The Seven Altars of Dusarra

CHAPTER NINETEEN

He came to as the first glimmer of dawn broke through the clouds; he was lying sprawled on the dirt floor of the temple, surrounded by tortured scraps of metal and ragged, red-clothed corpses. Ashes and charred wood were scattered at his feet.

Before him, the elongated hilt of the great broadsword protruded from the throat of his final victim; the gem set in the pommel gleamed as red as blood, but the blade had been washed clean by the rain. In the dim light the metal was dull gray.

He got slowly to his feet, and the events of the night seeped back into his mind; he grimaced in disgust.

Here was the destruction the Seers of Weideth had foreseen. What had come over him?

He found himself unwilling to admit that he had in truth been possessed by some higher power, acting as no more than a puppet; but then, the thought that he had within him such berserk savagery, so easily roused, was almost equally unacceptable. True, his rage and hatred of the Aghadites still smouldered, and his anger at the Baron of Skelleth likewise. Had the babblings of that senile old P'hulite suggested to his suppressed darker side that he take out his aggressions thus? Perhaps the dance of Bheleu had hypnotic properties designed to release a watcher's pent-up emotions; perhaps some mystic fumes, invisible and unnoticed, had affected him. He had heard that volcanoes produced such gasses, and Dыsarra was built on the slopes of a great volcano.

It really mattered very little; what was done was done, and could in no way be altered.

He recalled the roaring storm, of which nothing remained but, puddles and dispersing clouds; the dome had been blasted away. He remembered the fiery lightning-had it actually struck him? That could not be. He looked at his hands; the palms were burnt black. He shuddered. Had he really pulled the sword red-hot from the fire?

No. He rejected that. The whole thing could not have been as he remembered; he must have been under some magical influence, whether hypnosis or hallucinogen or even actual possession he did not know. He had slain the entire cult of Bheleu, yes; there had been a storm, and lightning had destroyed the ruins of the dome; but beyond that, he refused to accept any of it. He had no idea how he had burned his hands, or how the bonfire had been spread about, but he rejected his memories of those events.

His hands were numb, he realized; the nerves might well have been destroyed. At the very least they had been temporarily overloaded. If they were intact, at any minute sensation might begin to return, and he was quite sure that the result would be pain like nothing he had ever suffered before-except possibly once, when he had recovered slowly from a wizard's deathspell. He cringed at the thought. That experience was not something he could bear to think about.

He still had one more temple to rob; and his escape to make good; he was a wanted fugitive. He could not afford to waste any time. If he waited for his hands to heal, he might be hiding and running about the city for weeks. On the other hand, if he moved quickly, perhaps he could finish his task before the pain began, and before any infection set in-if such were to happen. It might be that his hands were permanently ruined.

He did not care to consider that; instead, he snatched the sword of Bheleu from the final corpse and wiped the remaining blood off on the man's robe. He had not seen the temple of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, but he somehow thought he knew where it must be. The dead have returned to the earth, humans were wont to say; death is a part of the world. It was appropriate, then, for the god of death to have his temple in the earth itself.

Garth marched from the ruined shrine, across the rubble-strewn courtyard, and through the shattered gates into the street; it was still early, and none of the day-dwellers were yet about, so it stretched bare and empty from the overlord's palace to the blank stone of the volcano.

Garth turned right, toward the bare stone.

As he approached he made out what he had expected to find; at the end of the avenue; amid black shadows and black stone, was a deeper shadow. There was an opening into the mountainside that he knew to be the temple of the Final God.

It did not occur to him to wonder how he could now know, with such certainty, things that he had not even guessed at prior to the carnage in the temple of Bheleu.

The great broadsword was naked in his unfeeling hands; there was no way he could sheathe it, no other way he could carry it. Even had he still worn his old sword's scabbard, it would never have held the five foot blade of this monstrous weapon.

He paused at the brink of the cave; it seemed very odd that such a cave would exist here within the city walls, but it undeniably did. He peered into the gloom, but could see nothing. He recalled what Frima had said of it, but paid it no heed; mere myths, to impress gullible humans.

A voice spoke from behind him, saying, "You broke your word, Garth."

He turned, but could see no one; the speaker was hiding somewhere. Garth made no attempt to locate him; he recognized the voice. It was the same one that had taunted him in the temple of Aghad.

"I gave no word."

"You gave assent by silence to our bargain, thief, yet you harmed no one in the temple of P'hul."

