The passageway took us straight toward the southeast for a distance of a few hundred yards. It gave onto a much larger corridor running east and west. Just at the juncture, however, we found our way blocked by lines of iron bars running from the ceiling down into the floor. An iron door, like one leading from a jail cell, was set into the middle of the bars.
'Locked!' Maram cried out as he rushed forward to try it. 'Then we're Still trapped in this forsaken place!'
None of us knew how long it would be before Morjin's men burst into the throne room behind us and found their way to this secret passage.
'Hrold your noise!' Ymiru said softly, stepping up to the bars.
Then he brought forth his purple gelstei and worked its magic upon them. Its violet light transformed the crystal within the iron into a softer substance – soft enough so that Ymiru's great strength, with Maram, Kane and me helping, sufficed to bend them. Daj danced through this opening, and as for the rest of us, only Ymiru had much trouble squeezing through.
'There!' he huffed out after leaving shreds of white fur upon the rough iron bars.
'We're not trapped! I'll never allow myself to be trapped and taken again.'
'But how did Morjin take you?' Maram asked him.
'It was bad chance,' he said. 'After Val killed the dragon, we made it back past the old throne room and up to the seventh level without much trouble. Then we ran into that company of Grays.'
The Grays, as he explained, had scented out the secrets of their minds, and had used their frightful minds to freeze them with fear until Morjn's guards – and Morjin himself – could be summoned to bind them in chains.
'It was hrorrible,' Ymiru said, nodding at Atara and Master Juwain. 'We fought them as hard as we could, with the light meditations, but how long can one hrold against such creatures? And then Morjin suggested taking us into the throne room; he said that the torture of our bodies might help the Grays break into our minds.' 'Are you sure they didn't?' Kane asked him.
'I think not,' Master Juwain said, stepping up to Ymiru. 'When Morjin discovered that you and Val had broken into the throne room, he was very keen to have the Grays turn their minds toward you.'
'So, then it's possible that the enemy doesn't know how we entered Argattha?'
'It's likely,' Master Juwain said. 'I heard Morjin give orders to double the guard at the city's gates. He berated the captain of his guards for allowing a giant such as Ymiru to pass through un challenged.'
'Then they will likely look for us at these gates,' Maram said. 'If we can find our way back as we came, we may yet have time to make our escape.'
'A little time, perhaps,' Kane said. 'But we must hurry.' And so hurry we did, out onto the larger corridor, which was lit with numerous glowstones set at intervals into the black, basalt walls. To the west as Kane told us, the corridor led back toward Morjin's palace. And to the east, this bore through solid rock would take us straight through the mountain to the window carved into its side known as Morjin's Porch.
'But how did you know that?' Daj asked him. 'If this is the way toward Morjin's Porch, only Lord Morjin is ever allowed to use it.'
'Not ever, lad,' Kane said grimly as he stared down the corridor. 'Once, a long time ago, one named Kalkamesh was taken this way and crucified to the face of the mountain.' Daj, who apparently hadn't heard this story, stared at Kane in awe. 'If I remember aright,' Kane said, 'it also leads to Morjin's Stairs.'
As Daj had told us, Morjin's Stairs would lake us down to Argattha's lower levels, perhaps as far down as the abandoned first level – though not even Daj or Ymiru could say where it might give out. 'Can you see where?' Kane asked Atara.
Atara, who could 'see' well enough to keep from stumbling along this dim corridor, shook her head and told us, 'It's too far.'
'Let's find out, then,' Kane said.
We had no trouble in finding Morjin's Stairs about a quarter mile to our left. They spiraled deep into the dark mountain, turning around and around, and down and down for hundreds of feet. After a while, we came to a landing giving out onto a tunnel, which we supposed led to the secret tunnel system and sanctuaries on the sixth level. It was quiet in that direction. This gave us good hope as we turned the other way and resumed our journey down the endlessly winding stairs Thus we passed openings to the fifth, fourth, third and second levels There, as we had prayed, the stairs didn't end; they led us another five hundred feet down to the first level of Argattha.
'What is this?' Maram said, pointing ahead of us. The stairs let us out onto a very short corridor that seemed to end abruptly in a wall. 'Another trap?'
'Ha, another secret door, most likely!' Kane said, clapping him on the shoulder. Then he stepped forward and called out, 'Memoriar Damoom !'
Remember Damoom, I thought as Kane pushed open the carefully concealed door. I looked back at Atara and the one-armed Ymiru, and I knew that all of us, live though we might another thousand years, would always remember Argattha.
By great, good fortune, we discovered that the door opened upon Morjin's old throne room. We stepped out into the great hall where we had fought our first battle with the dragon. Here, with its great, cracked columns of basalt and the pyramid of skulls, the floor was still caked with the blood from Ymiru's severed arm. And across from the great portal leading out to the first level, the doorway to the stairs by which we had first entered the hall still stood open.
It was strange and disquieting to cross this vast open space where once had thundered a dragon. We were glad to gain the shelter of the stairwell. And glad, too, to climb down a little way to the corridor leading back toward the labyrinth. Daj, who had explored many of the tunnels of Argattha's first level, had never dared to enter this dark, twisting place. As I held high Alkaladur, now blazing brilliantly in the Lightstone's presence, he and the others followed closely behind me around and through its turnings. At last we came out of it as we had entered it. And so we stepped into the close, foul-smelling, rat-infested tunnel system leading to the cave hidden behind Skartaru's north face.
We found the cave as we had left it: piled with the bodies of the knights we had slain, as well as the saddles of their driven-off horses and other accouterments. Here, despite our fear of pursuit, despite the awful fetor of the rotting bodies, we had to pause to search through the knights' gear. We took away as many saddlebags of food as we could carry, and the smallest saddle that we could find. Atara was very happy to lay her hands on a full quiver of arrows; although they were not so well-made as those that the Sarni carefully shaped and fletched, she said that they would likely fly straight enough if only she could aim them at our enemies.
When we were finally ready, we rolled aside the great rocks with which we had sealed the cave. We stepped outside into a brilliant night. In all my life, the air that I breathed had never smelled so clean and sweet -even though that air was still of Sakai. A cold wind blew down from the Nagarshath through the valley to the north of the mountain. It set all of us except Ymiru to shivering, even so we were glad for the scent of ice and pines that it carried along in its frigid gusts. 'What time is it?'
Maram asked softly as he gazed at the shadowed rockscape of the valley.
I looked up at the sky; to the east of us, above the dark, rolling plains of the Wendrush, the Morning Star stood like a beacon among the Night constellations.
'It's nearly dawn,' I told him. 'What day is it?'
None of us seemed to know. In the lightless hell of Argattha, we might have journeyed and fought for two days – or two years.
'I would guess it's the 24th,' Master Juwain said 'Or perhaps the 25th.'
'The 25th of Ioj?' Maram asked.
Kane came up to him and rumpled his curly hair, 'Ioj it still is, my friend. We've still time to make it home before the snows come.'
We started walking down through the valley then. First light found us working our way across the ridge that hid the little canyon to the north of Skartaru. With nerves laid bare by what we had endured, we listened and looked for any sign of pursuit But the slowly brightening foothills rang with the cries of wolves and bluebirds rather than the hoofbeats of Morjin's cavalry. We knew that it would be only a matter of time before he or one of his priests sent out riders to patrol the approaches to Skartaru. How much time we had, however, not even Atara could say. And so we came down into the grassy bowl where we had left the horses; there my heart cried out with what it took to be
