“If you’re worried about it getting in b-before us,” the animal dealer said with the hint of a stutter despite his attempts to control it, “it could be behind those.” His whip nodded toward one of the door leaves, then the other. At the moment, he was more afraid of N’Sumu than he was of the sauropithecus itself.
“No, it couldn’t,” said the Egyptian as he stepped into the sanctuary. There was no reason not to hide what had happened, because neither Vonones nor Lycon would survive the capture of the phile. They knew too much, and they had made dangerously accurate extrapolations from what they knew. Still, the emissary saw no reason to add that the light would have stained itself bloody red had it played over the crouching form of the creature they sought.
The walls of the sanctuary were not pierced by windows, but several square feet of roof tile had blown off in past years to let in a dim column of moonlight like the sun drawing water through a break in the clouds. Vonones’ eyes adapted to see in a room ten feet square and perhaps thirteen feet to the ridgepole. The cult statue had been replaced at the time the temple was reconstructed; but the replacement was of wood also and had decayed thoroughly during decades of neglect. Splits along the grain of the wood had cracked off much of the paint from the limbs and features of the goddess, and the torso had not been painted at all: a robe would be draped over the figure in the unlikely event of a ceremony at this shrine. The statue had less character in the moonlight than did the water-marks on the interior stucco of the walls.
The Armenian looked upward sharply, as the fact of the moonlight made him consider the opening through which it fell. But the Egyptian—and almost certainly Lycon, when he chose the location, though he had not said anything about it—had already considered and rejected that concern. Though the tiles were gone, the framing members of the roof were spaced too tightly for the beast to enter between them. That it could tear its way through beams which rain and the sun’s heat had gutted of their strength was probable; but the delay would leave it at the mercy of whatever force it was that N’Sumu controlled.
That thought aroused a more serious question. The animal dealer shifted so that he could see past the bronze-skinned man and out through the hand’s-breadth slit to which N’Sumu had again closed the sanctuary doors. Lycon’s armored figure had disappeared into the apartment building where he claimed to have stowed the remainder of his paraphernalia for this operation. The distance between the temple and the entrances to the apartment block had seemed short when the three men had been standing outside the sanctuary—a clout shot for an archer, certainly. But it was not archers involved this time . . . not that an arrow could be more than an instrument of revenge, for only if the lizard-ape were gripped by someone sure to be its victim would it be unable to dodge the missile.
Aloud, Vonones said, “Master N’Sumu, will you be able to strike the creature down from this distance?”
The Egyptian did not look away from the facade of the building opposite. “I should be closer,” he muttered. “Perhaps he’ll lead it this way.” He turned his head and added more sharply, “You understand that I can’t afford to hit your friend Lycon instead of the beast?”
“Yes, of course,” said Vonones, who misunderstood.
“The sauropithecus will give me only one opportunity,” N’Sumu explained, “just as it did the first time. If I waste that chance, it will certainly deal with me before it finishes off your friend.”
In a neutral voice, and returning his eyes to the empty doorways of the apartment block, Vonones said, “I see what you mean.” He did, and he was more uncomfortable than ignorance had permitted him to be. His whip nodded in time with the angry pulse in his throat.
“Lycon,” he added sharply, and the whip bobbed and held.
The man in armor stepped into the plaza, not from the arch to the courtyard as Vonones had expected but from the stairwell entrance giving onto the apartments above. He looked around, the motion and implied hesitation exaggerated by the rimmed globe of his helmet. His right hand touched the pommel of his sword, despite the fact that he already held a net with that hand.