Chegory did not like the idea of exile.
Life in Zazazolzodanzarzakazolabrik was hard, tough and monotonous. Jal Japone was a ruthless taskmaster who drove his men hard. Those men were dangerous killers, trained knife-fighters all. In such company in such a place death could be all too casual. In contrast, Injiltaprajura was a place of luxury. Sweet water unlimited! Green coconut cheap. Cassava, mangos, breadfruit and sugarcane sold fresh from the city’s market gardens all year round. Wealth undreamed of in the wastelands.
But…
He would survive.
In Japone’s court there would be men who would recognise him, who would remember him from his childhood and would be pleased to meet him again as a man.
One might expect Chegory to slip off to sleep once he had assured himself his survival was certain. But he did not. It was not the comfortless stone which kept him awake. He was tired enough to have slept on a bed of nails. But he was beginning to worry about the alcohol he had drunk at Firfat’s warehouse.
He shouldn’t have.
He shouldn’t have let Ingalawa force him to drink it.
What would happen to him? Would he become an addict? Would he find himself crawling through the streets on the morrow craving for drink?
Chegory shared Injiltaprajura’s full knowledge of the evils of alcohol. Furthermore, he had been heartily impressed at a tender age by the attitudes of Jal Japone. The warlord made his living by brewing rotgut booze in the wastelands, but he had placed an absolute interdict on the stuff as far as his own men were concerned. Chegory’s father had oft reinforced Japone’s ban by telling his son of the terrible damage alcohol had wrought on the Ebrells themselves.
Tales of men who had lost ships when they were incapably drunk. Of families which had fallen to fighting because of demon rum. Of the depraved horrors of drunken ceremonies in the temple of the evil Orgy God of the Ebrells. Of [Here another of the catalogues with which the Originator of this Text was incurably beglamoured. Deleted by Order. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]
Thus Chegory was for long kept awake, but at last he fell asleep. Nobody bothered to wake him up when the queue moved on. There were already fifty people lined up behind him, none unhappy to leapfrog past the sleeping one, since all were innocent (at least of theft from the treasury) and most were impatient to be scrutinised by the squealer and to be gone. The guards never bothered to rouse the sleeper since it made no difference to them who was first and who last. They had in any case settled to dicing and playing at cards by the light of star lanterns.
Chegory dreamt of Zazazolzodanzarzakazolabrik, that region of desolation known also as the Wastes, the Scorpion Desert, the Scraglands, and as Zolabrik for short. He dreamt of red rock in a red sunset. Of his father, grizzled and gnomish, muttering under his breath as he pottered around in his distillery.
Then Chegory woke.
Then he Woke Up!
Because all hell was breaking loose.
The guards were down, riot was loose, uproar ruled, and the prisoners were mobbing into the treasury. Chegory was swept along with them. Helpless to resist. He knew already that this insurrection was madness. They would never get out of here. Palace guards would seal all exits then starve them into submission. Then there would be trials indeed and punishments of unabated horror.
He screamed in frustrated rage, then screamed no more for he needed all his strength to fight for footing in the tussling mob. In through the entrance he was swept, into the treasury. There wealth was heaped upon wealth, and there lanterns and other lights illuminated a scene of outright anarchy.
Prisoners in their dozens were scrabbling for treasure of all description then bearing it away through a hole in the wall which led into yawning darkness. Chegory knew at a glance that this breach must issue into the undermines Downstairs.
Man after man dared the dark, bearing away armloads of gold and silver, of opal, japonica, celestine and carnelian, of amber and pounamu. Two were flailing at each other, fighting over a trifle which had caught the fancy of both — a green globe of stone, no larger than a fist, in which the souls of fireflies glowed like frozen pinpoints of essence of rainbow. While the fighters contended, another man seized it and was off.
‘You crazy bastards!’ screamed Chegory.
Nobody paid him any attention at all.
Then there were cries of panic from the corridor in which the prisoners had so lately queued while awaiting audience with the squealer. In moments, alarm-shouts warned everyone that reinforcements from the palace guard were fighting their way towards the treasury.
A panic flight ensued. An irresistible floodtide of bodies swept young Chegory Guy through the hole in the wall of the treasury and into the yawning darkness beyond.
Down tunnels they went, blundering through confusions of darkness where elbow argued with chin and boot with instep. They jostled down echoing stoneways, sludged through mephitic passages ankle-deep in sewage, climbed stairs going up then found those same steps descending, and ever they sought for light, light, light, a glimmer of light to free them from the terrors of the darkness which yet oppressed them though their numbers were many.
Intersections were many and each thinned the mob. As intersective decisions lessened the density of the crowd so its pace and urgency lessened also. It became not a mindless flux of squalling flesh but small, disparate groups of individuals who began to think, talk and argue.
Chatter broke out.
‘Go north.’
‘North, he says! Where’s north?’
‘You doubt my sense of direction?’
‘I doubt your sense, man. There’s no way out of here!’ ‘Of course there is. Must be.’
‘Nay. Bones wander here for years. Become dust. No hope for them, no hope, we’re lost, lost.’
‘We’re dead. We’re dead, and this is hell.’
‘If you weren’t with us I’d disbelieve it.’
‘Oh! Is that you, Thagomovich?’
‘None other. Just my luck to end up with you. Now — what’s this? Name yourself!’
‘Datkinson Rowen. Tailor by trade. Born Wen Endex. What else you want to know?’
‘The way out of here, fool! And you — what have we here?’ So saying, a voice grabbed Chegory by the elbow. He broke away, for he did not care to identify himself. Two steps he took, and that was all. Then he stood still, very still, in the darkness.
‘A guard, by chance?’ said the voice. ‘Perhaps it is. Get it, boys!’
But nobody showed any enthusiasm for games of chase and thuggery in the overbearing dark. Instead, on went the arguing voices. Thirty paces further they went, then halted at an intersection.
‘Stinks!’ said one.
‘Dikle,’ said another.
‘Can’t go down there,’ said Datkinson Rowen, the tailor from Wen Endex. ‘Stuff’s poison. Gets into your skin. Does for you.’
‘But it’s solid.’
Sound of someone stamping. Thrice. Thonk thonk sploosh!
‘There! Turns to liquid, see. Goes solid when it’s cool enough but liquid when it’s walked on.’
‘Thixotropic,’ said a scholar.
‘Thixotropic! Is that what you call it? Bloody perverse, that’s what I call it. Stinks, anyway, as the man said.’
‘But there’s light at the end.’
‘Aagh, there’s light for an ending to every tunnel. Come on. Any direction will bring us to light in the end.’
‘Oh no. Not so. It’s ghosts down here. Ghosts and jaws. Sharks which float in the thinness of air.’
‘Oh yes! That I’ll believe when pigs shit silver, when sun burns blue, when my mother-in-law turns sweet…’
With that, the voices were on their way, choosing ways other than that which led down a tunnel awash with dikle. Chegory footpadded through the dark to that passage. There was indeed light at the far end, some four or five hundred paces distant if he was any judge. A cool blue light which glimmered on the dikle.