After some groaning, they went on, down and around a long curve. Where the passage straightened was another change. This time a section of floor was pitch black. Not the light-absorbing black of magic, nor the gloss black of polished stone, but a flat black. Rakt tilted his head back, to shine his glowstone on the ceiling.

“Bars of iron. If the floor is dangerous, why set them there? Unless it is some combination of the two that kills. The traps to date have not been as deadly as they could be; is this of the same sort?”

He reached out and touched the surface lightly with a dagger point. It held the blade a moment before he could tug it free. A coin tossed towards the centre stuck fast on landing.

“Very like pitch,” Rakt said.

Chrys spell-lofted a scrap of rag across the pitchy surface. Half-way across the magic failed and it sank to the floor. The floor rose, steadily and swiftly, to meet the bars overhead. There was a hiss and the smell of scorching. They were looking at a black wall.

“Right,” said Rakt. “First, it’s a good thing it was not one of us, or they would be stuck, suffocated and griddled. Second, if it stays like this, what do we do?”

They waited, then pried at the pitchy wall, watching it ooze back over any cuts they made, then waited some more. At last the pitch freed itself from the ceiling with a slow sucking sound and subsided until it was again a level floor.

“I cannot fly all of us over, and this place saps access to the ether. We cannot touch it, and it is too long and low for the Giant’s Leap to carry anyone across,” Chrys summed up. “Ideas?”

Cardnial had a suggestion. “I have been working on a variant of the Rising Rope. Instead of holding the rope vertical, it holds it horizontal. What if we cast that and could walk across? Our ropes are long enough.”

A trial with a first rope was promising. It stretched across the pitch in a rigid line, knee-high. Since no-one was confident in their tightrope walking skills, Chrys cast a second rope at shoulder height. First Aitonala, then the others edged across, sliding their feet cautiously along the line. When Cardnial dropped to the floor they were all exhausted, as much from long tension as exertion. They drank, then limped on.

Twenty more paces and they entered a large round space, faintly lit. Their glowstones showed some litter against a wall, a short stone pedestal in the centre and a large black door at the far side. Cardnial walked over, stirred the rubbish with a foot. The glow beneath brightened, and he stooped to turn to pick up a metal headband. An inset glowstone still shone feebly.

“A pack, a broken axe, an empty water bottle. No bones, yet these are left. Why did they leave them?”

Rakt was looking at the door. “They broke the axe on this. You can see the marks. I think they died down here – maybe gave up and went into the pitch.”

“I have maybe two minor spells left,” said Chrys. “After that, we are down to force, because I do not think I will recover enough access to do much more. This place presses on the ether.”

Deyilan nudged the broken axe, then checked the door. “If that axe broke making these scratches, then no force we can bring will do any good.”

They all contemplated the bleak room in gloomy silence. Chrys sighed and put on the green wax, only to pass on that Hassani could sense nothing through the door. Aitonala wandered to the pedestal, and fingered a small depression in the top.

“Perhaps something fits in here? Or it accepts offerings?” They tried water, coconut milk, a piece of dried meat, bread, coins of copper, silver and gold, a reluctant drop of blood. Nothing worked. Deyilan was right, too, in that no force at their command made any impression on the door. At last they sat around dejected, too tired even to talk.

Bajur sat apart, murmuring his devotions, then prostrating himself in prayer. After a time he went to the door, then to the pedestal, then came to the group and formally bowed.

“It may be that my sins have led us to failure.” Chrys looked up, wondering what Bajur had done that was worse than anything everyone else had done. If Bajur’s sins doom him, she thought, then we are all damned indeed.

Bajur bowed again. “It would relieve my heart to tell you.”

Chrys looked around, shrugged. “We have nothing better to do, and we are not going anywhere.”

Bajur sat, cleared his throat, placed his hands palm down on the floor.

“My mother was an advocate of the Gracious God.” Here Bajur lifted a hand to touch forehead and lips, then circle his chest. “When she was called she went to the front line, and was captured. I now think this was not an accident, but she said no word ever to me against her comrades. She was not ransomed, and so the Saka bound her to the Red Branch. I was born eight months after her capture.”

He swallowed, then resumed. “She served faithfully, as she did everything faithfully. The Saka are not officially cruel, so she was freed when they judged she had paid her ransom. Yet she stayed, although she never told me why, and brought me up in the faith, and instructed me in the body-magic granted by the Gracious God.”

Bajur paused again. “If I did not have an easy time while my mother lived, I had a worse time after her death. I do not say this to justify my actions. I was among the Saka, but not of them, and a Brahnak in belief when Brahnaks were the enemy, and had been the enemy time out of mind. Few doors were open to me, fewer still the ones I would enter. I spent much time alone, much of it in places I would not be looked for.

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One such place was underneath a store-room of the Red Branch. I was there when I thought to look up and found a board had rotted, exposing leather sacks. One of those had rotted too, and coins and a small bag fell into my hand when I poked it. In my misery I thought it was a sign, that the Gracious God had sent me gild for my mother. It was after that I felt a need to go, to journey north and west, the God drawing me. So I changed one of the coins for silver in the market and went to Serneh-on-the-Edge, where I met you. Two coins I gave to the God’s servants at Brafa, one more I spent in my travels, and one I still have. Yet this theft has been on my mind since we came to this place of apes and skulls and sacrifices. The Gracious God would not lead me astray, but would this?”

Bajur reached into a pocket sewn into his belt, drew out a small bag of stained leather, opened it and emptied the content into his palm. It was the figure of an ape, done in gold, half the size of his thumb.

Aitonala looked at it. “Bajur,” she asked gently, “you did not hear Skaia’s story, did you?”

