«On the other hand, if you please him in all the ways King Furzun enjoys being pleased, you will live as well as a slave may until he tires of you: Then I shall take you from him and you may continue to live with me for as long as it is given for slaves to live.» Blade suspected that was not very long. Life in Lord Desgo's power would hardly be worth living, in any case. But for the time being Blade knew he would continue to be as well behaved a slave as possible. Live slaves had more opportunities to escape than dead ones.
He wasn't sure Neena would see things the same way. She'd continued to be apathetic and numb all the way to the city, not even speaking when Desgo slapped her, drinking her water and eating her food in silence. She'd watched the ghastly scenes at the walls and in the streets with a face that might have been a bronze mask. Now she looked at the palace with the same bleak, resigned expression. Was anything going to register, or had her mind broken under the shock of captivity?
The massive gates of the palace squealed and rumbled open. A score of guards in blue leather tunics and codpieces scurried out, with drawn swords. Desgo spoke briefly to their leader, then stepped back and let them surround his prisoners. Blade and Neena found themselves being herded in through the gates. In the darkness beneath the gate towers, Blade heard more squealing and rumbling as the gates shut behind him.
Inside the walls, the palace seemed to be a labyrinth of twisting alleys and low doors that seemed to neither come from anywhere nor lead to anywhere. The only difference between the palace and the poorer neighborhoods of the city seemed to be that the palace didn't smell as bad.
Eventually the guards led Blade and Neena up to a door of solid square beams set in a featureless brick wall. To Blade's surprise it opened at a shove from the guard captain. Total blackness yawned beyond the doorway, blackness and an almost solid stench of too many things too long dead.
Before Blade could move, four of the guards grabbed him by the arms. The leader drew his sword and in two quick slashes cut through the bonds around Blade's wrists and the hobbles on his ankles. Then all four of the men holding him gave a mighty heave. Blade felt his feet leave the ground, then he was flying forward and plunging down into the darkness beyond the doorway.
Chapter 6
Blade somehow expected the darkness to be completely bottomless. Instead he struck solid ground no more than ten feet below. He wasn't braced for the shock of landing, and sprawled face down.
The ground under him was more of Trawn's universal mud, several inches deep, slimy, cold, and foul smelling.
Blade rose on his hands and knees and spat the mud out of his mouth, then stood up. Ten or twelve feet above his head, he saw a rectangle of light-the doorway through which he'd been thrown. As he watched, several figures struggled into the light. Three were guards, the fourth was Princess Neena.
The guards did not heave Neena out into the gloom like a sack of grain. Instead they took her by the hands and lowered her over the doorsill until her feet were only a few feet above the mud. Then they let go. Neena landed with a squelching noise, staggered, and would have fallen if she hadn't reeled against the wall. She seemed unhurt.
Neena pushed herself slowly away from the wall and straightened up. As she did so, the door above slammed shut with a thunk that echoed hollowly in the thick air of the chamber. For a moment there was total darkness around the two prisoners again, as lightless and seemingly endless as the remotest parts of outer space. Blade heard Neena give a faint whimper of fear or pain.
The blackness lasted no more than a minute. Slowly a faint light crept into the prison, driving back the darkness. It was a pale light without color or warmth, like a winter dawn. It seemed to be coming from above. Blade looked upward, and saw a faint glow creeping through a circle of holes in the ceiling at least twenty feet above his head.
Blade looked at Neena. The princess was standing a few feet from the wall, erect and motionless, her face blank and her hands at her sides. She seemed as numb as ever, making no effort to meet Blade's eyes. He sighed with frustration, then began examining their prison.
It was a simple square chamber, about forty feet on a side and dug about twelve feet into the earth. The floor and the walls up to ground level were bare earth. Above ground level were ten-foot brick walls, with a heavily timbered ceiling on top of that. The holes from which the light was coming were set in the bottom of a large wooden drum in the exact center of the ceiling. Blade suspected that there was more than light behind those holes. The light had come on so fast that someone was almost certainly up there, with ears to hear and eyes to watch what went on below.
Blade lowered his eyes, scanning the walls of the prison again. This time he saw something that made him start-a wooden grating low down in the opposite wall. Behind it was blackness.
Slowly, trying to give the impression that he was wandering aimlessly, Blade drifted over toward the grating. When he'd reached it, he sneaked a quick look at the ceiling. He might-just might-be outside the angle of vision of any of the holes. Or he might still be visible, but not clearly enough for the observer above to realize what he was doing. It might be a foolish risk to try anything with the grating this soon. It would be an even more foolish risk to sit around doing nothing to find out what might lie in the darkness behind it.
Blade bent down and looked carefully at the grating. It must have originally been designed to open-on one side were rusted hinges. It had been sealed shut around the edges and the lock removed. Several of the bars also looked as if they had been broken out and replaced over the years.
Blade sat down in front of the grating so that his body hid what he was doing from anyone looking down from above. Slowly he pulled on each bar, testing it. He didn't try to break the bars themselves. They were made of a dark wood as heavy and nearly as tough as wrought iron. Instead he tried to loosen them from their sockets.
Bit by bit he began to feel a little play in one of the bars. He concentrated on that one, pushing and pulling with all his strength. Sweat began to stream off him, plowing lighter paths in the dark mud that covered much of his skin.
Suddenly one end of the bar popped out of its socket, with a shower of dust. Blade now had more leverage. He forced himself to work slowly and quietly, until suddenly the other end of the bar was also free. Then he heaved, and the rotted cords that bound the bar in the middle also gave.
The missing bar left a gap barely wide enough for Blade's head, let alone his massive shoulders. But it gave him more room to work on the others. Three more bars went quickly, and there was an opening wide enough for Blade to squeeze through. He looked back across the prison chamber. Neena was now sitting down where she'd been standing. Her face was as expressionless as ever. Blade sighed and carefully pushed himself through the hole in the grating. He was bruised and sore by the time he found himself in the dark tunnel on the other side.
As his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, Blade saw that the tunnel was not absolutely black. Far away-so far away that it was impossible to even guess the distance-he sat two faint patches of grayish light, one above the other. Blade smiled. Perhaps there was some other explanation. But from here it looked very much as if somewhere far down the tunnel was an opening to the light and air above.
Blade crawled forward into the darkness. He held onto one of the loosened wooden bars as he moved, using it to probe the way ahead. After only a few yards he felt the floor of the tunnel sloping downward. He moved on more slowly, occasionally pausing to feel above and to either side of him. The tunnel's cross section was roughly square, about four feet on a side. The walls were plain earth, but solidly packed and surprisingly dry. This tunnel had been dug a long while back. Blade wondered how many prisoners had found their way out through it.