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have a torch he could use. He began to walk, one hand clutching his matches tightly, the other patting the unseen wall to make sure it was still there. When he thought he had come far enough, he struck another match. And saw another empty fist.
    After he had wasted four of his matches, he tried a new method. He pocketed his match box and began to grope very carefully down the wall, feeling for the fists. He found eight of them that way, and a sharp stump of metal that cut his hand and had probably been a ninth. Each of them was empty, corroded. Finally, in despair, he sank to the floor.
    There would be no torches. He had come too deep. Down here, though the yaga-la-hai had held these burrows once, the grouns had ruled for endless ages. They hated torches. It was hopeless. Up in the Undertunnel, yes, and even in the border regions, the so-called groun-runs, yes. But not here.
    Yet, without a torch—his matches were next to useless. They would never lead him out.
    Perhaps he could make a torch, Annelyn thought. He tried to recall how torches were made. The shafts were generally wood. The crooked ones were cut from the bent yellow bloodfruit tree, after the leaves and the red-white berries had been put into the breeding tanks for the food-worms. And then there were the straight ones, longer and white, the shafts made by binding together thick strips from the stem of a giant mushroom and soaking them in—what? something—until they were hard. And then something was wrapped around the end. A cloth, soaked in something-or-other, or a greasy bag of dry fungus, or something. That was what burned. But he didn’t know the details. Besides, without a torch, how could he find a bloodfruit tree or a giant mushroom? And how could he find the right fungus, and dry it, if that was what you were supposed to do? No. He could not make a torch, no more than he could find one.
    Annelyn was frightened. He began to shake. Why was he down here, why, why? He could be up among the yaga-la-hai , in flamesilk and spidergray, bantering with Caralee or munching spiced spiders at a masque. Now, instead of munching, he was likely to be munched. By the grouns, if they found him, or by the Meatbringer. He remembered vividly the way the Meatbringer had quaffed the cup full of Vermyllar’s lifeblood.
    The thought sent Annelyn to his feet. The Meatbringer would be coming for him. He must go somewhere, even if he could not see where . Frantic, with one hand he pulled loose his stiletto while with the other he felt for the reassuring wall, and he began to walk.
    The burrow was endlessly black, and full of terrors. The wall was the only sanity, cool and firm beside him, with its fists and its air ducts where they should be. The rest—there were sounds around him, rustlings and scurryings, and he was never sure if he imagined them or not. Often, in the long walk toward nothing, he thought he heard the Meatbringer laughing, laughing just as he had at the Sun Masque so long ago. He heard it dimly and far-off, above him, below him, behind him. Once he heard it in front of him, and stopped, and held his breath and waited for an hour or perhaps a week without once moving, but there was no one there at all. After a time Annelyn saw lights too; vague shadowy shapes and drifting globes and crouching things that glowed and ran away. Or did he only think he saw them? They were always distant, or just around some bend, or glowing behind him and not there when he turned to see. He spied a dozen torches, off ahead of him, burning bright and crackling with hope, but each was snatched away or snuffed before he could run to it. He found only empty bronze fists, when he found anything at all.
    He was walking very fast now, even running, and his footsteps echoed deafeningly, as if an army of the yaga-la-hai were trotting into battle. Annelyn didn’t remember when he had begun to run; he was simply doing it, to keep ahead of the sounds, to reach the lights in front of him, and