"Not cast you to that slavering mob, certes." She spoke in an undertone to one of the lesser priestesses, who glided out and presently returned. After a whispered colloquy, Sahmet said:
"Fires have sprung up in several parts of Iraz as well as Zaktan, and the soldiers are too busy fighting them to control the mobs of factionists. The crowd of Kilts surrounding this temple has been reinforced, so you cannot leave by the streets."
"Neither have we magical power to fly over their heads," said Jorian.
"Let me think," said Sahmet. "I am loath to harbor you overnight, since for entire males to pass the night here, other than on the occasion of the Divine Marriage, would offend the goddess. Happily, there is another course. Ere I reveal it to you, howsomever, I must have your promise to do me a small favor in return."
Jorian's eyes narrowed. "Madam, I have been in and out of not a few tight places in my short life, and buying pigs in pokes is one thing I have learnt to avoid. If I can, I shall be glad to help you—but I must needs know about this favor."
"It amounts to little. I do but ask that you play a small part in one of our forthcoming observances."
"If you mean to make a eunuch of me, madam—"
"Bountiful heavens, nothing like that! I solemnly promise that it shall cost you not the least scrap of your splendid physique. More I cannot say now."
"Nor senses, faculties, and abilities?"
"Nor those, either. Well, sir?"
Jorian argued a little more, but no further details could he elicit from Sahmet. He exchanged glances with Karadur, but the old wizard was not helpful. Jorian did not like to promise anything under such vague conditions, but he saw no alternative.
"Very well, Madam Sahmet," he said, "I agree."
"Good! You shall not rue your choice. Now come with me."
An assistant priestess hurried up with a small lanthorn, which she handed to Sahmet. The high priestess led them out. They passed through halls and rooms and down steps until Jorian was lost. In an underground passage, dimly lit by a single sconce, Sahmet halted at a massive, bolted, wooden door.
"Master Jorian," she said, "I would not do this for any wight, even to save life. But, since this peril involves the barbarian savior, I have no choice." She slipped a massive ring off one finger. "Take this. When you come to the door at the far end of the tunnel, knock four times, thus." She tapped twice with a knuckle, paused, and tapped twice more. "When the peephole opens, show this ring—which, may I add, I wish returned when this peril has passed."
She drew back the bolt and opened the door. Then she held out a hand. "Fare you well, gentlemen." She gripped Jorian's hand longer and more forcibly than he expected. "I may see you again, Master Jorian—and sooner than you think."
She handed Jorian the lanthorn, whose single candle stub sent feeble rays through its windows of glass. The heavy door boomed shut behind Jorian and Karadur.
The passageway sloped down and down and down. The stones lining the tunnel became wet and slimy. Jorian said:
"This must be that tunnel under the Lyap I've heard of. I am sure we're below the water table."
"The what, my son?"
"The water table. Know you not how, a certain distance below the surface, water fills up all the pores betwixt the grains of soil? Hence, if one digs below that level, one gets a well."
"Nay, I did not know, having devoted my life to the spiritual as opposed to the material sciences. How learnt you such things?"
"I picked them up when I was surveying for the Syndicate of Ir."
"You are assuredly a versatile fellow."
Jorian grinned in the gloom. "I suppose I am." He recited:
Jorian hastened to add: "I'm really not so self-conceited as all that. Tis just that the rhyme amused me."
Karadur chuckled. "My boy, you are all that you say; albeit I doubt that you are really so determined upon a quiet life as you proclaim. Otherwise you would not—"
"Oh, yes? And who dragged me from my quiet, peaceful surveying job to this hotbed of intrigue and insurrection?"
"Ah, but in your last letter you said you would do aught to recover your Estrildis."
"Oh, well, so I did. But now I'm sure we are below the Lyap. What keeps the water out? I see no pumps."
"The water is kept from Hoshcha's Tunnel by a trio of wizards, spell-casting night and day. They are Goelnush, Luekuz, and Firaven, in my Department of Applied Thaumaturgy. Just now the House of Learning is embroiled in a furious feud, which I am supposed to resolve and compose. So high has partisan feeling run that the deans of my two schools will not speak to each other."
"What's this?"
"Goelnush, Luekuz, and Firaven form part of the School of Spirit. Now, engineers in the School of Matter claim that with pumps of the latest design, they can keep the tunnel as dry as my three wonderworkers, at less cost and with less chance of failure. The dean of the School of Spirit retorts that pumps are quite as likely to break down as a group of well-trained thaumaturges; that besides labor to furnish power for the pumps, we should require plumbers to keep the pumps and pipes in order; and that the pumping apparatus with its pipes would occupy so much of the tunnel that it would impede the king's monthly journeys through it."
"Is this the Divine Marriage whereof Zerlik told me?"
"Aye. You know of that, then?"
"I know what Zerlik told me. Is this ritual marriage consummated?"
"Well—ah—yes, it is. In sooth, when the king can no longer play his manful part, he is disposed of."
"Good gods, this is as bad as Xylar! How is it done?"
"When the king can no longer—ah—carnally penetrate the high priestess, she reports the fact to her nominal husband, the high priest of Ughroluk. Then the high priest, with a delegation of lesser priests, waits upon the king and presents him with the sacred rope, wherewith to hang himself."
"And the silly ass does it?"
"Aye; although this suicide has taken place but once in the last century. All the other kings have perished in war, or by assassination, or from some common ill, ere the rope came into play."
Holding his lanthorn up, Jorian walked a few steps along the dark tunnel in silence. Then he said:
"By Thio's horns, you don't suppose that promise Sahmet exacted from me was to take the king's place in this ceremony?"
"I know not, my son, but I fear she had some such scheme in mind."
"There you are! I listen to your moral preachments on the virtues of continence and try to practise them; but the very gods conspire against my new-found virtue."