But so much might have identified any part of any large city, and the strain of concentration was too great. Despairing, at the last possible moment she surrendered her grip on awareness, wondering whether she would die.
“Water!” someone shouted, and doused her with it. She opened her maw, but not soon enough. By the time she had registered that she was still alive, reflex had dropped her to the floor, gasping for any drop that might remain. But she lay on an irregular mesh of tree-roots with wide gaps between them; it drained away. There was a stench of ancient rot. What light reached her came from phosphorescent molds, not decent luminants.
Moaning, she tried to raise her eye quickly enough to identify the person who had soaked her. She failed. A barrier of tightly woven branches was being knotted into place above her. A harsh laugh was followed by slithering as her tormentor departed.
But at least she wasn’t dead.
Summoning all her remaining energy, Chybee felt for any spongy-soft areas that might have absorbed a little of the water. She found two or three, and though the taint nauseated her, she contrived to squeeze out enough to relieve the dryness of her maw.
By degrees she recovered enough to take stock of her predicament. The roots she was trapped among were so tough there was no hope of clawing or gnawing through them. The sole opening was blocked. Her weather-sense informed her that she was far below the bower where she had encountered Aglabec. There was one and only one explanation which fitted. He had ordered her brought to the deep foundations of Slah, where nobody had lived for scores-of-scores of years. Above her there must be layer upon layer of dead and living houses, totaling such a mass that it amazed her to find this gap had survived without collapsing.
With bitter amusement she realized how fitting his choice had been. Did he not wish to lure everyone into the pit of the dead past, instead of letting the folk expand towards the future?
And those he could not dupe, he would imprison…
Was she close to the outcrop of rock which must account for the existence of this tiny open volume, little wider than she herself was long? She hunted about her for a probe—a twig, anything—and met only slimy decay and tough unbreakable stems.
At that point she realized she was wasting energy. What she needed more than all else was something to eat. Because otherwise…
Oh, it was clear as sunlight. They were going to starve her. When she was as dreamlost as Isarg, they would lay siege to her mind with fawning talk. In the end she would accept passively whatever Aglabec chose to say, until she betrayed Ugant and Hyge and Wam, until—
No! It must not happen! Feverishly she scoured her prison, tasting the foulest patches of rot in the hope that some trace of nourishment might inhere in them … and at last slumped into the least uncomfortable corner, having found not a whit of anything less than utterly disgusting. Somehow she had lost even Glig’s protective leaves. She could only hope they hadn’t been noticed and identified.
Well, if all else failed, she could gulp down some poisonous mess and cheat Aglabec that way. But she was determined not to let him overcome her hatred of him and all he stood for. She would fight back as long as she could.
And surely, long before she was driven to such straits, Ugant would have started to worry and sent out searchers!
Compacting her body to conserve warmth, for there was a dank chill draught here, redolent of loathsome decay, she set about giving herself instructions for resistance, even though already a hint of anger colored her thoughts when she remembered Ugant so prosperous in her fine home, so ready to enlist a stranger in her cause…
The only way she had to measure time was by the changing air-pressure of successive dawns and sunsets, for as it turned out the person who had been assigned to pour water over her—the absolute minimum needed to keep her alive—was also instructed to do so at random intervals. Sometimes the chilly shower occurred four tunes in a single day; then a whole one might pass without it, and she was almost reduced to begging as she watched, in the wan glow of the molds, how her mantle was shrinking from thirst. Enough of her pride remained thus far to protect her against that humiliation. But she could discern how hunger was taking its toll. At first she had kept careful count of darks and brights; then after a while she was alarmed to realize she no longer knew precisely how long she had been shut up. Her trust in Ugant gave way first to doubt, then to sullen resentment. The pangs of anger multiplied, until it came to seem that the scientist, not Aglabec, was her true captor, because as yet she had not succeeded in locating this secret prison.