The low priest threw down his cards.
“Double Onion,” he said.
The High Priest looked down suspiciously.
The low priest consulted a scrap of paper.
“That’s three hundred thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four pebbles you owe me,” he said.
There was the sound of footsteps.
The priests exchanged glances.
“Haven’t had one for poisoned-dart alley for quite some time,” said the High Priest.
“Five says he makes it,” said the low priest.
“You’re on.”
There was a faint clatter of metal points on stone.
“It’s a shame to take your pebbles.”
There were footsteps again.
“All right, but there’s still the—” a creak, a splash “—crocodile tank.”
There were footsteps.
“No one’s ever got past the dreaded guardian of the portals—”
The priests looked into one another’s horrified faces.
“Hey,” said the one who was not High. “You don’t think it could be—”
“Here? Oh, come on. We’re in the middle of a godsdamn jungle.” The High Priest tried to smile. “There’s no way it could be—”
The footsteps got nearer.
The priests clutched at one another in terror.
“Mrs. Cake!”
The doors exploded inward. A dark wind drove into the room, blowing out the candles and scattering the cards like polka-dot snow.
The priests heard the chink of a very large diamond being lifted out of its socket.
THANK YOU.
After a while, when nothing else seemed to be happening, the priest who wasn’t High managed to find a tinder box and, after several false starts, got a candle alight.
The two priests looked up through the dancing shadows at the statue, where a hole now gaped that should have contained a very large diamond.
After a while, the High Priest sighed and said, “Well, look at it like this: apart from us, who’s going to know?”
“Yeah. Never thought of it like that. Hey, can I be High Priest tomorrow?”
“It’s not your turn until Thursday.”