He knew the game. They wanted him to resist. He had done so. Now they had the excuse they wanted, and they began to close up on him.
He ran the only way still open, to the end of the courtyard, where it came up against the high peak of the rock on which the Afen sat, a facing wall of gray basalt. It was beyond the witness of anyone on the walk between the wall-gate and the door.
They herded him. He knew it and was willing to go as long as there was room to retreat, intending to pay double at least on one of them when they finally closed in on him. T’Senife, who had insulted Nym, that was the one he favored killing, a slit-eyed fellow with a look of inborn arrogance.
But to kill him would endanger Elas; he dared not, and knew how it must end. He risked other’s lives, even fighting them.
A small gate was set in the wall near the rock. He bolted for it, surprising them, desperately flinging back the iron bar.
A vast courtyard lay beyond it, a courtyard paved in polished marble, with a single building closing it off, high-columned, a white cube with three triangular pylons arching over its long steps.
He ran, saw the safety of the familiar wall-street to his left, leading to the main street of Nephane, back to ! the view of passersby.
But for the sake of Elas he dared not take the matter into public. He knew Nym and Kta, knew they would involve themselves, to their hurt and without the power to help him.
He ran instead across the white court, his sandalled feet and those of his pursuers echoing loudly on the deserted stones. The wall-street was the only way in. The precinct was a cul-de-sac, backed by the temple, flanked on one side by a high wall and on the other by the living rock.
His pursuers put on a sudden burst of speed. He did likewise, thinking suddenly that they did not want him to reach this place, a religious place, a sanctuary.
He sprang for the polished steps, raced up them, slipping and stumbling in his haste and exhaustion.
Fire roared inside, an enormous bowl of flame leaping within, a heat that filled the room and flooded even the outer air, a phusmeha so large the blaze made the room glow gold, whose sound was like a furnace.
He stopped without any thought in his mind but terror, blasted by the heat on his face and drowned in the sound of it. It was a rhmei, and he knew its sanctity.
His pursuers also had stopped, a scant few strides behind him on the steps. He looked back. T’Senife beckoned him.
“Come down,” said t’Senife. “We were told to bring you to the Methi. If you will not come down, it will be the worse for you. Come down.”
Kurt believed him. It was a place of powers to which human touch was defilement-no sanctuary, none for a human-no kindly Ptas to open the rhmei to him and make him welcome.
He came down to them, and they took him by the arms and led him down and across the courtyard to the open gate of the Afen compound, barring it again behind them.
Then they forced him up against the wall and had their revenge, expertly, without leaving a visible mark on him.
It was not likely that he would complain, both for the personal shame of it and because he and his friends were always in their reach, especially Kta, who would count it a matter of honor to avenge his friend, even on the Methi’s guard.
Kurt straightened himself as much as he could at the moment and t’Senife straightened his ctan, which had come awry, and took his arm again.
They brought him up a side entrance of the Afen, by stairs he had not used before. Then they passed into familiar halls near the center of the building.
Another of their kind met them, a stripe-robed and braided young man, handsome as Bel, but with sullen, hateful eyes. To him these men showed great deference. Shan t’Tefur, they called him.