They found more steps and descended into the courtyard. But there seemed to be no archway in the outer wall. They walked through into the next courtyard, then the next. There were no doors. And that, Ulf pointed out, made good sense; what was the point of building an immense fortified castle and then putting hundreds of doors in its walls through which enemies could gain entrance?
That still left the problem of how the inhabitants had gained access to the top of the stairway. Niall climbed back to the top of the wall — being the youngest and most active — and looked down directly on the flight of steps. Now he noticed something he had not seen when inspecting them from the side. They apparently started twenty yards down the cliff. But if they stopped there, how could people who had climbed all the way up from the plain reach the citadel?
He went to the other side of the wall and looked down into the courtyard. Immediately below was a dim circular mark on the ground, about six feet in diameter. He called down to Ulf: “What’s that?”
“What?”
“There’s a circle on the ground right below where I’m standing.”
“I can’t see it.”
“You’re standing right on it now.”
He hurried back down the stairway. Back in the courtyard, the circle had become invisible; but since he knew his father was standing inside it, he went on all fours, examining the ground closely. With his flint knife, he began to scrape where the dust seemed soft. There was a crack between two stones. Now Ulf, Niall and Ingeld all used their knives, and in five minutes had uncovered the circle of stone. Further examination revealed a metal ring. Niall had never seen any kind of metal in his life, and thought it must be some rare kind of stone. The ring was about six inches in diameter, wide enough for all three of them to be able to grip it simultaneously. They braced their feet and heaved; nothing happened. They tried again, and this time the great stone trapdoor seemed to move very slightly. They tried for five minutes until they were panting, and had succeeded in raising the lid about two inches.
Now, in spite of their dislike of the inner rooms, they decided to look into the hall across the courtyard. This was smaller than the one in which they had slept, and was full of strange objects made of wood. Never having seen a chair or table, none of them guessed that they were in an officers’ mess room. Much of the furniture was worm eaten, and a chair broke when Niall tried to pick it up. Fragments of carpet on the floor were bleached with the sunlight, although in remote corners, where the sun had been unable to reach, there were still coloured patterns, badly faded, but oddly rich and exciting.
And protruding from a heap of rubble in a corner there was a wooden beam, ten feet long and four inches wide. Ulf held it by one end, and pressed his foot on it; the wood was unyielding. Niall took the other end and they carried it into the courtyard.
They placed it through the metal ring, and Niall and Ingeld took one end while Ulf took the other. They braced their knees and gave a tremendous heave; the stone lid came out of the ground, and a six-inch gap appeared. The weight was too great, and they had to let it fall. Niall went back into the room, and found another piece of wood. And next time they raised the stone lid, he used his foot to manoeuvre the wood into the gap. Then, using the other beam as a lever, they forced open the trapdoor and succeeded in pushing it to one side. A blast of wind blew up into their faces. Below, they could see stairs descending into darkness.
Ten minutes later, they were climbing down cautiously. For a space of twenty feet or so, the tunnel became so black that they had to move very slowly, testing each step with their feet. Then there was a glimmer of light, and around the next bend, the entrance admitted a blinding beam of sunlight. Then they were standing in the narrow doorway and experiencing vertigo at the sheer drop below them and the distant horizon.
Looked at from above, the steps seemed to descend almost vertically, like a ladder. Ingeld sat down, pressing tight against the wall of the tunnel.
“I”m sorry. I can’t go down there. I can’t stand heights.”
Ulf looked at her in astonishment. “You climbed up the other side.”
“But that was going up. Besides, it was nearly dark.”
Ulf grinned sarcastically. “All right. We’ll wait until it’s dark.”
She began to cry. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it.”
Ulf shrugged. “Do you want to spend the night sitting there?”
“But there must be a better way down.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this.”
The sullen stubborn look came into her eyes. “I’m not going down that way.”
It was the worst possible thing to say to Ulf; he had often felt infuriated with Thorg for giving way to his wife’s determination to have her own way. Now he stared back at Ingeld with a stony, set expression.
“You can do what you like. We’re going down to spend the night at the bottom.”
Ingeld was not accustomed to being thwarted.
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“You can go and spend the night in the fortress.”
“What about the spiders!”
“What are you more afraid of — spiders or heights?” He began descending, his face towards the steps. “Come on, Niall.”
Unwillingly — for although he felt as his father did about Ingeld, he still felt sorry for her — Niall began to descend the stairway. It was, in fact, less dangerous than it looked, for although each step was only a few inches deep, hand-holds had been cut in the rock beside them. A hundred yards farther down, where the steps turned at an angle behind the hump-backed rock, the slope suddenly became less steep. Here, out of sight of Ingeld, Ulf beckoned him to sit down. They stayed there for a quarter of an hour, and ate a prickly pear and some maize bread. After that, Ulf left his baggage and went back up the cliff. A few minutes later, he reappeared with Ingeld. Her face was stained with tears and her lips were set in a sullen pout; but the mulish expression had disappeared.
There must have been over three thousand steps. They followed a twisting curve, sometimes descending into clefts, sometimes exposed on the face of the cliff, and at one point passing through a valley with massive and rectangular carved rocks, sculptured with bas reliefs of strange animals. Some of the creatures looked a little like desert rodents; but they were as big as insects. They stood and contemplated these things with a feeling of awe. Niall pointed to a particularly fierce looking creature that seemed to be surrounded by hunters. “What is that?”
“I’m not sure. . .”
Ingeld said contemptuously: “It’s a tiger.”
“Did such things really live on earth?”
“Of course.”
Ulf said: “The spiders killed off all the larger animals.”
“Then why did they allow man to survive?”
“Because man cannot protect himself. He has no claws, no tusks, no sharp teeth.”
“But he has weapons.”
Ulf said grimly: “But weapons can be taken away. You cannot take away a tiger’s claws without killing it first.”
They tramped on. For the last few hundred feet the descent became more difficult, for the cliff was broken and eroded. At its base it had been hollowed out by the wind; they had to throw down their baggage and jump the last ten feet, landing in soft sand. Looking back up, they saw that the stairway was now invisible. Its builders had taken care not to make it obvious to enemies.
By travelling over the plateau, they had avoided the worst of the desert. The countryside ahead was not unlike the region around the burrow, but with more vegetation. Compared to the plateau, the atmosphere here was hot and oppressive. In spite of the menace of the spiders, which now lay behind them, Niall felt a sharp pang of regret at leaving the ruined citadel. For him, it represented something he had never before encountered: romance and mystery.
The sun was near the western horizon. The long descent of the stairs had made them all tired. Ulf decided to rest until the moon rose. The hollows worn in the base of the cliff argued that there should also be caves. They walked due west for almost a mile but found nothing deeper than a few feet. However they encountered another group of the low trees or bushes under which they had slept on the plateau. They selected the lowest one, spread blankets over it to form a sunshade, then lay down to rest. Ingeld lay several yards away; she had still not forgiven Ulf for making her climb down the stairway.