captured his uncle. Our clergy have hidden depths. The older
man is humiliated. It's an awkward situation, I'm afraid, but I
was amused.'
'So am I, Your Cognizance. Thank you.'
Quetzal rose. 'We'll find our own amusing, when we find our way
out. May I look for water?'
'Of course, Your Cognizance.'
'You won't try to stand until I'm back? Give me your word,
Patera Calde.'
Silk sat up.
'Please, Patera--'
'I have to go with you, Your Cognizance. I have to find water,
wash, and drink, so I can do whatever I can for Viron and Hyacinth.
You've got nothing to carry water in, and all four of you couldn't
possibly carry me far.'
'You've been suffocated, Patera Calde,' Quetzal bent over him.
'We merely thought you dead, and I shouldn't have hinted at a
miracle. No god can turn back death, and if they could, no god
would to please us. You were still alive when we dug you out. You
revived naturally--'
Unaided, Silk staggered to his feet. 'I had a cane, Your Cognizance.
Master Xiphias gave it to me. I didn't need it then, or at least
not much. Now I do.'
Quetzal offered him the baculus. 'Use this.'
'Never, Your Cognizance. Councillor Lemur called me--No, I won't.'
The tunnel behind them was nearly choked with earth; a trampled
path led Silk to an opening in the wall. 'Is this where you found me,
Your Cognizance? In there?'
'Yes, Patera Calde. But if your young woman is in there, she is
surely dead by now.'
'I realize that.' Silk put his head through the opening, 'and I
believe she's in the pit with Auk, anyway; but Master Xiphias values
that cane, I need it, and it's probably very close to the place where
you found me.' He began to work his shoulders through.
'Be careful, Patera Calde.'
The wall was shiprock, little more than a cubit thick. Beyond it
lay a cavity hollowed from the tumbled soil that seemed utterly
dark. When Silk tried to stand, he found his head capped by a rough
dome; earth and small stones showered him invisibly. 'This could
collapse any moment,' he told the swaying figure in the tunnel.
'So it could, Patera Calde. Come out, please.'
His questing fingers had come upon stubby protuberances he
assumed were roots. Exploring his pockets, he discovered the cards
Remora had given him and used one to scrape away the soil. One
root wore a ring. He cleared away more soil until he could get a firm
grip on the hand, tugged, dug farther, and tugged again.
'There are new sounds in this tunnel, Patera Calde. You had
better leave that place.'
'I've found someone, Your Cognizance. Somebody else.' Silk
hesitated, unwilling to trust his judgement. 'I don't think it's
Hyacinth. The hand is too big.'
'Then it doesn't matter whose it is. We must go.'
Getting a firm grip on the arm, Silk heaved with all the strength
that remained to him, and was rewarded by a cataract of earth and a
dead man's embrace.
I'm robbing a grave, he thought, spitting grit and wiping his eyes.
Robbing this man's grave from below--stealing his grave as well as
his body.
It should have been at least as amusing as Gulo's uncle the major,
but was not. Holding onto the jagged edge of the opening in the
tunnel wall, he succeeded in pulling his own partially buried body
free. Back in the tunnel (suddenly very glad of its cold, sighing airs
and watery lights) he was able to extract the corpse from the loose
soil that had reclaimed it. Quetzal was nowhere to be seen.
'He's gone to look for water,' Silk muttered. 'Perhaps water could
revive you the way something revived me,' but the dead man's ears
were stopped with earth. As he cleaned the pitiful face, Silk added,
'I'm sorry, Doctor.'
He searched his pockets again; his beads were not there, left
behind with his own worn and dirty robe at Ermine's. It seemed a
very long time ago.
He wriggled back into the dark cavity beyond the tunnel wall.
Hyacinth had bathed him in their bedroom at Ermine's, undressing
him, and scrubbing and drying him bit by bit. He ought to have been
embarrassed (he told himself); but he had been too exhausted to
feel anything beyond vague satisfaction, a weak pleasure at finding
himself the object of so beautiful a woman's attention. Now all her
concern had been undone, and Remora's fine robe, scarcely worn, ruined.
'You returned me to life, Outsider,' Silk murmured as he
resumed digging, 'I wish you'd cleaned me up, too.' But the
Outsider had doubtless been, as Doctor Crane had maintained, no
more than a vein's bursting.
Or had Doctor Crane--who had thought himself, or at any rate
called himself, an agent of the Rani--been in truth an agent of the
Outsider? Doctor Crane had made it possible for him to proceed in
his attempt to save the manteion despite his broken ankle; and
Doctor Crane had freed him when he had been taken by the
Ayuntamiento. It was conceivable, even likely, that Doctor Crane's
scepticism had been a test of faith.
Had he passed?
Weighing that question, he dug harder than ever, making the
dark, evil-smelling earth fly. If he had, he would almost certainly be
tested again, after this surrender to doubt.
The card struck something hard. At first he assumed it was a
stone, but it was too smooth; another half minute's work bared the
new find: a slender hook. As soon as he grasped it to pull it free, he
knew that he had found the silver-banded cane Xiphias had brought
to Ermine's for him.
Without warning, brilliant light flooded the cavity. He turned
