Free Days of High Adventure by Elliott Kay

her head.
    “What brings you to Deyallah, child?” the woman asked. She was herself hardly older than Amanda, but she spoke with self-assured elegance.
    “I seek refuge,” Amanda said. “I was abducted from home and taken here against my will. I escaped, but they hunt for me. I need a place to hide.”
    “Refuge we may grant,” the woman said, “for Deyallah values freedom. Yet hiding is not the way of Deyallah, or her daughters. We practice our faith openly. We abhor shame.”
    “ Shame doesn’t drive me to hide,” Amanda replied. “I hide from danger.”
    The other woman nodded. She turned to ring a small bell sitting beside her. A minute later, two more women emerged. They looked about Amanda’s age. They were almost as lovely as the woman sitting in the shrine, with similarly dark complexions and similarly scant clothing.
    “Refuge is granted,” said the woman on the lion, “until the dawn. The high priestess will speak with you then. Hide nothing from her, nor from yourself. Leave behind both shame and fear upon these steps.”
    Amanda bowed again, not really knowing the etiquette for this, and followed the other women inside.
     
    ***
     
    “Left. Left. Up again. Faster. Remember your feet. Trust your instincts. Faster—no! Too slow,” Fallon snapped. She ducked in under the swing of Eric’s cloth-wrapped stick, sliding hers across his right thigh at the hip and then his left just over the knee in a single slash.
    “That would cripple a man,” Fallon said, rising again. Their only light in the cave came from a small lantern, making it hard for Eric to make out the expression on her face. Her voice didn’t convey disdain, but there was no approval in it, either. He wished he could make out her eyes.
    They slipped into the abandoned shaft a few hours before dawn every night to practice, ever since that first rainy night. They practiced with simple sticks and bare hands, sparring until the oil ran out in the lantern, as was happening just now. The flicker of the lantern’s light warned them that it was time to return to the surface, and then to another day’s toil in a different cavern.
    Fallon cast her sparring stick aside. “Let’s go,” she grunted before walking out.
    Eric dropped his stick and followed. They had only a short distance to cover, then out into the camp, creeping past guards and overseers as they went. Before he met Fallon, Eric had never thought himself particularly sneaky. It turned out that he only needed a little coaching from her. After that, stealth seemed to come naturally.
    Already up before the dawn, Eric and Fallon were the first to grab at the bread and cold meat cast out to the slaves as they awoke all over the camp. They lingered briefly on the surface, watching the guards for any changes in their routines before inevitably returning to the underground dig.
    “More guards now,” Fallon noted as they headed down the main tunnel. “And the priests of Set have looked troubled for the past few days. Something must have happened outside the camp to put them on edge. They speak of some disaster.”
    “Must be outside the camp,” Eric nodded in agreement. His shoes had finally fallen apart under the wear and tear of the tunnels, forcing him to resort to crude sandals. He hoped his cut-offs would continue to hold up. The loincloth look didn’t do much for him. “They were pretty pleased up until a couple days ago.”
    “ The dig has almost breached the old temple,” Fallon shrugged. “Could get inside any day now.”
    “Fallon,” Eric ventured, having worked up the courage for his question over the last couple of nights. “Why are you still here?”
    “Hm?”
    “You could slip out of here whenever you want. You said so before, and by now I completely believe it. Why are you still here?”
    Fallon look ed at him like it was a silly question. “Because bringing you with me would slow me down,” she said. “I could get away on my own, yes, but we could not