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possible. They spent only a few minutes each day in the tunnel. Each time they
passed through the grating, Blade pulled the loose bars roughly back into
place and held them there with globs of mud. In the dim light, the grating
looked almost intact.
They never left the grating and tunnel unwatched, though. Somehow they had to
find out just exactly how wide that mysterious gap might be. Blade would
cheerfully have promised anything to anybody in return for fifteen minutes in
the tunnel with a good torch.
As Blade expected, Neena found the waiting hard. From his own years as an
agent he was used to waiting, like a cat in front of the hole of a very lazy
mouse. Neena, on the other hand, was a royal lady, proud and impatient as a
thoroughbred race horse. Several times a day she would spring up and stride
around and around the prison like a caged tiger, until sheer exhaustion
brought her to a stop.
Blade himself soon began to wonder how much longer they would have to wait.
From the number of meals served, they'd already been here over a week. Lord
Desgo seemed to have forgotten their existence, and as for King Furzun, it
seemed that he had never even heard of them.
Chapter 8
"Blade, Blade-wake up"
Neena's voice cut into Blade's sleep. He struggled awake, rolled over, and sat
up.
"What-?" he grunted, as he drove the fog of sleep out of his mind. Neena only
pointed at the grating and the tunnel beyond it. Suddenly Blade was not only
awake but alert, and he saw what Neena meant.
Far down inside the tunnel was a flickering orange glow. Wherever it was and
whatever it was, it was bright enough so that the bars of the grating threw
shadows on the floor of the prison chamber. That glow must be illuminating the
entire inside of the tunnel. Blade got down on hands and knees, and scrambled
quickly and quietly toward the grating.
A few quick jerks, and the way was open. Blade crawled through, Neena
following him. In the tunnel they rose to a crouch and headed downward as fast
as they could. The orange glow grew stronger as they moved.
They came to the gap. The glow showed it clearly, and the tunnel beyond. The
actual source of the light lay well beyond the gap, about where Blade had seen
gray daylight trickling through. Now an enormous fire was burning above,
flooding the tunnel with its glow. Blade could hear the distant roar and
crackle of the flames and feel puffs and waves of warm air on his skin.
Blade turned his attention to the gap that yawned at his feet, and plunged
away into the depths. The blackness in the shaft below swallowed even the
fire's glow after a few yards.
The width, on the other hand-Blade looked, and cursed. The far side of the gap
was just under twenty-five feet away.
Damn, damn, damn-damn ten times over! A yard less, and Blade would have gladly
attempted the leap.
The earth on both edges was firm, and there was plenty of room overhead.
As it was, the gap was just a little too wide for him to have more than a slim
chance of making it safely.
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A chance much too slim to be worth risking, when the price of failure was a
three-hundred foot plunge to certain death in the musty darkness far below.
As he'd suspected, the tunnel wasn't going to be a very good escape route. As
a hiding place for moments of privacy, it was fine. As a route to a quick and
merciful death it was even better. But for the moment Blade's mind was more on
escaping. He suspected Neena's was the same.
He noticed that she was staring out across the gap, apparently measuring it
with her eyes. Then she turned to him.
"Blade. Can you leap that?"
Blade slowly shook his head. "Not with much hope of landing safely."
She nodded. "Neither could I. But if you-well, threw me just as I leaped-"
Again she measured the distance with her eyes. "I am light, and you look very
strong. I think it could be done."
Blade frowned. "But then?"
"If we had a rope and a stake, I could push the stake into the dirt and tie
the rope to it. Then I could throw the other end of the rope back to you, and
you could swing across and climb out on the other side."
That seemed perfectly logical and sensible to Blade. Except-
"One of the bars from the grating will do for the stake. As for the rope-" She
smiled and shook her head.
"There I admit we have a problem." She pulled out a few strands of her dark
hair and looked at them, then dropped them into the shaft and watched them as
they floated down out of sight. "No, that will not do. Not even if I made
myself as bald as a koba nut could I make a proper rope of my hair."
There was undoubtedly plenty of stout rope in Trawn. But all of it was outside
their prison chamber.
Damn again!
Neena looked at Blade, saw the sober expression on his bearded face, and
misunderstood what was on his mind. "Blade-do not think that I would ask you
to help me escape if there was no way out for you. I
am of the royal house of Draad, and unlike those of Trawn we have some
knowledge of honor. We shall escape together, you and I, or not escape at
all." She rose on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth. It was a long,
lingering, warm kiss, that promised an even warmer passion at another time and
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