He was given no time to ask questions. Clatatol said, “The pinkfaces have found the chamber behind the wall of my bedroom, and they will soon be breaking through it. We can’t stay here.”
Two men left the room but quickly returned with telescoping ladders. These were extended full-length up the air shaft. On seeing this, Kickaha felt less apprehensive. He said,”Now your patriotism demands that you hand us over to von Turbat. So … ?”
Two men had climbed up the ladder. The others were urging the Lords and Kickaha to go next. Clatatol said, “We have heard that the emperor is possessed by a demon. His soul had been driven out into the cold past the moon; ademon resides in his body, though not comfortably as yet. The priests have secretly transmitted this story throughout the city. They say for us to fight this most evil of evils. And we are not to surrender you, Kickaha, who is the beloved of the Lord, Ollimaml, nor should we give up the others.”
Kickaha said, “Possessed? How do you know?”
Clatatol did not answer until after they had climbed the length of the shaft and were in a horizontal tunnel. One of the smugglers lit a dark lantern, and the ladder was pulled up, joint by joint, bent, folded, and carried along.
Clatatol said, “Suddenly, the emperor spoke only in the holy speech, so it was evident he did not understand Tishquetmoac. And the priests reported that von Turbat and von Swindebarn speak
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Wishpawaml only, and they have their priests to translate orders for them.”
Kickaha did not see why a demon was thought to possess Quotshaml, the emperor. The liturgical language was supposed to scorch the lips of demons when they tried to speak it. But he was not going to point out the illogic when it favored him.
The party hurried down a tunnel with Fat Judubra wheezing loudly and complaining. He had had to be pulled through the shaft; his robes had torn and his skin had been scraped.
Kickaha asked Clatatol if the temple of Ol-limaml was well guarded. He was hoping that the smaller secret gate had not been discovered. She replied that she did not know. Kickaha asked her how they were going to get out of the city. She answered that it would be better if he did not know; if he was captured, then he could not betray the others. Kickaha did not argue with her. Although he had no idea of how they would leave the city, he could imagine what would happen after that. During his last visit, he had found out just how she and her friends got the contraband past the customs. She did not suspect that he knew.
He spoke to Anana, who was a glimmer of neck, arms, and legs ahead. “The woman Clatatol says that her emperor, and at least two of the invaders, are possessed. She means that they suddenly seem unable, or unwilling, to talk anything but the language of the Lords.”
* ‘The Black Sellers,” Anana said after a pause.
At that moment, shouts cannoned down the tunnel. The party stopped; the lantern was put out. Lights appeared at both ends of the tunnel; voices flew down from the rigid mouths of shafts above and ballooned from mouths below.
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Kickaha spoke to the Lords. “If you have weapons, get ready to use them.”
They did not answer. The party formed into a single file, linked by holding hands, and a man led them into a cross-tunnel. They duckwalked for perhaps fifty yards, with the voices of the hunters getting louder, before they heard a distant roar of water. The lamp was lit again. Soon they were in a small chamber, exitless except for the four-foot-wide hole in the floor against the opposite wall. The roar, a wetness, and a stink tunneled up from it.
“The shaft angles steeply, and the sewage tunnel to which it connects is fifty feet down. The slide, however, won’t hurt,” Clatatol said. “We use this way only if all others around here fail. If you went all the way down this shaft, you’d fall into the tunnel, which is full of sewage and drops almost vertically down into the river at an underwater point. If you lived to come up in the river, you would be caught by the pinkface patrol boats stationed there.”