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Trae had a strong feeling he would never see the man again.
    Petyr said not a single word to him all the way back to Trae’s apartment, where his parents were anxiously awaiting him on the eve of his departure from their world.

CHAPTER 4

    P etyr took him to a place he’d never heard of before. It was deep in the bowels of the caverns, and there was no heat or light. Petyr had come for him at midnight, and Trae had been waiting for him in the street outside the only home he’d known for sixteen years. He was dressed warmly in layers of rough, woolen clothing Petyr had given him the night before.
    Petyr arrived, and led him silently down the street into an area of closed, dimly lit shops. They went to a door marked “Service.” Petyr had a key to unlock it. The door appeared to be a side entrance to a shop, but instead there was only a dark staircase descending steeply into darkness. They stepped inside, Petyr closed and locked the door behind them, and then a hand-lamp flared brightly. Petyr handed it to him, and a second lamp flared. “Keep the light at your feet,” said Petyr. It’s steep all the way down, and there’s no hand railing, so lean towards the wall.”
    They descended stone stairs in a helical staircase for a minute or so. There was a cavern at the bottom and they followed shallow stairs to the left into the black maw of what seemed to be another cavern. The stairs went down steeply again, and were irregular in height and spacing, cut out of the natural rock. Warm air rose from below, and there was a low, moaning sound. Trae leaned instinctively to his left until his shoulder felt rock. He stayed a step behind Petyr all the way down, focusing on each move, for he knew that one step to his right there was only a great abyss.
    Perhaps it was not as deep as he thought. In only a few minutes they reached level ground. The air was wetly chilled, and Trae smelled salt. Petyr motioned him ahead; they had come all the way down without a word. They walked across a cavern floor strewn with rubble and into a tunnel. Almost immediately Trae saw a light ahead, and heard voices. The light flashed once—twice, and Petyr answered by swinging his torch back and forth.
    They came out of the tunnel, and four men surrounded them. A rain slicker was thrust into Trae’s hands. “Pouring outside. Couldn’t be better weather for us,” said a man. All the men wore ponchos, cowlings pulled up, their faces hidden in the gloom.
    “Is it sunny where we’re going?” asked Petyr. His face was tense, his shoulders hunched, and Trae thought of a cat ready to spring.
    “The sun never shines in Lycos,” said a man, and Petyr visibly relaxed.
    They followed the men across a sandy area, winding between boulders as tall as Petyr, to a rock shelf hanging over a narrow channel of black water. A large rowboat was there, nearly as wide as the channel. The four men took up the oars after seating Petyr and Trae in bow and stern. Even as they pushed off, Trae could hear the pounding of surf some distance down the channel.
    The men pulled hard on the oars, the channel water first smooth, then rougher until Trae grabbed the gunwales for support. They came out into a half-submerged cavern with a wide entrance to the sea, and the boiling water beyond it was foaming white. The rowing men never changed the beat, but charged the foaming turbulence and went up over it with a shudder. Trae squinted against sudden rain and hung on for his life as the boat lifted and twisted beneath him, but then there was only a rocking motion and the mess of surf breaking was behind them. In the darkness ahead Trae saw the dark outlines of a boat with three tall masts, sails down. The wind was gentle, but as Trae watched, the boat’s crew was already raising sail. The rowers never slowed, but suddenly raised oars and the hull of the boat appeared, rope netting deployed for boarding. Two men remained in the boat, the other two scrambled up the netting, then