Clarion

CLARION 113

it. There was no sign of the sentries. He motioned to Dorland, and they silently climbed over the wall and started across the roadway.

The sentry must have been standing in the deep shadows down by the comer. Paul was unaware of his presence until he heard the shout. Then he and Dorland were running across the roadway. Shadowy figures loomed suddenly in front of them. Paul fumbled for his knife, and a hand grasped his arm.

"This way!" Karyn hissed.

Several hundred meters down David's Tube they stopped to rest. They had lost the pursuers in the maze of roadways before they went up the access port to the tube.

"Are you okay?" Selmer asked.

Dorland kept silent. Paul nodded, but he didn't feel okay, and he was sure it showed. He felt as if he had been . . . raped. Something slimy had entered his mind. It had pulled open his private thoughts and memories and pawed through them. He wasn't sure he would ever feel totally safe again. Karyn and Selmer were full of questions, but Dorland was withdrawn and uncommunicative. In a few halting sentences Paul described the ceremony he and Dorland had witnessed. Without even considering why he did so, he kept silent about the other experiences—the shadows that had reached out to his mind, the visit from Shari. That part was private between him and Dorland.

"You actually saw Lord Tern in there?" Karyn asked when he had finished.

"We saw something. It came out of the chauka."

"High Elder Brill. . . called it?" Paul hesitated. Somehow it was hard to remem-ber exactly how that had happened. "I think so. He was chanting and making motions with his hands. Then it came."

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