Free The Diamond of Darkhold - 4 by Jeanne DuPrau

deal with. Everyone in Ember knew this. But to think about those who had fallen to their deaths alone in the darkness, in terror—that was different. “Let’s go,” she said. “I want to get away from here.”
    So they hurried on, lighting the way with just Doon’s candle, now that the haze of light from the city was so close.
    “Do you smell something?” Lina asked.
    Doon sniffed. “I do. Smells like smoke.”
    “Could a building be on fire?” Lina wondered.
    “I don’t know,” said Doon. “I hope not.”
    They walked on. The orange light stayed more or less steady, though the smell of smoke grew stronger.
    They realized they had reached the city when a wall suddenly appeared not five feet in front of them. The candlelight, instead of making a circle beneath their feet, seemed to fold upward at the farthest edge. A few steps closer, and they could put their hands out and feel the chilly stone of the building. Doon raised his candle higher to see if there were any clues about what building they had come to—but of course there weren’t. None of the buildings in Ember had windows or doors on the side that faced the Unknown Regions.
    Keeping one hand on the wall, they made their way along until they came to a corner, and there Lina looked for a street sign. She found it easily—a pole with its small printed rectangle on top. “Deeple Street,” she said, and in her mind, the whole city and their position in it fell into place. “We’re on the north side—in Farwater Square. Look, here’s a light pole.” Doon’s candle lit up the base of the pole, but the top, where before a great lamp would have been shining, was lost in darkness. On the corner of Deeple and Blott streets, an old white rocking chair stood, for some reason. Maybe someone had put it out as trash, although to Lina it looked perfectly sturdy.
    “All right, good,” said Doon. “So first let’s find where that light is coming from.” Lina took out a candle and lit it from Doon’s. She wanted to see everything as well as possible.
    They started down Blott Street, Doon ahead and Lina close behind. It was strange and thrilling to be in her old city. Even though their candles lit only a very small area around them, her memory easily filled in the rest. Here was one of Ember’s many old-clothes shops, the one run by Sarmon Grole. Here was the market where she’d bought so many turnips and beets and jars of baby food. Here was the house where she’d once taken a message to an old man who collected string. It was all familiar, but so strange, too, because of the silence and emptiness. No people bustled past the stone buildings anymore; the great streetlamps fixed to the buildings’ eaves no longer sent out yellow pools of light. Lina’s candlelight glimmered on dark, cracked shop windows, fell into the gulf of open doors, and lit bottom steps of stairways, where sometimes there was a sock or a scarf, dropped by someone in a hurry to leave. Lina peered at everything she passed, identifying, remembering.
    By the time they came to Cloving Square, she’d fallen quite a distance behind Doon. She saw that he, too, must be absorbed in remembering, because he didn’t seem to notice she was no longer near him. She hurried to catch up; they mustn’t get separated. But she couldn’t help pausing once again when she came to the messengers’ station.
    This was where she’d come on the first day of her first job, which had been assigned to her on her last day of school. She’d been given her red jacket and told the rules, and then she’d been off—running through the streets of the city, carrying messages everywhere. She’d loved being a messenger. She gazed at the empty spot, where beside a door was a bench with a couple of red jackets flung across it.
    A wave of sadness washed over her, and she looked away and hurried on up the street toward the tiny glow of Doon’s candle far ahead.
    Then suddenly she heard a shout. Doon’s voice—what