She appeared to consider, then shook her head. "Must have been after my time. Never heard of him," she said with a shrug.
Tanis was beside himself with frustration. "Even if our beating hearts were your way out of Death, you can't get at them from where you stand, anymore than we can escape you from inside this pit."
"Wrong!" the little blond boy chirped. "You'll grow weak from hunger. You need to eat." He nodded wisely. "I used to eat. Food was good. I liked soup. Didn't I, Grandma?" he asked, tugging at the woman's blue skirts.
"Yes," she said, patting the boy on the head. "He was fond of my fish soup," she told her victims proudly.
"You will go to sleep before you die," the little boy continued. "Then we'll climb down and cut you open with grandma's shovel. Hold your hearts in our hands, go back to Life, and eat soup. Right, Grandma?"
She smiled and nodded, the movement loosening the knot of gray hair at the nape of her neck. "You can see why I'm so proud of him, can't you?"
Tanis sat on the soft earth, ignoring the gloating dead ones above, and tried to think.
Brandella plopped down with a sigh. "I know this isn't the time to mention it," she said, "but I'm getting hungry. And I'm awfully thirsty, too." She sighed again and picked at a thread hanging from her soft leather slippers.
"It'll pass," said Tanis.
"Yes, and so will we, and we're already in our grave."
They sat silently for a few moments, contemplating the truth of her words, until Brandella angrily banged her fist against the side of the pit. A large clump of dirt fell to the ground. Looking at the small hole she had made in the wall of their tomb, she lifted her head, saying, "That's it!"
Tanis just peered at her. "What?"
She scrabbled toward the half-elf, ignoring the dirt she was grinding into the knees of her woven trousers. 'The stream bends right behind this pit. That's probably why the ground is so soft and damp. Don't you see?" she exclaimed, her voice rising, "I think I know how we can get-"
Tanis clamped his hand over her mouth. "Softly," he said in her ear. "They're listening." Chastened, she nodded her head, and Tanis removed his hand from her mouth, leaving a dirty smudge on her cheek. She leaned close to the half-elf and in a low voice said, "The ground is so soft that we can dig our way out of here. The two up there won't have any idea where we're coming up." "It could take more time than we have left to live," he warned her. "How long will we live if we don't try it?" she asked, a crease between her exasperated eyes. "Do you have a better idea, Half-Elven?" Tanis pursed his lips and thought. Then he said, "Let's start digging." Tanis dug at the earth with his sword, which no longer glowed red, and Brandella used both hands to pull the loose dirt he broke from the wall out of their way. "What are you doing down there?" demanded the old woman, peering into the pit. Tanis and Brandella paid her no mind; they kept on digging at a ferocious pace. "What are they doing?" the old woman asked her grandson. "Digging a tunnel," guessed the little boy. With a self-satisfied grin, the boy's grandmother said, "They'll be dead long before they ever dig their way to the top. Foolish creatures." Sweat poured from their bodies as Tanis and Brandella clawed and scraped at the earth, flinging big clumps of wet dirt through their legs like dogs digging a hole for a bone. The harder they worked, the more they sweated, and the more they sweated, the drier became their throats. "How far are we from the pit?" panted Brandella after several hours of hard labor. A layer of soil had been added to the smudge Tanis had left on her cheek. "About six feet, I'd say." The damp walls of the tunnel made his voice seem dead, and the weaver shivered. She paused, a handful of dirt dropping from suddenly listless fingers. "We aren't going to make it, are we?" she asked. "Don't know," Tanis said. "Just keep digging." Every muscle in Tanis's body cried out from the work he was doing in such cramped quarters. Brandella fared no better with fingernails that were broken and bloody. Dirt caked their clothes, inside and out, and generous helpings of earth crept into their eyes, ears, and mouths. "I don't know how much longer I can keep this up," she said wearily. "Do you have a better idea?" Tanis gently mocked, echoing her earlier question. He couldn't tell if she gave a short laugh or a sob, but she kept on digging.
31
"There's water trickling in!" Brandella cnied fearfully. "I can hear it dripping!" From inside the pit, they couldn't tell in which direction they were digging. Obviously, they'd headed toward the stream. A mud puddle quickly formed at the base of the tunnel, and a short while later the water flow grew from a trickle into a thin but steady stream. Soon, the whole bottom of the gently sloping tunnel turned into a muddy mess, making it difficult for the two to work; they kept slipping and sliding as they tried to dig. Tanis was in front, stretched out with his head and arms at the location where the water was coming into the tunnel. Brandella was behind him, reaching forward to get at the dirt that Tanis pushed back in her direction. It was her job to take that dirt and move it still farther back into the tunnel.
The last thing she expected at that moment was to feel something tickling her ankle and feet; she'd long since lost her shoes. She screamed, kicking her feet.
Tanis squirmed to one side; she could barely see his mud-striped face in the gloom. "What is it7" he asked.
"I… don't know," she said, fearing that the little blond boy had climbed down after them. In the positions they were in, barely able to move, even a child could easily get at them from behind.
The tickling continued despite her thrashing. Then it stopped. Started. Stopped.
Tanis, frantic to try to help her, turned on his side; making a desperate attempt to slide backward and squeeze next to her.
But the tickling feeling had come from dirt beginning to fall on her legs from the roof of their tunnel. She knew what it was when the entire tunnel began collapsing on her feet…
"Cave-in!" she screamed.
Tanis hadn't gotten far when he heard her cry. He reached back and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her out of harm's way. At least for the moment.
When the dust and dirt that nearly choked them finally began to settle, Brandella rested her head on Tanis's stomach and said in despair, "We're trapped. We can't get out now; we can't get back to the pit. When the water gets higher, we'll drown."
Tanis was thinking the same thing; there would be no more digging in this lifetime. The only consolation he cculd think of was that those two ghouls waiting at the top of the pit would not be able to get at them while the half-elf and weaver still lived. Stroking Brandella's mud-encrusted hair, Tanis did not speak. He leaned his head back against the wall from where the water was seeping and thought, not about his coming death, but about the living. Kitiara. And Laur- ana, the elven princess he'd grown up with, who'd had a crush on him for years and who'd given him the ring of golden ivy leaves that he still wore. His companions…
"I'm sorry you didn't get to know Hint," he finally said, closing his eyes against the gloom. He continued to stroke the weaver's hair.
She shifted to try to peer at him. "Who's Hint?"
'The dwarf in the inn. He was my closest friend."
"You'll miss him," she said simply. "And he'll miss you. I'm so sorry that I'm the cause of your loss."
He traced one finger around the curve of her ear. "No," he said. "Don't ever think that. I did what Kishpa asked of my own free will. It was my choice. You have no blame."