It was strewn with detached boulders, and great, jagged rocks projected everywhere like iron teeth. Tydomin pointed to a small black hole near the base, which might be a cave. "That is where Ilive."
"You live here alone?"
"Yes.
"It's an odd choice for a woman - and you are not unbeautiful, either.""A woman's life is over at twenty-five," she replied, sighing. "And I am far older than that. Ten years ago it would have been I who lived yonder, and not Oceaxe. Then all this wouldn't have happened."A quarter of an hour later they stood within the mouth of the cave.
It was ten feet high, and its interior was impenetrably black.
"Put down the body in the entrance, out of the sun," directed Tydomin. He did so.
She cast a keenly scrutinising glance at him. "Does your resolution still hold, Maskull?""Why shouldn't it hold? My brains are not feathers.'
"Follow me, then."
They both stepped into the cave. At that very moment a sickening crash, like heavy thunder just over their heads, set Maskull's weakened heart thumping violently. An avalanche of boulders, stones, and dust, swept past the cave entrance from above. If their going in had been delayed by a single minute, they would have been killed.