Read Online The Equen Queen by Alyssa Brugman - Free Book Online Page B

It's just a passageway. There's moss on the walls, a few spider webs and old sconces, but I don't think they've been lit for a while. It smells stale and damp.’ She sniffed, but her head still seemed to be filled with smoke from the cell. ‘I think it's been closed up for a long time.’
    Tab heard another trill ricochet along the passage walls and then a splintering crash.
    ‘What was that?’ Philmon asked.
    ‘She already said it was dark,’ said Amelia. ‘I think we can guess it was the hatchling.’
    ‘I hope …’ added Tab. She tiptoed down the corridor, keeping her hand on the wall for balance. The moss was cold and slippery under Tab's fingers. Every now and then she would come across a slimy mollusc leaving a trail of sticky goo.
    Tab heard Amelia and Philmon arguing back in the dungeon, which seemed cosy and safe to her now.
    ‘I hope you're not trying to fit your head through those bars, Philmon.’
    ‘These two are wider,’ he replied confidently.
    The air smelt old, swampy and slightly sulphurous. It reminded Tab of the odour of the manure piles while they were fermenting and before they turned sweet, a smell she often experienced back when she worked for the Dung Brigade.
    It was so dark in the corridor that Tab started to see bright splashes of colour in front of her eyes. She paused, turning back to the light coming through the cleft in the wall to the dungeon. Her friends were still quarrelling and it made her smile.
    ‘I'm stuck!’ complained Philmon.
    ‘Well, you shouldn't have tried to push your big head through! I told you it wouldn't fit,’ Amelia rebuked.
    ‘Ow! Stop it! Don't pull. You're making it worse …’
    Tab sighed, and walked further into the dark tunnel, wishing her friends were able to come with her. It wouldn't seem so scary with them bickering all the way. But on her own she was picturing all kinds of beasts in the shadows ahead, a giant snail, so tall that its googly eyes on sticks brushed against the tunnel's ceiling. She would walk straight into it, get entrapped in its goo and it would run over her slowly. Even before it crushed her to death, she would drown in the gluey, foul, boggy-smelling slime.
    In her head she saw a hundred thousand tiny beetles with metal teeth, each bite loaded with poison. They would scuttle out of a drain in a swarm and strip the flesh from her bones while a scream froze in her throat.
    She imagined a phalanx of hulking insect-soldiers with bulging eyes and wings folded about them like cloaks. She shivered. The baby dragon had nothing on the creatures Tab could envisage in her head. In Quentaris anything was possible. A vampire with a long staff – fangs glistening. A gargoyle, a troll, a werewolf, a fat serpent, a zolka.

     
    Tab crept further still. The passage floor was flat and smooth, although she seemed to be heading ever so slightly downhill. She closed her eyes and sent out her thoughts, trying to sense if something was there. In her mind she could hear the incoherent but contented, metallic gurgles from the hatchling up ahead. It was not afraid. In fact, it seemed to have found something that it liked. Tab shuddered again – not sure if she wanted to know what that was.
    ‘Tab!’ Her friends called out. ‘Are you still there? What have you found?’
    ‘I'm here!’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘It's still just a corridor.’
    Just then the wall beneath her fingers dipped away and in the hollow she felt a softer surface – wood. Further along she found a metal wedge. It was a hinge. A door. In the centre there was a hole. Its edges were rough and splintered from where the hatchling had burst through. She traced around the split wood with her fingers and climbed through.
    The first thing she noticed was the smell. It was a cool, musty smell that was familiar to her, but she couldn't place it. She heard the baby dragon chittering, the leathery sound of its limbs and its clicking claws as it moved around – like harness