corridor that was the twin brother of the first. The same inky-black darkness, the same cold, musty, damp air that sent shivers down my spine. The same walls of crude stone covered with rough moss or lichen, the same metal doors with barred openings. But there was just one difference, which I noticed when I started counting my steps. The doors in the wall were set a hundred yards apart instead of twenty.
It was a lot colder here than in the upper corridor and after a while I started shivering, without really noticing it. In the darkness I had to walk slowly; I was afraid of running into an unexpected obstacle or simply falling into a pit. When I had walked past seven doors on my right, the walls changed. The coarse stonework and the moss disappeared, giving way to solid basalt. Whoever the builders were, they had cut the rest of the corridor straight through the rock. I began to suspect that I had ended up in a prison built by gnomes or dwarves.
Far ahead in the darkness I caught a brief blink of light, like a tiny glowworm. I stopped, pressed myself back against the wall, and started gazing into the distance. The little light blinked again. From the look of it, it was probably the flame of an oil lamp that wasn’t quite burning properly yet. The light was swaying gently from side to side in time with someone’s steps and slowly moving away from me.
I didn’t stop to think. A light meant rational beings, even if they might not be very kindly disposed toward unexpected visitors. I had to avoid getting too close to the unknown individual carrying the lantern, remain inconspicuous, and hope that my inadvertent guide would lead me out of this strange, confusing, and mysterious prison.
I dashed forward, ignoring the danger of stumbling over some unexpected obstacle and breaking my legs. Catching up with the stranger proved quite easy—he was plodding along with all the speed of an ogre gorged on human flesh.
As I ran, I passed a staircase leading upward (that was where the lantern-carrier had come from), but decided not to take it, because I didn’t want to go stumbling through the dark again. When I got close to the man ahead of me, I could see from the hunched back, the shuffling walk, the wrinkled, trembling hand clutching the lantern, and the gray hair that he was definitely very old. He was dressed in old, tattered, dirty-gray rags. But I would have bet my last gold piece that some time long, long ago those rags had been a magnificent doublet.
The massive bunch of keys hanging on his worn belt jangled ominously in time to his shuffling gait. One hand was holding a bowl or a plate. The other was trembling slightly as it held the lantern out at arm’s length, so that his shadow, enlarged several times over, danced on the wall.
I crept along several steps behind the old man, trying to keep two yards outside the boundary of the light. He shuffled his feet, groaning and swearing under his breath. Once he gave a hoarse cough. I was afraid he might fall to pieces as he moved, without ever reaching the place where his trek was supposed to take him. But, fortunately for me, the corridor suddenly came to an end and the jailer, as I had begun to think of him, halted with a grunt beside the final door. He put the bowl and the lantern down on the floor and took the bunch of keys off his belt.
Mumbling cantankerously, he sorted through the keys, until eventually he settled on one and tried it in the lock, but it didn’t work. The jailer cursed the darkness and the father who had begotten him and started jangling the bunch again, looking for a key that would fit better.
At this point it dawned on me that when the old man started walking back, I would be right in his path, if I didn’t make a run for that staircase in a hurry. But running in pitch-darkness without making a noise when I couldn’t see the walls or the steps was a rather difficult proposition. The old man might be a slow walker, but even if he didn’t follow closely enough to see me, he was bound to hear me.
He kept fiddling with the keys, and I tried desperately to think of a way out of this unpleasant situation. I could always smash the old man across the head, but then what guarantee was there that I would find the way back up without him? The new stairway could quite easily lead me into a new labyrinth where I would wander until the end of time. So attacking him was out.
There was no place along his route where I could hide—the lantern lit up the corridor from side to side, and no matter how hard I tried to squeeze back against the wall, a blind mole would be able to spot me. But opposite the door where the old man was standing, there was the doorway of another cell.
And I do mean
I didn’t know who they’d been keeping in that cell, but when I saw what the prisoner had done to the door, I didn’t envy the guards when the creature broke out. And it was definitely a creature! No human being could possibly have made dents like that in a five-inch-thick sheet of steel (unless he’d spent three hundred years constantly hammering his thick head against it).
The old man finally found a key, picked the lantern up off the floor to examine his find in brighter light, clicked his tongue in satisfaction, and started playing with the lock. I slipped past him just two steps away and ducked into the dark cell.
The old man stopped trying to turn the key and sniffed the air rapidly, like a hunting dog that has caught the scent of a fox. But right then I wasn’t concerned about the old man’s eccentricities. I almost jumped straight back out into the corridor, because the empty cell stank as if an army of gnomes had been puking in it for the last ten years.
I covered my nose with the sleeve of my jacket and tried to breathe through my mouth. It wasn’t easy, because the smell was so bad that my eyes started watering. And while I stoically struggled against the stench, the old man stood as still as a statue beside the door that he was trying to unlock.
Eventually the jailer took another long sniff at the air and shook his head as if he was driving away some delusion. Oh, come on, granddad! There’s no way you can smell me through this stench! Not even if you have the nose of an imperial dog!
The old man started struggling with the stubborn lock again. Meanwhile I tried to keep the remains of my breakfast in my stomach. If I ever got out of these subterranean vaults, I’d have to throw away my stinking clothes and climb into a hot bath for a month.
The lock finally surrendered with a clang and the old man gave a triumphant laugh. There was a creak of rusty, unoiled hinges. He picked up the bowl and walked into the cell, lighting his way with the lantern.
I heard a faint clanking of chains.
“Woken up, have you?” the old man wheezed in a hoarse voice. “I expect you’re hungry after three days, eh?”
The answer was silence. A chain clanked again, as if the prisoner had moved.
“Ah, you’re so proud!” The old man laughed. “Well, well! Here’s some water for you. I’m sorry, I forgot the bread, left it in the watch house. But don’t you worry, my beauties, I will definitely bring it on my next round. In a couple of days.”
He gave an evil laugh.
I glanced out of my hiding place, hoping to see what was happening in the opposite cell, but all I could make out was the dim glow of the lantern and the old man’s back.
“Well, I’m off. Enjoy your stay. And drink your water. Of course, it’s not peacock in mushroom sauce or strawberries and cream, but it’s very tasty all the same!”
The old man walked out of the cell and the door creaked as it started to close.
“Stop!” Ah, so one of the prisoners was a woman. It was a clear, resonant voice, one used to giving orders.
“Well, I never!” the old man exclaimed in surprise, and stopped. “She spoke. What do you want?”
“Take off the chain.”
“And is there anything else you’d like?”
“Do as I say and you’ll get a thousand gold pieces.”
“Don’t abase yourself in front of him, Leta!” another woman said in a harsh voice.
“A thousand? Oho, that’s a lot!” the old man croaked, and the door of the cell started creaking again.
“Five thousand!” I could hear a note of despair in Leta’s voice.
The door kept on closing.
“Ten! Ten thousand!”
The door slammed with a crash, and I shuddered. That crash seemed to bring the sky tumbling down onto the earth. The bunch of keys jangled again, and I moved away from the wall beside the doorway, where I had been
