lined with cotton.
He was afraid.
Once again. Damson produced a torch to light the way, a
flare of brightness in the dark, and they moved noiselessly ahead.
Par glanced at Damson and Coil in turn. Their faces were pale
and taut. Each met his gaze briefly and looked away.
It took them less than an hour to reach the Mole. He was
waiting for them when they climbed out of the dry well, hunched
down in the shadows, a bristling cluster of hair from which two
glittering eyes peeked out.
“Mole?” Damson called softly to him.
For a moment, there was no response. The Mole was
crouched within a cleft in the rock wall of the chamber, almost
invisible in the dark. If it hadn’t been for the torch Damson bore,
they would have missed him completely. He stared out at them
without speaking, as if measuring the truth of who they appeared
to be. Finally, he shuffled forward a foot or two and stopped.
“Good evening, lovely Damson,” he whispered. He glanced
briefly at the Valemen but said nothing to them.
“Good evening, Mole,” Damson replied. She cocked her
head. “Why were you hiding?”
The Mole blinked like an owl. “I was thinking.”
Damson hesitated, her brow furrowing. She stuck the torch
into a crack in the rock wall behind her where the light would
not disturb her strange friend. Then she crouched down in front
of him. The Valemen remained standing.
“What have you discovered. Mole?” Damson asked quietly.
The Mole shifted. He was wearing some sort of leather pants
and tunic, but they were almost completely enveloped in the fur
of his body. His feet were covered with hair as well. He wore
no shoes.
“There is a way into the palace of the Kings of Tyrsis and
from there into the Pit,” the Mole said. He hunched lower.
“There are also Shadowen.”
Damson nodded. “Can we get past them?”
The Mole rubbed his nose with his hand. Then he studied her
expectantly for a very long time, as if discovering something in
her face that before this had somehow escaped his notice. ‘ ‘Per-
haps,” he said finally. “Shall we try?”
Damson smiled briefly and nodded again. The Mole stood
up. He was tiny, a ball of hair with arms and legs that looked as
if they might have been stuck on as an afterthought. What was
he, Par wondered? A Dwarf? A Gnome? What?
“This way,” the Mole said, and beckoned them after him
into a darkened passageway. “Bring the torch if you wish. We
may use it for a while.” He glanced pointedly at the Valemen.
“But there must be no talking.”
So it began. He took them down into the bowels of the city,
its deepest sewers, the catacombs that tunneled its basements
and sublevels, passageways that no one had used for hundreds
of years. Dust lay upon the rock and earthen floors in thick
layers that showed no signs of having ever been disturbed. It
was warmer here; the damp and fog did not penetrate. The
corridors burrowed into the cliffs, rising and falling through
rooms and chambers that had once been used as bolt holes for
the defenders of the city, to store foodstuffs and weapons, and
on occasion to hide the entire population-men, women, and
children-of Tyrsis. There were doors now and then, all rusted
and falling off their hinges, bolts broken and shattered, wooden
timbers rotting. Rats stirred from time to time in the darkness,
but fled at the approach of the humans and the light.
Time slipped away. Par lost all track of how long they navi-
gated the underground channels, working their way steadily for-
ward behind the squat form of the Mole. He let them rest now
and again, though he himself did not appear to need to. The
Valemen and the girl carded water and some small food to keep
their strength up, but the Mole carried nothing. He didn’t even
appear to have a weapon. When they stopped, those few brief
times, they sat about in a circle in the near-dark, four solitary
beings buried under hundreds of feet of rock, three sipping wa-