"Or?"

"Or I will die, and you will find it alone. At any rate, the nomad warriors will never go on, shamed or not. If you keep on about their pledge, all you will accomplish is to make them your enemies. Let them go. We can travel by ourselves, whether in the inferno above or in the lightless realms below."

She paused for the response that both of them knew would settle the matter, one way or the other. Gord looked into her eyes, as if trying to see into the depths of her soul and beyond the present into the future. After a minute, he made the decision he knew he had to make. "We will go on… below," was all he said. Leda embraced him, and they held each other for a few seconds before going back inside the chamber.

All of the nomads were injured from the most recent combat, but they had cleaned and bound their wounds with skill born of long practice. Each of them had drunk as much of the contents of his waterskin as he could hold. "Show us to the water now, Farzeel, so we can fill our skins and set off!" Achulka said heartily.

"Come with me," Gord told the warriors. "I'll lead you to the pool." While they went off, Leda busied herself by rummaging through the coffers, picking up some odd items that she thought might be useful later.

By the time Gord and the nomads returned, the young thief was totally resigned to what was about to happen, and he decided to make the best of matters by being friendly and thoughtful. "Shall we lay Nizamee in one of the stone chests?" he suggested to Achulka. "I think he would appreciate resting on more wealth than most men see in a lifetime."

"Agreed, Farzeel. A hero's tomb for a brave warrior of the Thuffi!" the nomad leader said. Then, after seeing to this task, Achulka grinned and pointed to the door. "Let us all now get above to see the sun and feel the air of the real world – even that of this stinking desert!"

Leda was surprised to hear talk of this sort; apparently Gord had not yet informed the nomads of their final decision. "You go alone, warriors," she told them. "Gord and I will rest here a little time, and then set forth again for the City Out of Mind."

"You cannot mean that, warrior-woman! Is this true, Farzeel…?"

"She speaks the truth, Achulka." With no further words, all five retraced their path and ascended back to the room through which they had entered the building.

"Here," said Gord as the nomads were organizing and packing their equipment and treasure. "Take our waterskins with you. Our rations, too. We will not need them, for we know places to gain both as necessary."

"I could not trust such a statement," said Achulka, "if it came from anyone but you, Farzeel. You are not bent on dying – I know this, for otherwise, you would now be lying on the floor in the cellars below us. So, you must believe the truth of what you say, and if you believe it, then I do too." He accepted the provisions, and the three nomads bowed deeply to Gord and Leda in a sign of great respect. The two of them helped transport dust-walkers, poles, and other gear up the ladder, and then they said their final farewells to Achulka and his comrades.

Gord and Leda took what little of their equipment they would need and returned, at her suggestion, to the treasure chamber below. He wanted to move out immediately, to be free of this forbidding place, but she actually seemed relaxed in the same environment. "Let me rest a bit first," she told him, "and then I will be able to heal your burns and the wounds you still have before we set out."

"You can do that so easily? Why, then, did you not tend to Achulka and his fellows?"

Her expression turned abruptly cold. "They deserted us," she said disdainfully. "Let time care for them." Gord was a bit bewildered by this sudden change in her attitude, but attributed it to the fact that she really did need to rest.

"Now, let me sleep and regain my powers," she said tersely. "I'll have to use them to see to our food and drink too, probably, so stand guard while I rest and recover."

"As you wish," the young thief replied in an equally curt manner, but if Leda noticed his tone, she chose not to react to it. By the time he had put the bar in place across the door, she was prone and well on her way to sleep. He soon forgot about her cool demeanor and had a fine time for the next few hours browsing through the great piles of treasure that remained in the stone coffers. He knew he could not take any of it with him, but for the time being, at least, it was all his. What more, he thought to himself wryly, could a thief ask?

Chapter 13

THEY HAD BEEN FOLLOWING an old passage leading away from the pool for only a few hundred yards when a pile of broken rock loomed before them – a cave-in that, at first glance, seemed to keep them from going farther. Then Leda saw a small opening in the ceiling just in front of the heap of stones and rubble. "Look, Gord," she said, pointing to the hole. "That is how the apes and pygmies come and go."

Gord scrambled swiftly up the pile of rock and hoisted himself up into the vertical passageway. It was a very snug fit, but that actually enabled him to climb better because he could exert constant pressure on the sides of the tunnel. He disappeared from Leda's sight for a couple of minutes, then came down feet first and dropped lithely back into the chamber where she stood. "There is a maze of passages above," he reported. The hole in the ceiling seems to be an escape tunnel, Leda. Above it are what were sewers, subcellars, and who knows what else. Some of the work is newer than the rest, so the pygmies must have made them. Those places are only about four feet high, and narrow too."

"Do any of the routes go in the direction we want?" the dark elf asked.

"Yes, but only one of the little ones, and it heads upward, too."

"Then let's see if we can clear away the debris here and move onward in this tunnel."

"What makes you think we can do that, girl?

Those white midgets would have done so long ago if it was possible."

"Why would they bother if they had their own egress from the area? Just be still, and watch while I use a little trick to discover if there is a way," Leda told him.

She knelt and, using a sharp stone, scratched a strange symbol on the tunnel floor. It was composed of three swords, two pointing downward at angles and one perpendicular, point upward, to form a starlike symbol. The girl began to chant under her breath, and then from within her robe she produced a tiny bead of quicksilver. As she intoned her chant, she worked the stuff into a bit of clay she had picked up from the temple's cistern. Then she smoothed the mixture out onto a large piece of the fallen rock, sang out a strange series of syllables, and stepped back. Gord was about to ask her what she thought to accomplish with her actions of the last several minutes when Leda spoke – but she did not address him.

"Tell me, stone, what lies beyond you?"

A hollow, toneless voice, barely audible, replied, "More of the passage you stand in."

"Between it and you – how much more stone?"

"Ten times the length of your arm."

"Everywhere?"

"No."

"Where is there less?"

"Above."

"Where above?"

This question-and-answer routine went on. The very rocks would speak, it seemed, to those clerics able to employ the correct power to enable or compel them to do so. Finally the weird voice related that in the far corner near the roof of the passage, only an arm's length of fallen rock was between them and the continuing tunnel.

"But is there more loose stone above that place, which might come down if we clear away what lies there?"

A long pause. "Yes," the slab of rock finally admitted.

"What of the corner on the opposite side?"