Rivers of Fire (Atherton, Book 2) by Patrick Carman

turned it back and forth, unlocking the secret passage in the floor, and then he turned to Vincent.
    "Have you got what we need?"
    "I do indeed," said Vincent. He had been carrying a pack and two spears all along, but now he dropped the spears as if he planned to leave them behind. From the bag he removed a selection of weapons Edgar had never seen. One was a whip, long and leathery, which Vincent coiled in a circle and held in one hand.
    "He's quite talented with that," said Dr. Kincaid. "Sort of like you with the sling and the black figs."
    Edgar was so confused that he simply watched as Vincent held his bag in the same hand as the whip and put his other hand inside. When his hand emerged it clutched a magnificent
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    knife the likes of which Edgar had never seen or imagined. The blade was a foot long, made of something that reflected the weak light in the room.
    "What are you going to do with that?" said Edgar. "You can't get close enough to a Cleaner to use it."
    Vincent didn't answer but instead looked at Dr. Kincaid. "I'm ready," he said. "Open it up."
    "Open what up?" said Edgar. There was a deep ache in his forehead and it was making him irritable. He was growing tired of being kept in the dark.
    Dr. Kincaid stepped over the ivy-covered floor near the wall and removed the cover to Mead's Hollow.
    "We'll need light," he said.
    Vincent handed the knife to Dr. Kincaid and went into the outer hall without hesitation as Edgar approached the hole in the floor. He saw the words chiseled into the stairs leading down but could not read them.
    "It's called Mead's Hollow," said Dr. Kincaid. Vincent returned with a torch from outside and held it down into the dark passage. "It's here, beneath the House of Power, that we shall find Dr. Maximus Harding."
    Edgar was thunderstruck. "What's he doing down there?"
    Vincent uncoiled the whip in his hand, playing it back and forth on the stairs like a snake.
    "That's exactly what I've been wondering," said Dr. Kincaid.
    ***
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    From the moment the door to Mead's Hollow had been closed Isabel was unable to shake the feeling that she would never get back out again. It created a knot in her throat that would not leave, a knot that was telling her to cry and curl up into a ball in the dark where no one could find her. But Isabel forced the knot deeper down her throat, willing herself to go on.
    She and Samuel had been in Mead's Hollow for hours. At first there had been a steep switchback path surrounded by walls on every side. Down, down, down they'd gone, past the bottom of the House of Power and into Atherton itself. In the silence of her own thoughts Isabel wondered just how deep the Highlands had fallen into the middle of Atherton.
    There came a moment when the air turned cold and the space changed in tone. Without warning, their way went from confined to abysmally wide open. There was but one wall to lean their bodies against, and as Samuel held the flame out and away from it, the darkness seemed to go on forever. Isabel had the feeling that if she walked out into the open space it would swallow her up. And what was worse, there was an almost unbearable sensation that the whole world of Atherton was crashing in around her. She clung to Samuel, desperate to find a way out of Mead's Hollow.
    "How much farther?" she asked, her voice drifting softly in the wide open space.
    "We've got to be getting close," answered Samuel. "I can't imagine it being much farther."
    The two had followed the instructions that had been given
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    to Samuel by his father a long time ago, and Isabel was beginning to think Samuel had read them wrong.
    "Are you absolutely sure we're going the right way?" she asked. There was a part of her that had no idea why she was trying to find the source of water to begin with. It was a journey begun with a purpose, but the purpose was starting to feel a little beside the point. Even if they could find it and make the water flow once again, the Highlands were sinking, so