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She turned the first corner of the tunnel, and stopped abruptly.

They were waiting, three of them, older and more wizened than before, grasping their staffs of office in their hands as though the sticks served to give them physical and mental support. From behind their shoulders, Pseth’s parents watched fearfully, powerless to intervene.

“You are accused of being a potential Renegade against the Tribe,” the first Elder said, peering at her through eyes so sunken that they seemed to be no more than holes in his face. “You have been preparing to visit the Forbidden Circle where the Gods are stilled.”

“I have not done anything wrong,” Pseth replied, politely enough, though her heart was hammering. “It is not a crime.”

“It is against the law of the Tribe. The place is full of evil magic, which a careless footfall can awake anew.”

“I don’t believe in any such magic,” Pseth told them. “This thing you say cannot be acceptable to me. If there was ever magic there, it has long since fled.”

“The accusation has been investigated,” the Elder said, “and has been discussed in the High Council. It seems to us that such a one as you cannot be trusted to cease and desist from activities that may hurt the Tribe. Accordingly, you will go with us, and suffer the fate of all Renegades. It is richly deserved.”

Without giving her a chance to answer, they threw a black hood over her head and dragged her off with them. For such aged men, they had intensely powerful grips.

They pulled her down winding corridors to a part of the warren the Tribe had long since abandoned, and Pseth, her head and face covered by the hood, could see nothing at all. Down here the air was musty and old, and clouds of thin dust floated up from their feet. “May the goblins find you delectable,” they said as pushed Pseth through a narrow aperture, rolled a heavy stone across the mouth, and left.

Left to herself, Pseth pulled the hood off her head. She had been left, with only a torch for illumination and a small bag of dried food, in a tunnel that wound away into the darkness. Without hesitation – for she wished to explore what she could, and while she still could – she began making her way up the tunnel.

It was a long and wearying walk. The tunnel twisted, turned and divided over and over, and if Pseth had thoughts of returning the way she had come, she would soon have found herself lost. Several times the roof and floor almost met each other, and she had to crawl through on her belly, pushing the bag and torch ahead of her.

She lost all conception of time. She ate when she was hungry, slept when she was tired. When the food was all gone, she chewed the bag until it was tender, and swallowed it piece by piece. When the torch burned out, she kept on crawling on through the darkness, feeling her way with her hands and feet. She found pools of water sometimes, little puddles of rank and gritty water in the floor, and scooped it up and drank it. It was what she was used to doing in the corridors of the Tribe, in any case.

She began to imagine things. Little things, the scrape of a stone on another stone, or the drip of water on rock, began to take on deeper meanings. She began to think of voices in the darkness, saying things about her, describing what she had done and where she was going. Sometimes they called her by name.

She began to see things, too. The darkness became shot through with the distant ruddy light of the swollen sun, and she began to imagine that she stood out on the plain, looking up at the sky dusted with dying stars. In the far distance the stone figures of the gods themselves stood, and they were alive, and each time she looked at them they came closer and closer.

She finally collapsed from hunger, thirst and exhaustion on a flat shelf of rock, where the tunnel was so narrow that the roof almost touched her chest. For a long time, she lay, staring up at the darkness, and when she slept, she dreamt she was on the plain, looking up at the gods.

And the gods were looking down at her, and they were smiling.

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