The Hole

How Orem Scanthips was first recognized as he came into Inwit through the Hole.

A Shadow Does Not Know Him

Braisy led him on a twisting journey through Beggarstown that led at last to a tavern far from the twin towers of the Hole. It was not a bright-painted tavern like the Spade and Grave, but a dingy place, decayed outside and filthy and corrupt within. Braisy flashed a coin, and the innmaster nodded.

The coin spun through the air. Before the innmaster caught it, Orem noticed that it was silver. Not copper at all. It was then that he became afraid. If Braisy's first bribe was so much greater than the whole fee Orem was paying him, it surely meant that someone else was paying Braisy for Orem's passage.

"I need to piss," Orem said.

"Not now," Braisy answered. He would not get out so easily. With a tight and painful grip on his arm Braisy hurried him up the stairs and into an open door.

Only a faint light came in through the cracks of a boarded up window. Someone else was in the room. It was too dark to see more than a looming shadow against the crack of light from the window.

Heavy breathing from the shadow, and the stench of a foul mouth.

"Name." It was a whisper, and still Orem could not guess man or woman, old or young, kind or cruel.

"Orem."

"Name."

"They call me Scanthips."

"Name."

"Of Banningside. Orem Scanthips of Banningside."

More breathing. The shadow still did not believe him.

"Name of God it's true," said Orem.

A sigh like the softest whine of a keener. "I can tell neither truth nor lie."

"Stick him, then?" asked Braisy.

Orem braced himself to run—he'd not die of a blade in a place like this. But Braisy was strong, stronger than such a small man looked to be. And then the shadow's dry hand, crisp and light as paper, stroked his bare arm. "Safe, safe," came the whisper. "Safe, safe." And then a tiny prick on his arm, something edged like a razor or a sharp rock scraping off the blood that surely formed, and the shadow moved away.

"Sweet sweet Sister sister sister," came the hissing from a corner of the room. "Nothing, nothing."

"What then?" asked Braisy. His voice sounded like shouting, the room was so still.

"Pass or stay, stay or pass, all one, what can I tell?"

Hesitation.

"I need to piss."

Braisy's hand squeezed tighter on his arm. "Not now, not now, I'm thinking. What are you, boy?"

I'm scared of dying, that's what I am. You've taken my blood, name of God! Let me go. "Orem ap Avonap," he said. "Try that name."

The shadow returned quickly. "The son of Avonap? But that's a lie, a lie, a lie, there's no goldenwheat seed inside of you."

"Swear to God."

"There's word," said the shadow, "of a learned doctor."

"Would this boy be useful to him?"

"Who can say? Take the low way, low to Segrivaun, and ask for the glass of public death."

"Shit," muttered Braisy.

"Or nothing."

"And I say shit. But yes. Yes, the low way, damn you."

"And damn you," came the whisper.

Braisy dragged him now to a far corner of the room, where a deeper black waited in the black of the wall. Braisy stopped there and shoved him in. For a sickening moment he thought he was falling into a pit. Then his foot hit a step. Bad angle. He lurched, he stumbled down three more steps, and when he caught himself his foot was on fire with pain and he was frightened.

"Careful, boy," said Braisy.

"I can't see."

A door closed softly above them. Only then did Braisy try to strike a light. Click; spark. Click; spark. Click; light. A little flame in a wad of dry wool. With his bare hands Braisy gently and slowly moved the burning wool to a small lamp. It took. The stairway went down steeply, and didn't bend.

The treads were only inches, the risers a foot at least, and it led far deeper into the darkness than ever the house could be. The low way.

And if I do escape, what then? Must remember my way back. Up the stairs, out this door however it opens, past the whispering shadow, left in the hall, down the stairs, and out. He made it a thread in his mind, a thread of words that became numbers and numbers that became words. Little mnemonics formed. Stone Road Bone Road. The stairs ended in a dirt tunnel that could not go straight for fifteen feet, with turns here and holes overhead and holes down and streams of filthy water crossing the path.

The dirt walls turned to brick, with gaps every few inches, narrow spaces a quarter of a brick wide. Out of some of them came a thin trickle of fluid. Was it raining above ground? Why did they build this place? Fly dog, sky dog, ice water, under water. The thread of the remembered path grew longer, and Orem wondered if he could hold it all in his mind. And all along the walls, the little slits.

The corridor tipped left and down, and the floor was slick hard mud with a thin skiff of water running over it. Orem's foot skidded. He braced himself against the wall. His longest finger slipped into a gap in the bricks. The water flowed down his arm.

"Name of God," Braisy said. "Get your hand out."

Orem retrieved his finger from the slit.

"Look at your arm."

It was wet. Braisy held the lamp over it, studied where the water had flowed. "Should be black.

Should be black, boy. It's where they put the ashes of the dead. They fill up the slits with the ashes of the dead, and if you get the water on you, then you—but you don't turn black, do you? What are you, boy?"

They came to a stairway down. The water cascaded over the steps. They descended, a step at a time. Water began dripping from the arched bricks overhead. Now and then the lamp hissed when a drop struck it. Braisy seemed to wince with each drip that hit him.

"Quiet here," Braisy said softly. "The guards have tunnels through here, to listen for people like us, trying for the Hole. And if you think to call for help, remember this—everyone who's taken in the paths of the Hole always says they were forced, always claims they were lost in the Tombs. The guard cuts them up anyway, in little pieces, boy. Cuts them up in little pieces. Think of it before you shout for help."

The stairs stopped, and now it was rock overhead, not masonry. Here and there were posts to shore up the roof of the tunnel. The water ran sluggishly; where would it drain to, after all, at the bottom of the world?

"What are you going to do with me?" Orem whispered.

"Shut up," Braisy answered.

More twists and turns, and Orem felt the floor of the tunnel begin to incline. They were climbing now, and the water grew shallower and began to run against their path, downward, and finally they were on an upward climbing corkscrew through the rock. When the path had crossed itself three times, the stone walls and steps made way for wood.

"Slowly," whispered Braisy. "No squeaks, no creaks."

A step at a time, placing their feet at the edges of the stairs, they crept upward. Suddenly he cracked his head against a ceiling. There was a roof over them, smooth planks from side to side of the wooden stair, and the stair ran right up into it and stopped.

"That's right, knock," Braisy whispered. "Why not call out a greeting? We'll not pass you for bright, will we?" Braisy clambered awkwardly up beside him and reached with his finger until he found a hole in one of the planks. He waggled his finger around, then held the lamp up against the hole. The flame flattened, then leapt up. For more than a minute he held the lamp there, and then the board flew upward, and the one beside it, and the one beside that, until there was a way to climb out. The boards were subtly hinged and silent.

"Trying to burn us out?" asked an immense fat woman. Her voice was soft but still had an edge to it. "Want to start a flame? Should we roast a rat over the hole? Braisy, you're a rutting hog, that's what you are, come up, come in."