The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) Read Free Page A

eyes fixed to the floor as they set off through the precarious twisting passageway.
    Now that they were the only ones left to pick their way around the fallen beams and side props he could hear the sounds coming from deep within the roof above him even more clearly. The hissing sound of running sand had stopped as if all the spare spaces had now been filled and the grinding of shifting stone was no more than a distant murmur. What really worried him was the groaning which was now so loud that it could be heard above the noise they made as they squirmed their way forward. His heartbeat increased and sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes. He wished they would go faster and as if they had read his thoughts the two men in front of him increased their speed and pulled away.
    They reached the difficult turning where the first roof fall had happened when Bradge hesitated for a moment and then levered himself forward using the unstable beam to pull on. Tozaman froze, unable to believe what the man had just done and waited for the inevitable. It came with a shriek of tortured wood and a deafening crash as beams splintered and the roof caved in. He just had time to curl into a tight ball and put his hands over his head when the mine fell on him.
    It wasn’t the noise of splintering beams and moving rock which terrified him or even the pounding of rocks and stones as they collapsed on top of his back. It was the silence afterwards and the total darkness. He breathed in and then coughed violently as the dust-laden air filled his lungs. Despite his coughing nothing around him moved. Somehow his head had escaped the pounding rock fall and a small pocket of air had been created saving him from suffocation. He could breathe but not see or hear anything and he couldn’t move.
    Panic started to rise within him and he tried to force his limbs into movement but that only made things worse as sand trickled down to touch the corner of his mouth, sticking to his lips and coating his tongue. He breathed in too hard and coughed violently, filling his small air space with more sand. Closing his eyes he did his best to control his panic but it was difficult as memories of once being buried in a sandstorm flooded his mind. His stallion had saved his life on that occasion, but he wasn’t here now.
    With an effort he pushed those thoughts from his mind and tried to remember what his father had taught him about escaping from a sand pit. It was small movements which were important; testing for weight, testing for damage and using anything you could as an anchor. He started with his fingers, testing the muscles and making small movements. With the exception of two fingers on his left hand they all moved and his right hand, which was stretched out in front of him, felt relatively free.
    He continued down his body tensing and relaxing each muscle until he knew exactly how he was lying and how the heaviest weight lay across his legs. Carefully and slowly he moved his right arm away from him increasing his air space and pushed at the debris with his left hand until the top of his body was free. The Goddess, if she existed, had surely smiled upon him. When the roof fell in the beams had fallen into another set of triangles, smaller this time, but still big enough for him to crawl through.
    Two of his fingers had been crushed by a heavy beam and he was badly bruised down one side but he was alive and that was all that mattered. He started crawling forward through a space no bigger than a pack tent, pulling himself over broken beams and chunks of rock. Desperately he hoped he was going in the right direction and that somewhere his armsbrothers were digging their way towards him. He pulled himself over one soft mound and then another and stopped as his hand touched warm flesh.
    It was as black as a starless night but he could feel the shape of a head, a nose and a mouth beneath his hand. Whoever it was he was still breathing so Tozaman cleared away the