At last she turned down a trail that dropped into the crater. "Walk carefully here," she said as they turned into the huge pit.
"Something is not right," Urson said softly. "It's a trap I tell you. How does that thing go? I could use it now. Calmly brother bear ..."
"Calm the winter sleep,
Fire shall not harm,"
continued Geo.
"Says who," mumbled Urson glancing into the bowl of flame. Geo went on:
"water not alarm.
While the current grows,
amber honey flows,
golden salmon leap."
"Like I once said before," mused Urson, "In a ..."
"In here," came the voice of Argo. They turned into the dark mouth of one of the caves which pocked the crater's inside wall. "No," she said to Snake, who was about to use the jewels for illumination. "They have been used too much already."
With a small stick taken from a pocket in her robe, she struck a flame against the rock, then raised it to an ornate, branching candelabra that hung from the stone ceiling by brass chains. Flame leapt from cast oil cup to oil cup, from the hand of a demon to a monkey's mouth, from a nymph's belly to the horns of a satyr's head. Chemicals in the cups caused each flame to burn a different color; green, red, blue, and orange white light filled the small chapel and played across the tops of the benches. On the altar sitting on one side of the room were two statues of equal height: a man sitting, and a woman kneeling. Iimmi looked at the altar. Geo and Urson stared at the candelabra.
"What is it?" Iimmi asked when he saw where their eyes were fixed.