Bajur shook his head. “My Dravish is still poor.”

“I think we have been led, although by whom and to what end we shall now find out,” Aitonala said calmly. She took the figurine from his palm, walked over and placed it in the niche on the pedestal. The door made a grinding noise and opened a hands-breadth.

“Fishtits! Give us some warning!” Deyilan scrambled to his feet, spear at the ready. Rakt joined him, then Bajur. There was no sound from the door. Aitonala circled to one side, snatched a quick peek through the gap. She raised her hands.

“Nothing moving. Stairs down.” After a cautious interval they pried the door wider, making a stressful screech. Still nothing emerged, so they crept down the stairs, as watchful as if entering a dragon’s cave, to emerge breathless into another room. This held only a black metal chest on a stone block and, beyond it, a well where black water lay still as glass.

Chrys let herself unwind, then realised that the stifling pressure that had lain over her ether-sense had lifted a little. Or balanced might be better, she thought. Balanced by the power pouring from the metal chest, a wave of etheric force as loud as a shout. And there, on the lid of the chest, an ape head engraved. I am unsurprised, she thought. Her next thought was spoken aloud.

“So is this the treasure? A chest that maybe holds a dead ape? One that will attract everything sensitive to magic like flies to carrion? Is that it?

Rakt was more focused on the immediate. “Whatever it is, we need to get us and it out of here, and not back the way we came.”

The chest was not large, of black metal, with no visible way to open it. No hinges, no keyhole, no seam. Two recesses gave a grip, and that was all. Rakt touched it gingerly, then curled his fingers and lifted. It came up with little effort. Whatever the contents, it was not full of gold.

Aitonala had fished in the well with her spear. “It’s deep, but there is an entrance under water about an arms’ length down. Who is the best swimmer?”

Deyilan volunteered, stripped to his drawers and tied their last line about his waist. He lowered himself gingerly, swearing as the cold reached his groin, took a deep breath and disappeared. He re-appeared before they could get too anxious, to report that it surfaced in an empty passage. One by one they entered the chill water, towing their wrapped gear. The chest went through on a line. Rakt was the last. He looked around the gloomy chamber, wondered how long it had held its secret and how many had died trying to reach this place. He held his breath and ducked into the flooded tunnel.

They dressed, shivering, on the far side. The weak light cast by glowstones shone on puddled water on the stone, tinged with pink where blood had seeped through bandages. There was nothing to do but go on. They shouldered packs, took up the rope-slung chest and set out. At least, Chrys thought, they were going up, towards air and sky. Around they went in a great curve, around again, and Aitonala waved a hand to halt.

“I can hear something ahead – not voices, perhaps wind,” she breathed to Deyilan. As the message reached her, Skaia frowned, then reached to tap Chrys and Rakt.

“Gruyush skin masks etheric emanations. Wrap the chest in the ones we have?”

Unrot had kept the skins supple, but they were still slimy to the touch and they smelled. “Our only profit,” grumbled Chrys under her breath “and it stinks.”

The sound resolved into the suck of restless water, washing about at the bottom of a crevasse spanning a rough cavern. Chrys welcomed the smell of honest brine. She was less enthused about the blue shimmer that hung above the water, or the black skein across the narrow stone bridge that spanned the crevasse. Aitonala had halted, and drew attention to the far side of the cave with a wave of the hand. There, illuminated by the low blue light, were ranked row after row of skulls, grinning from the walls. In the centre of the floor a stone slab showed dark stains. Here was Skaia’s intended fate, and possibly their own.

There was no choice but to walk the bridge. The black skein parted with a deep ringing sound, a chime that echoed through the caves. “Move!” called Rakt. “We go right, then left, then right. If we hit a dead end we reverse and repeat.”

He led at a fast walk past the grisly sacrifices, into a second cavern, down a low twisting tunnel. It branched and he unhesitatingly went left, then right at the next branch. The footing was rough, the roof so low he had to stoop, then a sharp bend showed light ahead and he stumbled out into the sunset. Never had he been so glad to see the sky. One by one the others emerged, Skaia rubbing a lump on her head, Deyilan last, cursing as the chest scraped the stone.

“How did you know the way out?” asked a panting Chrys.

“I didn’t. I just knew that hesitating at every choice might be fatal, given what that chime could arouse. And always going left or right might well go in a circle, so I alternated.”

“We had to be lucky sometime.” Chrys looked at the setting sun. “But we will not be lucky long if we are here when night comes.”

“Good point.” Rakt and Bajur took the chest from Deyilan and started down the beach, shingle scrunching underfoot. The sun was scraping the horizon when they reached the top of the ridge and started down to the rough track to the southern beach and their boat. A long hoot from above hastened their steps. Deyilan picked up the stumbling Skaia, whose unshod feet were cut and bruised by the stones, and staggered down the gully as fast as he dared. Past the leaning posts, the shattered skulls, out on to the pale sand they ran. Cardnial, Aitonala, Skaia and the chest were bundled into the dinghy and shoved off. The others clustered with weapons drawn. The hoots sounded again, closer. Deyilan raised his shield just in time to deflect a rock thrown from above, there was a rattle of stones from the gully, a shifting of shadows.

From behind came the scrape of wood on sand. “Quick!” hissed Skaia, and they piled in, Bajur using his spear to shove off. Stones splashed into the water, a long panting cry came from the hill, and then the perilously loaded craft was bumping alongside.

“Will they try to get us here?” asked Rakt.

“Apes fear water, as they cannot swim,” said Skaia.

“Everyone fears this water, and no-one who does not want to die swims in it,” remarked Aitonala.

“Nevertheless, I want to be ready to sail at first light,” Rakt said. No-one disagreed.