He felt a chill despite the growing heat of the day. What sort of a place had he invaded?
A cry from within the temple cut off further speculation. Tooke’s voice, telling everyone he’d found something.
Westphalen led the rest of the men inside.
Cool within, and very dark. Oil lamps set on pedestals along the ebony walls gave scant, flickering illumination. He had the impression of cyclopean sculptures rising against the black walls all around him, but could make out only an occasional highlight where pinpoints of light gleamed from a shiny surface. After seeing the friezes outside, he was quite content to let the details remain in shadow.
He turned his thoughts to other matters more immediately pressing. He wondered if Tooke and Russell had found the jewels. His mind raced over various strategies he would have to employ to keep what he needed for himself. For all he knew, he might need it all.
But the two scouts had found no jewels. Instead, they had found a man. He was seated in one of two chairs high on a dais in the center of the temple. Four oil lamps, each set on a pedestal placed every ninety degrees around the dais, lit the scene.
An enormous statue made of the same black wood as the temple rose behind the priest. It was a four-armed woman, naked but for an ornate headdress and a garland of human skulls. She was smiling, protruding her pointed tongue between her filed teeth. One hand held a sword, another a severed human head; the third and fourth hands were empty.
Westphalen had seen this deity before, but as a booksized drawing—not as a giant. He knew her name.
Kali.
With difficulty, Westphalen tore his gaze away from the statue and brought it to bear on the priest. He had typical Indian coloring and features but was a little heavier than most of his fellow countrymen. With his receding hairline he looked like a Buddha dressed in a white robe. He showed no trace of fear.
“I been talking to ’im, Captain,” Tooke said, “but ’e ain’t been—”
“I was merely waiting,” the priest suddenly said in deep tones that resonated through the temple, “for someone worth speaking to. Whom am I addressing, please?”
“Captain Sir Albert Westphalen.”
“Welcome to the temple of Kali, Captain.”
Westphalen heard no hint of welcome in his voice.
His eye was caught by the priest’s necklace—an intricate thing, silvery, inscribed with strange script, a pair of yellow stones with black centers spaced by two links at the front.
“So, you speak English, do you?” he said for want of something better.
This priest—the high priest of the temple, no doubt—unsettled him with his icy calm and penetrating gaze.
“Yes. When it appeared that the British were determined to make my country a colony, I decided it might be a useful language to know.”
Westphalen put down his anger at the smug arrogance of this heathen and concentrated on the matter at hand. He wanted to find the jewels and leave this place.
“We know you are hiding rebel sepoys here. Where are they?”
“There are no sepoys here. Only devotees of Kali.”
“Then what about this?” It was Tooke, standing by a row of waist-high urns. He had slashed through the waxy fabric that sealed the mouth of the nearest one and now held up his dripping knife. “Oil! Enough for a year. And there’s sacks of rice over there. More than any twenty ‘devotees’ need!”
The high priest never looked in Tooke’s direction. It was as if the soldier didn’t exist.
“Well?” Westphalen said at last. “What about the rice and oil?”
“Merely stocking in provisions against the turmoil of the times, captain,” the high priest said blandly. “One never knows when supplies might be cut off.”
“If you won’t reveal the whereabouts of the rebels, I shall be forced to order my men to search the temple from top to bottom. This will cause needless destruction.”
“That will not be necessary, Captain.”
Westphalen and his men jumped at the sound of the woman’s voice. As he watched, she seemed to take form out of the darkness behind the statue of Kali. She was shorter than the high priest, but well proportioned. She too wore a robe of pure white.
The high priest rattled something in a heathen tongue as she joined him on the dais; the woman replied in kind.
“What did they say?” Westphalen said to anyone who was listening.
Tooke replied: “He asked about the children; she said they were safe.”
For the first time, the priest admitted Tooke’s existence by looking at him, nothing more.
“What you seek, Captain Westphalen,” the woman said quickly, “lies beneath our feet. The only way to it is through that grate.”
She pointed to a spot beyond the rows of oil urns and sacks of rice. Tooke hopped over them and knelt down.
“Here it is! But”—he jumped to his feet again—“whoosh! The stink!”
Westphalen pointed to the soldier nearest him. “Hunter! Watch those two. If they try to escape, shoot them!”
Hunter nodded and aimed his Enfield at the pair on the dais. Westphalen joined the rest of the men at the grate.
It was square, perhaps ten feet on a side, made of heavy iron bars crisscrossing about six inches apart. Damp air, reeking of putrefaction, wafted up through the opening from the impenetrable darkness below.
Westphalen sent Malleson for one of the lamps from the dais. When it was brought to him, he dropped it through the grate. Its copper body rang against the bare stone floor fifteen feet below as it bounced and landed on its side. The flame sputtered and almost died, then wavered to life again. The brightening light flickered off the smooth stone surfaces on three sides of the well. A dark, arched opening gaped in the wall opposite them.
They looked down into what appeared to be the terminus of a subterranean passage.
And there in the two corners flanking the tunnel mouth stood small urns filled with colored stones—some green, some red, and some crystal clear.
Westphalen experienced an instant of vertigo. He had to lean forward against the grate to keep himself from collapsing.
