Tiaan caught her breath. Not Gilhaelith, surely? She drew the construct alongside, opened the hatch and looked down.

The body was small, female, and tar-impregnated. 'It has a.., withered look; Tiaan said. 'As if long dead.'

'Many people, and many animals, must have become stuck in the tar over the aeons, and been carried down into the depths. I saw a number of them over my time here, all perfectly preserved. You need shed no tear for her, Tiaan. She's been dead hundreds of years, at the very least.'

'I'll go on, just in case…' She edged the construct down the tunnel. I thought you said they tunnelled in a long way.'

About a hundred spans, I heard.'

'We're only in twenty and I can see the end,' said Tiaan.

She lifted herself up on the side, the better to see. The end of the tunnel was but spans away, a smooth, shining black bulge dotted with fragments of wood and cloth. 'It's moving!' Warm tar was creeping towards them like molasses squeezed through a hole. The tunnel had collapsed, 'If Gilhaelith was in there, he's dead.'

Five

Merryl gripped her shoulder. 'Was he special to you, Tiaan?' 'I wouldn't say that we were friends, for he had none. Gilhaelith was quite the strangest man I've ever met, and totally absorbed in himself. Yet he was good to me and I can't forget it. We'd better go, if we're to get out.'

Reversing the little construct, Tiaan turned it about and went back the way they had come. At the first intersection, Merryl said, 'Go left.'

She headed that way but was soon confronted by a baleful glow and another creeping fume.

'There's fire ahead, Tiaan. Try the other way.'

To the right they encountered a cave-in that completely blocked the tunnel. There was no hope of clearing it, for the fumes were knee high and rising. They turned back to the junction and took the middle path, their last hope.