Author's Preface
Sepet, with lips pursed, slips like a rusty-hued wraith back into the curtain folds.
In a veritable blink, returning with the iron-dry click of numerous weighty keys carried on a ponderous ring.
Jewel box diminutive, to granary-key hand-span, a locksmith's cornucopia.
Sepet fumes and fuddles awhile until with a triumphant thinning of the lips, he unlatches a grey little tine-fork looking thing, which he passes into Pyna's unblemished and open palm.
Sepet sweet
Blessed be.
Now, there's the cellar beneath.
Our feet.
Sepet bows and withdraws, once more a mere ripple into the drapery.
There is the scrape of something metal-wrought, and the muffled grumbling of the seneschal.
Umin follows at foot wordlessly. Pyna once more moving out into the mazy corridors of the Inn.
They arrive after a few more turns upon the lip of a plain, round iron-ribbed doorway, embedded at a sloping angle.
Pyna presses the tine-fork little key into a smooth keyhole and mutely unhinges the way.
Peering down into a darkness reminiscent of a place for the keeping of root vegetables and mushrooms, a reek of moulder and something altogether even less amicable, stops up Umin's nose with a grimace.