"Good?" muttered Alos. "This stone crack?"
"Aye," replied the Fjordlander. "They can only come at us from one direction."
"They?" quavered Alos.
"They. The foe. Whether one or many," replied Egil.
"Like the thing that howls," added Ferret.
"Eep!" squealed Alos, and he huddled down against the stone wall behind.
That night they stood ward in overlapping shifts: Aiko and Alos, Alos and Delon, Delon and Ferret, Ferret and Egil, Egil and Arin, Arin and Aiko. Again there came in the middle of the night another prolonged howl, seeming louder than before, jerking sleepers awake, weapons springing to hand, yet nought came at them from the darkness.
With a half moon above, just ere dawn Egil moaned and thrashed in his sleep, visited by a hideous dream.
They broke camp as the slash of sky lightened, and soon were on the trail again, the camels grunting in sullen ire, angered at having had nothing to eat but a meager amount of grain and nothing to drink at all, angered as well at having to bear riders and cargo, or so it seemed.
Once more the dark shadows turned scarlet as the day seeped down into the land of red stone. The trail twisted and wrenched through the labyrinthine maze, passages shattering off in directions without number, leftward, rightward, veering hindward as well. Choice after choice Arin made as the rarely glimpsed sun angled up in the sky, seen only when the chasms skewed easterly.
"Garlon, but I'd swear we're going in circles," grumped Alos. "That, or we're lost altogether."
"What makes you say that?" asked Ferret.
"This canyon, that rock, I vow we've passed it a thousand times."
"A thousand times?"
Alos growled. "Well, more than once, that's for certain."
Ferret shook her head. "I don't think so, Alos. I believe with all this red rock, everything looks the same."
Delon grunted in agreement. "Even the red is beginning to look normal to my eyes. -I wonder if it's possible to become used to Hel."
Midday came and went, and still they pressed onward, riding and walking, peril growing with each stride, Aiko now insisting on taking the lead every step of the way, though she paused at the junctions for Arin to make a choice.
Midafternoon came and then eve drew nigh, the crimson shadows mustering again deep in the chasms below.
Alos groaned. "Another night in this blasted maze, with night after night to come. Lost in your Hel, Delon. Trapped forever. We'll never find our way back out."
Before Delon could reply, Aiko rounded a turn and there before her in solid rock stood the opening of an arched tunnel, low and narrow and black. "Yojin sum!" she called. "Beware."
"This is carved, not natural," said Egil. "See: hammered drill rods and mattocks shaped this way."
As Aiko looked up at the steep canyon walls, a canyon dead-ended but for the tunnel, Arin said, 'The trail goes in."
Egil glanced from one to the other. "Then so do we."
"Can the camels squeeze through?" asked Ferret. "I mean, it's like an eye of a needle."
Delon looked at the camels and then at the opening before them. "I think so. But we'll have to lead them."
"Not yet," said Egil.
Aiko, her swords in hand, nodded and said, "Egil is right. I would not want to be trapped in there with camels blocking the retreat. I will go afoot and see where this leads."
"Not alone," said Egil. "I will go with you."
"As will I," said Delon.
"Me, too," added Ferret.
"I'll guard the camels," said Alos, drawing back from the dark entrance. "But not by myself."
Arin looked from one to the other, and then sighed. "I will stay with thee, Alos."
Egil turned to the Dylvana and embraced her and said, "Be ready to flee." Then he kissed her and stepped away and hefted his axe.
Delon lit a small oil lantern, and weapons at the ready, they entered the dim opening.
The tunnel floor was level, and within ten strides the corridor turned sharply to the left. "It reminds me of the way beneath Gudrun's fortress walls," whispered Egil.
"Just so," said Aiko. "Carved to keep siege engines at bay."
"There are no murder holes," hissed Delon.
"Not in this stretch, at least," replied Egil.
Again the corridor turned sharply, this time to the right, and ahead they could see a portcullis down and a glimmer of the dying day beyond.
"Put out the light," sissed Aiko. As Delon quenched the lantern, Aiko added, "Go softly. The peril lies just beyond the gate."
Cautiously they approached the heavy grille, and in the dim light, just as they reached the bars a voice called out, "Min int?"
Startled, they flattened themselves against the walls in the narrow way. And again the voice called out, "Min int?"
It came from above.
Egil looked up, but saw nought. He took a deep breath. "We are friends."
There was a slight pause, and then: "Friends?" replied the voice, a woman's, accented as was the 'alim's. "Yet you come with weapons in hand?"
Egil glanced at Aiko. "We sensed peril."
"Ah. Many things are perilous. What do you seek?"
Again Egil looked at Aiko, and then at Ferret and Delon. At a nod from each he replied, "We come in urgency and seek a keeper of faith in the Temple of the Labyrinth."
Long moments passed, but finally, with a clanking and grinding of gears and the clack of a ratchet, the heavy portcullis screeched upward in its tracks. It stopped at the halfway point.
"Enter," called the voice.
Egil started to stoop under, but Aiko stopped him. He turned to her and said, "If the temple is here, we must take risks."
She looked at him, her gaze impassive, and then nodded.
Together they ducked under the teeth of the grille, Delon and Ferret following.
They came into a vast opening, a sheer-walled circular basin nearly two full miles across, hemmed in all 'round by vertical red stone reaching up to the evening sky above.
"Stand!" came a command from behind.
They stopped and slowly turned.
Behind a low castellated parapet upon a wall above the portcullis stood perhaps fifty dark-haired women of varying ages, all dressed in red robes matching the stone and armed with bows drawn to the full, nocked arrows aimed at the foursome's breasts. Among them and in the center, at a notch in the wall where leaned a ladder, stood a tall man dressed in a red robe as well. Looking to be in his early thirties, he was some six feet four and weighed perhaps two hundred twenty lithe pounds. His hair was a sunbleached auburn, his skin desert tanned, and his eyes were ice-blue. His hands rested upon the hilts of a great two-handed sword, its point grounded on the banquette above.
Aiko looked at him, puzzlement in her eyes, and she sheathed her swords and said to Egil, "I do not understand. He is not the peril, yet the peril is within him."
CHAPTER 52
You say you come seeking a keeper of faith," called down one of the women, an elder, standing to the left of the man. She wore no veil, nor did any of the women. "We are all keepers of faith herein."
Egil slipped his axe into his belt and motioned Delon and Ferret to sheathe their weapons. As they did so, the woman called out in a low voice, "Wakaf lataht'." The women released the tension on their bows and lowered the weapons.
Empty-handed, Egil said, "We have come far and have a tale to tell."
"Before you begin, do you wish me to send someone to bring in your last two companions along with your camels?" she asked as she signaled to the man to descend. Shouldering his great sword, he started downward, the woman following.
Egil glanced at Aiko. Keeping a wary eye toward the big man descending, the Ryodoan nodded and said, "Unless provoked, there is no peril in these women. But as to the man, I cannot say. Even so, Dara Arin should be safe."
By this time, the man and woman had reached the base of the ladder, and now many of the other women started down, though some stayed on the banquette.