Garth marveled at the perversity of this creature, criticizing him for not killing enough people when the Aghadite had surely seen the bloody havoc he had wreaked during the night. "Do not the many deaths in Bheleu's shrine more than compensate?"

"No. You were to slay a priest of P'hul."

"Who? The leper girl? The senile old seer? I gave no word, skulking liar; if I have failed of the terms you set me, what of it? Annoy me no further."

"You were to slay a priest of P'hul. Now you enter the temple of the Final God, yet the cult's priest is nowhere within. You scorn our agreement, and be sure that if you come alive from this cavern, you shall die nonetheless."

"In time, no doubt, I shall; but it will be none of your doing! When I emerge from this place I will depart this city, and I suggest that you not get in my way."

"Say what you will, but be aware that we can suppress information as well as disseminate it, and it is by our grace that the angry mobs gathered by the temple of Tema have not yet beset the stable at the Inn of the Seven Stars. Their agent who spied upon you and the owner of the house you so cavalierly broke open were kept from spreading the word by the followers of Aghad, but even now we are withdrawing our aid; the boy Dugger is being punished for his silence, and the good people of the city are no longer being held in check."

This speech caused Garth genuine concern for a moment; then he shrugged it aside. He had faith in the invincibility of his warbeast.

Still, there was no time to spare. Ignoring the further comments of the Aghadite, he plunged into the gloom of the cave, finding some slight gratification in the knowledge that the other would fear to follow.

There was no gate, door, nor guard; the reputation of the Final God was quite sufficient to keep out the unwelcome.

The gray light of early morning faded behind him as he marched down the smooth, sloping floor, but somewhere ahead of him he detected a faint, ruddy glow. He would not have to contend with complete darkness.

The entry passage gradually widened and the glow became more pronounced, until at last he found himself in a large chamber, where the natural cave had been artificially enlarged. The floor was smooth and level, the walls straight, but the central portion of the ceiling was the rough and broken surface of a cave, showing where the original opening had been, while the sides were lower and shaped into smooth vaulting, obviously the work of human hands.

It was impossible to distinguish any colors, for here the only light was the pure red of that mysterious glow that came from somewhere beyond the far side of the chamber; it seeped up from the continuation of the natural tunnel, which Garth could see sloped sharply downward. A dry warmth seemed to come with it. Shapes were plainly discernable, and Garth saw that the walls were carved into high-relief friezes of a grotesque and hideous nature, depicting twisted, semi-human creatures, cavorting obscenely, butchering one another while simultaneously engaged in a wide variety of perverse couplings. Garth wondered what manner of imagination had created such things.

In the center of the chamber stood the altar, high and narrow; it was scarcely a yard wide, but almost five feet in height, its sides smooth stone that blended seamlessly into the floor. Apparently, Garth thought, it had been carved from a column or stalagmite. The top was ornate and slanting; it was tilted up to resemble a reading stand, such as could be found in the best libraries, with elaborate decorative carving along either side and surmounted by a strange semi-human skull. The space where an open book would have stood, were it in fact a reading stand, was bare, smooth polished stone.

That meant the skull was what he had come for. He crossed to the altar and looked at it.

It was somewhere between human and overman in size and shape, save that it was impossibly tall and narrow, and two twisting horns thrust up from its temples; its teeth were gone, and its jaws leered open.

He put aside his sword and reached for it, and discovered that it was somehow anchored to the stone altar; furthermore, it was coated with some sort of slime, so that his senseless fingers slid from their hold.

Probably just drippings from the roof, he decided, though there was no discernable moisture in the warm air. He grasped and tugged at the skull, but it refused to yield.

A faint rumbling sounded, and he felt a vibration in the stone beneath his feet; he thought vaguely that it was unusual for a second thunderstorm to blow up so suddenly, and ran his fingers over the sides of the skull, wishing they weren't still numb.

They came away coated with slime; he peered at it closely, and realized that this was no dripping cavewater. The red glow dimmed slightly; he glanced up, then returned to his study of the skull.

The coating seemed to be some sort of ichor, though he had seen no sign of life in the cave-temple. The skull appeared to be firmly secured to the altar by a heavy rivet through the base of the cranium.

There was a faint tingling in his hands; the nerves were not wholly destroyed. He glanced down at them, and the red glow seemed to dim still further. There were blisters forming. He looked up in time to see the thing coming at him before its shadow covered him in darkness, shutting out the faint crimson light.