The panels reeked of bloodshed and repression. Kings and priests had stamped out
the worship of Dyareela a hundred times in a hundred places. The rites had
festered in the darkness, then burst out again – cancers metastasizing from the
black lump here in the vaults beneath Sanctuary. A shrine in the wasteland
before it was a city; and even as a city, a brawling, stinking, leaderless hive
where no one looked too hard for Evil’s heart since Evil’s limbs enveloped all.
Alar hil Aspar – a brash outsider, a reformer flushed with his triumph over
brigandage – had at last razed the fane of Dyareela here. Instead of salt, he
had sown the ruins with a temple to Heqt, the goddess of his upbringing. Fool
that he was. Alar had thought that ended it.
Just above the archway, set off from the courses around it by a border of ivy
leaves, was a cameo that caught Samlor’s eye as he returned sick and exhausted
by what he had been looking at. A file of women led by a piper cavorted through
the halls of a palace. The women carried small animals and icons of obviously
more than symbolic significance, but it was to the piper’s features that
Samlor’s gaze was drawn. The Cirdonian swore mildly and reached up to touch the
stone. It was smooth and cold to his fingertips.
So much fit. Enough, perhaps.
Samlor stepped through the double-hung doors closing the archway. The
crossbowman waiting beyond with his eyes on the staircase screamed and spun
around. The patterned screen that would have concealed the ambush from someone
descending the stairs was open to the archway – but judging from the bowman’s