Forest Kingdom Trilogy 1 - Blue Moon Rising

side vent's metal grille, and the candle wick finally lit. All at once the tunnel seemed to spring into being around him, as though it had been waiting eagerly for that little extra light to make it real and solid again. Darius cringed away from the roof of the tunnel as it pressed down bare inches above his head. The walls crowded in around him as the sudden light once again made clear how horribly narrow and enclosed the tunnel was. Darius staggered round and round in a tight circle, and everywhere he looked a wall of ancient brickwork stared mockingly back, only inches away. A cold sweat ran down his face, and he moaned and whimpered and flapped his hands aimlessly as the panic rose in him. Darius spun round and round and round, unable to stop. He was buried alive deep in the stone guts of the Castle, miles away from light and air and freedom. He screamed suddenly, and attacked the wall before him with his fists, and then he tripped and fell and lay sobbing in the filth that coated the tunnel floor. He lay there for some time in the darkness, blind to anything but his own panic, and then his sobs slowly died away as his fear receded, leaving behind nothing but a simple, overwhelming tiredness. He sat up, and wiped at his face with the back of his hand. He felt something move in his closed hand, and opened it to find he'd crushed his candle stub into a shapeless mass of
    crumbling wax.
    Darius sniffed once, and then threw the wax away.
    He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, retrieved his dagger from where he'd dropped it, and moved back into the golden light falling from the side vent. He brushed at the foulness that soaked his clothes, and wished fleetingly for a mirror. He often wondered how he looked now. He could tell he'd lost weight from the way his robes hung loosely about him, but he felt there'd been other changes too, though he couldn't quite name them. He was cold and tired all the time, but he'd got used to that. Darius shrugged, and stopped thinking about it. It didn't matter. Nothing really mattered any more, except the face that floated always before him, even in the deepest and darkest of the tunnels — Harald's face, smiling calmly as the Prince betrayed him to his enemies.
    You can't trust anyone these days, Darius.
    Darius crouched down on his haunches in the golden light. To either side of him, he could just make out the dirt-and smoke-smeared walls, running with slime and sooty water. A thin, slippery mud squelched under his feet. The centuries-old brickwork surrounding him was pitted and uneven, and the drainage channels that should have carried away the condensation and other deposits were all hopelessly blocked.
    The Castle was getting old, falling apart. Much like him. Darius scowled, and muttered to himself, remembering all the things he'd planned, all the things he'd meant to do. He'd had so many plans ... all worthless now. His rebellion was over. Finished. Beaten before it had even begun. Darius chuckled softly, and the unpleasant sound took a long time to die away into whispering echoes. There was still his revenge. All the people who'd tricked and lied and driven him into the darkness were going to pay in blood for what they'd done to him. The dark master had promised him this.
    Darius hefted the dagger in his hand, admiring the way the golden light shimmered on the narrow steel blade. Dirty brown specks of dried blood still crusted the blade near the crosshilt. Darius frowned. It was a pity about Cecelia. There was no doubt he was better off without her; she was always getting in his way, slowing him down. Always pawing at him. And yet he missed having her there, at his side. He'd always been able to talk to Cecelia, even though she hadn't understood half of what he had to say. A pity about Cecelia. But she shouldn't have got in his way.
    Darius tensed suddenly as he heard voices rising and falling, not far off. The voices became steadily louder as they drew near, but there was a sinister blurred quality to the sound that made the words indecipherable. Darius shrank back against the wall as the voices boomed like thunder in the narrow tunnel, and then suddenly they stopped, cut off in mid-word, and all was still and silent again. Darius smiled uncomfortably, and relaxed again. Sound travelled strangely in the air vents, echoing and re-echoing until it faded into whispers, but every now and again some freak of acoustics would bring Darius voices and conversations from the inner castle,