No matter where they looked, the room was thick with them.
And no matter where they cast their eyes, they could make out the bundled, mummified remains of human beings. The webs were full of them; they hung like flies, light and grey and bloodless. The room was a subterranean larder of God knows what antiquity. In places, body had been piled upon body, the mouldering remains sewn together in huge packages. In one corner, what seemed to be a relatively recent addition to their meat supply was being drained of its remaining fluids by a small army of spiders that moved across their prey with quick, quivering motions. To his horror, Christopher estimated the size of the spiders: the largest had a leg-span longer than a man’s forearm, from fingertips to elbow.
Everywhere black shapes were walking in the shadows. The webs were alive with them, trembling as they crawled from thread to thread on huge, misshapen legs.
“For God’s sake, get back into the tunnel!” Christopher cried. He had seen stings on the ends of the bulbous bodies and he guessed that the spiders had not overpowered their prey by brute force.
Woodenly, they stumbled back, past the webs at the entrance to the food-chamber, as far as the first body. William was shaking with fright and loathing nothing in his worst nightmares had prepared him for such a sight. Samdup too was rigid with fear.
“The horror of it! The horror of it!” Chindamani kept repeating.
She was brushing and brushing her arms and body, desperately trying to rid herself of anything that might be clinging to her. She could feel their soft bodies and cold legs against her flesh. To be poisoned and pinned down and sucked dry by such creatures .. .
Christopher checked for spiders. None seemed to have dropped on them or followed them so far. These, then, were the guardians set over the Oracle’s treasure. A species of spider, mutated by the thin air and the darkness, discovered or placed down here to sting and kill intruders. But why had there been none in the treasure chamber And where did their victims come from?
“Chindamani, Samdup,” Christopher ordered.
“Get out any extra items of clothing you have in your bags. Wrap your hands and faces tightly. Leave no gaps, just a space for your eyes. Help each other. And hurry. We’ve disturbed them it won’t be long before they start investigating.” He bent down and quickly repeated what he had said to William. The boy had taken Samuel out of his bag and was clutching it to him nervously.
“Put Samuel away,” Christopher said softly.
“You’ll need your hands free.” William complied reluctantly.
Feverishly, Chindamani and Samdup wrapped each other up, using spare scarves and leggings they had packed. When they were ready, Chindamani helped William bind himself, then Christopher.
“We can still go back,” he said.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said.
“Zam-ya-ting is waiting for us there. It’s death whichever way we go.
But perhaps we have a chance down here.
That place is their lair. The stairs of Yama must be beyond it. If we can make it that far, we’ll be all right.”
Christopher prayed she was right.
When they were ready, he led the way down to the exit from the tunnel. He could hear the rustling of their legs in the darkness, stiff wire bristles on paper a host of spiders coming to investigate the disturbance.
If only he could make out an opening somewhere that would enable them to make a straight run for it. There was a risk that, if they became entangled in the vast network of spiders’ webs and confused by fighting off their hideous inhabitants, they would lose their lamps and be plunged into absolute darkness. And that would almost certainly be fatal.
A large spider, its legs moving jerkily, like a badly oiled machine, came scuttling towards him at shoulder height along a swathe of tattered web. He swept at it with the sword and sent it tumbling back into the shadows. Another ran at his feet with a queer sideways motion. He kicked down hard and felt it give way beneath the heel of his boot.
“Which way do we go, Christopher?” Chindamani asked, pressing against him from behind.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“If there are stairs, they could be anywhere.”
“There have to be stairs. Sonam was right about everything else.”
“Perhaps.” He paused.
“There’s one way to find out. The most likely place is right opposite. I’ll make a dash for it. Watch me closely. If I get through and there are stairs, I’ll call. Don’t waste any time come running.”
“Be careful, Christopher,” she said. He could only see her eyes peering out above her scarf. With one hand, he reached out and touched her. She lifted a hand and put it over his. In a world of spiders, among dark threads and silken fabrics of most intricate and passionless death, they touched for a moment in silence. Skin did not touch skin, lips could not meet, there was a deathly chill upon their hampered breath.
A huge spider landed on Christopher’s back. William cried out and Christopher spun, dashing the monster to the ground and crushing it.
“Run!” cried Chindamani.
He ran, cutting a path through meshes of doubled and redoubled web, pulling, tearing, scything as he staggered through the room.
The floor was littered with small wizened corpses, pathetic bundles no longer recognizable as human. At every step, more spiders dropped on to him, clinging to his back and arms and legs, stinging again and again into the thick layers of cloth and fur.
How he made it to the other side he did not know. He swept the last web curtains aside. There was nothing but rock. Frantically, he thrashed about, severing webs like cheesecloth, ripping them apart. There was nothing but bare rock. Something struck his lamp and sent it skittering from his hand. The world was plunged into darkness. He dropped the sword with a clatter.
A large spider dropped on to his head, then another on to his shoulders. One of the corpses caught his foot and he fell helplessly to his knees. He reached out desperately and his fingers caught nothing but a tangled mass of spider’s web.
“Christopher!”
Her voice echoed in the narrow confines of the tunnel. There was no answer, and she called again, more desperately this time.
“Christopher, where are you? What’s happening? Answer me!”
But after the echoes, there was only silence. She had seen
Christopher’s lamp go out. Now he did not answer. The spiders were everywhere now, malign, implacable, without pity. She shuddered and called again.
“Christopher!”
There was something a muffled sound from the far side of the room.
“He must have fallen,” Samdup said.
“We’ve got to get to him!”
Chindamani clenched her teeth and prayed to Chenrezi for the strength to do what had to be done now.
She took the boy by the shoulders and made him face her.
William looked on, his eyes filled with terror.
“Samdup,” she said.
“I’ve got to help Ka-ris To-feh. Wait as long as you dare. If I don’t come back, leave the way we came. Go back to the gon-kang. Take the boy with you. You’ll both be safe; they won’t harm you. Do you understand?”
But even as she spoke, William suddenly broke away from them, running into the room of webs, his lamp bobbing as he ran, calling after his father. Chindamani reached out a hand frantically, but he had already eluded her grasp and her fingers found nothing but cobwebs, old and dirty.
Without a moment’s thought, she hurried after him, threshing her way through the hanging threads, flailing her arms to knock away the quivering bodies with which she came in contact.
A last grey curtain parted and she saw them Christopher on his back, fighting to throw off the dozens of
