infected, and her eyes were slits beneath the bloated lids.
'Who did this to you?'he asked softly.
She mumbled incoherently through her black-scabbed lips. They made me
No! Don't try to talk.' He changed his mind as her lower lip cracked
open and a droplet of fresh blood welled up and glistened like a ruby on
her skin.
'I have to tell you,' she insisted in a broken whisper.
'They made me tell them everything. The numbers of your men. What you
and Nicholas are doing here. Everything. I am sorry, Mek. I betrayed
you.'
'Who was it? Who did this to you?'
'Nogo and the American, Helm,' she said, and although he embraced her as
gently as a father with his infant in his arms, his eyes were terrible.
/4P- -I he lowed chamber of the tunnel was cleared of gas at last.
Hansith's fire burned bright and steady in the middle of the floor, the
rising hot air wafting away the noxious vapours and dispersing them
through the upper levels of the maze, where they mingled with
the'cleaner oxygen-rich air and lost their toxicity. By this time Royan
had fully recovered from the physical effects of the gassing, but her
confidence was shaken, and she allowed Nicholas to lead the way up the
steps that rose from the far side of the chamber.
'It's the perfect gas trap,' Nicholas pointed out to her as they climbed
cautiously. 'No doubt at all that Taita knew exactly what he was doing
-when he built this section of the tunnel.'
'Surely he must have expected any interloper of his period to have
either succumbed to his hellish devices, lost his way in the maze, or
given up and turned back by now,' she reasoned.
'Are you trying to convince me that this was Taita's last line of
defence, and that he has no more tricks in store for us? Is that it?'
Nicholas asked as he took another step upwards.
'No. Actually I was trying to convince myself, and not having much
success. I just don't trust him one little bit any more. I have come to
expect the worst from him. I expect the roof to collapse on me at any
moment, or the floor to open and drop us into a fiery furnace or
something worse.' They had descended forty steps down into the se they
were now climbing was a chamber, and the stairca mirror image of that.
It rose at the same angle and the tread of each step was the same depth
and width. As their heads rose above the fortieth step, Nicholas played
the beam of the lamp down the spacious, level arcade that ened before
them, and they were dazzled by a riot of OP
colour and pattern, bright and lovely as a field' of desert blooms after
rain. The paintings covered the walls and ceiling of the arcade,
stunning in their profusion, wondrous in their execution.
'Taita!l Royan cried in a voice that quivered and broke. 'These are his
paintings. There is no other artist like him, I could never mistake it.
I would know his work anywhere.'
stood on the top step and gazed around in They wonder. When compared to
these, the murals in the long gallery seemed pale and stilted, the
tawdry sham that they the work of a great master, a timeless really