Saved!
He quickly glanced around at his men. They had seen the urns, too. Accommodations would have to be made. If those urns were full of jewels, there would be plenty for all. But first they had to get them up here.
He began barking orders: Malleson was sent out to the horses for a rope; the remaining four were told to spread out around the grate and lift it off. They bent to it, strained until their faces reddened in the light filtering up from below, but could not budge it.
Westphalen was about to return to the dais and threaten the priest when he noticed simple sliding bolts securing the grate to rings in the stone floor at two of the corners; on the far side along one edge was a row of hinges.
As Westphalen freed the bolts it occurred to him how odd it was to lock up a treasure with such simple devices. But his mind was too full of the sight of those jewels below to dwell for long on bolts.
They raised the grate and propped it open with an Enfield. Malleson arrived with the rope then. At Westphalen’s direction he tied it to one of the temple’s support columns and tossed it into the opening. Westphalen was about to ask for a volunteer when Tooke squatted on the rim.
“Me father was a jeweler’s assistant,” he announced. “I’ll tell ye if there be anything down there to get excited about.”
He grasped the rope and began to slide down. Westphalen watched Tooke reach the floor and fairly leap upon the nearest urn. He grabbed a handful of stones and brought them over to the sputtering lamp. He righted it, then poured the stones from one hand to the other in the light.
“They’re real!” he shouted. “B’God, they’re real!”
Westphalen was speechless for a moment. Everything was going to be all right. He could go back to England, settle his debts, and never, never gamble again.
He tapped Watts, Russell, and Lang on the shoulders and
pointed below. “Give him a hand.”
The three men slid down the rope in rapid succession. Each made a personal inspection of the jewels. Westphalen watched their long shadows interweaving in the lamplight as they scurried around below. It was all he could do to keep from screaming at them to send up the jewels. He could not appear too eager. No, that wouldn’t do at all. He had to be calm.
Finally they dragged an urn over to the side and tied the rope around its neck. Westphalen and Malleson hauled it up, lifted it over the rim and set it on the floor.
Malleson dipped both hands into the jewels and brought up two fistfuls. Westphalen restrained himself from doing the same. He picked up a single emerald and studied it, outwardly casual, inwardly wanting to crush it against his lips and cry for joy.
“C’mon, up there!” said Tooke from below. “Let’s ’ave the rope, what. There be plenty more to come up and it stinks down ’ere. Let’s ’urry it up.”
Westphalen gestured to Malleson, who untied the rope from the urn and tossed the end over the edge. He continued to study the emerald, thinking it the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, until he heard one of the men say:
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“A noise. I thought I ’eard a noise in the tunnel there.”
“Yer daft, mate. Nothing in that black ’ole but stink.”
“I ’eard something, I tell you.”
Westphalen stepped up to the edge and looked down at the four men. He was about to tell them to stop talking and keep working when the priest and the woman broke into song. Westphalen whirled at the sound. It was like no music he had ever heard, the woman’s voice a keening wail, grating against the man’s baritone. No words, only disconnected notes, none of which seemed to belong together. No harmony, only discord. It set his teeth on edge.
They stopped abruptly.
And then came another sound. It rose from below, seeping from the mouth of the tunnel that terminated in the pit, growing in volume. A grumbled cacophony of moans and grunts and snarls that made each hair on the nape of his neck stand up one by one.
The sounds from the tunnel ceased, replaced by the dissonant singing of the priest and priestess. They stopped and the inhuman sounds from the tunnel answered, louder still, in a litany from hell.
Suddenly the singing was joined by a scream of pain and terror from below.
Westphalen looked over the edge and saw one of the men—Watts, he thought—being dragged by his legs into the black maw of the tunnel, shrieking. “It’s got me! It’s got me!”
But what had him? The tunnel mouth was a darker shadow within the shadows. What was pulling him?
Tooke and Russell had him by the arms and were trying to hold him back, but the force drawing him into the dark was as inexorable as the tide. It seemed Watts’s arms would be pulled from their sockets when a dark shape leaped from the tunnel and grabbed Tooke around the neck. It had a lean body and towered over the man. Westphalen could make out no details in the poor light and dancing shadows of the pandemonium below. But what little he saw was enough to make his skin tighten and shrink against his insides, and set his heart to beating madly.
The priest and the woman sang again. He knew he should stop them, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
Russell let go of Watts, who was quickly swallowed by the tunnel, and rushed to Tooke’s aid. But as soon as he moved, another dark figure leaped from the shadows and pulled him into the tunnel. With a final convulsive heave, Tooke too was dragged off.
Westphalen had never heard grown men scream in such fear. The sound sickened him. Yet he could not react.
And still the priest and the woman sang, no longer stopping for an answering phrase from the tunnel.
Only Lang remained below. He had the rope in his fists and was halfway up the wall, his face a white mask of fear, when two dark shapes darted out of the darkness and leaped upon him, pulling him down. He screamed for help, his eyes wild as he was dragged twisting and kicking into the blackness below. Westphalen managed to break the paralysis that had gripped him since his first glimpse of the denizens of the tunnel. He pulled his pistol from its holster. Beside him, Malleson had already moved into action—he aimed his Enfield and fired at one of the creatures. Westphalen was sure he saw it take the hit, but it didn’t seem to notice. He fired three shots into the two creatures before they disappeared from sight, taking the howling Lang with them.
