Escape From Riddler's Pass by Amy Green Read Free Book Online

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    Then Silas threw down the spear and joined Bern at the cart. The strain on Silas’ face indicated the carts were heavier than they appeared. Jesse dropped his own torch to run over and push. Rae was soon beside him.
    â€œWhat did you do, Bern?” Jesse demanded as they shoved the cart under the overhang.
    Bern just shook his head. He grunted and lifted one edge of the cart up, straining with effort. “Get under the cart.”
    From his urgent tone, Jesse decided that now was not the time for questions. Silas fell to the ground on both knees, then scrambled over to the cart. Once underneath, he crouched and bore some of the weight on his shoulders. “Hurry,” he said, groaning.
    Jesse let Rae go first, then crawled in after her, dragging his walking stick with him. Bern was last, and then Silas dropped the cart over them with one last grunt of effort.
    With none of the glowing stones on the ground, it was pitch black under the cart. Rae’s boot jutted into Jesse’s back, and he could hear everyone breathing in the silence. How long will the air last under here?
    Then, suddenly, the entire cave seemed to shake with a violent explosion. The ground rumbled underneath them, and a roar echoed in the cavern. Someone—Bern, Jesse guessed—moaned loudly.
    They had asked Bern for a cave-in, and he had given them one. Almost without thinking, Jesse shot his arms out, bracing them against the side of the cart. As if that will help when hundreds of tons of rock come crashing down on us.
    The entire world collapsed. At least that’s what it sounded like from underneath the cart. Jesse imagined the noise he heard was what it would sound like if a thunderstorm rained rock. The ground kept trembling, not a steady, even trembling, but one with punctuated jerks from the impact of the falling boulders.
    And yet, only a few rocks bounced off of the overturned cart, and those hit from the side. Bern was muttering something to himself, but Rae and Silas remained silent, hardly breathing.
    Jesse was slightly less calm. His trembling hands were still braced against the iron cart, and he felt like screaming at the top of his lungs. Since that would use up most of the air they had left, he settled instead for clutching his walking stick in a white-knuckled grip.
    The roar gradually died away, becoming nothing more than a sifting of dust and pebbles plinking against the cart. “All right,” Bern said, after what seemed to be years. “We can go out now.”
    Silas pushed the cart off of them, bearing the weight of the cart on his shoulders. “Go,” he grunted.
    Jesse hesitated for a second, not wanting to be crushed by a stray rock the moment he crawled from the cart. And do what? Let Rae go first? Jesse scolded himself for being so timid and scrambled out.
    The mines were in even greater disarray than they had been before. Stone cluttered the neatly marked path, and one large boulder had crashed down on a cart, denting it nearly to the ground. I’m glad we weren’t in that one .
    Yet, the metal overhang they had been under still stood strong, though fallen rocks lay all around it. “Good Roaric metalwork,” Bern said, sounding satisfied.
    Clearly, though, the worst of the cave-in had not occurred in the mines. Jesse saw the worst when he followed Bern to the tunnel. There, past the archway, a wall of stone blocked the way back.
    â€œWhat did you do?” Jesse asked again, staring at the dwarf in awe.
    â€œWe have a powder that can blast through rock,” he explained. “That is how the mines were created, long ago.”
    â€œOf course,” Silas said, nodding. “I have heard of it.”
    Bern shrugged. “I am not of the miner clan. I did not know how much to use. So we hid under the cart.”
    He could have killed himself and us , Jesse realized. If Bern was shaken by the cave-in, he didn’t show it.
    â€œCome,” he said, turning