Страница 24 из 32
Had it not been for the noise, Ishmael would have been caught unawares and the stone jaws would have closed on his arm.
He jumped away and the jaws clanged shut as if they were made of iron.
At the same time, the body lifted on its badgerish legs and started to turn.
Ishmael rammed his spear into the mouth, when the jaws opened again.
A yellowish fluid sprayed out of the mouth into Namalee's face and she fell backward against the man on the step below her. Ishmael leaped up and jumped up onto the thing's back. He pulled out his stone knife and began chipping away at its right eye. His knife shattered, and then the neck of the thing creaked as it slid far out from the shell. Ishmael could no longer reach the head to stab at it, and it dipped to get at Namalee.
The head continued to approach Namalee, the neck seeming to be of interminable length. Ishmael could see that the neck was of stone, or covered with stone. But the silicon consisted of hundreds of tiny plates, and these slid one over the other as the thing moved its neck from side to side and bent it downward.
Ishmael stood up on the tortoise-shaped shell and leaped outward. He came down astraddle the extended neck just behind the massive head. His weight carried the neck and head down until the head slammed into the steps. More yellowish fluid spurted out from the thing's open mouth, and then abruptly the jet became a trickle.
There was no more movement from the creature.
Ishmael got off the neck and slid down alongside the head. The gray hard eyes were as stony and lifeless as before, but this time the thing seemed to be actually dead. The mouth was still open, and a torch showed that Ishmael's spear and Karkri's arrow had pierced a huge eyeball-like organ in the cavity past the throat. This no longer pulsed, though some of the yellowish fluid was still oozing out from around the shafts of the two weapons. Ishmael asked Namalee if she had been hurt, and she replied that only her emotions were pained. Then he rapped on the thing's hide. If the skin of the beast was not indeed granite, it was something very like it. What ma
Namalee and the others said that they had never heard of such a creature, not even in the many tales of horrible beasts they had heard from their grandmothers.
"But it is dead now," Ishmael said. "I do not know where the Booragangahns got this creature. I suppose they may have found it buried in the heart of the mountain when they carved these steps. I hope this was the only one they found. At least we will not have to worry about it on the way back."
"Do not be so sure," Karkri said.
He held his torch in the thing's mouth, and Ishmael saw that the arrow and the spear were being sucked -- or absorbed -- into the red organ. And the thing was begi
Then the jaws slowly closed, and the neck began to retract. The gray eyes continued to stare as blankly, and the head offered no hostility. But the men scrambled by it, watching it closely to make sure that the head did not turn toward them. When they were all in the hallway, behind the back of the thing, they paused for a moment. They looked at Ishmael as if to ask, What next?
He said, "All we can do is go ahead. But I am sure of one thing: the priests of the temple of Boorangah will not be expecting anybody to come alive through here. So we will take them unawares."
"If this does lead to the temple," Vashgunammi, a sailor, said.
"Somebody has to feed the guardian beasts once in a while, and I doubt that they enter from the other end to do so," Ishmael said. "In any event, we must go on until we win or lose."
And that, he said to himself as he turned away, summed up the mechanics of life. A living being had to keep on going, no matter what happened, until the enemy was conquered or had conquered. Even here, in this quivering world of the red sun and the falling moon, that held true.
So far they had been fortunate. If the guardians had been more vigorous, or of a slightly more belligerent nature, they might have wiped out the band of invaders. And perhaps in earlier days they might have done so. But ages had passed with no call for their talents, and they had grown older and more feeble. Their keepers, the priests, had started to neglect them, perhaps not feeding them enough to keep them fully strong. And the beasts dwelt in the long, long darkness and dreamed of their prey; when their prey was among them, they took a long time awakening. The sluggishness of mille
They were faced with another extremely steep stairway cut into the stone. This led up and up and then became even steeper with very high rises so that Ishmael's shins brushed against the edges of the steps. Presently he was clinging to the steps with his free hand while he held a torch in the other.
Since he had entered the chambers, Ishmael had looked for signs of the keepers: dust or lack of it, footprints or lack of them where they should be, anything that would show that these rooms were used. But there was no dust and therefore no footprints. And there was not a sign of garbage or of anything left after the animals had been fed. Apparently the priests ventured into here often enough to clean up. Or the priests only cleaned up at long intervals and they had just recently done so. Whatever the situation, the chambers must have been cleaned a short time ago.
Ishmael was heartened by this, because the chances were that the keepers would not be coming for some time. Also, the fact that the beasts had been fed recently might account for their lack of all-out fury. The edge of their hunger had been taken off.
Ishmael whispered, "Perhaps you are bringing us good luck, Namalee!"
"What did you say?" she whispered back.
"Nothing," he said, lifting his free hand to signal silence. He thought he had heard a noise from above.
The others stopped climbing too, and they stood on the steps, listening.
Again the faint noise drifted down the flight of stairs.
It sounded something like chanting.
"I think we might be close to the temple," Namalee said.
"I hope we are close to the exit from this place," Karkri said. "Something is following us."
Ishmael looked back down the steps, past the torches, and strained to see into the darkness at the foot of the steps. The extreme influence of the torchlights barely reached there. Still, it was light enough for him to see the hulk that moved slowly, creakingly, from the corridor into the space at the bottom. Though he could not make out the details, he knew that it was the stone beast.
"It didn't die," Namalee said.
"And it's waiting for us," Ishmael said. "Well, it surely can't come up the steps after us."
The thing made no effort to ascend the flight. It was as motionless as the statue it seemed to be. It was waiting, and it probably was better at waiting than any creature in this world or the one that Ishmael had left.
"It's blocking the corridor," Karkri said. "And the next time it will be aroused. We have hurt it, and it won't forget that."
"You don't know that," Ishmael said.
He climbed on until he reached another narrow corridor. This led straight for about sixty feet and ended in a wall of stone. But the voices, which had become louder, had to be close by. He put his ear to the wall and could hear the chanting quite clearly. It was not in the tongue of the Zalarapamtrans.
Softly, he rapped on the wall. He was surprised to find that the wall was not as thin as he had thought. It was very thick and solid. He determined after going over the wall that the voices were filtering through openings near the bottom, the center, and the top of the wall. These were holes a quarter-inch wide drilled through the stone and spaced about a foot apart.