The riders left them, returning to the camp. Carey moved on slowly
toward the cliffs. It became apparent where the well must be. A
great arching cave-mouth showed in the rose-pink coral and men were
coming and going there, watering their animals. Carey approached it
and began the monotonous chant that etiquette required, asking that
way be made for the dead, so that warriors and pregnant women and
persons undergoing ritual purifications would be warned to go aside.
The warriors made way. Carey passed out of the cruel sunlight into
the shadow of an irregular vaulted passage, quite high and wide, with
a floor that sloped upward, at first gently and then steeply, until
suddenly the passage ended in an echoing cathedral room dim-lit by
torches that picked out here and there the shape of a fantastic flying
buttress of coral. In the center of the room, in a kind of broad basin,
was the well.
* * * * *
Now for the first time Arrin broke her silence with a soft anguished
cry. There were seven or eight warriors guarding the well, as Carey had
known there would be, but they drew away and let Carey's party severely
alone. Several men were in the act of watering their mounts, and as
though in deference to tabu Carey circled around to get as far away
from them as possible. In the gloom he made out the foot of an age-worn
stairway leading upward through the coral. Here he stopped.
He helped Arrin down and made her sit, and then dragged Derech from the
litter and laid him on the hard coral. The animals bolted for the well
and he made no effort to hold them. He filled one of the bags for Arrin
and then he flung himself alongside the beasts and drank and soaked
himself in the beautiful cold clear water. After that he crouched still
for a few moments, in a kind of daze, until he remembered that Derech
too needed water.
He filled two more bags and took them to Arrin, kneeling beside her as
though in tender concern as she sat beside her dead. His spread cloak
covered what she was doing, holding the water-bag to Derech's mouth so
that he could drink. Carey spoke softly and quickly. Then he went back
to the animals. He began to fight them away from the water so that they
should not founder themselves. The activity covered what was going on
in the shadows behind them. Carey led them, hissing and stamping, to
where Arrin and Derech had been, still using them as a shield in case
the guards were watching. He snatched up his axe and the remaining
water-bag and let the animals go and ran as fast as he could up the
stairway. It spiralled, and he was stumbling in pitch darkness around
the second curve before the guards below let out a great angry cry.
He did not know whether they would follow or not. Somebody fumbled for
him in the blackness and Derech's voice muttered something urgent.
He could hear Arrin panting like a spent hound. His own knees shook
with weakness and he thought what a fine militant crew they were to
be taking on Wales and his men and thirty angry Shunni. Torchlight
flickered against the turn of the wall below and there was a confusion
of voices. They fled upward, pulling each other along, and it seemed
that the Shunni reached a point beyond which they did not care to go.
The torchlight and the voices vanished. Carey and the others climbed a
little farther and then dropped exhausted on the worn treads.