"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.