They walked for what seemed like an hour. The tunnel branched and other tunnels intersected it, but their guides steered them firmly through the maze though the prince’s party quickly lost all sense of direction. Buried here in the mountain, away from the honest light of the sun, all directions were equally dark and forbidding.
At last the way before them brightened slightly and the tunnel opened into a chamber that could only have been King Zargov’s audience hall. While brighter than the tunnels it was still dimly lit by surface standards, and its size was not much greater than that of an average room in the palace of Ravan. But it was neither the light nor the size of the room that made the travelers gasp in astonishment.
The walls, the arched ceiling, and even parts of the otherwise s
