All at once the roof lifted: Arha could stand straight, and stretching out her hands she felt no walls. The air, which had been close and earthy, touched her face with a cooler dampness, and faint movements in it gave the sense of a great expanse. Arha took a few cautious steps forward into the utter blackness. A pebble, slipping under her sandaled foot, struck another pebble, and the tiny sound wakened echoes, many echoes, minute, remote, yet more remote. The cavern must be immense, high and broad, yet not empty: something in its darkness, surfaces of invisible objects or partitions, broke the echo into a thousand fragments.
Here we must be beneath the Stones, the girl said whispering, and her whisper ran out into the hollow blackness and frayed into threads of sound as fine as spiderweb, that clung to the hearing for a long time.
Yes. This is the Undertomb. Go on. I cannot stay here. Follow the wall to the left. Pass three openings.
Kossil's whisper hissed (and the tiny echoes hissed after it). She was afraid, she was indeed afraid. She did not like to be here among the Nameless Ones, in their tombs, in their caves, in the dark. It was not her place, she did not belong here.
I shall come here with a torch, Arha said, guiding herself along the wall of the cavern by the touch of her fingers, wondering at the strange shapes of the rock, hollows and swellings and fine curves and edges, rough as lace here, smooth as brass there: surely this was carven work. Perhaps the whole cavern was the work of sculptors of the ancient days?
Light is forbidden here. Kossil's whisper was sharp. Even as she said it, Arha knew it must be so. This was the very home of darkness, the inmost center of the night.
Three times her fingers swept across a gap in the complex, rocky blackness. The fourth time she felt for the height and width of the opening, and entered it. Kossil came behind.
In this tunnel, which went upward again at a slight slant, they passed an opening on the left, and then at a branching way took the right: all by feel, by groping, in the blindness of the underearth and the silence inside the ground. In such a passageway as this, one must reach out almost constantly to touch both sides of the tunnel, lest one of the openings that must be counted be missed, or the forking of the way go unnoticed. Touch was one's whole guidance; one could not see the way, but held it in one's hands.
Is this the Labyrinth?
No. This is the lesser maze, which is beneath the Throne.
Where is the entrance to the Labyrinth?
Arha liked this game in the dark, she wanted a greater puzzle to be set her.
The second opening we passed in the Undertomb. Feel for a door to the right now, a wooden door, perhaps we've passed it already-
Arha heard Kossil's hands fumbling uneasily along the wall, scraping on the rough rock. She kept her fingertips light against the rock, and in a moment felt the smooth grain of wood beneath them. She pushed on it, and the door creaked open easily. She stood for a moment blind with light.
They entered a large low room, walled with hewn stone and lighted by one fuming torch hung from a chain. The place was foul with the torch-smoke that had no outlet. Arha's eyes stung and watered.
Where are the prisoners?
There.
At last she realized that the three heaps of something on the far side of the room were men.
The door isn't locked. Is there no guard?
None is needed.
She went a little farther into the room, hesitant, peering through the smoky haze. The prisoners were manacled by both ankles and one wrist to great rings driven into the rock of the wall. If one of them wanted to lie down, his chained arm must remain raised, hanging from the manacle. Their hair and beards had made a matted tangle which, together with the shadows, hid their faces. One of them half lay, the other two sat or squatted. They were naked. The smell from them was stronger even than the reek of smoke.
One of them seemed to be watching Arha; she thought she saw the glitter of eyes, then was not sure. The others had not moved or lifted their heads.
She turned away. They are not men any more, she said.
They were never men. They were demons, beast-spirits, who plotted against the sacred life of the Godking! Kossil's eyes shone with the reddish torchlight.
Arha looked again at the prisoners, awed and curious. How could a man attack a god? How was it? You: how could you dare attack a living god?
The one man stared at her through the black brush of his hair, but said nothing.
Their tongues were cut out before they were sent from Awabath, Kossil said. Do not speak to them, mistress. They are defilement. They are yours, but not to speak to, nor to look at, nor to think upon. They are yours to give to the Nameless Ones.
How are they to be sacrificed?
Arha no longer looked at the prisoners. She faced Kossil instead, drawing strength from the massive body, the cold voice. She felt dizzy, and the reek of smoke and filth made her sick, yet she seemed to think and speak with perfect calm. Had she not done this many times before?
The Priestess of the Tombs knows best what manner of death will please her Masters, and it is hers to choose. There are many ways.
Let Gobar the captain of the guards hew off their heads. And the blood will be poured out before the Throne.
As if it were a sacrifice of goats? Kossil seemed to be sneering at her lack of imagination. She stood dumb. Kossil went on, Besides, Gobar is a man. No man can enter the Dark Places of the Tombs, surely my mistress remembers that? If he enters, he does not leave
Who brought them here? Who feeds them?
The wardens who serve my temple, Duby and Uahto; they are eunuchs and may enter here on the services of the Nameless Ones, as I may. The Godking's soldiers left the prisoners bound outside the wall, and I and the wardens brought them in through the Prisoner's Door, the door in the red rocks. So it is always done. The food and water is lowered from a trapdoor in one of the rooms behind the Throne.
Arha looked up and saw, beside the chain from which the torch hung, a wooden square set into the stone ceiling. It was far too small for a man to crawl through, but a rope lowered from it would come down just within reach of the middle prisoner of the three. She looked away again quickly.
Let them not bring any more food or water, then. Let the torch go out.
Kossil bowed. And the bodies, when they die?
Let Duby and Uahto bury them in the great cavern that we passed through, the Undertomb, the girl said, her voice becoming quick and high. They must do it in the dark. My Masters will eat the bodies.
It shall be done.
Is this well, Kossil?
It is well, mistress.
Then let us go, Arha said, very shrill. She turned and hurried back to the wooden door, and out of the Room of Chains into the blackness of the tunnel. It seemed sweet and peaceful as a starless night, silent, without sight, or light, or life. She plunged into the clean darkness, hurried forward through it like a swimmer through water. Kossil hastened along, behind her and getting farther behind, panting, lumbering. Without hesitation Arha repeated the missed and taken turnings as they had come, skirted the vast echoing Undertomb, and crept, bent over, up the last long tunnel to the shut door of rock. There she crouched down and felt for the long key on the ring at her waist. She found it, but could not find the keyhole. There was no pinprick of light in the invisible wall before her. Her fingers groped over it seeking lock or bolt or handle and finding nothing. Where must the key go? How could she get out?
Mistress!
Kossil's voice, magnified by echoes, hissed and boomed far behind her.
Mistress, the door will not open from inside. There is no way out. There is no return.
Arha crouched against the rock. She said nothing.
Arha!