As he inched forward the tunnel narrowed. He had to thrust first with one shoulder, then with the other. The torch burned down, scorching his hand. He crushed it out against the earth wall and crawled on, trying to believe that the walls were not closing on him. Sweat sprang out on his head and ran into his eyes; he could not free a hand to wipe them. Nor could he crawl back now; the tunnel was too low for him to raise his hips and edge backward.

His hand before him met not earth floor but vacancy. A push and his head and shoulders were over a gap. Cautiously, he reached forward again. Solid earth, two feet ahead, leading only downward. The builders did not want to make this too easy, he thought.

But I know what must be there. I know this is not a trap, but an entrance. So I must crawl down, round the bend. My face will be in the soil for a foot or two, but I can hold my breath for long enough.

If I am wrong, I will die smothered, face down. The worst thing will be if I struggle. That I will not do. If I cannot get through I will push my face in the earth and die.

Shef crawled over the edge and twisted his body down. For a moment he could not make his muscles force him on, as his legs retained a lingering grip on the level floor he had left. Then he pushed himself down, slid a foot or two, and stuck. He was jammed upside down in the tunnel in the pitch-black.

Not a nightmare, no panic. I must think of this as a puzzle. This cannot be a blind alley, no sense to it. Thorvin always said that no man bears a better burden than sense.

Shef groped round him. A gap. Behind his neck. Like a snake he slid into it. And there was level floor again, with this time a gap leading upward. He heaved himself into it, and for the first time in what seemed an age, stood upright. Beneath his fingers he found a wooden ladder.

He climbed unsteadily upward. His head bumped against a trapdoor. But a door designed to be approached from outside would not open so readily from within. There could be feet of earth heaped on top of it.

Pulling the whetstone from his belt he braced himself against the shaft-wall and stabbed upward with the sharpened end. The wood splintered, creaked. He struck again and again. When he could get a hand through broken wood he wrenched more free. Sandy soil began to patter down into the tunnel, rushing faster and faster as the hole widened and the pale sky of dawn appeared above.