After sprinting only a short distance, Lo-Yang, out of shape and also unable to endure the suspense, had felt compelled to look back. Then he had paused, panting. The god who had caught Keyes was in the act of disappearing underground, his prisoner in hand. All the other gods were considerably more distant, and none of them were paying the least attention to Lo-Yang.
Fatalistically, the apprentice dared to crouch behind a rock and wait, catching his breath. Paradoxically his fear had become more manageable, now that the worst, or almost the worst, had come to pass.
Presently the great god who had taken Keyes-Lo-Yang was able to identify Mars, by the helmet the god was wearing, and by his general aspect-Mars came up out of the ground again, but without his prisoner, and went striding away to rejoin his colleagues.
Time passed, and the sun rose higher. The frightened apprentice remained behind his rock. Eventually, gradually, the council of the gods broke up, though not entirely. The remnants, still wrangling, moved even farther off.
When it seemed to Lo-Yang that all the gods were safely out of the way, he crept out from behind his rock, and dared to come back to the upper rim of the cave, looking for Keyes. With a surge of relief he saw that his master was at least still alive.
But Keyes took no notice when his apprentice waved. Lo-Yang called down to him cautiously.
At the sound the man below raised his head, turning it to and fro, in a feverish motion that spoke of near-despair and sudden hope. “Lo-Yang? I’m blind, I…”
“Oh.”
“Lo-Yang, is that you? Where are the gods?”
“Yes sir, I am here.” The apprentice raised his head, squinting into the sunlight, then looked down again. “They’re all moving away, at the moment. Slowly. Still bickering among themselves. No one’s paying any attention to us. Master, if Mars has blinded you, what are we going to do?”
“Your voice seems to come from a long way above me.”
“I’d say twelve meters, master, or maybe a little more. I saw him carry you down there, and I thought…”
“Lo-Yang, get me out of here, somehow.”
The young man surveyed the entrance to the cave below, and shook his head. It pained him to see his proud master reduced to such a state of helplessness, to hear an unfamiliar quaver in the voice usually so proud. “We need a long rope, master. Looking at these rock walls, I wouldn’t dare to try to climb down without one. I’d only fall in there with you, and…”
“Yes. Of course. And you have no magic that will get me out.”
“Unhappily, master, you have as yet taught me nothing that would be useful in this situation.”
“Yes. Quite true. And I also find that my own magic has been taken from me, along with my sight.” Keyes paused. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its urgency, had become slow and resigned. His shoulders slumped. “Hurry back to our camp, then, and get the rope. We have a coil in the large pack.”
“Yes, master.” A pause. “It might take me a couple of hours, or even longer, to get there and back. Even if I bring our riding-beasts back with me. Should I bring them back here, master?”
“Yes. No! I don’t know, I leave the details to you. Go!”
“Yes, master.” And Keyes could hear the first few footsteps, hurrying away. Then silence.
He was alone.
Fiercely Keyes commanded himself to be active, more to keep himself from dwelling on his fate than out of any real hope. Slowly the approximate dimensions and contours of the flatter portions of the cave’s floor revealed themselves to the blind man’s probing. With his hands he explored as much of the walls as he could reach. Seemingly the god had not lied. The cave consisted of a deep shaft, down which Keyes had been carried, and an adjoining room or alcove whose bottom remained in shade. The whole space accessible to the prisoner’s cautious crawling was no larger than the floor of a small house, and it was basically one big room. Here and there around the perimeter were certain crevices which might, for all Keyes could tell, lead to other exits. But the crevices were too narrow for him to force his body into them. He was going to have to wait until Lo-Yang got back, with the rope.
If Lo-Yang came back in time.
If the assistant ever came back at all. If he had any intention of doing so. Mentally the newly helpless magician reviewed the times in the past when he had treated his apprentice unjustly. He had hardly ever beaten him. Surely, on the whole, he had been a fair master, and even kind….
Mindful of the divine warning about pits, Keyes continued his exploration for the most part on all fours, and, when he did stand up, walked very carefully. By this means he located several perilous gaps in the floor, holes into which tossed pebbles dropped for a long count before clicking on bottom. Presently in his groping about the cave he came upon some bones. After he had found a skull or two, he became convinced that the bulk of the bones were human, evidence that other human victims had died in this cave before him. Sacrifices, perhaps? Or simply unlucky hunters, blinded by night or by driving snow, who had fallen in by accident.
Lo-Yang had said that the god was Mars-and Mars had said that he was coming back, and soon. Mars had spoken of using Keyes in some kind of an experiment…. Once more quivering with horror and fear, the trapped man persevered in his compulsive search for something, anything, that might offer him some chance of escape.
And so it was that at last, behind some loose rocks in the comer farthest from the entrance, the blind man’s trembling, groping fingers fell upon something that was round, and smooth, and narrow, and was not rock. When he pulled on the object, it came toward him.
When he stood up again, he was holding in both hands the padded, meter-long weight of a sheathed Sword.
Even with his sense of magic almost numbed by Mars, Keyes could tell this was no ordinary weapon. He had no real doubt of what he had discovered, though he had never seen or touched one of Vulcan’s Swords before, and had not expected to ever have the chance to touch one-at least not for a long, long time.
Thanks to his magical investigations at a distance, the difficult, painstaking studies he’d carried out even before the forging of the Blades had been completed, he knew the Twelve Swords well in theory-understood them better, no doubt, than all but a few of the gods yet did. But how one of the Twelve Blades had come to be tucked away in the remotest corner of an obscure cave was more than the human magician could understand. Certainly it had not been placed there for him to find; only his fanatical thoroughness in searching, his determination to keep busy, had led him to the discovery.
Slowly one possible explanation took shape in the man’s mind: One of the divine gang might have stolen another’s Sword, as a prank or as a ploy in their great mysterious Game, and had found a handy, nearby hiding place at the very bottom of this cave.
Impulse urged Keyes to draw the unknown Sword at once, to end, if possible, the suspense of waiting in ignorance, and to endow himself immediately with whatever powers his find might confer upon him-but there was one ominous contingency which made him hesitate. Fate, or some cruel trickster of a god, might have given him Soulcutter.
He was aware that in recent months his ambition had, perhaps more than once, irritated certain of the gods. Until now, by good fortune, none of them had become more than half-aware of him, as humans might be vaguely cognizant of some troublesome insect in the air nearby-but his magic, practiced as subtly as possible on Vulcan’s human assistant, had been clever and strong enough to bring him extensive theoretical knowledge of the Twelve Swords and their unique powers.