He walked ahead of the others, while those who had been given bows strung them. It was time for them, now that they were approaching a place where they knew the enemy would be up and armed.
The end of the corridor behind them was a blank wall, and there were no doorways or archways along the walls. They passed by the torches and caged fireflies and started up the slope. At the end was a square-cornered opening about seven feet high and six feet wide. Across it was a spiderwebbish arrangement of gray strands bearing little bits of mica-like material. It was these that flickered in the shifting light of the torches.
"What is that?" Ishmael whispered.
"I do not know," Namalee said.
Ishmael took a torch from a man and stepped up close to the web and peered through it. The torch threw the shadow of the strands onto the floor behind it. Beyond was a vast darkness.
Ishmael hesitated. The web looked so fragile that he could not imagine why it had been set there. Or would breaking it set off an alarm, as the shaking of a spider's web transmitted vibrations to the waiting predator? If he burned it with his torch, and so avoided touching it, he still might release tension on strands connected to the web and leading back into the darkness. And the release of tension would awaken something in there.
He passed the torch across the face of the web and the flames licked them out of existence. The mica-stuff fell to the floor like metallic snowflakes.
A thrumming sound, faint but deep, came from the darkness.
Holding the torch ahead of him, Ishmael stepped through the doorway.
The light opened its own path. The room was even larger than he had thought. The ceiling was so high that the torchlight could not reach to it, and the walls receded at a slant into invisibility. Before him was a smooth stone floor that stretched into the heart of the mountain, or at least looked as if it did.
The air, however, was motionless, musty and warm. There were no shafts sunk along the walls.
The others came through the entrance and gathered behind him. Four held torches, and these pushed the darkness back more. But the ceiling was still shrouded, and the walls departed to the right and the left at an ever-increasing angle.
Namalee spoke very softly behind him. "It is said that when Booragangah led his people to this place, he found that others had lived here before him. There were some large chambers cut into the mountain itself and some perilous beasts living in them. The original inhabitants had died out or been killed by the perilous beasts. Booragangah slew some, but the others were too strong for him. So he shut them up, and his people cut other rooms and halls into the rock of the great ledge."
"Doubtless the story contains some elements of truth," Ishmael said. "But if there are any beasts here, they do not seem to have been shut up. How could that web hold anything in?"
"I do not know," she said. "But it might have an odor that we can't detect but that the beast can. Or there may be some other explanation."
Their whispers seemed to fly out like bats into a never- ending night. The darkness was absorbent; it sucked in everything, light, sound and, given a chance, it might suck in their bodies.
Ishmael, stepping forward again, holding the torch above him, was reminded that he really knew little of this world. Though he had crossed vast distances on it and seen strange things, he had become accustomed to much of it. But there must be many sinister things in this world, things which he would be ill-prepared to cope with because he would not understand their nature.
He went on. The torches were burning ships falling in the night. Darkness split ahead of them and fused behind them. And the stillness and silence continued.
After a while, Ishmael got the impression that the darkness was breathing. It was as if the darkness were itself an entity, a gigantic animal without form which lived on all sides of them.
Ishmael looked back at the doorway. It was a block of light -- but not the solid block it had been after he had burned off the web.
The web was back.
Namalee, who had also looked back, gasped.
The others turned their heads too.
"It may be some small animal which spins a web as soon as it is broken," Ishmael said. He tried to say it as if he meant it.
He turned away and began walking forward again. It would have been easy to panic then and dash toward the doorway and the web. Perhaps, though, that was what the spinner hoped they would do. In any event, they must go on.
Something whooshed by his head.
He spun, batting at it with his torch.
A round body, grayish in the light, with six thin legs and a round head with a big eye and a slit mouth from which a long sharp tooth stuck, sailed away into the darkness. Its body was about the size of his own head, and something very thin and slimy was emerging from its back. Then he realized that the thin slimy thing was a line, and that the other end was attached to the ceiling somewhere up there in the black. The creature had leaped out, probably from high up on a wall, and swung down and made a pass at his head.
These beasts might be quite harmless except as watch dogs to frighten away intruders or to cause them to make a noise which would alert the human sentinels.
The next creature came out of the darkness on the end of its line so swiftly that there was no defense. It shot out into the light and fastened its legs around the head of a sailor near Ishmael. The impact knocked the man backward, and his short spear clattered on the stone. The man next to him stabbed his spear into the creature, which spread out its six legs and fell off its victim's head. It lay on the floor, kicking.
The sailor did not get up.
Ishmael shook him and placed his head against his heart and then peeled back an eyelid.
"He's dead."
There were three little red marks on the man's neck where the claws at the end of the legs had scratched.
Something dark gray shot out of the darkness, and another sailor impaled it on his spear.
The spear was torn out of the man's grasp, but the thing was dead.
About thirty seconds later, another arced over their heads, but it went on into the darkness.
That the creatures didn't swing back showed that they were ending their swing on something hanging down from the ceiling.
Ishmael counted to twenty slowly and then told everybody to roll a few feet to one side immediately. At approximately thirty seconds after the last thing had swung over, another zoomed over them. It was lower to the floor than the previous one but not low enough because of the change of position of its intended prey.
There might be thousands of them -- a chilling vision -- but they seemed to be taking turns at thirty-second intervals.
Ishmael leaped up and threw the torch high into the air.
It turned over and over, lighting up only darkness, until it came to the top of its arc. It briefly illuminated the ends of three thick strands of grayish stuff hanging down from the darkness. The ceiling was still out of sight. But on each strand, clinging to it, was one of the creatures.