outside a tavern across from the temple, Samlor thought he understood why. The
temple had been built of grey limestone, its walls set in a square but roofed
with the usual hemispherical dome. The obelisk crowning the dome had originally
commemorated the victories of Alar hit Aspar, a mercenary general ofCirdonian
birth. Alar had done very well by his adopted city – and well enough for himself
in the process to be able to endow public buildings as one form of conspicuous
consumption. None of Alar’s boasts remained visible through the coating three
decades of wood and dung smoke had deposited on the spire. Still, to look at it,
the worst that could be said about the Temple of Heqt was that it was ugly,
filthy, and in a bad district – all of which were true of most other buildings
in Sanctuary, so far as Samlor could tell.
As the caravan-master swigged his mug of blue John, an acolyte emerged from the
main doorway of the temple. She waved her censer three times and chanted an
evening prayer to the disinterested street before retreating back inside.
The tavern’s doorway brightened as the tapster stepped out carrying a lantern.
‘Move, buddy, these’re for customers,’ he said to the classically handsome young
man sitting on the other bench. The youth stood but did not leave. The tapster
tugged the bench a foot into the doorway, stepped onto it, and hung the lantern
from a hook beneath the tavern’s sign. The angle of the lantern limned in shadow
a rampant unicorn, its penis engorged and as large as the horn on its head.