"You see," said Gak. The troll slipped off his shoulder the strap of his goatskin bag. He took out a pair of rushlights and a Rhaetian copper igniter, and he charged the device with tinder.
"Where get?" asked Thorolf, pointing to the igniter.
"Trade. Soon we make, too." Gak pulled the trigger and lit the rushlights from the brief yellow flame. He handed one to Thorolf and pushed the door back to its closed position. The trolls, Thorolf saw, had cleverly fabricated the stone door to fit the tunnel entrance, with pivots at top and bottom.
The meager light enabled Thorolf to stride after Gak. The tunnel sloped down, leveled off, and sloped some more. Where the solid rock gave way to earth, the tunnel had been lined with rough-hewn planking. The planks overhead were braced at intervals by posts against collapse.
They walked and walked; when Thorolf's rushlight weakened, Gak produced another. The floor became wet. In places mud had worked its way up between the planks, giving a slippery surface on which the yellow flames of their torches cast a flickering reflection. Thorolf thought he could hear the rumble of street traffic overhead.
Little by little his panic subsided, only now and then returning with a rush. He smiled in the near-dark; if he would never really enjoy being in a tunnel, at least he could now face such burrows with becoming fortitude.
"Step!" muttered Gak.
Thorolf found that he was ascending a stair, then walking on a level, then climbing again. Now and then the opening of a side tunnel gaped blackly in the rushlight. The passage became so narrow that both Thorolf and Gak had to turn sideways to squeeze through. Thorolf fought down a return of panic.
"Quiet!" breathed Gak. Thorolf gripped his scabbard lest it clank or scrape against stone.
The tunnel ahead showed a feeble blur of gray against blackness. As they approached, Thorolf saw that the left-hand wall had been chiseled out to form a rectangular opening, large enough to go through without stooping but only a span deep. The far end was blocked by a screen of some sort, which admitted enough light for Thorolf's dark-adapted eyes to see.
As Thorolf peered at the screen, he picked out a variegated pattern of darker patches. The mottling resolved itself into a familiar-seeming form. Then he realized that he was looking at the back of a well-known painting. It was the huge picture, in the assembly chamber of the Rhaetian Senate, of Amalt of Thessen, in armor, leading the charge against the Carinthians. To Thorolf's vision, the figures were reversed right and left.
Thorolf could not see anything in the room through the canvas. He listened, holding his breath, but detected no sounds of human presence. He gently touched the back of the painting. The canvas swung out and away a little; it was evidently hung from the top. A sharp hiss from Gak made him jerk his hand away, and the picture returned to its normal position with the ghost of a thump.
Thorolf wondered where the chimney flue led up from the fireplace over which the painting hung. By rights it should pass through the space where he now stood; but the masonry beneath his feet seemed solid. There must be an offset, carrying the flue beneath his feet to the passage wall behind him and then up. Perhaps the Carinthian governors had built these holes to spy upon the king's officials or to escape from Zurshnitt in a crisis.
Thorolf did not feel he could spend time on this architectural puzzle. "Now castle!" he whispered.
They went back to where the tunnel widened. Gak's light ahead seemed to vanish, leaving a faint afterglow. Hurrying, Thorolf found that the troll had turned into one of the side tunnels.
Again they walked and walked and climbed almost invisible stairs. The climb went on and on until even Thorolf, strong and inured to hardship though he was, found his breath coming faster. They wormed through passages even narrower than that which led to the Senate chamber.
At last Gak stopped, holding up a hand. Thorolf found that he faced another rectangle of dark gray against the blackness. This aperture was smaller than that into the Senate chamber but still large enough to squeeze through.
"Quiet!" murmured Gak. "Castle. Sophonomists here."
Thorolf examined the screen. The paint must be thicker on this picture, he thought; or else the light in the room beyond must be dimmer. He could not decipher the painting until he noticed several black patches against the gray, each in the form of an oak leaf. Then he remembered the painting of the Divine Couple in the Chamber of Audience, whither Orlandus had conducted him on his first visit to the Sophonomist lair. The black spots were the oak leaves that a later artist had painted to conceal the deities' sexual parts, in deference to the Rhaetians' puritanism.
There was, however, a tiny spot of light high up on the back of the painting; Thorolf remembered that the picture was slightly torn. He leaned forward and put his eye to the tear. By moving slightly he found that he could bring most of the chamber into view. The room seemed empty.
"Finish?" Gak asked. "Come away?"
Thorolf wagged a hand. "Wait!" he whispered. "Must see Sophonomists."
"Bad!" muttered Gak. "Have magic. Find us ..." Gak drew a finger across his throat.
"Fear?" asked Thorolf. Gak had put the same question to him at the tunnel entrance.
"No fear," said Gak rapping his chest with his knuckles. "No damn fool, either."
"Wait ..."
Thorolf stiffened at the sound of voices. One of the doors swung gently open. In came Yvette of Grintz, in a yellow robe, followed by the stout, red-haired, red-robed Parthenius, whom Thorolf had met before. The Countess was saying in that toneless deltaic voice:
"... but my good Doctor, I must obey the Master's orders, and he has not commanded me to lie with you."
"But," expostulated Parthenius, "ye know I be Orlandus' second in command, his lieutenant in all things. Aught I ask, ye may take as coming from him. Since he cares not for commerce with women, 'tis nought to him whose bed ye haunt. So take this as an order, my lady: Ye shall repair to my chamber after curfew, to pass the night there in pleasure. Ye shall not regret it!"
"My pleasure is but to do my Master's will," said Yvette's flat voice. "Nameless, I will not comply without a direct command from the Master."
"Then bide ye here; I'll fetch our Psychomagus in person!"
"If he say so—" began Yvette; but Parthenius bus-tied out.
Thorolf's mind was in a whirl. The sight of Yvette aroused his passions to a feverish pitch. Parthenius' crude effort to extort her sexual favors filled him with blinding rage.
For the moment, the fact that Yvette was no gentle maiden but an experienced woman of the world mattered not at all. Thorolf wanted to get her out of Zurshnitt at any cost. What he would do with her, since she still acted as mechanically as one of the figurines that marked the hours on Rhaetian clocks, he had not figured out. He would get her away and let the future unfold as it would.
Thorolf pushed the back of the painting. Like the picture in the Senate chamber, this work of art was secured at the upper edge, so that it swung away from the wall. He pushed it farther and lowered himself to the floor, a little over a yard below the lower edge of the hole in the wall. Below the bottom of the picture the unused fireplace gaped; its chimney must follow the same zigzag route up as that in the Senate chamber.
As Thorolf gathered himself up and let the painting swing back, he heard a squawk from Gak: "Ho! Come back, fool!"
Yvette turned and stared at Thorolf, bringing her hand to her mouth with a jerky intake of breath. "Sergeant!" she cried, her blue eyes wide. "What dost?"
Thorolf bounded forward, reaching for her wrist. "Come, Yvette! I'll whisk you out of this prison!"
She backed away, avoiding his grasp. "I serve only the Master!" she said. Then she turned and fled toward the door through which Parthenius had vanished.