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"Gods are always stolen," Namalee said, astonished.
"Why not just drop Kashmangai into a dead sea and forget about him?"
"He would not like that," Namalee said. "He would not rest until he had seen to our complete destruction. But while we hold him prisoner, part of his power is ours, and..."
Ishmael was about to throw up his hands in surrender and in disgust, when the scouts, who had stayed in the corridor as sentinels, came ru
"We had to shoot two priests," one said. "We tried to take them unaware and failed. One shouted out an alarm before he died, and now there is much commotion down the hall."
Kashmangai was stuffed into a bag, and the band started back toward the corridor. But, on reaching it, they saw a mob of priests and some armed men coming down the hall corridor toward them. Several had bows.
Ishmael snatched a torch from a man and ran down the short flight of steps to the wall with the shafts set in it. He passed the torch back and forth before each shaft in the same linear sequence he had used on the first occasion. The stone squeaked and the lower part of the wall started to swing out.
The approaching Booragangahns gave a great shout on seeing this, and two of the bowmen pushed to the front. They fitted arrows to their strings, but both fell before the shafts could be properly sent. Ishmael's archers had shot first.
At this, the entire enemy group ran forward, screaming war cries. Another volley of arrows downed those in front and then those immediately behind, and the others tripped on the bodies. Ishmael scooted under the wall with Namalee, carrying Zoomashmarta in a bag, behind him. A man carrying lesser gods followed her and close on his heels was a man carrying Kashmangai. Others followed them, rolling under the rising wall swiftly.
The enemy began to hack at the body to cut it apart and so let the wall continue to complete its revolution. Then they would unlock it again with their torches.
Two of Ishmael's archers shot through shafts, and though the arrows went at an upward angle, they struck two men. But an enemy archer got down on his side and sent an arrow underneath the wall. A man fell with an arrow in his ankle, and the god he was carrying crashed on the stone floor.
Before the wounded man could get up again, a spear shoved under the wall drove into his neck, and he died.
Ishmael shouted at his men to retreat. There was nothing to be gained by staying by the wall and much to lose. The hubbub outside was increasing. It was obvious that the whole temple and, for all he knew, the whole city, was alarmed by now. Even if his band wasn't followed through this wall, it might find itself cut off when it reached the boats. The Booragangahns would not take long to realize that the invaders had to have entered from the underside of the ledge. They would send boats and ships around under to cut them off. And they would also send ships out to look for the mother ship and her supporting war vessels.
Ishmael's only hope was to get away in the boats before the forces on the topside of the ledge were notified of what was going on.
He led the way down the steps with a torch in one hand. Namalee fell, slipped halfway down with the god and, screaming, slid down toward the stone beast. The monster had somehow managed to turn over onto its feet. It was now climbing again with its lower hind feet braced on the fifth step up from the floor. On seeing Namalee fall, it shot its neck out and its jaws opened. The god in the bag, Zoomashmarta, bounced ahead of Namalee, rose into the air, and was snapped into the mouth of the stone beast.
Ishmael jumped down after Namalee, who had stopped sliding, and pulled her back up from a step just out of reach of the head. She was ski
The beast had closed its jaws on the idol of Zoomashmarta, but now it opened them again. The statue was jammed tight inside the neck where it opened into the mouth.
"We have to get the great god back!" Namalee wailed.
Ishmael did not curse. The situation was too perilous -- and at the same time touched with absurdity -- for him to express himself in mere cursing.
"I don't think that your god wants to leave," he said. "If he does, he is certainly acting peculiarly."
Up over the top of the steps, the priests were shouting and swearing. They were cutting away the body so the wall could descend and then be raised again.
Behind him were the silent survivors of his band.
Ahead was a stone beast that had swallowed divinity but showed no sign of any transubstantiation or of any desire for communion other than with the flesh of the invaders.
And around him, permeating everything, was the sweet-stinking and drunk-making perfume.
If the influence increased, he would soon be seeing two stone beasts. And one was almost more than he could bear.
Karkri's body, he suddenly noticed, was gone. There was nothing left to show that he had existed except for streaks of drying blood on the steps. The beast had swallowed him without trouble.
Ishmael gave an order and staggered down the steps, stumbling once and almost falling. The great head with the unblinking dead eyes swung toward him, and the neck retracted as if getting ready to shoot out at him. Nevertheless, it did not attack him, and he passed it safely.
"I am not another Tyr to put my hand into the monster's mouth and lose it!" Ishmael said. But the reference was, of course, lost on her.
"If we go ahead, we lose your god, that is true!" he shouted at her. "But if we stay and try to pry him loose, the Booragangahns will soon be with us! And then we die! So which is better? Die with your god or live without him?"
"Why couldn't it have been Kashmangai?" she wailed, weeping.
One of the men in the rear called, "The beast has swallowed Zoomashmarta! He is in the body of the beast now!"
Ishmael turned. All but three men had passed the monster. The last three were still on the steps, halted because the jaws were wide open and the extended neck was swinging back and forth.
There was little chance that all could get by the beast. The first to try it would be the sacrifice for the others.
Ishmael said, "Wait!" and he grabbed the bag containing Kashmangai from a man and threw it over the beast to the first man.
"Toss that into his mouth and then run by him!" he called.
"No!" Namalee cried. "We can't lose him, too!"
"Throw it!" Ishmael said. "We have no time to lose!"
The man, Poonkraji, swung the bag by its neck, and the bag and god were taken in by the great jaws. The three men scrambled by the beast. This time, as if catching a thought that had been traveling for a long time in the granite brain, the beast moved sidewise on its massive legs. Its shell caught the last man and crushed him against the wall.
"We can come back some other time and kill the beast and extract the two gods," Ishmael said. "The Booragangahns won't know that they are inside their guardian."
"But we have been defeated!" Namalee said. "This has all been for nothing!"
"Frustrated, not defeated," Ishmael replied. "But we will know something that the enemy does not, and we will return secretly and profit by it."
He did not believe that, since it was unlikely that the air shafts would be left open or unguarded from now on. But there was more than one way to enter a city.
They passed swiftly into the chamber of the things which hung from the ceiling by suction pads. They held their free hands by their necks as they dashed across the floor, the darkness burned away before them by the torches but reborn behind them. Pamkamshi and the two things had either been hauled up and eaten or else the path led them away from the bodies. They saw no sign of them during their flight.