And again they fell back to work. What spots of light spilled through the twisted net of jungle stopped at the total shadow beneath the great arch. A line of blackness up one side of the basalt door showed that it was ajar. Now they mounted the steps, moving aside a fallen branch which chattered leaves at them. Geo, Iimmi, then Snake, and at last Urson, squeezed through the door.
Ceiling blocks had fallen from the high vault so that three shafts of sun struck through the continual shift of dust to the littered floor.
"Do you think it's Hama's temple?" Urson asked. His voice came back in the stone room, small and hollow.
"I doubt it," said Iimmi. "At least not the one we're supposed to find."
"Maybe it's an abandoned one," said Geo, "and we can find out something useful from it."
Something large and dark suddenly flapped through a far shaft of sun. They stepped back. After a moment of silence, Geo handed his jewel to Snake. "Make some light in here," he said.
The blue green glow flowed from the up-raised jewel in Snake's hand. As the light flared, and flared brighter, they saw that the flapping had come from a medium-sized bird that was perched harmlessly on an arch that ran between two columns. It ducked its head at them, cawed harshly, and then flapped from its perch and out one of the apertures in the ceiling, the sound of its wings still thrumming in echo seconds after it was gone.
There were doors between the columns, and one far wall had not withstood time's sledge. A gaping rent was nearly blocked with vines except for a dim, green-tinted shimmer that broke in here and there through the uneven foliage.
Behind a twisted metal rail and raised on steps of stone, the ruins of a huge statue sat. Carved from black rock, it represented a man seated cross-legged on a dais. An arm and shoulder had broken off and lay in pieces on the altar steps. The hand, its fingers as thick as Urson's thigh, lay just behind the altar rail. The head was completely missing. Both the hand still on the statue and the one in front of them on the steps looked as though they had once held something, but whatever it was had been removed.
Iimmi was moving along the rail to where a set of stone boxes were placed like foot stones along the side of the altar. "Here, Snake," he called. "Bring a light over here." Snake obeyed, and with Geo's and Urson's help, he loosened one of the lids.