The City by Stella Gemmell Read Free Book Online Page A

me, any more than you know the one-eyed man with the very short arms. I might be planning to sell you to reivers.’
    But he did not sell them to evil men. He showed them where to find food and fresh water, and the sapphire moss, whom to approach to find work, and whom to avoid, the safest places to sleep and the parts of the Halls to stay clear of. At last they found the prized ledge in the Hall of Blue Light. And, for a while, they were safe.
    But Rubin vanished one day. Elija liked to think his friend had returned to the fabled land of Paradise, and he hoped to follow. Heremembered only that it was in the east of the City. But he was told the Halls and shores to the east were the most dangerous, and only the despairing and those hunting the death gods went there.
    In the darkness of the sewer Elija came awake again. He could hear only the sighing of the stream, the creak of ropes and his own breathing. Then he held his breath and listened. At last, over the sound of his own heart pumping noisily in his ears, he heard voices: the rumbling of a man speaking, the shriller voice of a woman. Then a third chimed in, gruff and harsh. They were far off, and Elija could barely hear them, but he was certain. Casting away his terrors, he took an eager breath.
    ‘Help!’ he yelled. ‘Help me! I’m down here! Please help me!’
    There was silence for a moment, then the voices came closer. His eyes detected a faint blur of light.
    It seemed an eternity until the remains of the bridge were hauled up, and for a while he feared he would slip from his prison of rope and wood and fall. He held on tightly and cried out as the jolting hurt his bruised side.
    ‘It’s a boy,’ a woman said. ‘Half dead.’
    Elija felt a hard hand grip his arm and he was dragged upwards and dumped on the path above. His legs had no strength and he collapsed like a string puppet. His unaccustomed eyes smarted at bright torchlight, but he squinted and could make out several faces looking down at him.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I feared I was going to die.’
    The faces glanced at one another, then the woman said, ‘What a little gentleman. Your ma taught you to say thank you.’ She laughed and the others grinned. ‘Come on, lad,’ she went on, picking him up and setting him on his feet. ‘We’re not staying here. You can come with us.’
    Elija tried to tell them he was too tired to walk, but they ignored him, and he awkwardly fell into step with the woman as they carried on. ‘My name is Elija,’ he told them, but no one replied.
    They walked for a long time, through tunnels large and small. Mostly they travelled downwards, with the stream, keeping the water to their right, the rough, dripping wall to their left. Elija could recognize none of it, although at one time he heard a sound in the distance he thought might be the Eating Gate, but it was too far away to be sure. They climbed for a while then went down a long flight ofcrumbling stairs, slick and treacherous, a dark chasm to their right. They kept going down and Elija thought he had never been so deep in the Halls before. After a while, his brain foggy and his legs weak, he wondered if they were still in the Halls, or in some foreign country he knew nothing of. He tried to remember what Rubin had told him of distant Halls, for Rubin had been a mine of information, a gushing never-ending fount of it, and the little boy had only kept a few cupfuls of what he had been told in the long days while Rubin talked.
    The woman, carrying a torch, and Elija were at the head of the party. He glanced at her from time to time. She was wrapped in many layers of ragged clothes, like all the other Dwellers. But her feet were encased in heavy boots, a prized rarity in the Halls, and Elija thought she must be an important person. He tried to look round from time to time to see how many people were following. He glimpsed many torches and thought there were maybe twenty. Once in a while he heard a child’s