He caught something; he held a handful of cloth, and yanked. There was loud ripping, and a long piece of fabric came away in his grip.
"What are you doing, blasphemer?"
He ignored the voice as he drew his dagger with his left hand and awkwardly twisted the cloth around the blade, securing it as best he could one-handed; with his right hand he took a few aimless swings with his sword, to make the priests maintain their distance. The dagger-torch thus produced wouldn't burn well, he knew; it wanted grease or fat or oil on the cloth.
He placed it on the altar beside the map, feeling carefully to be sure the roll of parchment was still there.
Again the voice asked, "What are you doing?" Garth thought he detected a worried tone; undoubtedly the priests could hear everything he did, making it plain that he was up to something.
"Why do you draw your dagger, thief? Is not your sword sufficient to deal with unarmed priests? Is that cloth a bandage? Have we wounded you so severely?"
Garth was relieved that his scheme had not been deciphered. He pulled his largest piece of dried meat from his pouch and smeared it along the blade of his sword, letting it soak up what remained of the blood; for the first time in his life he was grateful that his provisions were of less than premier quality, for there was a significant amount of fat in the meat, and he hoped the blood would serve to soften it up somewhat.
There were rustlings all around him; the priests were also up to something. Something was being dragged toward him.
He smeared the bloody meat against the cloth wrapped on the blade of his dagger, then flung it aside.
He had prepared as well as he could; he struck at the altar again with his sword.
The angle was wrong; only a very few sparks glimmered briefly. He swung again, and a more encouraging shower of blue-white pinpoints spattered across the altar and parchment, but they vanished without igniting anything.
"Do you seek to enrage us further by smashing our altar? Fool! You cannot damage it, no matter how strong your arm; no man can!"
Garth was amused that they thought him a man; he resisted the temptation to correct their mistake, as it would hinder his identification once he was gone. He struck at the altar again, and sparks flew; again, and again, his blade grating on stone. He was ruining the edge, he knew.
He paused to catch his breath, and the darkness swallowed him up again, seeming more complete than ever after the brief respite the sparks had provided; but was it complete? From the corner of his eye he caught a faint flicker; he bent near the altar.
Yes! A dull orange glow tinged the edge of the rolled map; a spark had caught!
Holding his breath, ignoring the rustling movements behind him and the 'dragging which was scarcely ten feet away, he gently fanned the ruddy glow; his efforts were rewarded with a tiny tongue of flame that leapt up suddenly. Exulting silently, he carefully lifted the burning parchment and held it high, turning to take his first good look at his surroundings.
As he turned, a heavy net was flung across him; that, of course, was what the priests had been dragging. He managed to hang onto his sword and the burning map, but his foot slipped from atop the altar-stone. Fortunately, it, too, was tangled in the net, where the priests could not get at it readily even if they were to locate it.
He struggled to remain upright, and succeeded; the priests, thinking him human, had underestimated his strength.
For a moment, he was too busy studying his newly visible environment to pay the net much heed. He was in the middle of a large room, perhaps a hundred feet across, totally devoid of furniture save for the altar itself, which was a single block of rough stone. The walls were bare, unfinished stone; here and there were hung heavy draperies, presumably concealing doorways. The dim light of his small flame was not sufficient to make out color or detail.
The heat of the flame began to reach his fingers, and he recalled himself to his immediate situation; he set to methodically cutting his way out of the net with his sword, which was fairly easy. In only a moment, he had cut a hole large enough to let the net slide down across his body onto the floor.
The priests formed a ring around the net, tugging at it, trying to force their captive down; they were unaware that their actions actually made Garth's escape much easier, providing the tension necessary to cut the strands, and pulling the severed net down off him.
Once mostly free, he wasted no time in snatching up his prepared dagger and setting the greased cloth ablaze; it produced a dim, smoky, malodorous flame, but it burned. He dropped the flaming remnant of his map and again looked about.
This time he studied the priests; all wore black, or at least colors dark enough to be indistinguishable in the available light. They were babbling excitedly, aware that their captive had somehow eluded the net and set something on fire; the odor was unmistakably that of something burning. Garth regretted that, as it removed much of the element of surprise.
There were about two dozen of them; they covered a wide range of sizes and shapes and, judged by their faces, varied in age from scarcely adult to positively ancient. Their garments were uniformly dirty and ragged, and their faces filthy; but after all, who would care in the eternal darkness of the temple? Or even outside, who expected the blind to be concerned with appearances? That thought drew Garth's attention to their eyes, which he immediately regretted; some were not bad, being merely permanently closed or open and staring sightlessly, but others were glazed; whited over with cataracts, flooded with blood and scar tissue, or simply gone, leaving bloody sockets.
He noticed that one had a long, jagged tear in his robe, revealing a cut across his chest; it seemed singularly clean and bloodless until Garth lifted his makeshift torch for a better look. When the dim light shone full on the man's chest the cut suddenly began oozing blood thickly, and the priest hissed in pain.
Another had a makeshift bandage tight, around his wrist; as the light hit it blood seeped through, staining it a dark red.
A man, an old man, lay on the floor not far from him; a trail of blood showed that this was the priest who had grabbed Garth's shoulder and ankle, only to be wounded at the base of the altar. Whatever dark magic had stanched the wounds of his companions until light hit them had apparently been overtaxed by the severity of his injuries, as his blood seemed to have flowed freely enough. The old man was still breathing, faintly, and Garth wondered if he would live.
Looking across the floor beneath the net Garth saw another trail of blood, where two priests had dragged away the first one he had seriously wounded. His eyes followed the trail to where it vanished under one of the curtains; that, he supposed, would be sleeping quarters, or some similar place where they could tend their wounded.
"So, thief, you lied to us, and brought in some way to make fire. We dare not attack you, thus, when you have your sword and we are unarmed; but still, you cannot find your way out. The maze will stop you."
For the first time Garth could see who spoke; it was a tall, elderly man, his hair gray with age. One sleeve was slashed where Garth's sword had cut it. He had no eyes, but merely empty sockets, long since healed from whatever injury had destroyed his sight.
It seemed unlikely to Garth that the maze could actually be all that impossible; with a wary eye on the priests, he put down his sword for a moment, transferred the dagger-torch to his right hand, picked up the cloth-covered stone with his left, tucked it back in its former position under his arm, put the torch back in his left hand-which could still hold it, although it was not free to make large motions-and picked up the sword. This operation took a minute or more before he was comfortable again, but the priests kept their distance; they knew they were no match for him except in the darkness.