“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?”