No sooner did the Speaker command than Stoneye stepped forward and took the Silent Lady roughly by the arm. There was no reverence or even gentleness in his action, and Mouse cried out in protest.
A protest unheard or unheeded by all those gathered. Stoneye led the way, marching the prophetess like a prisoner before him as the high priestess silently followed, the rest falling into step behind her. Mouse was caught up in the flowing tide of her sisters in red and black and the marching eunuchs around them.
Out of the open hall and around to a stair cut into the red foundation rock they filed down, following Stoneye and the strange woman to the ground below. For the first time, Mouse walked the low path where she had years ago seen the first throng of slaves driven, and many more since then. But she had never yet seen the door through which they were sent, the door into the Diggings.
It was little more than a crack in the red stone, jagged like a wolf’s jaws. Darkness spilled from it and coldness as well. Mouse felt it even before they drew near, and she trembled with dread.
“Here,” said a priestess beside her. Mouse turned and, to her surprise, recognized Sparrow, clad in red, adorned in a fine wig. “Take this.”
Mouse felt something pressed into her hands, and looked down at a black cloth. Sparrow, still walking toward the crack in the stone, was tying a similar cloth about her face, shielding her eyes. “You must not see the darkness of the Diggings,” she said, her voice calm. “If you do, you will be lost.”
Sparrow finished securing her blindfold, then put out a hand. A eunuch, his eyes unshielded, stepped to her side and offered his arm, leading her to the gaping doorway through which the other priestesses and acolytes were flowing. Hating to follow but hating still more to be left behind, Mouse also blindfolded her eyes and felt a eunuch slip to her own side and tuck her hand under his arm. So she was guided into the swallowing darkness of the Diggings.
It was like the Midnight she had witnessed earlier, only deeper. With the blindfold on her face, she might have been drowning in the depths of a black ocean. Her only guide was the arm of the eunuch, to which she clung as a babe clings to its mother. The tramp of many feet ahead comforted her, but the silence, deeper than all other silences, flooded the world behind her, as if a thousand people cried out for help only to find their voices rendered mute.
So these were the Diggings into which those who rebelled against the Flame were sent to find the chamber of Fireword.
“Why does she want it?” Mouse whispered. The silence offered her no answer.
Onward they plunged, deeper and deeper. Sometimes Mouse thought she heard from a distance the ringing of hammers and picks, slaves hard at work. Their search for the chamber must have extended far into this subterranean world. How cold it was! Mouse was thankful for the woolen robes that had always seemed such a bother before. She should never doubt the will of the goddess.
It was difficult to say how far they progressed into those depths. Time meant little in that blind world. But sooner than Mouse expected, the procession halted and she heard the voice of the prophetess speaking clearly up ahead.
“Here. This is the place.”
“Impossible” came the high priestess’s reply. “We searched this entire quarter ages ago. There is nothing here. We must proceed.”
“No,” said the Silent Lady. “This is the place. Etanun’s mark is on the wall.”
Mouse released hold of the eunuch and, with trembling fingers, reached up and pulled the blindfold down. To her surprise, there was light all around her, the light of torches carried by the eunuchs, and the white light glowing from the starflower tucked in the prophetess’s hair. The procession had halted at a crossroad where the main tunnel branched in two, a larger passage continuing to the right, a smaller to the left. It was an old part of the Diggings, carved out before the Speaker was even born.
None of the other acolytes had dared remove their blindfolds, but the high priestess, standing beside Stoneye at the head of the procession, looked upon the Silent Lady, and her eyes were bright even in that darkness.
“We would have seen it,” the Speaker said, “long ere now.”
“You could not,” said the prophetess. “No matter how you searched. Etanun said his sword must sleep undisturbed. He did not wish it found until this time.”
She took a step forward, but Stoneye clutched her arm. Mouse saw the pain shoot across her face. How could Stoneye treat her so? Did he not realize who she was? Or did he really believe she would try to escape in this awful labyrinth?
The high priestess spoke a soft command, and Stoneye unwillingly released his hold. The Silent Lady stood as though uncertain. Then, setting her jaw, she strode toward the ragged stone wall between the split passages. And suddenly everyone saw what had been hidden from mortal eyes for generations of enslaved Diggers, hidden until that moment.