Behind him the ghastly song went on, playing counterpoint to the agonized screams from the tunnel below, and all around him the stench …
Westphalen felt himself teetering on the edge of madness. He charged up to the dais.
“Stop it!” he screeched. “Stop it or I’ll have you shot!”
But they only smiled and continued their hellish song.
He gestured to Hunter, who didn’t hesitate. He raised his Enfield to his shoulder and fired.
The shot rang like an explosion through the temple. A red splatter bloomed upon the priest’s chest as he was thrown back against his chair. Slowly he slid to the floor. His mouth worked, his glazing eyes blinked twice, and then he lay still. The woman cried out and knelt beside him.
The song had stopped. So had the screams from below.
Once again silence ruled the temple. Westphalen drew a tremulous breath. If he could just have a moment to think, he could—
“Captain! They’re coming up!” Malleson cried, an edge of hysteria to his voice as he backed away from the pit. “They’re coming up!”
Panic clutching at him, Westphalen ran to the opening. Shadowy forms filled the chamber below. No growls or barks or hissing noises from down there, only the slither of moist skin against moist skin, and the rasp of talon against stone. The lamp had been extinguished and all he could see were dark milling bodies crowded against the walls—
—and climbing the rope!
He saw a pair of yellow eyes rising toward him. One of the things was almost to the top!
Westphalen holstered his pistol and drew his sword. With shaking hands he raised it above his head and chopped down with all his strength. The heavy rope parted cleanly and the distal end whipped away into the darkness below.
Pleased with his swordplay, he peered over the edge to see what the creatures would do now. Before his disbelieving eyes they began to climb the wall. But that was impossible. Those walls were as smooth as—
Now he saw what they were doing: The things were scrambling over and upon each other, reaching higher and higher, like a wave of black, foul water filling a cistern from below. He dropped his sword and turned to run, then forced himself to hold his position. If those things got out, there would be no escape for him. And he couldn’t die here. Not now. Not with a fortune sitting in the urn at his feet.
Westphalen mustered all his courage and stepped over to where Tooke’s Enfield propped up the grate. With teeth clenched and sweat springing out along the length of his body, he gingerly extended a foot and kicked the rifle into the pit. The grate slammed down with a resounding clang as Westphalen stumbled back against a pillar, sagging with relief. He was safe now.
The grate rattled; it shook, it began to rise.
Moaning with terror and frustration, Westphalen edged back toward the grate.
The bolts had to be fastened!
As he drew nearer, Westphalen witnessed a scene of relentless, incalculable ferocity. He saw dark bodies massed beneath the grate, saw talons gripping, raking, scoring the bars, saw teeth sharp and white gnash at the iron, saw flashes of utterly feral yellow eyes, devoid of fear, of any hint of mercy, consumed by a bloodthirst beyond reason and sanity. And the stench … it was almost overpowering.
Now he understood why the grate had been fastened as it had.
Westphalen sank to his knees, then to his belly. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to run, but he would not. He had come too far! He would not be robbed of his salvation! He could order his two remaining men toward the grate, but he kn
ew Malleson and Hunter would rebel. That would waste time and he had none to waste. He had to do it!
He began to crawl forward, inching his way toward the nearest bolt where it lay chained to the steel eye driven into the floor. He would have to wait until the corresponding ring on the shuddering, convulsing grate became aligned with the floor ring, and then shove the bolt home through both of them. Then and only then would he feel it safe to run.
Stretching his arm to the limit, he grasped the bolt and waited. The blows against the underside of the grate were coming with greater frequency and greater force. The ring on the grate rarely touched the floor, and when it did clank down next to the floor ring, it was there for but an instant. Twice he shoved the bolt through the first and missed the second. In desperation, he rose and placed his left hand atop the corner of the grate and threw all his weight against it. He had to lock this down!
It worked. The grate slammed against the floor and the bolt slid home, locking one corner down. But as he leaned against the grate, something snaked out between the bars and clamped on his wrist like a vise. It was a hand of sorts, three-fingered, each finger tapering to a long yellow talon; the skin was blue-black, its touch cold and wet against his skin.
Westphalen screamed in terror and loathing as his arm was pulled toward the seething mass of shadows below. He reared up and placed both boots against the edge of the grate, trying with all his strength to pull himself free.
But the hand only tightened its grip. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of his saber on the floor where he had dropped it, not two feet away. With a desperate lunge, he grabbed it by the hilt and started hacking at the arm that held him. Blood as dark as the skin that covered it spouted from the arm. Westphalen’s tenth swing severed the arm and he fell back onto the floor. He was free—
Yet the taloned hand still gripped his wrist with a life of its own!
Westphalen dropped the sword and pried at the fingers. Malleson rushed over and helped. Together they pulled the fingers far enough apart to allow Westphalen to extricate his arm. Malleson hurled it onto the grate where it clung to one of the bars until pulled loose by one of the fiends below.