Hart s Hope Page 0,58

shadow moved away.

"Sweet sweet Sister sister sister," came the hissing from a corner of the room. "Nothing, nothing."

"What then?" asked Braisy. His voice sounded like shouting, the room was so still.

"Pass or stay, stay or pass, all one, what can I tell?"

Hesitation.

"I need to piss."

Braisy's hand squeezed tighter on his arm. "Not now, not now, I'm thinking. What are you, boy?"

I'm scared of dying, that's what I am. You've taken my blood, name of God! Let me go. "Orem ap Avonap," he said. "Try that name."

The shadow returned quickly. "The son of Avonap? But that's a lie, a lie, a lie, there's no goldenwheat seed inside of you."

"Swear to God."

"There's word," said the shadow, "of a learned doctor."

"Would this boy be useful to him?"

"Who can say? Take the low way, low to Segrivaun, and ask for the glass of public death."

"Shit," muttered Braisy.

"Or nothing."

"And I say shit. But yes. Yes, the low way, damn you."

"And damn you," came the whisper. Braisy dragged him now to a far corner of the room, where a deeper black waited in the black of the wall. Braisy stopped there and shoved him in. For a sickening moment he thought he was falling into a pit. Then his foot hit a step. Bad angle. He lurched, he stumbled down three more steps, and when he caught himself his foot was on fire with pain and he was frightened.

"I can't see."

A door closed softly above them. Only then did Braisy try to strike a light. Click; spark. Click; spark. Click; light. A little flame in a wad of dry wool. With his bare hands Braisy gently and slowly moved the burning wool to a small lamp. It took. The stairway went down steeply, and didn't bend. The treads were only inches, the risers a foot at least, and it led far deeper into the darkness than ever the house could be. The low way.

And if I do escape, what then? Must remember my way back. Up the stairs, out this door however it opens, past the whispering shadow, left in the hall, down the stairs, and out. He made it a thread in his mind, a thread of words that became numbers and numbers that became words. Little mnemonics formed. Stone Road Bone Road. The stairs ended in a dirt tunnel that could not go straight for fifteen feet, with turns here and holes overhead and holes down and streams of filthy water crossing the path.

The dirt walls turned to brick, with gaps every few inches, narrow spaces a quarter of a brick wide. Out of some of them came a thin trickle of fluid. Was it raining above ground? Why did they build this place? Fly dog, sky dog, ice water, under water. The thread of the remembered path grew longer, and Orem wondered if he could hold it all in his mind. And all along the walls, the little slits.

The corridor tipped left and down, and the floor was slick hard mud with a thin skiff of water running over it. Orem's foot skidded. He braced himself against the wall. His longest finger slipped into a gap in the bricks. The water flowed down his arm.

"Name of God," Braisy said. "Get your hand out."

Orem retrieved his finger from the slit.

"Look at your arm."

It was wet. Braisy held the lamp over it, studied where the water had flowed. "Should be black. Should be black, boy. It's where they put the ashes of the dead. They fill up the slits with the ashes of the dead, and if you get the water on you, then you - but you don't turn black, do you? What are you, boy?"

They came to a stairway down. The water cascaded over the steps. They descended, a step at a time. Water began dripping from the arched bricks overhead. Now and then the lamp hissed when a drop struck it. Braisy seemed to wince with each drip that hit him.

"Quiet here," Braisy said softly. "The guards have tunnels through here, to listen for people like us, trying for the Hole. And if you think to call for help, remember this - everyone who's taken in the paths of the Hole always says they were forced, always claims they were lost in the Tombs. The guard cuts them up anyway, in little pieces, boy. Cuts them up in little pieces. Think of it before you shout for help."

"What are you going to do with me?" Orem whispered.

"Shut up," Braisy answered.

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