“I didn’t expect this!” choked Dalreay.
“How much powder did you use?” Prestin let the disgust rise to fight the fear. “Haven’t you any idea?”
“Of course I don’t know!” Dalreay spat out dust and rock chips. The dust whirled about their heads, sucked back and driven up as the air billowed in response to falling sections of roof. A glittering gray mass of rock and rubble poured down the steps, obliterating them. The noise rumbled like the inferno on Saturday night overtime.
Prestin pushed himself harder into the crevice.
“If Nodger were here I’d—I’d shove him into the rock fall!” Dalreay was really worked up. “He told me it would go well—strike another blow for our freedom, he said! Why—I’ll—”
“Who’s Nodger?”
“Him? He’s the most brainless, most useless, most sinful pile of offal this side of the Cabbage Patch.” Dalreay stopped shouting and wiped streaky fingers down the dust and sweat of his face. His beard stiffened, caked in dust. Their hair and eyebrows made them look like millers.
“It’s stopping.”
“By Amra, if it doesn’t the whole roof will cave in. We’ll be buried alive.”
“I thought,” Prestin swallowed and tasted flat dust, “I thought we were.”
“Maybe so. But we don’t know yet. This will bring Honshi, Trugs, rabble, maybe even a few Valcini themselves.” He stood up and bashed angrily at the dust on his green clothes. “We’ve got to find a way out before we’re caught.”
A single glance up the steps showed Prestin that no one was going in or out that way again until a million man hours with shovels had been put in. He felt dry.
Obediently, he followed Dalreay over the sprawled rock shards of the corridor. His eyes hurt and his feet hurt and his mouth felt drier than the rock dust caking his tongue.
“You wouldn’t, by any chance, Todor, have a drink?”
“No. And who gave you permission to use my own name?”
“Your own name—? Oh—I thought it was a title, like, mister—” Prestin licked his lips—unsuccessfully—and eyed Dalreay’s sword uneasily. The green had been cleaned off on the Honshi’s clothes, but the memory of it lingered. So did its smell.
“Todor is my own name. I do not know yours.”
“Robert. Robert Infamy Prestin.”
“So, Roberto—”
“Bob.”
“Bob. We have no water. We will walk until we find a way out. If we must kill guards, Honshi or Trugs, then we will do so. We cannot afford to lose now through any weakness of the flesh. Si?”
“Si,” said Prestin, and slogged on after his leader.
They reached the point at which their original explosion had brought down the ceiling and triggered off the fall down the steps shaft, and Prestin wondered what Dalreay would do. Obviously, they could not go on. The dust still drifted mindlessly in the air, the gems sparkled through it with an eerie persistent, glow, not a glitter, and Prestin’s eyes pained him badly.
“Through here.” Dalreay guided him roughly toward the wall.
A crevice had opened, a crack not more than eighteen inches wide. Dalreay slid through easily. Prestin followed with more difficulty, but he pushed on. Dalreay knew what he was doing. The ban on noise had long since passed, and as they edged their way along the crack Prestin heard swords and javelins clanking merrily against the encrusted walls. One good thing—a crack in the wall here brought its own light.
Sweat stung him, he panted for air, his arms and legs ached, but still he crabbed on after Dalreay, too scared of being left behind to stop for a breather.
How long he pushed and struggled on he didn’t know; he did not consult his wristwatch for he felt that he could not register time in this mad universe.
Dalreay halted with a sibilant hiss for quiet.
Tensely, the two men peered ahead where the crack, now widening, showed a darkness that struck back against the jeweled glow like a flung arc of ink.
Noises spurted from beyond the darkness—curiously muffled voices, laughter, a snatch of song, the trill of a guitar.
“Guards and their women,” said Dalreay viciously. “We must have bypassed the main workings, going parallel to the center passage. The whole place is interlaced with tunnels and runnels and cracks. It’s a common phenomenon in jewel workings.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Prestin meaningfully.
“Well, we’ve just got to go on. There’s certainly no way back.”
They ventured into the darkness where the gems’ sparkle ended and found their way blocked by a wooden door, studded with bronze.
“Looks as though the guards have a back door.” Prestin rubbed his hands thoughtfully over the stained wood. “This must be their way out.”
“And that means the passageway to the side must lead them to safety.” Dalreay chuckled. “Now it will lead us.”
The way became more difficult in the darkness but both men were now buoyed by hope that they would escape this rat maze with their lives. Soon a low opening showed grayly ahead. Dalreay put his head through, grunted deeply, and began to wriggle out.
“It’s clear,” he said. “Come on, Bob.”
They emerged into a vast cavern—it must have seemed larger to him than it really was, Prestin surmised, because of the previous claustrophobic tunnel—whose dim radiance poured into it from a high crenellation artificially formed against the groined roof. The place smelled unpleasantly of decayed fish.
“These are the Lancarno caves,” Delreay said joyfully. “All the time a back door to the Valcini mines and we never knew!”
“Well,” said Prestin sourly, his thirst almost unbearable, “you know now.”
They began to pick their way carefully over the littered floor. With grotesque rock formations rising on every side, in the dimness Prestin missed the sparkle of the jeweled rocks. Only the easement of the intolerable pain of his eyes gave him comfort. When he heard the tinkling plashing of water over rock he hurled himself ahead, sprawling full length to cup great double-handfuls of water into his mouth, slobbering and gasping and feeling the crystal water cut channels through the dust of his throat.
Dalreay joined him more delicately, and when Prestin sat up at last, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth so that drops flew, he was reminded of that story in the Bible of the choice between fighters and behind-the-lines men. He couldn’t have cared less.
Pushing on after that, they crossed areas of gravel and hard ridged outcroppings that took a toll on Prestin’s shoes—Dalreay wore leather ones hand-cobbled with an eye to strength rather than appearance—and reached a low arched opening beyond which they caught a glimpse of sky and cloud and a great bird wheeling in slow circles.
“Caution is indicated, Bob. There may be Ulloa about.”
Prestin made a face and hefted his sword.
Now that he had slaked his thirst he felt hungry. The risotto had worn off.
Once outside the low cave entrance, Prestin noticed how it blended in with the undulations of the land; he saw how the edge of one mound that normally would have been inconspicuous was cut into by the sharp edge of bare rock in which the cave entrance lay. The Lancarno caves. Well. A place worth remembering. Dalreay shaded his eyes against the sinking sun and sniffed the slight breeze, his face screwed up tight, concentrating.
Prestin let him get on with it. Presently Dalreay said, “They are there, waiting. But we must hurry for we have come a long way from the direct route, and my people are a hasty people when roused.”
With a panache and a swagger Prestin found most appealing, Dalreay started off across the weed-covered desert and the tall grasses bespeckled with red poppies.