If the fighters hadn’t moved back to close the opening again, I think Aesnil would have fainted. The vendraa were fighting like madmen on the edge of the mob, trying to hack their way through to us, and it was only a matter of time before they did. I felt as paralyzed by shock as she did, and could do no more than stand and stare.
“Quickly, Chama, in here!” a hoarse voice called, and I jerked my head around to see one of our guardsmen only five feet away, pointing into a gap in the stone. The man had no choice but to turn back to the fight in order to stay alive, but his few words were enough. With Aesnil still clutching my arm, I edged toward the gap he had pointed out.
It took an age to get there, but we finally reached the gap to discover a doorway in the stone wall, one which led to a large room with other doorways. It was a way out, it had to be a way out, and Aesnil and I fell through the doorway in frantic haste, then turned to close the door. The heavy wooden door closed more easily than we’d expected, as if the door hinges were kept well oiled, but when we searched for the metal bar that would slide across the door and lock us in, it was nowhere in sight.
Aesnil walked woodenly to the middle of the room and crouched down to sob into her hands, but there were still the other doors to check before I could—or would—join her in despair. The torchlit room was large but nearly bare, with nothing to decorate the walls but chains hanging high above the floor on the left, separated by about three feet of empty stone between each set. On the right, beyond the farther door and halfway to the door straight ahead, was a bench carved out of the rock, with no cushions set on it to make it more comfortable. The floor was swept rock as well, but smoothed over as though by the passage of many feet.
I started with the closer door on the right, but pushing it open showed nothing but a smaller room carved into the rock beside the first room. It had carpet fur on the floor and cushions scattered about, but no entrance or exit other than the one I stood at. Strangely enough it also had two or three thin chains and collars attached low down on the silk-covered walls, but I was in too much of a hurry to wonder what they meant.
The farther door in the right-hand wall was large and heavy, with a metal bar set into the stone beside it that closed it tight. I paused at it briefly before going toward the last door, quickly deciding to leave it for a last-ditch effort. The heavy wood and metal would take more than my strength to move, and there was no sense in trying to get Aesnil’s help if it wasn’t necessary.
The third door was unbarred even though it could be barred, but I was glad I opened it only a crack to look out. I recognized the area where Aesnil and I had seen the chained vendraa by the chain-hung posts in sight, but the posts weren’t the only things in sight. Dozens of men fought with swords in the area, some of them clearly guardsmen and some of them recognizably Tammad’s l’lendaa. There was no way out that way, especially not for me, and I closed the door again with a sinking feeling inside me.
“Aesnil, come and help me here,” I said as I turned back to the only barred door. “Do you by any chance know where this might lead?”
“No,” the girl answered, standing erect with defeat stamped on her features. “This room is for use of the guardsmen, and I have little knowledge of the inner workings of the ralle. Do you feel we might escape if we should succeed in opening it?”
“It is highly unlikely,” I told her, putting my shield down to study her more closely. She was still as upset as I was, but she was no longer giving up. “To leave this room we must go either back as we carne, or forward to the courtyard area. As men fight in both places we may do neither, yet perhaps another corridor may lie behind this door, to lead us eventually to a way out.”
“We must try,” she said, putting her hands on the metal bar near mine. “The Chama must not be found cowering in a corner. If she is to die, she must die with some semblance of dignity.”
Good girl, I thought as the two of us began pushing at the bar. Aesnil had quite a few bad points, but at least she wasn’t a quitter. We strained at the bar, forcing it to slide free of the brackets it was seated in, then started on the door itself. It opened more easily than we thought it would, but there was nothing behind it we could use.
“A stairway,” Aesnil observed, pushing sweat-soaked hair back away from her face.
“Leading downward into darkness,” I added to the obvious, wiping at my forehead with the back of my hand. “Perhaps it comes out again elsewhere.”
“I fear not,” she sighed, moving to the stone wall to lean against it. “It is undoubtedly the dungeon of the ralle, where the cells of the vendraa are located. There is but one entrance for security sake, and this . . . .”
Her words were cut off as the door to the corridor was opened with a crash, admitting three figures in vendra red. The men’s swords dripped red with blood, and their minds growled with anger and a need for vengeance. Aesnil and I backed up against the wall as the three advanced slowly, their swords held in front of them, anticipation and grim pleasure on their faces. The corridor behind them seemed empty of life, no more than savagely slashed bodies to be seen on its floor, unliving bodies we would soon resemble. My heartbeat thundered in my ears as loudly as the swirling in Aesnil’s mind beat in my head, and I was shocked when Aesnil stepped away from the wall to stand in front of me.
“I am the Chama,” she announced to the three men, trying to stand proud and straight despite the trembling of her body. “Slay me if you will, yet you must not harm my companion. She had no hand in causing your trials.”
“She accompanies you of her own free will,” one of the men said in a flat, uninterested voice. “She may also accompany you in death.”
“That is not so!” Aesnil protested, but the men weren’t listening any longer. They were coming toward us again with sword points raised; I grabbed her shoulder and quickly pulled her back against the wall—as though it would do some good. They came another step closer, two steps closer
“Hold!” a deep voice rang out, causing the three big vendraa to wheel around in instant readiness. Incredibly, unbelievably, Tammad and Cinnan stood just inside the doorway, their giant bodies braced as they stood with swords up, their entire manner shouting battle-readiness. It was Cinnan who had spoken, but the eyes of the three nearer men moved to Tammad.
“You cannot take this pleasure as your own!” the one on the extreme left protested to the barbarian. “You have been vendra no more than a short while, he beside you an even shorter time. It is we who have suffered the longest, we who strove so long for survival that this day might somehow come to be! We must have her life in payment for what was done to us!”
“Enough lives have been lost in this insanity of guiltless vendraa!” Cinnan interrupted harshly, bringing their attention to him. “No others save criminals were to have been declared vendra, yet it is now clear that too many others have fallen so. Should you wish one to blame you may take me, for I have been unforgivably remiss in my duty. It was my place to band the Chama at the proper time, not give heed to her pleas for delays. There will now be no further delays, for this you have my word.”
“You are the one meant to band her?” the same vendra asked, outraged disbelief in his voice. “And you, too, were made vendra?”
“As easily as the merest child,” Cinnan growled in self-disgust. “I could not believe she would dare do such a thing. There will be payment enough for that doing to satisfy each and every one of you. Death would be too easy.”
“Indeed.” The vendra nodded, turning to look at Aesnil with a snort. “Death would indeed be much the easier. Should my brothers agree, her life is yours.”
“What of the other?” a second vendra asked, the same one who had spoken to Aesnil. He turned to look at me, and his eyes were deadly cold.