Just as he entered the main hall of the great cathedral there was a flapping of wings. Leah departed from one of the teardrop portals high in the walls. The base of the Face of God was open, the chin now a door. She had been into the corridors of the idol’s mind, looking out through its eyes, waiting for Stauffer Davis, the famous novelist, the love-seeker, the—he cursed himself—stupidest man in the Alliance! But he had come in just a moment too late, and she had left without seeing him.
He turned, ran down the echo-sharp hall and out onto the rounded dome of the snowy breast, leaving his footprints in its white skin. He looked for her, searched the sky.
She was flitting off toward the yellow mountains.
He called to her, but she was too far away. She could not hear him.
And the car was useless. He could only run.
He ran.
She flew.
The distance between them grew.
She settled before the trees, stepped into the dark of the woods and was gone from sight.
He screamed, but she was too far away to hear.
He ran.
His chest ached. A fire had been set to flashing life in his lungs. He sucked in cool air and blew out steam. Still, he ran, faster and faster—but not as fast as he thought he had to. He was over the edge of the temple hill, streaking along the fields toward the trees. Minutes passed before he reached them.
He called her name.
She was too far ahead. The thickness of the trees soaked up his words. There was no echo. The snow drifted down around him, filtered through the tight web of branches and sifted the forest floor.
Proteus came behind.
Which way? Would she go straight. ahead or slant to the left? To the right? He sobbed, moved straight on, leaping over fallen logs, kicking piles of leaves up around him as he went. He skidded on the snow once, sprawled onto his face, skinning his cheek. He lay for a moment, tasting dirt and blood. Then he shoved up and went on, aware that a moment’s delay might mean the difference between success or failure.
He called her name again.
Silence.
He hurried on.
Then a cry and the howl of wolves. A scream!
He stopped and listened, head cocked to catch the exact direction of the noise. There was a second scream, one that trailed off like a dying siren. It was to his left. He started in that direction. In a moment, a baying of savage hounds moaned through the cold air and snow slithered like thick, cold oil between the trees.
Proteus moved up beside him.
In the darkness ahead, two glimmering red eyes the size of walnuts peered at Davis between the thick trunks of the yellow-leafed trees. A wolf loped closer, skidded to a stop and stared at what it evidently hoped might be its supper. Its jaws hung open, dripping saliva onto the frosted ground. It growled deep in its thick throat, spat, blew snot from its nose.
Proteus opened with his vibra-beam weapon, blasted the darkness with blue flames.
The wolf danced onto two legs, twirled, collapsed onto the snow. Blood spattered outward from the charred body and patterned the whiteness.
Davis stepped over the corpse and moved on. Please, he thought, don’t let her be dead . . .
IV
SNOW WAS falling more heavily now, drifting through the trees where the leaves had been worn away by the tireless hands of autumn, matting Davis’s eyelashes so that he had to keep brushing them to see.
There was more howling ahead, deep and gutteral, a brother to the sigh of the wind itself.
He scrambled over a formation of rocks, stumbled on a small log concealed by snow and leaves, and came to the clearing where she was stretched out on the ground, head raised slightly against a yil tree base. There was a wolf circling her, its teeth bared, a snarl held deep in its throat where it was releasing it only a note at a time.
There were teeth marks above her wrist where it had nipped her experimentally, and blood dribbled down over her hand.