Chapter 4: A Prisoner Seeking An Escape
By this point I had stopped running and had been working my way through the dungeons for about a minute or two. I stopped to rest, knowing my pursuers were far, far behind and with no chance of catching up. Doing this was a mistake.
When not occupied with keeping alive or with the gradually fading but still present stitch in my side my current situation began to dawn on me. I was in the dungeons of Azad, a palace which I had been in and seen with my own two eyes to be huge beyond what people thought possible in the real world, with guards all along the way trying to kill me and countless booby traps between me and my goal. And my goal? To climb up to the princess' bedroom, where I had heard my love was being held, in less then an hour and to somehow get her out of danger. Then the full implications of this hit me. An hour. I had only one hour to get from my current position (underground in a dungeon) up through floor after floor that would be full of enemies, traps and who knows what else, all the way to the bedroom which was high, high above the city streets. Should I fail, both I and Sheherazad were going to die.
Two thoughts went through my mind at this point, one after the other. The first was that I should give up right there and then as my task was impossible. The second was that giving up was not one of my options: it would result in Sheherazad's death and quite possibly mine as well. The only option, the only option, was to continue on and hope against all probability that I be able to succeed. It is true that at this point I felt despair, but soon my mind was far to occupied on keeping myself alive to feel such again.
I opened a gate and dropped down the ledge to the level below me but could see no real reason why as it was a dead end. The gate slammed shut behind me, which was fine as there was no reason I could think of to retrace my steps, yet for the moment it seemed to leave me trapped. In despair I ran to the opposite wall, and as I passed over the intervening floor it suddenly shook and cracked beneath my feet. I had just enough time to get to the other side of the tile before it crumbled into pieces and fell away. I made a note of this. Edging warily forwards I looked down to the smashed pieces of stone on the hard ground below me and contemplated the drop. Slowly and carefully I lowered myself off the ledge, hung off it for a moment, then closed my eyes and let go.
The landing on the cold stone stung my feet but caused no permanent damage. Looking up I saw a long hall way in front of me that looked like the way out of the dungeons. Behind me there was a wall but with a ledge on it narrow enough to scale. I was just about to head happily for the way up when I heard the sound of a door opening and footsteps coming down stairs. A guard had heard the rather loud bang of the tile against the ground. Quickly I turned and headed away from the corridor, uncertain of where to go but knowing I couldn't stay, and headed towards the ledge. I scaled the wall and pulled myself onto a new floor just as I heard the sounds of the guard looking around behind me. I knew I had to put some distance between him and me so that I wouldn't be discovered and looked ahead. The walls of the floor I was now on seemed to be slightly older and less sturdy then the ones on the previous floor, which was definitely saying something since the dungeons, and indeed the entire palace was very poorly looked after by Jaffar and was falling to pieces. There was also a pit halfway across that looked quite deep but only about three feet wide. I jumped over the top of it easily and landed in front of a gate, on a button. I wished vigorously that the gate wasn't so horribly loud as it opened and stepped through.
Not far ahead of me the path abruptly dropped away without stairs onto a lower level. I jumped down and looked about me. In front of me there was another pit, this one wider and deeper, with a closed gate on the other end. Behind me there was a button. The tile just one step away from me was supported by nothing and as I landed particles of dust and even pieces of stone fell from it. I took a deep breath and stepped on the button behind me, turning to see the gate rise up in front of me. I took as much a run-up as I dared, stopping just short of the rickety tile, and leaped the gap. However I hadn't had enough speed by my jump and fell just short. Even now I'm not sure how my flailing arms managed to grab the ledge as I fell past it but they did, and with a little effort I pulled myself up and saw the gate was now starting to close again. It was hard to suppress a yell but I managed and rolled underneath it.
I began to walk forwards and noticed the floor below me was vibrating. Quickly I sprinted over three tiles as they crumbled and fell to bits beneath me, smashing on the floor below. As the last one fell I briefly wondered who on earth had designed these labyrinthine and inhumane dungeons and what they had been smoking when they had done so but then hurried on. Where I was going to I did not know, and I did not like the fact that I was going further down rather then up, but the corridors here only went in one direction so I followed them. I opened and headed through one more gate to see a short drop below me. This part of the prison was clearly ancient and ruinous, and had not been used for some time. Carefully lowering myself to the bottom level, I noticed a skeleton lying in the corner that was so old by now that it was almost dust. In one of the unfortunate's hands it held an old, rusty blade of outdated design. I sighed, decided it was better then nothing, and put it in my pants (as I had no belt at the time). Despite the discomfort this caused, and the frailty of the weapon, I felt emboldened to finally be armed and thus capable of doing more then simply running from the palace guards.
Climbing back unto the path, I immediately set about retracing my steps. Moving backwards over the way I had come was even more difficult then the first journey over had been but I shall not go into the details of it here as I am sure they are of no interest to the reader. After what could not have been more then a minute I arrived at the same tunnel I had dropped to originally, leading towards the only stairs which could take me up to the next level. To my irritation I noticed that the guard still remained where I had heard him before, and as I arrived he drew his sword and shouted a challenge. Faced with no other option I drew my own blade and held it in a defensive stance I had been taught during my studies in Persepolis. I was tired and wielding a low-quality blade but I had survived thus far already and was determined to continue to survive to rescue Sherharazad and myself from our plight. The guard rushed forth and swung his sword experimentally forwards, to test my defences. I jumped backwards with a laugh, letting the blade sweep past me. Immediately I counter-attacked with a quick slash from my own blade towards his unguarded left. I was rewarded with a cry of pain from my opponent as I carved a shallow but long cut in his side. While he was momentarily distracted, I stepped forwards to close the distance and swung with all of my might, burying my sword two-thirds of the way through his neck. The guard made a slight gurgling noise and toppled backwards, dead almost instantly. I stooped down and took his blade and his belt to wear it in, then stepped over the body and continued on my way.
Unfortunately I saw that the door the guard had come through had closed behind him. For a moment I was gripped by horrible panic. After all of my efforts to escape, was I now trapped permanently? After everything I had tried, had my plans come to naught? Desperately I looked around the room for something to open the portal with, but ahead of me was a dead end and behind me the corridor I had come from. Faced with despair I urged myself to calm down and look at the problem objectively. I told myself it would be completely illogical for the guard to follow me down here if it meant that he would also be sealed in with me and therefore there had to be a way of opening the door from this side. I again scanned the room, this time being sure to look more carefully. The gates and doors such as this one in Azad were all opened by means of a pressure plate, so there had to be one around somewhere. It was then that I noticed the ledge that hung above corridor I had come from. Filled with anxious hope, I scrambled up and grabbed hold of the edge. I felt my weight pull it down with no small satisfaction and heard the gate open behind me. I quickly dropped off from the ledge and ran through the door, climbing the stairs to the next level, one step closer to freedom.