Above the hard breathings of the crew Ishmael heard a hissing from the boat behind and to the right of them. Ishmael told the others to stop, and the boat slid to a halt, pressing against the rock bottom. To see what was going on, it was necessary to push against the rock to lower the boat. Ishmael squirmed around while everybody else pushed. The boat to the right was about six feet away and was only a dim shape in the blackness.
Vargajampa, the third mate, said softly, "Joognaja! There is a shaft in the rocks here!"
"What size?" Ishmael called back. He hoped that there was no one listening at the upper end of the shaft.
"Just large enough! There is a grille of wood in the opening, however!" Ishmael gave the order, and his crew began working the boat toward the other, while that one moved away.
Namalee had told him that, as far as she knew, no one had ever penetrated into an enemy's city in this manner. In fact, though raids had been made at night, they were always either sudden massive onslaughts or a few ships sailing in, destroying, looting and then getting away as swiftly as possible. No one had ever carried out such a plan as Ishmael's or even suggested it.
Despite this, however, the possibility of such was recognized. That explained why the shafts were screened and sometimes guarded.
When the boat was centered under the shaft, Ishmael gripped the latticework of wood set into it and pulled. The grille failed to yield. By probing through the spaces between the bars with a slender stick, he determined that a rope was secured with hard wooden pegs to each corner on the inside of the screen. The other end of the ropes must be secured to the inside of a grille set in the top end of the shaft. It was possible that a pull on this grille would drag the other down and set off an alarm mechanism.
To avoid this, he inserted a slender stick with a flint knife on one end and cut the ropes. Then, after some hard pulling and prying with a sharp stick, he managed to get the grille loose. He stood up slowly and pulled himself up by one of the ropes into the shaft. After that, to avoid pulling the grille loose, and so precipitating himself down the shaft, he braced himself against the walls. It was not easy to climb in that manner. The tunnel was so narrow that he had to hold himself in, and progress upward, by using his knees, and shove upward a few inches. This would have taken the skin off his back and knees and hands if he had not clothed himself in thin leather and put on thin leather gloves. Nevertheless, before he got to the top, the leather was worn through. And he was puffing and panting and sweating and trembling. On reaching the top, he waited until his breathing had become inaudible. He listened for sounds: a foot scraping against the stone, snoring, heavy breathing, but could hear nothing except the blood in his ears.
The grille above him came out with a skreaking that tore at his nerves as the stone had torn at his leather clothes. He waited a while after it had come loose and then inched up, expecting to have his head split open by a stone ax when it emerged. But there was no one waiting for him. He lit a match and looked around. The room, a cube cut out of rock, was empty except for some boxes in one corner.
He hoisted himself out and lay for a moment on the floor, which trembled beneath him. When he rose, he went to the open doorway and looked down it but could see nothing because of the darkness. He returned to the shaft and uncoiled the rope bound about his waist. It fell down the shaft and was seized by someone below and given a tug. Ishmael sat down, holding the rope, his feet braced against the opposite lip of the shaft. He held on while Namalee climbed up it. After she was out, she helped him hold the rope while Karkri came up.
Karkri and she held the rope while the next sailor came up.
Ishmael took a small torch Namalee had carried up in a sack. He lit it and then proceeded down the hall corridor. The open entrances on either side gave to more storerooms. At one end, the corridor stopped against stone; at the other, it opened into a stairway cut out of the rock. This curved around and up. Ishmael decided not to go any further until all of the men had come up the shaft. This was a slow process. The empty boats had to be slid away, and the balancing of each boat required a careful moving around. Every time a man went up a shaft, the equilibrium of the boat was affected.
One boat was to remain with three men aboard. These would wait until three hours had passed. If the others had not returned by then, the three were to take their boat back to the Roolanga and the next phase would begin.
Ishmael led the band to the next level, which was much like the lower one. The corridor, however, was twice as long as the one beneath it. And the one above that was double the length of the one below it.
Booragangah seemed to be built much as Zalarapamtra was. This, too, would have had an upside-down pyramid-like appearance if a cross-section had been cut in it. The next level should be twice as long as the one below it, and it was. This, however, was lit here and there with torches or with the less bright but low-oxygen-using fireflies. The torches or cages were set in stone rings carved out of the wall. The few people within were sleeping.
They passed on. It might have been best to kill the slaves, but there was always the chance that one would wake and cry out. And these were not going to attack the invaders if they should be forced back this way. They would stand to one side and let invaders and invaded fight it out.
The Zalarapamtrans proceeded more swiftly. The fact that the layout of the tunnels was much like that of their own city assured them that they could find the way to the temple. They went up the next stairway and turned to the left to go in toward the mountain. But Ishmael and two others went ahead without torches and with knives ready while the others waited below. This corridor was dark, and a few random explorations of chambers along the way disclosed more storerooms, one of them an arsenal. These contained no weapons which the band did not have.
The party went to the other end of the corridor. This did not end in a wall, as the others did, but in another staircase. Namalee said that she expected this, since the corridor of her city on this level also had a staircase.
"This should lead up to another corridor at the end of which is another stairway to still another corridor. But that one will lead to the temple of the gods. Only..."
"Only what?" Ishmael said.
"A long time ago, when even my great-grandparents were not yet born, a Zalarapamtran escaped from Booragangah. He told some strange stories. One says that there are guardians of the temple of the gods of Booragangah. Not human guardians. Beasts that the founder of this city, the hero Booragangah himself, could not kill. So he left them here in places where the unwary would encounter them, and --"
"We've no time for folk tales," Ishmael said. But when he had climbed the next staircase and looked around the corner, he was not so sure that there was not something strange in this place.
This hallway, unlike the others, was brightly lit. Torches and cages of fireflies were set within stone rings every six feet, two cages for every torch. The hallway ran deep into the shelf, or into the mountain, for he was not certain how deeply they had penetrated. At the far end the corridor tilted upward. The lower end was still visible, however, and something across it flickered brightly in the torchlight.
Ishmael finally stepped out from around the corner. The air passed across his face like a cold hand. At the junction of wall and floor were many holes about six inches across. Apparently these were shafts drilled through to the bottom of the shelf. He did not know what caused the air to move. What did come to him was a vision of the ledge drilled through with many holes and the tiny cracks that had to be developed in the ledge with the constant vibration of earthtides and quakes and the cracks spreading and reaching the shafts and then, inevitably, a great piece of the ledge falling off.