Yorgh swore luridly to himself when he discovered that the plant was armed with sharp thorns the size of arrowheads, but it was too late to protest. "Kansi ..." called Vaneen softly. The sentry straightened nervously and hissed, "Who is it?" "Come and see," invited the girl, keeping her voice so low that it might have been any girl. Kansi strode over with quick, worried steps, the picture of a man torn between opportunity and duty. Yorgh's big fist shot out of the darkness to take him behind the ear with a solid thunk! He went down without a sound. Back in the village, there were symptoms of a growing hue and cry. Torches began to move out along the trail. "Hurry!" said Yorgh. "What will you do when we reach the top?" asked Vaneen. "That I will tell you when I see what is there. Perhaps, if we are in possession of their precious shrine, they will think twice before egging us on to destroy it!" The steps led upward, then doubled back around a narrow turn to rise further. They were on the fourth such flight and still almost directly above the trail when the first Raydowers set up a howl of rage at discovering the unconscious sentries. "Yorgh!" shouted a voice that sounded like Ueln's. "Come down! This is no joking matter!" Yorgh reached back an arm to sweep Vaneen close to the rock out of which the steps were cut, and kept climbing. He guessed that they were more than a hundred feet up. Then, they turned onto a flight that stretched upward without a landing as far as they had already come, and curled past a corner of the cliff out of sight. Some bowman below, with the eyes of a night-roaming ponadu, caught sight of the fleeing pair at a place where the stairway narrowed to a mere two feet. It seemed to Yorgh that a section of rock must have been broken away by a fall of stone from above, but he put aside his speculation as an arrow hissed up from below and snapped against the face of the cliff less than ten feet ahead. "They're coming up the steps too!" Vaneen reported breathlessly. "Hurry!" urged Yorgh, grabbing her hand. "They seem to think we're breaking a greater taboo than killing!" He heard more twanging of bows below, but only two more arrows came close. Then they were past the narrow spot and protected by the bulge of rock around which the steps curved. Yorgh groaned when he looked ahead. "Have they been guarding steps that lead only to a place to jump from?" Then he saw the dark hole in the rock where the stone footway ended. "A cave!" gasped Vaneen. "Yorgh, must we go in?" Little liking the idea himself, he said nothing. His exploring fingers found that the walls, near the entrance at least, were curiously smooth. He edged into the blackness, groping ahead cautiously. Guiding Vaneen's hand to a grip on his belt, he drew the bronze knife and held it--blade upward and ready--in his right hand. About thirty feet straight into the mountain, he tripped.