«Have we a way out of here, truly? Have you found where the tunnel goes? Can we get out through it?» Her questions came one after another. She wasn't quite as calm as she wanted to seem.
He gently took her chin in one hand. «Slow down, Neena. Don't let your hopes run ahead of what we know.»
«But what do you know?»
He told her, leaving out nothing, including all the uncertainties that remained. «The ashes are dropped into a hole in the center of the hearth. The hole is covered with an iron grating, with bars set wide enough apart to let a man pass through easily.
«The hole leads to an underground pit. I don't know for certain how large or deep it is. But all the ashes and debris from the hearth are thrown into it. That is part of the ritual — 'returning the ashes to the womb of the Earth Mistress,' they call it.»
«And the tunnel leads into that pit?»
«It must, or we wouldn't be able to see the light of the fires in the hearth through it. The problem is, I don't know how far down in the pit the tunnel enters it.
«I will find out for sure when it comes my turn to be a pit slave. They are lowered through the grating into the pit, with scoops to spread the ashes evenly. It is the dirtiest and most painful job in tending the hearth, so I am sure I will get more than my share of chances to do it.»
«And then?»
«If the tunnel is in the right place, I will see about hiding a rope in its mouth. That shouldn't be too hard, with the darkness and all the clouds of ashes down there.»
«I see,» said Neena. «Then when I leap across the gap I simply run down to the mouth of the tunnel, bring the rope back, and-«
«Haul me across,» finished Blade, with a grin. «Exactly. It will take a lot of muscle and a lot of luck, but I think it's our best way out.»
«Well, Blade, I think we have already had much luck. We have found each other, and we can trust each other. Is that not more luck than we could have expected to come our way?»
Blade had to admit she was right. His arms went around her, and they sat there in the darkness for some time. There was more comfort than passion in their embrace. Finally they rose and returned to the prison chamber to sleep.
Blade found himself on pit duty the very next day. All that he'd heard about its being the hardest job in the service of Tiga was perfectly true. It was dark and airless in the pit. The ashes poured down and rose up around him in stifling clouds. They got in his mouth and his nose, his hair and his eyes. He coughed and gasped and choked, his eyes watered continuously, and even his ears seemed to be clogged by ashes and soot. The rope around his waist jerked and twisted constantly, and at times it seemed about to cut him in two. It took all his concentration and toughness to keep alert and keep going. He succeeded, and by the end of the day he'd found out what he needed to know.
«We can do it,» he said to Neena that night. They were in the tunnel, and she was combing his hair and beard with her fingernails, trying to get out at least some of the ashes and grit. «The tunnel enters the pit only about ten feet below the iron grating.»
Neena didn't ask him how he was going to solve the last problem-finding a rope and getting it into the right place. Blade himself wasn't quite sure. The ropes used to lower and raise the pit slaves would be more than long enough. How to get hold of one? Just as important, how to get hold of one fast? King Furzun wouldn't wait forever before having Neena taken out of the prison and moved into his harem.
Blade was given no pit work during the next two days. Instead he was given a taste of just about every other job involved in tending the Hearth of Tiga, from mortaring up cracks in the stone blocks to piling up logs for the next ritual fires. Each day was fourteen hours or more of grim, sweating, filthy work, making demands on even Blade's enormous strength.
As tired as he became, Blade's ceaseless watch for an opportunity to snatch and hide a rope went on. Nothing could make him abandon that watch. The whole thing would have been far easier if Blade could have simply waited several weeks, until the guards had him tagged as a docile, harmless lout, a slave they hardly needed to watch. Then he could have a fair hope of getting away, if not with murder, at least with the rope he needed.
He also kept an eye open for any clues to other possible escape routes. Unfortunately nothing came of that. He saw no prospect of any other way out of both the prison and the palace, except the tunnel. Simply getting out of the prison would leave him and Neena inside the palace walls, surrounded by more guards than they could possibly hope to fight.
Outside the palace, on the other hand, they would have all of Trawnom-Driba to give them room for running and fighting. They would have to get over the city's ramshackle wall, of course, but beyond that lay the endless forests of Gleor. In those forests Neena at least was far more at home than the warriors of Trawn, made slow and clumsy by too many years of relying on the stolofs in any tight spot. Lord Desgo was considered a mighty warrior among the men of Trawn, yet Blade knew he could fight two or three men as good as the nobleman and have them all dead or down in a few minutes.
It was the stolofs that were the heart of Trawn's power. Neena had said so many times. The more Blade saw, the more he believed her. The great spider-creatures, the regular green ones and the golden ones from the royal stables, were monstrous and deadly fighting machines.
They were not so fast that a swift-footed man could not outrun them. But anyone who stayed to fight was almost certainly doomed. The eyes were vulnerable, so were the uppermost joints of the lehs, and so was a small spot under the belly. Otherwise every square inch of a stolof was covered with the scales and plates of armor that would turn the sharpest sword blade or spear point in Gleor.
«Warriors of Draad have slain stolofs in battle,» Neena had said. «But only a few, and not all of those have lived through their victories. It is a rare man who can strike at one of the vital spots and move away before the stolof or the men with it attack. Stolofs alone would be formidable, but we could learn to meet them. The men of Trawn alone would give us a stout fight, for they greatly outnumber us, and few of our own warriors are your equal. Together, the stolofs and the warriors of Trawn may some day rule all of Gleor.» Her face clouded and her eyes closed in pain as she said that.
So Blade knew that he would fight Draad's battles if he ever had a chance. He also knew that he would never have that chance unless he and Neena found a way out of the city. His fate and hers hung, if not quite by a thread, at least by a rope.
Chapter 11
Blade worked on everything except pit duty for eight maddening days. At times he wondered if his plans and hopes had been discovered. Perhaps Lord Demo knew every detail of what Blade was planning, and these work assignments were one more way of tormenting him.
On the ninth day Blade went back into the pits. He went down there every other day from then on. The days were also becoming warmer, for the season was moving onward, toward a stifling tropical summer.
Blade now knew the best way of snatching and hiding the indispensable rope. He was only waiting for the best possible chance, knowing that he could count on only one. A single incident could probably be written off as an accident. A second incident would probably arouse suspicion, a third would be condemning himself to death.
The day of Blade's fifth turn in the pits dawned even hotter and more stifling than usual. As the slaves were led out to the Hearth of Tiga, the guards were already streaming with sweat and trying to stay in the shade as much as they could. In fact, they seemed more interested in finding shade than in keeping an eye on the slaves.