‘No more than three hundred feet,’ said Ekodas.
‘Allow for poetic overstatement,’ snapped Senta.
Miriel laughed. ‘You needn’t have come,’ she chided.
‘And miss this?’ he cried, in mock astonishment. ‘What sort of a man refuses a walk in the dark with a beautiful woman?’
‘And a priest,’ she pointed out.
“That is a flaw, I grant you!’
‘Be silent!’ hissed Ekodas. Genuinely surprised, Senta was about to fire back an angry reply when he saw that Ekodas was listening intently, his dark eyes narrowing to scan the gloom at the end of the corridor.
‘What is it?’ whispered Miriel.
‘I thought I heard something – like breathing. I don’t know, perhaps I imagined it.’
‘It is unlikely there’d be anything living down here,’ said Miriel. ‘There is no food source.’
‘I cannot use my Talent here,’ said Ekodas, wiping sweat from his face. ‘I feel so… so limited. Like a man suddenly blind.’
‘Happily you do not need your Talent,’ said Senta, still irritated by the priest’s outburst. This is hardly the most …’ He halted in mid-sentence, for now he could also hear stentorian breathing. Silently he drew his sword.
‘It could be a trick of the earth,’ whispered Miriel. ‘You know, like wind whistling through a crack in the rocks.’
‘There’s not usually a great deal of wind at this depth,’ said Senta.
They moved cautiously on, until they came to a long room, filled with metal cabinets. Most of the glowing panels had ceased to operate, but two still cast pale light across the iron floor. Miriel saw an object lying beneath an overturned table. ‘Senta,’ she said softly. ‘Over there!’
The swordsman crossed the room and knelt. He rose swiftly and backed to where Ekodas and Miriel were standing. ‘It’s a human leg,’ he said. ‘Or what’s left of it. And believe me, you don’t want to know the size of the bite-marks.’
‘Kesa Khan said there was no danger,’ put in Miriel.
‘Perhaps he didn’t know,’ volunteered Ekodas. ‘The crystal is through that doorway. Let me find and destroy it, then we’ll leave as fast as we can.’
‘If we disappeared in a flash of magic it wouldn’t be fast enough,’ Senta told him. The priest did not smile, but moved on through what was left of the doorway. ‘Look at that,’ Senta told Miriel. ‘The stone of the wall around the door has been torn out. You know, call me boring if you like, but at this moment I’d like to be sitting in that cabin of yours, with my feet out towards the fire, waiting for you to bring me a goblet of mulled wine.’ The lightness of tone could not disguise the fear in his voice, and when Ekodas cried out, apparently in pain, Senta almost dropped his sword.
Miriel was the first to the doorway.
‘Get back!’ shouted Ekodas. ‘Stay beyond the walls. The power is too much for you to bear!’
Senta caught Miriel by the arm and hauled her back. ‘You know, beauty, I don’t mind telling you that I am frightened. Not for the first time, but I’ve never known anything like this.’
‘And me,’ she agreed.
A shuffling sound came from the other end of the hall.
‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ whispered Senta.
And the creature moved into sight. It was colossal, almost twelve feet high, and Senta gazed in horror at the beast’s two heads. Both were grotesque, with only vestigial traces of humanity; the mouths wide, almost as long as his forearm, the teeth crooked and sharp. Miriel drew her sword and backed away. ‘Whatever you have to do, Ekodas, do it now!’ she shouted.
The creature leaned forward, part-supporting its weight on two huge arms, its three legs drawn up beneath its bloated belly. It looked to Senta like a giant white spider crouching before them. One of the heads lolled to the left, eyes opening, fastening on Miriel. A groan came from its grotesque lips, deep and full of torment. The mouth on the other head opened and a piercing scream echoed in the hall. The creature tensed and shuffled crablike towards them, groaning and screaming.
Miriel edged to the left, Senta to the right.