Eldin, swiftly tucking the keg under his arm, drew back one massive fist to strike a second blowâsaw that it wasn't needed. Dribbling spittle and teeth, his brown eyes rapidly glazing over, the Kledan slid down the wall into a seated position.
“There!” Eldin nodded his satisfaction. He took a torch from its bracket on the wall, glared his hatred once at the Kledan ships suspended over Yath, turned into the tunnel, and set off at speed after the column of slaves.
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Swift as a moonshadow, and as silent, Una moved through the vegetation of Yath's shoreâbut back toward the excavations, not (as she'd promised Eldin) away from them toward Baharna's safety. He'd told her she must go back to the city, report to the Council of Elders, tell them all she knew of what had passed. He would go with her except ⦠he had something to finish. With luck they'd meet again; he hoped so, for he loved her; but for now he had work to do and there were dangers in it, and it was no job for a girl, and anyway she'd already done her bit. He'd been a little surprised, but glad, when she hadn't argued.
But if Eldin was bent on vengeance, so too was Una. The Wanderer had seen Hero murdered before his very eyes, and so too had Una seen her sister's cruel death; both of them had scores to settle. Which was why she hadn't demurred, at least not out loud. Why let him see in advance that she intended to defy him? That's the trouble with love: it's fun when the sky is blue and the sun is shining, but when the crunch comes, then you'll lay down your life for it. Una had loved her sisterâloved Eldin, too, great oafâand while she might possibly face life without the one, it would be quite unbearable with neither.
As for danger: there'd be that, she knew, but on the other hand who'd be looking for them, she and Eldin? Those Kledan pursuers they'd seen rushing along the shore in the afternoon were after a couple on the run, not a couple in hiding. Which was why they hadn't investigated the tiny island. Eldin and Una wouldn't be hiding, but hurrying away from here, on their way to report to the authorities in Bahama. So the Kledans must have reckoned, and doubtless they were still thinking it
when they returned with the twilight, weary and empty-handed. Following which, the fugitives had waded ashore.
Then she'd given Eldin time to get out of sight, watched him disappear in the shadows cast by bulrushes and palms, before following on behind. But bulky as the Wanderer was, few men (much less women) could match his prowess in darkness. A great prowling cat, he'd rapidly outdistanced Una, so that she arrived at the entrance to Yath-Lhi's labyrinth a good ten minutes after his brief altercation with the guard. By then that worthy had fallen over on to his side and was snoring loudly and blowing bloody bubbles. His ravaged face and the great bump on the back of his head spoke less than eloquently but amply of what had gone before.
Eldin's blood was up, no doubt of that, and his mind so full of revenge that he'd overlooked a certain instrument of that emotion, for he'd neglected to take the Kledan's great curved sword. Una weighed it, found it too heavy, settled for the guard's knife instead. My, but the Wanderer was in a hurry! Then, fearlessly and with never a backward glance, she followed in Eldin's footsteps into the tunnel's gloom.
After about a hundred and fifty yards of shallow descent, and when visibility was almost down to zero, suddenly the way turned to the left, and Una saw ahead a flaring torch in its bracket. By its light she paused to tear a great wide hem from her dress (which had been very pretty, but now hampered her movements enormously) before taking down the torch and carrying on into the maze. And after that she went very much faster.
Then, too, she started in on the maze proper; where the way twisted and turned, with side-passages branching off and myriad junctions; with pitfalls, sand traps (all of them sprung now), ominously stained pivoting
slabs (now permanently shored up), and other such hazards. But along the way the walls were daubed with yellow arrows, recently painted, and the stone floor was scuffed in a faint telltale track, so that she knew she couldn't get lost in the labyrinth's coils.
