summit.
Only when the creature was lost to view behind the intervening rocks did his
faculties begin functioning again. Still in a daze he retraced his steps
downward to the stream. “Indeed thou wert meant to bring me to this place,” he
murmured to his steed as he untethered it and remounted. “Now may we rest easy
in our minds that Meerkulla has received many blessings in return for his
sacrifice.” He turned the horse round and descended the slopes below. Only when
he was almost at the trail did he see Captain Horazzorgio and the company of
Kroaxian Royal Guard waiting for him.
According to Clarissa, they were between Padua and Genoa, at a point almost at
the edge of the desert in which the first Terran-Taloid meeting had occurred—in
fact not that far at all from the very spot at which it had taken place.
Therefore the cruising time to Genoa would only be about fifteen minutes. Things
hadn’t worked out too badly at all, Zambendorf thought to himself as he stood in
the cockpit doorway and watched the takeoff routine.
“Any sign of Moses down there?” Price asked curiously from the cabin behind.
Abaquaan brought up a series of infrared views on the copilot’s scanner screen
until one showed a bright dot on the lower part of a broad slope some distance
below the summit on the side of the mountain down which Moses had disappeared.
He switched in the telescopic viewer and produced a large, clear image. “He’s
got a horse,” Abaquaan said. “Must have left it lower down someplace.”
“He’s riding a horse back down the mountain, with the slab you gave him under
his arm,” Zambendorf said over his shoulder. “Want to come and see?”
Price moved forward beside Zambendorf and studied the screen for a few seconds.
Moses had stopped and seemed to be staring down the hill at something. Abaquaan
switched back to a low-resolution image, which showed more dots clustered
together not far away below. A close-up revealed them to be more Taloids, also
mounted. “I wonder who they are,” Price murmured. “Do you think Moses might be
in some kind of trouble down there?”
“I don’t know,” Zambendorf replied slowly. He sounded concerned. After a second
or two he turned his head toward Clarissa and said, “Take it down lower. Let’s
have a closer look at what’s going on.”
“I have no fear of thee now, Horazzorgio, Defender-of-False-Faith,” the
Enlightener called down the hillside, his voice loud and firm and his eyes
glinting brightly. “For verily have I climbed the mountain and seen the angels,
and I return now to be known henceforth as the Enlightener, who has been chosen
to carry the Lifemaker’s true Word to all comers of the world and bring a new
faith of love and brothership to all robeings. Heed my words well, Horazzorgio,
for they are indeed His, the Lifemaker’s.” He held high a slab of ice that he
was carrying. “Swear your allegiance now to the true faith of which I speak, and
renounce thy false creeds, and thy transgressions shall be forgiven thee. Dost
thou so swear, Horazzorgio?”
Uncertain if he could believe his ears, Horazzorgio was still too astonished to
reply when he saw the sky-dragon rising from the mountaintop in the background.
His imagers dulled in cold fear, and his body trembled. Twice now he had come to
Xerxeon in pursuit of one or the other of this pair of accursed brothers, and
twice they had eluded him. And now, just as before, the dragons of the
sky-beings were appearing in the sky to protect them. He wasn’t about to mess
with dragons a second time, he decided. No way was he going through that again .
. . not for anything or anybody.
Horazzorgio jumped down from his saddle and fell to his knees. “I swear, O
Enlightener!” he shouted. “Horazzorgio has found the true faith! I believe! I
believe! Truly thou speakest the Lifemaker’s Word. What is thy wish, Chosen One?
Thy servant awaits thy command.”
The troopers behind were looking at each other in amazement and murmuring among
themselves. “What sorcery has this hearer worked?”
“Horrazorgio on his knees? This is surely a miracle.”