Apart from these, and similar questionings and replies, we exchanged no conversation.

I did not know where she was guiding me, but surmised it must be onto some unfrequented path from Erran’s territory, maybe even from the city itself.

We entered a passage with no exit, and I guessed the trick of it before she set her schooled palm on the place in the wall that swung it wide. Beyond lay blackness and a smell of gray bones.

“I don’t see in the pitch-dark, my lady,” I said.

“It is only a short distance without light,” she said, “but you must take my hand.”

So, hand in hand, we stepped into the solid night and the wall folded shut behind. That hand was very small and cold in mine; it was the white one without the blood, a slim, sad, hungry hand that clung to me against its will. It made me recall, that hand; it brought back shreds of what had been before. It woke up my pity, thinking of her pain.

Then the black began to dilute, and she drew herself away from me.

We had come under a street, and the paving had burst overhead, opening the passage-roof in places, just enough to wash the dusk with starshine.

Everything seemed fossilized here, not even a rat to scuttle.

Shortly the gaps closed above us, and tunnels ran off to the sides, and the sourceless luminescence of a sea-cave lighted everything.

There were faint markings on the stone sides of the passages; I suppose she told the way from them.

In the end, she led me through another magician’s wall into a vast underground hall of broken pillars, and here was a black horse tethered, harnessed, and with a pack at his saddle.

Her resourcefulness brought me to a standstill. I could see she had been planning quickly and thoroughly; her mind surely had begun to work on it the second my blade went in her lover’s gut.

“The horse is sound,” she said. “I brought him here by another way at sunset, and he carries a little food and water and some other items for your journey. I could not get you much or my endeavors would have been noticed. There are flints and a parcel of resin torches that you will need later.” She spoke calmly, as if she were a stranger I had asked for directions on my road. She pointed across the space, beyond the horse, and said to me, “The opening by the leaning pillar. Go down it, turning neither left nor right. Presently you will notice a mark like a serpent on the left-hand wall. Put your palm over his head and he will open the stone for you. Have you noted what I have said, for I accompany you no farther?”

“I shall remember,” I said. “Where then?”

“The tunnel runs straight,” she said, “through the belly of the mountains southeast of Eshkorek. I don’t know where it ends, but it will be far from here. Nine or ten days to ride it.”