And coils they were! Serpentine, and yet in cross-section weirdly angled, the walls of these passages occasionally leaned outward from bottom to top, and at other times narrowed almost to a triangular shape, but they were never straight up and down. On the other hand, all junctions or crossroads looked precisely alike, with corners faceted seemingly in defiance of sane geometric laws. In the dreamlands, of course, the laws of the waking world were often stressed or warped almost beyond recognition, but never so much as here. All in all, the discovery of the way through the maze to the core must have driven Raffis Gan and his Kledan friends almost to the point of madness.
So Una was thinking when she came upon a clay pot of yellow paint with a brush still in it, sitting on the floor close to the wall. At first she passed it by, then retraced her steps and took it up. She looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, then gave a slow smile. So Gan needed painted arrows to find his way through here, did he? And did he also need them to find his way out?
She was about to make certain alterations to her first yellow arrow, when from fairly close at hand there came sounds of shouting and of leather Kledan sandals slapping the stone floor. The Eldin-mauled guard had been discovered! Ducking into a passage to her left, then taking a right, and another left, Una quickly hid herself awayâhid herself so well, in fact, that long minutes after unseen slavers had clattered by, she was still trying to find her way back to the maze's main route! But finally she did â¦
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“No more battering-rams,” said Raffis Gan. “Too late for that now. Now it's blasting time!”
“Are you sure you know what you're doing?” Zubda Druff was a little claustrophobic: he didn't like darkness, tunnels, or tombs, and he especially didn't like the idea of being buried under millions of tons of rock.
“No,” Gan snapped, “I'm not sure I know what I'm doing. But I'm very sure of what will happen if we're still here tomorrow! You, there!” he called to a massive Pargan slave. “Get that keg of powder over hereâand the rest of you be careful with those torches!”
They were at the central core, which Gan had long since charted. He sat on a wooden stool at a small folding table, a map of the maze spread before him. In design the subterranean labyrinth was like half a disc, with the core almost at the center if the disc had been full. The semicircleâthe maze's perimeterâreached almost to Yath's shore, which was represented by a wavy line. The core was shown as a regular geometric figure with twenty-three sides, around which the inner corridor turned full circle unobstructed.
Gan stabbed a finger at the chart. “That's where we are,” he told Zubda Druff. “These twenty-three facets”âanother stabâ“are those walls. And we've had a go at all of them!”
“Tell me something new,” said Druff, a little less nervously.
“This core is maybe seventy or eighty feet right through to the other side,” Gan continued. “And at its center, Yath-Lhi's tomb and treasure-chamberâwhich must be fairly extensive, to contain all the loot she took in her time!” He stood up, crossed to the wall of the core, gave it a tap with his knuckles. The wall or facet
he'd struck was maybe six feet wide by ten high, which was the height of the ceiling. “I believe,” he went on, “that behind one of these facets is a passage leading into the tomb.”
“Agreed,” said Druff. “The problem is, that whichever panel it is, it's more than three feet thick. Indeed it might be ten or even fifteen feet thick!”
“Now who's stating the obvious?” said Gan. “But you're right: we've battered our way two to three feet into the base of each facet, and we're not nearly through yet. So now you see why I wanted that man, that Eldin the Wanderer, down here to help us out.”
“I do?” Druff wasn't convinced.
Gan sighed. “He reads glyphs, understands Ancient Dreamlandsâwhich happens to be the writing at the top of these walls!” He pointed.
Toward the top of each facet or wall, lines of glyphs stood sharp-etched in the flickering light of many torches. “I'm sure,” Gan continued, “that these writings contain a clue. The ancients might have been sophisticated in their tomb building, but I think they must have been rather naive in other ways. They were, after all, primitive people. With the Wanderer to read these inscriptions, we might have got a lead on which wall covers the entrance tunnel.”
“Water under the bridge now,” answered Druff gruffly, tired of words and explanations. “So now we blast until we
find
the right one, right? So where do we start? One wall looks pretty much like another to me.”
Gan wryly nodded his agreement. “Yes, they do. So we might as well start right here.”
