'Straight ahead or to the left?' she said, after they'd been travelling a while.

'The way out into the main pit is straight ahead, but we may not be able to get through that way…' Merryl was looking at her expectantly. 'Is something the matter?'

She realised that she was frowning. I originally came here looking for Gilhaelith. He's a strange, unlikeable fellow, but he was good to me.' Even though he'd cared more for the amplimet than about her safety, Tiaan had to know that he was safe.

'He's an important man,' said Merryl. 'Surely the lyrinx will have taken him with them.'

'I was important to them, yet they panicked and left me behind. They may have abandoned him as well. Do you know where Gilhaelith was working?'

'In a tunnel excavated into the Great Seep.'

A tunnel in liquid tar? How can that be?'

'They froze it first.'

'How?' said Tiaan curiously.

'One of their Arts.'

'If he was left behind, can he possibly still be alive?' she said to herself.

'Not if he's still in the seep.' He looked through the front. 'But, perhaps, in the tunnels near it… We can go that way. It's not much further.'

Merryl was a man of the same heart as Tiaan. She thanked him, silently. 'He treated me kindly. I have to know.'

'Then go straight on.'

They came to a high point in the tunnel where the heavy black mist had not reached. Merryl cracked the hatch open to let in fresh air, but it stank so badly that he quickly closed it again. The construct went down sharply, plunging into fumes which the globes could not penetrate. Tiaan had to creep along, and even then was continually bumping into the sticky, gritty walls.

They turned a sharp bend, then another that formed the other half of an 'S', and the black fog thinned. Ahead, two tunnels diverged at a shallow angle.