"Your friend Irivor will be surprised when I tell him you have an unexpected gift for the theater," I grinned in a quiet aside to Lukor. He flushed and snorted through his nostrils.
"Nonsense, my boy!" But I could see he was pleased. A romantic to the heart, the old Swordmaster was enjoying himself vastly. For this was the very stuff of melodrama! An entrance into the palace under disguise―a daring midnight rescue―why, he was happy as a boy.
The palace, even at this late hour, was bustling. Lordly gentlemen in court robes charged with heraldic devices swept past us. Beautiful women in bizarre costumes were continuously streaming up and down spiral staircases of glistening marble. Gold statuettes and silver urns throbbed in the light of crystal chandeliers. The silken carpets under my buskins were deep and soft as the finest plush. Thousands of milky candles cast a wavering, romantic glow, faintly golden. Splendid tapestries displayed scenes of the hunt, the battlefield, and the bedchamber to every side. The odor of perfume and incense and candle wax and fresh-cut flowers filled the air.
Lukor nodded and smiled and bowed and paused to exchange snippets of gossip with half the personages who swept so grandly past. The Swordmaster was well known here from the days of the previous dynasty, and I reflected with an inward qualm that it would be dreadful if his complicity in my rash attempt to free Koja from the dungeon pits should become known, to the detriment of his reputation if not, indeed, of his freedom.
We progressed at a leisurely and unobtrusive pace to a lower level of the palace. I was in a constant sweat over the possibility of encountering Darloona in one of these sumptuous rooms; however, I saw her not.
At length we came to a side corridor that was seemingly deserted. Lukor pulled aside an old tapestry adorned with a scene from the life of Prince Maradol, a monarch of the former royal line. Then he felt about, fingers probing. He gave an exclamation―there sounded a distinct click―and a black opening yawned before us, into which we plunged without a moment's hesitation.
For a considerable period of time we went forth through utter blackness, edging along sideways between close walls of rough stone. This was not as difficult as it might have been―at least we were walking at a level, however dark the going was. But when at length we began descending a winding coil of stone stairs and I had stumbled three times, and had almost fallen once, I began to wish the technological ingenuity of the Zanadarians had extended to the invention of the flashlight.
After an eternity of stumbling and tripping on narrow spiral stairs we came into an open corridor. Here, Lukor said, we were safe from scrutiny and were free at last to make a light. While he fumbled, cursing eloquently, with flint and steel, he explained that spyholes were set in the walls of the passages through which we had thus far come, and that a light might well have been visible to any persons in the corridors or apartments into which these spyholes gave view, had they chanced to be looking in the right direction at the right time.
My companion soon had a small oil lamp lit, and from here on we were able to go forward with ease: He went first to light the way, and I followed close upon his heels.
"What are these passages?" I asked. "It's a regular labyrinth―I'd be afraid to live in this place myself, for fear of assassins lurking in the dark!"
"A labyrinth in very truth, my friend," he replied. "You will by now have noticed the characteristic feature of Zanadarian architecture is very thick walls. This is partly for warmth, for the mountain winds can be very cold, and partly for strength, for the winds can also be very powerful. But the custom affords a perfect opportunity for the construction of secret passages and tunnels. These were, I believe, constructed during the third dynasty of the Zanadarian kings, in the reign of Warlak the Mad. This peculiar monarch had the fancy that his life was in constant danger and that a hundred plots were constantly being spun to catch him in their toils. When he rebuilt this portion of the citadel, he had this elaborate network of secret passages built, and he employed a veritable army of spies to keep those he suspected of being his enemies under constant scrutiny. I learned of the existence of this network through an old friend, the former archivist, now deceased. The present dynasty of usurpers do not even dream of the existence of such a spider web of secret tunnels within their very walls."
"That's interesting," I said. "But whatever happened to old Warlak the Mad?"
My companion chuckled gruffly. "His constant suspicion and lack of trust in his own lords and nobles eventually aroused fear in them. They suborned several of his own spies and Warlak was murdered in his own bed―by assassins using the network of secret tunnels he had invented for his protection against just such an eventuality!"
We went forward for a very long time. The tunnels twisted and turned, branching into side tunnels, crisscrossing yet other tunnels, until I was hopelessly lost. Lukor knew his way, or, at least, he could follow the cryptic markings wherewith the turns and intersections of the passageways were emblazoned.
The royal citadel clung to the utmost peak of the mountain. On a somewhat lower level, it adjoined the Arena of the Games, and the network of secret passages communicated with the slave pits beneath the arena. I suppose it sounds easy enough on paper, but it certainly involved a lot of walking. My legs were growing weary and I was getting rather warm―the tunnels had the poorest ventilation imaginable, and I was muffled to the ears in a dark woolen cloak which served to hide the fact that a long Yathoon whip-sword was strapped to my back. I had my own rapier at my hip, of course, but I had taken the precaution of bringing along a weapon for Koja. It would be somewhat presumptuous of me to have expected the poor fellow to fight his way out of the pits without a sword. Luckily the Academy Lukor had several fine whipswords in its collection of foreign weaponry.
Everything had gone so splendidly up to this point, that I should have expected trouble. However, I assumed that Lukor possessed a greater familiarity with these secret passages than was actually the fact.
Our first inkling of this came when suddenly Lukor cried out and vanished and I fell face forward into a wall.
The barrier had certainly not been there a moment before. Lukor had been plodding along ahead of me, the light of his lamp casting his shadow huge and black over the walls to either side. But now he and the lamp had vanished and a stone wall stood before me. I called out his name but heard no answer. I began to sweat. Only Lukor knew the secret code symbols that made it possible to thread a path through this tangled maze of passageways. Without him I was completely lost.
I thumped both fists against the obstruction but it was solid and immovable. Again I called his name, but there was only an unbroken and ominous silence for reply.
What had happened? Had Mad King Warlak set traps and deadfalls along his secret tunnels? Had we accidentally tripped or triggered one, springing into place a sliding barrier of solid stone? I did not know; nor did I ever learn precisely what had happened to part the old Swordmaster and myself. As far as I knew I was buried alive beneath a mountain of solid stone.
At length I turned back and retraced my path to the last intersection we had passed, noting the code symbols―a row of blue disks. I took a side branch, hoping it would run parallel with the interrupted passage, and rejoin it further on.
The passage, however, curved sinuously around unseen obstructions, and seemed to run on before it intersected another tunnel. When such occurred, I took the new tunnel and went back along its length, hoping to find Lukor. But instead I became lost in a perfect maze of crisscrossing passages until I had to give up all hopes of ever finding my way along the route we had been following.