At a point some three feet high in the wall directly before them, a hole had been battered through what looked like solid rock to a depth of about two and a half feet. All about the foot of the wall large chunks of
stone, smaller shards and fragments lay heaped and layered with the dust of pulverized rock. At its deepest extent, the hole was just large enough to take a small keg of gunpowder.
“In there,” said Gan to the slave with the first keg. “Pack it well in.”
But as the huge black moved to obeyâ
“Raffis Gan! Zubda Druff!” came shouts from along the main passage. “We've caught one of your runaways!”
The thronging slaves were shoved aside by their Kledan overseers, and three more Kledans came into view pushing Eldin the Wanderer before them. Two of his captors held crossbows trained on him, while the third threatened with a whip. The strange thing was that the Wanderer made no protest.
“Ho, Gan!” he rumbled, waving his escort back and coming forward at his own pace. “I thought I'd find you here. And now, about our arrangement: enough wealth to buy Celephais, wasn't it?” Eldin grinned right into Raffis Gan's face.
The Kledans who'd brought. him were at first astonishedâbut in the next moment they'd fallen on him, driving him to his knees. Then Egg-head and Narrow-eyes came on the scene, and the latter snatched a crossbow from one of the Kledans, aimed it straight at Eldin's heart. At which momentâ
“Hold!” Gan shouted. He took Narrow-eyes' weapon from him, knocked him aside. “Are you mad? Don't you ever listen to anything that's said? We
need
this manâfor the moment!” And to the Wanderer, with his voice falling dangerously low:
“You dare to come in here, looking for me, speaking of âarrangements'? Do you think you can just come and go as you wish? You ran off, remember?”
“For the girl's sake,” said Eldin at once, as the Kledans restrained him. “See, your offerâof great wealthâwas too good to refuse. Me, I'd take a chance that you'd honor it, but I couldn't risk the girl. So I got her safely out of it, and then I came back.”
“You got her out of it?” Gan rasped. He bared his teeth, drew back a clenched fist. “So that she can run and tell the Council of Elders what a scoundrel I am?”
“No such thing.” The Wanderer had it all rehearsed. “Just like you, Gan, when all of this is done, I'd like to disappear. A thousand places in the dreamlands whereâwith a bit of gold and the odd gemstoneâa man might live a full and very pleasurable life. I know of many. And when I was settled in, then I'd send for the girl. That's the plan we made together, anyway. Of course, if she doesn't hear from me within a three-month,
then
she'll go to the Council of Elders. But until then ⦠on the contrary, she'll talk to no one.”
Gan narrowed his eyes, unclenched his fist, said: “Let him up.” And when Eldin was back on his feet:
“Wanderer, your life's still forfeit, for you crossed me and I'm not much for that. There's but one way you can save yourself, one slim chance. And what's more, I'll even throw in a fistful of jewels to see you on your way. That's wealth aplenty to such as you. But this is all on the understanding that you can show us the way into Yath-Lhi's treasure. If you can, good! Only indicate which wall hides the entrance, and we have a deal. I'll blast where you tell me, and if you're rightâthen your life's your own. But if you're wrong ⦔
“Then we'll blast our way in anyway,” growled Zubda Druff, “âbut you'll be sitting on the second keg!”
“Talking of blasting,” said one of Eldin's captors, “he had a keg with him.”
“What's more,” said another, “he did a bit of bloody work on poor Guz Umbus as he stood guard!”
Eldin was quick to answer: “I had no time to spare chatting with guards. As for the powderâI reckoned we'd need it. The ancients didn't build their tombs of fine porcelain, you know!”
Gan scowled a little but nodded anyway. “Enough talk, now let's see some action. Wanderer, walk with me. As for you two”âindicating Egg-head and Narrow-eyesâ“come with us and watch him. You, too, Zubda, and a couple of your lads. The rest can wait here.”
They started round the angled perimeter of the core, passed a massive battering-ram in its frame, examined something of the extent of the work already performed. “We've not been idle, as you can see,” said Gan to Eldin.