Path of the Tiger, стр. 458
‘Zhe little man is in here somevhere,’ he heard a booming voice, coloured with a Russian accent, gnarl. ‘I saw him go in.’
A new wave of panic began pulsing through William’s veins. Was this the strange man in the brown robe he had seen earlier, the master of these beasts? The voice that he had just heard, however, sounded completely different to the brown-robed man’s. How many of them were there? How many men? How many animals?
A ripping, sustained roar blasted through the corridors of the temple, the tearing waves bouncing in sonorous ripples off the stone walls, rending the darkness like a hail of arrows punching through a flimsy sheet of cloth. William clamped his hands over his ears and whimpered with terror in the darkness, biting down on his lower lip to suppress the pressure-building scream that so desperately wanted to flee from his lungs. The roar faded out and the echoes subsided, and William slackened his arms, letting them fall limp by his side. He breathed in a large lungful of the damp, mouldy air, and then released it in a panicked gasp. There had to be a way out of this, there had to be … but how?
‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’ someone shouted from somewhere inside the stone corridors. This time the speaker was female, but like the other voice had been, hers was tinged with a foreign accent.
William crept along, trying to steel his frayed nerves as he went. His heart almost stopped as a blasting sniff echoed abruptly through the passage, and through the darkness he saw two green, almost glowing eyes glint briefly.
With a cascading gush of horror, he pressed his body against the stones as the probing eyes roved from left to right … and then started coming down the corridor directly towards him. He sucked a sharp breath of air into his lungs and held it there, and in the same motion he quietly slipped his body into the nearest alcove, pressing himself as deeply into it as he could. With bated breath he waited, trying his utmost to suppress the violent trembling of his limbs as he once more saw the flash of the eyes in the shadows.
This time they were much closer. Through the gloom, to which his eyes had now become somewhat accustomed, he saw an enormous shape passing by him, close enough to touch. It was the great lion, no doubt; tall enough at the shoulder that it was almost his height, and easily the length of a horse. He inhaled the earthy rawness of its scent, an aroma that sent an icy chill tearing down his spine, while causing his knees to want to buckle beneath him.
Despite the debilitating terror, he somehow managed to remain upright and did not move and did not release any of the air from his lungs until the huge animal had padded past and disappeared around a corner.
Come on boyo, come on. You can escape this place. You can get out. Press on … Press on!
William slipped out of the alcove and crept on tiptoes through the passageway, his heart feeling, with every percussive thump in his breast, as if it was about to explode. He saw a light growing in the distance, and as it grew in intensity it revealed a spiral staircase heading upwards. He inhaled deeply and slowly, and started edging up the stairs, hoping that they would lead, somehow, to freedom.
The light bloomed in brightness as William rounded a corner, and, knowing now that the dark was his ally rather than his enemy, he kept himself pressed close to the rough stone as he craned his neck to see what the light would reveal. This light was not the diffuse grey glow of the gloomy, overcast day outside though; this was the swaying ebb and flow of orange torchlight. He smelled the charred scent of oil lamps wafting down the stairs, riding the trickle of cool air from above. Was this hope or was this doom? There was only one way to find out, for the massive beast was prowling the darkness of the corridors behind him and there would be no going back that way. William had to head out of this stairwell; out and up, up into the burning glow.
When he reached the end of the stairs, he saw that the narrow stairwell spilled out into a large hall. This was the inner sanctum of the temple, where a huge altar had once stood, taking centre stage beneath the curve of the great domed tower that soared above the treetops. Now, however, part of that stone dome had collapsed inward and had crushed the altar, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble where that locus of worship had once stood. In the lost idol’s place, however, a mighty tree had grown. Its gnarled roots were wrapped around the stones and the remains of the crushed altar like the tentacles of some enormous cephalopod, while the trunk burst through the hole in the fallen-in ceiling, blotting out the daylight with its crowding of limbs and leaves that were all trying to force themselves through the opening to drink in the life-giving sunlight without.
William craned his neck, keeping his back pressed against the wall of the stairwell, not yet daring to venture out into the vulnerability of the open space of the hall. Fresh torches had been lit and set in their mounting spots on the mossy walls, and the dancing oil-flames made the twisted bodies in the wraparound friezes seem to come to life, their ancient forms writhing and twisting in the primeval tar-pit of grey stone in which they were eternally entombed.
Through