“A Thunru’ul' Eyil squealed. “The servants of the Master of the Undead!”
The creature filled the doorway. Behind it was another being, smaller, manlike-
Hele’a of Ghaton!
Now the tendrils of the water-thing crept into the room again, past the smouldering matting on the floor. The creature Eyil had named a Thunru’u advanced silently upon creased, pudgy feet.
There could only be seconds left. Harsan never knew whether his next actions came from within himself or whether he was commanded by the powerful imperatives of the white sphere. All he knew was that the Man of Gold should never fall into the hands of those who sent forth such emissaries! His mind was icily clear, as happens sometimes in moments of mortal peril.
But was there time?
He strove to concentrate, to ignore the death that lumbered across the chamber. He had the metal rod in his hand. There, beneath a scattering of manuscript pages, was one half of the white sphere-and there on the floor by the table was the other half! He scrabbled for them. The rest of the relics he could not see. These were what mattered.
He shut his eyes, struggled for calm. And failed. A false start! He tried again-
— And reached “around the comer!”
The two halves of the sphere and the silvery rod flickered from sight.
Hele’a of Ghaton must have seen, for he cursed and shouted something in an unintelligible tongue. The Thunru’u's thick, moist hands were upon Harsan, and his struggles were as nothing.
Pain shot through his wrists as the spongy fingers closed upon them. Hele’a was at the other side of the table, Eyil writhing in his arms.
Two more entered the room. These were human, however, hard and efficient men in brown-lacquered mail of Chlen- hide.
“Get the relics,” Hele’a panted.
One hurled the table aside. The other snatched up the golden hand and the map symbol, thrust handfuls of crackling manuscript pages into a cloth bag. He began to ransack the storage cabinet.
“The rest?” Hele’a snapped at Harsan.
“Gone-where you shall never see them!” Harsan managed. The Thunru’u began to bend him backward as a man bends a sapling.
“Lord-! Someone comes!” the first man cried.
“There is naught else here,” the other said. The cabinet and the chest where they had kept their notes were empty, contents strewn upon the floor. The man had found the gems which Chtik p’Qwe had extracted from the first lump of rust. Now he tore open the packet left for Harsan by the Shen, exclaimed joyfully, and stuffed all into his belt-pouch.
“We must leave,” Hele’a grated. “If my eyes served me aright, priestling, then I know what you have done with the other gewgaws. You shall suffer the more for that! Take them along!”
They were dragged out into the corridor and up the stairs. Near the top the body of the other guard, Reshmu, crouched in a shrivelled mass against the wall. Water still dripped from his gaping mouth. Hele’a hurried them on into one of the branching passageways that Harsan had never entered. They passed musty boxes of temple vestments, the wreck of an ancient palanquin, tall standards from which the Kheshchal-plumes had rotted away. At last they stopped before a broken section of wall. A black tunnel mouth yawned there, and fragments of stone lay all about, half dissolved in puddles of water as though melted into sand by the washing of the sea.
The ghastly water-creature stood there, looming almost manlike in the shadows.
Behind them came voices, racing footsteps, wildly dancing torchlight. Harsan had a glimpse of an ebon whirlwind of arms and legs: Chtik p’Qwe, closely followed by the priest Siyun and two of the guardsmen from the upper chamber.
Harsan cried out, and Eyil screamed too. The Pe Choi drew up short, facing the two brown-mailed soldiers. The monstrous Thunru’u did not pause but gathered Harsan up effortlessly and plunged forward into the dank, dripping tunnel. Hele’a followed with Eyil. The two armoured men scrambled into the hole as well, the last holding his short, barb-edged sword back to menace the Pe Choi.
It profited him nothing. Chtik p’Qwe knocked the blade aside with one of his upper limbs, jerked it out of the man’s grip with his lower pair of hands, and reached in with his other upper arm to drive chitinous claws into the warrior’s face. Red splashed down over the brown armour.
Something glinted burnished gold in Hele’a’s hand. He called, “Oh Nshe, One of Water! Flow into the stones and bring down the roof upon those who follow!”
There was a damp, sucking sound, and the water on the floor seemed to flow backward toward the tunnel entrance as the tide ebbs from a sandy shore.
Harsan still struggled in the Thunru’u’s grasp and thus saw what happened next. Moist earth came slithering down into the tunnel. For a moment Chtik p’Qwe’s arms waved wildly, and then the whole ceiling sagged. A torrent of mud and water and stones hid the Pe Choi from view, and all was dark.
Chapter Fourteen
Jutting teeth of sharp stone bit at Harsan’s back and shoulders as the Thunru’u wrestled him through the narrow tunnel. After a dozen paces the way opened out, and he sensed that they had entered a larger cavern. Their footsteps went echoing and racketing off into invisible distances, and the shrill tinkle of dripping water came back to them from velvety silences.
Hele’a of Ghaton ordered a halt, gave Eyil into the remaining soldier’s keeping, and struck flint to tinder. Soon he had a length of waxed tow alight, and with this he lit a torch from a pile seemingly placed there for just this purpose. The crackling orange blaze revealed an immense hall. Ornately carved, monolithic columns rose above their heads to support the unseen ceiling and marched away into black vastnesses. The near wall, through which Hele’a’s tunnel had been hacked, flowed and danced with graven gods, kings, and vertical blocks of twisting Engsvanyali script. These inscriptions likely proclaimed the eternal power and glory of the long-dead lords of Engsvan hla Ganga, the Golden Age that had succeeded the Priest Pavar and antedated the present Second Imperium of the Tlakotani Emperors by fifteen thousand years or more.
Harsan jerked and wriggled in a sudden effort to escape, but the flabby paws of the Thunru’u held him as easily as a smith holds a piece of rare iron in his tongs. Eyil was conscious but dazed, limp in the soldier’s arms.
Hele’a raised his torch and looked about. “Where is Shuk-kaino?”
The other man shrugged. “Dead, master, I guess. The Pe Choi slew him, and then the two of them were buried together when the Nshe brought down the roof. ’ ’
“What of the bag?”
“I have it here. Shukkaino carried nothing.”
“Let us see…” Hele'a rummaged through the cloth bag, making only a halfhearted attempt to avoid damaging the fragile manuscript leaves. He brought forth the rolled parchment that Harsan had taken from the dead hand of Kurrune the Messenger.
“What is this, priest Harsan?” he chuckled. “Another summons from the Emperor? Alas, no, just a clever couplet-this time taken from the Epic of Thaunii of Sokatis! One must be a literary critic to keep up with this Kurrune. But then he could not very well commit all his warnings to paper, could he? I would guess that he was coming to give you more detailed admonitions himself when Lord Sarku’s Worms of Death dropped upon him.” He broke off and chortled. “Splendid! A warning indeed, but not against us! Rather a caution against certain others!” (Did the man’s glance shift to Eyil?) “How suitable! We’ll leave this here for your grey-robes to find when they break through the wall. Then will they go galloping off in pursuit of the wrong prey!” He dropped the parchment to the floor and scuffed at it with his foot.
“Now,” he continued, “if you are reasonable, young man, we shall have the other relics-and well I know where you have put them. Then we shall leave you and your naked lady to await the coming of the industrious priests of Thumis, who are doubtless burrowing even now to find our trail.”
