-achenva'ar. The disadvantage was that the power of the sword did not reach her, did not tie its strength to her, as it did when Daystar Clarion was unsheathed in her grasp.
    Tentatively Rhapsody passed a hand through the murky water on the floor ahead of her, shuddering inwardly again, and pressed forward. The walls of the tiled tunnel began to feel closer, tighter than they had in the light; in her ear she could hear her own voice whispering her confession to