When it actually came down to leaving the fortress, I was somewhat disappointed. I suppose I’d expected sliding walls with fiendishly clever release levers, but I must admit rock makes a poor medium for sliding. The bolt hole we used was just that, a narrow, wooden trapdoor in the far corner of the room, painted and disguised to look just like the rock of the rest of the floor. The trapdoor groaned slightly when we raised it, but the lack of hinges meant it didn’t need regular oiling to keep it usable. The door rested on a built-in ledge at the proper point below floor level, and just below the ledge were three torches, tied to metal stakes driven into the rock on three sides. The fourth side contained a wooden ladder, and I hoped it was as strong as it looked. It disappeared far down into unlit depths, a place I wanted to reach at a pace of one rung at a time. I was in something of a hurry to leave that fortress room, but not in that much of a hurry.
While Aesnil untied two of the torches and went to light them from the room’s torch, I looked around to see if we’d left any clues showing that we’d left the palace. The only thing I found was Aesnil’s discarded red gown, and knew immediately that it couldn’t be left behind. If there’d been a window I would have thrown it out, but lacking a window I decided the escape tunnel would have to do. After wadding it into a ball I threw it down, half expecting to hear it hit bottom as if it were a rock. I still hadn’t heard anything when Aesnil came over with the two lit torches, and then it was time to go.
Aesnil lowered herself through the trapdoor first, reached up to take one of the torches I was holding, then began a slow descent. When she was far enough down I took my turn, putting the torch down on the bare stone floor just long enough to find the top of the ladder with my feet. We’d decided Aesnil would go first to lead the way, but that left me with the job of reclosing the trapdoor. I immediately discovered that I needed one hand to hold a ladder rung, one hand to hold the torch, and one or two hands to pull the wooden cover back into place. I was seriously considering the acrobatics of draping one leg over a rung and holding the torch in my teeth when I saw an horizontal torch bracket set into the stone beneath one set of the stakes the torch had been tied to. With a sigh of relief I used the bracket, fought the wooden door back onto its ledge, then reclaimed the torch. The hardest part of the descent was behind me, and for the first time in a long time I felt like singing.
It’s embarrassing to look back on that night and ask myself if I really was that innocent, or if I had just been suffering from a severe case of wishful thinking. My urge to sing lasted all of five minutes, just long enough to let me appreciate the necessary routine for descending that ladder. The narrow, enclosed space was hot and airless, making it more than necessary that the torch be kept as far away from me as possible. Its orange and yellow flickering illuminated the rough gray stone walls and dark brown ladder, but it also started the sweat rolling down my forehead into my eyes and made my hair feel singed. I tried resting my torch hand on the highest rung above my head that I could reach, but that put the torch too close to the ladder and made me nervous. If the ladder caught on fire Aesnil and I were both dead, and in a place it was unlikely anyone would ever find us. Being dead is bad enough, but being dead and unmourned somehow makes it seem worse. The torch had to be held up, with my arm unbraced.
The arm not burdened with a torch had trouble of its own, needing to steady me on the ladder as my feet climbed down. My body seemed to tend away from the ladder, making it necessary that I hold on with my free hand, not simply guide myself with it. While stepping down to the next rung there was little difficulty other than strain; moving the hand down to a new position quickly became a race, to see if I would be able to secure the new position before my body swung too far back from the ladder. Early on I almost missed, and thereafter the race became much more absorbing.
As if the other problems weren’t bad enough, the ladder itself was a problem. Considering the fact that it had undoubtedly been built by the men of that world, it had also undoubtedly been built for them. Stepping down from one rung to the next was an exercise in body stretching, a leg below, an arm above. The squarely cut rungs were solid enough to hold a man’s weight, but after a couple of minutes the shape of them began hurting my bare feet. Add to that the fact that the trouser legs of my stylish new outfit didn’t take long before beginning to escape the confines of their leather ties, and we have almost all of an exciting, fun-filled picture. The last major point left out of it was that Aesnil was having the same trouble I had, which slowed her descent. If I hadn’t kept a regular watch on her progress, I would have lowered myself right onto her torch, instead of merely struggling through the smoke from it.
Subjectively speaking, how long the descent really took is impossible to know. It seemed three or four lifetimes before my groping lower foot found rock instead of ladder-rung, and I nearly cursed Aesnil for not giving me the good news sooner—until I saw her. She had moved only two steps away from the ladder bottom into a narrow tunnel before dropping to the rock floor, her head and back against the rock wall, her eyes closed, her torch forgotten on the rock beside her. I knew exactly how she felt, but I managed to put my torch into a bracket set in the wall before doing the same. I was soaked with sweat and nearly exhausted, but I didn’t want us to be left in the dark in a place like that.
It took at least twenty minutes before we were able to force ourselves on our way again. If we hadn’t been filled so full with the need to escape, we’d probably still be there, breathing hard and moaning at the aches in our arms and legs and backs. Aesnil stirred first, sending me her intention without words, forcing me into following her example. I wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, but if there hadn’t been the ladder to contend with, I might have considered turning back.
The narrow tunnel we began following went on a long way, but other than that it posed no problem. We passed three other wooden ladders descending out of rough square holes in the ceiling, but found no other idiots struggling down them. I’d long since begun wondering how good an idea we’d had, but couldn’t argue the fact that there were no viable alternatives. If we weren’t to be forced into someone else’s idea of what was right, we had to go our own way. The tunnel was narrow and dark before and behind us, the torches smoked just enough to be annoying, and the sweat poured into the heavy cloth sacks we were draped in; nevertheless we kept going, and finally reached an area that was noticeably cooler.
“Ah, we will soon be free of these confines,” Aesnil said, stopping to wipe at her forehead with the back of her hand. “The exit undoubtedly lies only a short distance ahead of us.”
“There is another thing which lies directly ahead of us,” I said, keeping my voice low as I put a restraining hand on her arm. “I feel the presence of a number of minds, and they seem to be male.”
“They could not have found us!” she cried, but softly as fear flooded her mind. She’d been projecting so much fear going down that ladder, I was surprised she had any left. I thought my own quota had just about been used up, but I suppose there’s such a thing as reserves.
“Their minds hold nothing resembling a desire to search for and find,” I soothed her, wondering what they were doing there if they weren’t looking for us. “Let us advance cautiously, and see what we might see.”