"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field, his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full voice.