presently the isle loomed darkly to their right. They landed halfway down the
eastern shore and dragged the dugout slowly to the nearest tree.
They put their cloaks in the boat, and Masha placed a coil of rope over her
shoulder and neck.
The isle was quiet. Not a sound. Then came a strange grunting cry followed by a
half-moaning, half-squalling sound. Her neck iced.
‘Whatever that is,’ Smhee said, ‘it’s no spider.’
He chuckled as if he were making a joke.
They’d decided – what else could they do? – that the camel’s eye would be too
heavily guarded after Benna’s entrance through it. But there had to be more
accessible places to get in. These would be guarded, too, especially since they
must have been made more security-conscious by the young thief.
‘What I’d like to find is a secret exit,’ Smhee said. ‘Kemren must have one,
perhaps more. He knows that there might come a time when he’ll be sorely in need
of it. He’s a crafty bastard.’
Before they’d taken the boat, Smhee had revealed that Kemren had fled Sharranpip
with many of the temple’s treasures. He had also taken along spiders’ eggs and
some of the temple’s animal guardians.
‘If he was a high priest,’ Masha had said, ‘why would he do that? Didn’t he have
power and wealth enough?’
‘You don’t understand our religion,’ the fat thief had said. ‘The priests are
surrounded by treasures that would pop your eyes out of their sockets if you saw
them. But the priests themselves are bound by vows to extreme poverty, to
chastity, to a harsh bare life. Their reward is the satisfaction of serving Weda