CHAPTER 2

Lionblaze pounded around the bramble thicket, wishing he was small enough to head straight through it like Dovepaw. On the other side he halted, panting. Dovepaw was halfway down the slope, crouching at the edge of a hole. Suddenly she lurched backward. Lionblaze heard a shriek and caught a glimpse of a thrashing white paw as Icecloud vanished into the earth.

It’s one of the tunnels! Panic throbbed through Lionblaze as he remembered his sister, Hollyleaf. In his mind, he saw her again, darting back into the mouth of the tunnel, ignoring everything he and Jayfeather said to warn her, and then all he could see was the endless fall of soil and rocks that had buried her underground forever.

“What’s going on?” Spiderleg’s meow jolted Lionblaze back to the present.

The black warrior darted past and joined Dovepaw, who was peering down into the hole. Looking around, Lionblaze spotted a familiar gorse bush and a spot where a tiny spring welled up between two flat stones. He realized that they were a little way up the slope from the exact place where Hollyleaf had disappeared. Icecloud had fallen into the same tunnel!

Lionblaze’s belly lurched. Great StarClan, what might they find down there?

He rushed down the slope to the edge of the hole, shouldering Spiderleg out of the way. Dovepaw jumped back, clearly startled by the look of horror on his face. There was just enough light in the tunnel to show Lionblaze the walls and floor as he peered down. Several tail-lengths below, Icecloud was scrambling out of a heap of earth and stones, shaking soil from her pelt.

“Get me out of here!” she yowled when she looked up and saw Lionblaze.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Not much. Just my shoulder.” Icecloud spat out earth. “Please get me out.”

Lionblaze leaned over the edge of the hole as far as he dared, and looked up and down the tunnel. Farther into the hill, it vanished into blackness. Lower down, a fall of earth and stones blocked the former entrance.

Is Hollyleaf under that? Lionblaze wondered, suppressing a shudder. “Spiderleg, go and fetch help,” he directed.

As the black warrior dashed off, Lionblaze gazed down again at Icecloud, who was crouching among the soil, her pelt ruffled and her eyes big and scared. “It won’t be long now,” he promised.

“Thanks, Lionblaze.” The young she-cat’s voice quivered. “It’s really dark down here.”

“I’ll try to make the hole bigger,” Dovepaw mewed. “That’ll let in more light.”

But as she began scraping at the edge of the hole, more earth started to rain down on Icecloud.

“No! Stop!” she wailed.

“Sorry.” Dovepaw stopped scraping and sat at the edge of the hole.

Lionblaze leaned over to hiss close to her ear. “No other cat is to go into the hole except me. Got it?”

The gray apprentice’s eyes widened with surprise, but she nodded. Lionblaze let out a tiny sigh of relief. He knew that if there were any dark secrets to be discovered down the hole, he needed to be the first cat to find them. His belly churned as he waited. For the first time in many moons, he wondered if his Clanmates really believed that a passing rogue had killed Ashfur, and that Hollyleaf’s disappearance had nothing to do with it.