He crept over toward the steps. For a moment he was going to kill the guard, as he had the other. But the slumbering figure never moved, and that gained it its life. It was more important to try to find her first. This could come later, on their way out, if it had to be done.
He went up the steps sideward, knife at the ready, face turned toward the sleeper, who was now below him.
A moment later, as if he were one of its own, the darkness swallowed him in.
The steps continued on the inside. He guided himself along with hand to one of the two facing walls, careful of each toehold, careful of each footrest.
Then presently a faltering dim light was seeping down to meet him. It strengthened almost imperceptibly. The black walls and steps shaded off into murky amber, then tan, then finally into a dark gold tint. It gave him a shadow that fell behind him; It gave him his eyes back, at least. There must be a lamp or something, up above.
He reached the head of the steps, and just beyond them was one more opening. It was through this that the low-toned effulgence was peering.
It was a shadowy chamber. At its far end he could see still more steps, rising palely into the night moon, for they were unroofed once more. They probably led to the very topmost part of the temple.
He didn’t need to go any farther than this, though. They were here, they were both here.
A single lazy tongue of flame flickered from a vessel holding oil, a sort of lamp or censer supported by a tripod. He stood there rooted, taking in this incredible place of superstition and of shadows. Over against the opposite wall, on a low pallet covered with ocelot skins, lay a motionless figure asleep, one arm trailing along the floor. Jugs of varying sizes were ranged against the wall, but whether they contained water or cosmetics, or simply were empty, he could not tell. A spray of hummingbird feathers attached to a wand, with which it must have been part of Chris’s duties to fan her, lay discarded beside the pallet.
And then, on the other side of the place, in a huddle against that wall over there, lay the contorted form of Chris, also asleep, but with her arms stiffly bound together behind her, as his own had been only a little while ago. The ragged tunic or shirt she wore had been pulled down low over her back, and even at that distance he thought he could see angry marks there, as though she had been recently beaten.
He moved cautiously across the barren stone-surfaced flooring until he had reached her, and his shadow fell across her where she lay. He glanced over at the other one for a moment, as a precaution. She hadn’t stirred.
He turned back to Chris again. He crouched down to bring his face more to a level with hers. It was important to wake her first, before he tried to free her. Otherwise she might wake herself and cry out. He put out his hand, and placed it lightly across her mouth, more in readiness than in actual pressure. Then he touched her lightly on the curve of her unclad shoulder. Then he breathed her name, lips to ear.
Her eyelids flew up and he was looking into the same candid aquamarine-brilliant eyes that he could remember from the finca. Nothing about them had changed. They could know everything bad and everything sad there was to know in the world, and they’d still be innocent. The eyes of youth, which have no shadows, hold no secrets.
He pressed down hard with his hand against her mouth for a moment. He could feel her lips close against it in a kiss. It wasn’t necessary to hold it there after that.
“Larry,” she breathed gratefully. A drop of excess brightness formed in the corner of each eye.
“Bend out of the way a little. Let me get at these thongs.”
“I was at the foot of the steps, with my empty pitcher. He woke up and dragged me back to her. She is going to have us both killed today.”
“No, we won’t die today,” he said in grim undertones. “Don’t talk any more now.”
Her hands, free, flew toward his shoulders. Then they fell back again as suddenly. “Larry!” She shivered warningly, and crouched down low against the wall.
He turned. Her head was reared, on the ocelot couch. If death could have flown out of her baleful eyes, it would have struck the two of them down right where they were, there was such hatred in them. The sounds that came from her lips were the gibberish that was their language, hissed viciously at him, snarled malevolently. She was like one of the creatures on whose pelts she lay. She was afraid of him, and angered at the nearness of him. Outraged as at some unspeakable defilement.
“So you’re awake,” he said softly, with grim vindictiveness. He left Chris and went slowly over toward her.
She drew a little away from him, dragging herself along the skins, pulling them after her as a sort of wary defense.
He watched her expression closely. Her face showed no compunction, no leniency, no vestige of any emotion but blended fear and animosity. Yet she knew him; if she had shown no recognition, he could have forgiven the rest. But he could tell by the cast of her eyes that she recognized him.
A dull glow of resentment, such as one feels after an unspeakable betrayal, filled him in spite of himself.
Suddenly she had jumped to her feet with animal-like agility and run for the stairs. Not the ones from below, up which he had just come himself, but the inner flight leading to the temple roof above.
Chris cried out suddenly from the background, “Look out, Larry! The war drum! It’s up there. She may—”
He sprinted after her, overtook her, gave her a circular fling around at the end of her extended arm that sent her crashing back onto the floor of the chamber behind them. She bared her white teeth at him, in a grimace of hatred more lethal than anything he had ever seen on a face yet.
“Larry,” he heard Chris whimper, “there’s no hope for us now. It means death to have put your hands on her.”
He didn’t turn his head to acknowledge the sacrilege. He kept his eyes fixed steady on Mitty, in a hatred that almost matched her own now.
She tried to rise. He put his hand to her shoulder and flung her roughly back again to where she’d been.
“Larry,” Chris kept pleading in a stifled voice, “Larry.”
Mitty spoke at last. Haltingly, in English, as though she had already lost the feel of the language. “Because of you, I lose my soul. Because of you, I go down into the underworld.”
“And that’s where you belong.”
“I serve a god. You have desecrated a Virgin of the sun. And in the sight of that fiery eye above, nothing goes unseen.”
His open hand cracked across her face like a cap pistol. “I was the one desecrated by ever touching you, not you. I could forgive what you’ve done to me. But for what you’ve done to this kid here — and what you did to her father—” He backed his forearm at her, in a threatened second blow, and then didn’t deliver it.
She strained backward, away from him. She averted her head, as though the sight of him were insupportable.
His arm dropped back to his side with a swing of disgusted futility.
“Larry,” Chris whispered fearfully. “Larry, the moon’s setting. In a little while it’ll be too late.” She tugged at his arm.
He still faced Mitty. “Why did I have to lose my way that night in the car? And having lost my way, why did I have to go and knock on the door of that house at the crossroads, to ask for directions? With you hidden in the window above, waiting your chance, and then dropping a little note down to me as I was turning away. That wasn’t enough. I had to come back again the next night, and the next, and for a whole week of nights, and throw pebbles up at your window and stand whispering underneath it by the hour. Then I had to get the bright idea it was up to me to rescue you from your ‘wicked guardian.’ Rescue is good. I was the one needed rescuing, not you. Sir Galahad, that was me. Just like in the storybooks. Falls for someone whose face he sees at a window in the moonlight. Because you whispered like a dove, and you leaned way over, and the neckline of your dress had a habit of— And I was young, and it was springtime, and apple blossoms were in the air.”