“What was that?” demanded a voice, originating, seemingly, at the far end of the chamber.
Gor Hajus looked at me and shrugged his shoulders in resignation (he must have been thinking what I was thinking—that with two avenues we had chosen the wrong one) but he smiled and there was no reproach in his eyes.
“It sounded from the direction of the Great Tur,” replied a second voice.
“Perhaps someone is at the door,” suggested the first speaker.
Gor Hajus and I were flattened against the back of the statue that we might postpone as long as possible our inevitable discovery should the speakers decide to investigate the origin of the noise that had attracted their suspicions. I was facing against the polished stone of the figure’s back, my hands outspread upon it. Beneath my fingers were the carven bits of its ornamental harness—jutting protuberances that were costly gems set in these trappings of stone, and there were gorgeous inlays of gold filigree; but these things I had no eyes for now. We could hear the two conversing as they came nearer. Perhaps I was nervous, I do not know. I am sure I never shrank from an encounter when either duty or expediency called; but in this instance both demanded that we avoid conflict and remain undiscovered. However that may be, my fingers must have been moving nervously over the jeweled harness of the figure when I became vaguely, perhaps subconsciously, aware that one of the gems was loose in its setting. I do not recall that this made any impression upon my conscious mind, but I do know that it seemed to catch the attention of my wandering fingers and they must have paused to play with the loosened stone.
The voices seemed quite close now—it could be but a matter of seconds before we should be confronted by their owners. My muscles seemed to tense for the anticipated encounter and unconsciously I pressed heavily upon the loosened setting—whereat a portion of the figure’s back gave noiselessly inward revealing to us the dimly lighted interior of the statue. We needed no further invitation; simultaneously we stepped across the threshold and in almost the same movement I turned and closed the panel gently behind us. I think that there was absolutely no sound connected with the entire transaction; and following it we remained in utter silence, motionless—scarce breathing. Our eyes became quickly accustomed to the dim interior which we discovered was lighted through numerous small orifices in the shell of the statue, which was entirely hollow, and through these same orifices every outside sound came clearly to our ears.
We had scarcely closed the opening when we heard the voices directly outside it and simultaneously there came a hammering on the door by which we had entered the apartment from the corridor. “Who seeks entrance to Xaxa’s Temple?” demanded one of the voices within the room.
“ ’Tis I, dwar of the Jeddara’s Guard,” boomed a voice from without. “We are seeking two who came to assassinate Xaxa.”
“Came they this way?”
“Think you, priest, that I should be seeking them here had they not?”
“How long since?”
“Scarce twenty tals since,” replied the dwar.
“Then they are not here,” the priest assured him, “for we have been here for a full zode1 and no other has entered the temple during that time. Look quickly to Xaxa’s apartments above and to the roof and the hangars, for if you followed them up the spiral there is no other where they might flee.”
“Watch then the temple carefully until I return,” shouted the warrior and we heard him and his men moving on up the spiral.
Now we heard the priests conversing as they moved slowly past the statue.
“What could have caused the noise that first attracted our attention?” asked one.
“Perhaps the fugitives tried the door,” suggested the other.
“It must have been that, but they did not enter or we should have seen them when they emerged from behind the Great Tur, for we were facing him at the time, nor have once turned our eyes from this end of the temple.”
“Then at least they are not within the temple.”
“And where else they may be is no concern of ours.”
“No, nor if they reached Xaxa’s apartment, if they did not pass through the temple.”
“Perhaps they did reach it.”
“And they were assassins!”
“Worse things might befall Phundahl.”
“Hush! the gods have ears.”
“Of stone.”
“But the ears of Xaxa are not of stone and they hear many things that are not intended for them.”
“The old she-banth!”
“She is Jeddara and High Priestess.”
“Yes, but—” the voices passed beyond the range of our ears at the far end of the temple, yet they had told me much—that Xaxa was feared and hated by the priesthood and that the priests themselves had none too much reverence for their deity as evidenced by the remark of one that the gods have ears of stone. And they had told us other things, important things, when they conversed with the dwar of the Jeddara’s Guard.
Gor Hajus and I now felt that we had fallen by chance upon a most ideal place of concealment, for the very guardians of the temple would swear that we were not, could not be, where we were. Already had they thrown
