There were about fifty of the eggish lumps in the body. The rest was apparently occupied by little but fatty tissue and a circulatory system, though this was only his guess.
Ishmael straightened up and signaled that they should proceed. They all kept one hand by their necks, and they kept glancing upward, as if they expected to see a purplish tentacle drop into the illuminated world of the torches.
After walking sixty paces, Ishmael stopped them again and again Karkri tossed a torch upward. The light flared briefly on a dozen tentacles uncoiling slowly from the darkness above.
Ishmael had no idea of what was causing this concerted action now. Perhaps the beasts, in, whatever form of communication they used, had conferred and decided that individual action was a failure. Or perhaps the death of one resulted in triggering an instinct which activated them to a communal effort.
Ishmael gave an order, and the band ran forward. They stayed, together, however, and each kept a hand by his neck. They had not gone forty steps before a dozen tentacles shot like frogs' tongues down from the blackness. Each dropped around a neck and its neighboring hand and tightened.
Namalee was one of those caught.
Ishmael spun around at the cries of those seized. He barked an order to the archers to crouch close to the floor, and to fire upward at random as best they could in this position. They were safer from attack now than if they had been standing up. And they sent shaft after shaft into the upper darkness.
Ishmael rammed the torch against the tentacle, and it released the man and snapped upward and out of sight. The odor of burned flesh trailed from it as smoke from a rocket.
Ishmael leaped upward, grabbing the slimy, ropy limb that was hauling Namalee upward. His weight pulled them both down, and with his other hand he passed the surface of the torch along the tentacle. It uncoiled and dropped them both on the stone floor.
By then the othe torch-bearers were burning the tentacles, and these uncoiled and withdrew.
Something heavy struck the floor ahead of them. After reorganizing, they proceeded ahead and shortly their lights flickered on a dead beast. An arrow had pierced one of the lumpy organs.
Torch men stood on the periphery of the group and waved the brands wildly. A single torchman in the center of the group waved his brand. Ishmael hoped by this positioning of the torches to discourage the beasts. Within forty yards they saw the wall of the chamber and a small square opening. They ran into it, though Ishmael would have liked to have gone slowly and cautiously. The builders of this place may have anticipated that those who ran the gantlet of the tentacles would dive headlong into this entrance as a mouse goes into a hole when the cat is after it.
But there was, by then, no appealing to the better sense of the group.
Their torches showed them a corridor that curved to the right. It was wide enough for two to go abreast and the ceiling was two men high. It continued to curve to the right for about eighty paces and then curved to the left. After about a hundred paces, they came to a stairway cut out of stone. This was so narrow that they would have to go in single file. The ascent was very steep, and the walls curved to the right.
Ishmael led the way, holding a torch in one hand and a spear in the other. As he ascended, he wondered how far these chambers of horrors extended. It was possible that they went on and on and finally ended in a blank wall or in some trap which no one could possibly escape. But he did not see how the Booragangahns could afford to stock these rooms with very many guardians. The beasts could not subsist on trespassers alone. It was doubtful that anybody had penetrated into this area since the chambers had been carved, To keep the guardians alive, the Booragangahns had to feed them. And even if the beasts existed most of the time in a dormant state, they still had to be fed from time to time. From the viewpoint of economy alone, the beasts had to be limited in number.
Presently the narrow stairway straightened out. Ishmael kept on climbing and, when he had counted three hundred, he stopped.
Above was the top of the stairs. And on it squatted a huge stone figure.
It was gray and shaped something like a tortoise with a frog's head and a badger's legs. The highest point, the crest of the tortoise shell, was about four feet from the floor. It quivered with the eternal shaking of the rock, and this motion gave it a semblance of life.
The eyes were as gray and stonelike as the rest of the body.
But when Ishmael got close enough to look into one of the eyes, he thought he saw it swivel within the eye socket.
His nerves were slipping their moorings, he thought, and he stepped into the hall which the figure guarded.
The stone head turned with a creaking.
Had it not been for the noise, Ishmael would have been caught unawares and the stone jaws would have closed on his arm.
He jumped away and the jaws clanged shut as if they were made of iron.
At the same time, the body lifted on its badgerish legs and started to turn.
Ishmael rammed his spear into the mouth, when the jaws opened again.
A yellowish fluid sprayed out of the mouth into Namalee's face and she fell backward against the man on the step below her. Ishmael leaped up and jumped up onto the thing's back. He pulled out his stone knife and began chipping away at its right eye. His knife shattered, and then the neck of the thing creaked as it slid far out from the shell. Ishmael could no longer reach the head to stab at it, and it dipped to get at Namalee.
The head continued to approach Namalee, the neck seeming to be of interminable length. Ishmael could see that the neck was of stone, or covered with stone. But the silicon consisted of hundreds of tiny plates, and these slid one over the other as the thing moved its neck from side to side and bent it downward.
Ishmael stood up on the tortoise-shaped shell and leaped outward. He came down astraddle the extended neck just behind the massive head. His weight carried the neck and head down until the head slammed into the steps. More yellowish fluid spurted out from the thing's open mouth, and then abruptly the jet became a trickle.
There was no more movement from the creature.
Ishmael got off the neck and slid down alongside the head. The gray hard eyes were as stony and lifeless as before, but this time the thing seemed to be actually dead. The mouth was still open, and a torch showed that Ishmael's spear and Karkri's arrow had pierced a huge eyeball-like organ in the cavity past the throat. This no longer pulsed, though some of the yellowish fluid was still oozing out from around the shafts of the two weapons. Ishmael asked Namalee if she had been hurt, and she replied that only her emotions were pained. Then he rapped on the thing's hide. If the skin of the beast was not indeed granite, it was something very like it. What manner of beast was this that excreted a skin which hardened into stone?
Namalee and the others said that they had never heard of such a creature, not even in the many tales of horrible beasts they had heard from their grandmothers.
"But it is dead now," Ishmael said. "I do not know where the Booragangahns got this creature. I suppose they may have found it buried in the heart of the mountain when they carved these steps. I hope this was the only one they found. At least we will not have to worry about it on the way back."