The Carpet People

away that thelight was not reflected from them. They passed through many great caverns, the path narrowing and spiralling up around great columns of hair, so that they had to cling to stay on it. Sometimes the light sparkled on a distant wall. While they were edging along one place where the path narrowed almost to nothingness, and cold air rushed up from the depths below, Snibril slipped. Bane, who was next in line, reached out with great presence of mind and grabbed him by the hair just as he was about to totter into the darkness. But the torch slipped from his hands. They peered over the edge to watch it become a spark, then a speck and finally wink out. Something shifted in the dark depths of Underlay, and they heard it scuttle heavily away.
    ‘What was that?’ said Snibril.
    ‘Probably a silverfish,’ said Brocando. ‘They’ve got teeth bigger than a man, you know. And dozens of legs.’
    ‘I thought you said there was nothing to be afraid of down here!’ shouted Glurk.
    ‘Well?’ said Brocando, looking surprised. ‘Who’s afraid of them?’
    Anything else in the depths below would hardly have seen them, little specks inching along the roots of the hairs. Eventually Brocando called a halt on the edge of another abyss. There was anarrow bridge stretching across it, and Snibril could just make out a door on the far side.
    The king held up the torch and said: ‘We are right underneath the rock now.’
    The roof of the cavern was gently curved towards its centre, bowed under the great weight above it.
    ‘You are the only people apart from the kings of Jeopard to see this,’ Brocando went on. ‘After the secret passage was dug, Broc had all the workers personally put to death to stop the secret escaping.’
    ‘Oh? That’s part of kinging, too, is it?’ said Glurk.
    ‘It used to be,’ said Brocando. ‘Not any more, of course.’
    ‘Hah!’ said Bane.
    When they had crossed the bridge Brocando pushed the little wooden door open, revealing a spiral staircase lit by green light filtering down from a tiny circle of light. It was a long climb up the winding staircase, which was so narrow that the boots of the ones in front tangled with the hands of the ones behind, and the torches made flickering shadows of giant warriors against the walls. Ghostly as it was, Snibril welcomed it. He hated the darkness under the Carpet.
    Before it reached the circle of green light the stairway opened on to a little landing, just bigenough to hold them all. There was another door in the wall.
    ‘Where—?’ Glurk began.
    Brocando shook his head and put his finger to his lips.
    There were voices on the other side of the door.

Chapter 10
    There were three voices, so loud that they could only be a metre or so from the hidden door.
    Snibril tried to imagine faces. One voice was thin and whiny, already raised in complaint.
    ‘Another hundred? But you took fifty only a few days ago!’
    ‘And now we need another hundred,’ said a soft voice that made Snibril’s hair prickle. ‘I advise you to sign this paper, your majesty, and my guards will gather together this hundred and be gone. They will not be slaves. Just . . . assistants.’
    ‘I don’t know why you don’t just take them,’ said the first voice sulkily.
    ‘But you are the king ,’ said the second voice. ‘It must be right, if the king says so. Everything signed and proper.’
    Snibril thought he could hear Bane grinning in the darkness.
    ‘But no one ever comes back,’ said First Voice.
    The third voice was like a rumble. ‘They like it so much in our lands we just cannot persuade them to return,’ it said.
    ‘I don’t believe you,’ said First Voice.
    ‘That does not really matter,’ said Second Voice. ‘Sign!’
    ‘No! I will not! I am king ...’
    ‘And you think that I, who made you king, can’t . . . unmake you?’ said Second Voice. ‘Your majesty,’ it added.
    ‘I’ll report you to Jornarileesh! I’ll tell on you!’ said First Voice, but he did not sound very confident.
    ‘Jornarileesh! You think they care what is done here?’ Second Voice purred. ‘Sign! Or perhaps Gorash here can find some other use for your hands?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Third Voice. ‘A necklace.’
    Brocando turned to face the others, while the voices on the other side of the door alternately threatened and whined.
    ‘That’s my brother,’ he said. ‘Such as he is. Here’s the plan. We rush in, and we kill as many mouls as possible.’
    ‘You think