The Forests Of Gleor

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.

Gradually the mouth of the tunnel faded to a pale, dim square incredibly far behind him. The gray light ahead seemed only a little closer. All around him were darkness and the smells of earth and air that never saw the sun.

His hand came down suddenly on something hard. He drew back, then felt cautiously. It was a human rib cage. A little exploration by touch turned up skull and leg bones. He didn't feel like looking for anything more. The bones were totally fleshless, and as dry as anything could be down here. Like the tunnel, the bones had been here for a long time.

Blade crawled past the bones and on into the darkness. It was now impossible to tell what lay around him except by feel. Blade moved on still more slowly, feeling his way before each movement.

It was just as well that he did. Suddenly his probing bar came down not on solid ground, but on empty air. He swept the bar completely across in front of him. He was on the edge of a wide gap in the tunnel, where the floor dropped away into-what? In the darkness, it was going to be hard to tell.

Blade got down on his stomach, wormed his way forward until he lay on the very edge of the gap, then reached out as far as he could. He swept the bar up, down, and sideways, without meeting anything but air.

Damn! The gap might be fifty feet wide. It might also end five inches beyond the end of his probing bar. There was no way to tell, and there wouldn't be any unless he could bring some light down here. But how to do that?

Perhaps he could climb down one side of the gap, across the bottom, and scramble up the other side? It would not be impossible to kick hand- and footholds in the earth, although it would take a while.

Moving as quickly as he dared, Blade scrambled back to the skeleton. He picked up one of the bones, then crawled back to the gap. He had to find out how deep it was before he risked starting a climb down into it. He held the bone out at arm's length, then let it fall.

He heard a faint whisper of air as the bone dropped down into the blackness. It fell for a long time, gradually fading away. A still longer time after that came a faint, incredibly distant thump as the bone landed. It must have fallen close to three hundred feet.

Blade swore to himself. Climbing down one side of the gap and up the other had been a good idea, in theory. It was not going to be a good one in practice, not if losing his grip meant a three-hundred-foot fall. He understood now why the tunnel was still there and so easily accessible from the prison chamber. All it was good for was a quick way of committing suicide. Blade wondered how many prisoners had done just that, and how many sets of smashed bones lay far below in the darkness.

Slowly he turned around and started crawling back toward the chamber. So one way out was blocked. Well, there would be others to be found, or if necessary made.

As Blade crawled back toward the main chamber, he realized that something was blocking off part of the entrance to the tunnel. A disagreeable thought flashed through Blade's mind. Had the guards come in to wait for his return and punish him for his curiosity?

Blade gripped his bar more tightly and crawled onward. Gradually he saw that the light was being blocked by a human figure sitting inside the tunnel. A few yards farther on, and he recognized Princess Neena. He practically scrambled up the last stretch of tunnel, then stopped abruptly as he reached her.

Neena's face was no longer set and expressionless. She was grinning broadly, and hugging her bare knees with both arms. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter. She looked as though she had either recovered from her numbness and apathy, or slipped out of apathy into madness.