Instead of returning to the bench on which he had been sitting, the young man
sat down beside Samlor. ‘Not much to look at, is it?’ he said to the Cirdonian,
nodding towards the temple.
‘Nor popular, it seems,’ Samlor agreed. He eyed the local man carefully,
wondering how much information he could get from him. ‘Nobody’s gone in there
for an hour.’
‘Not surprising,’ the other man said with a nod. ‘They come mostly after dark,
you know. And you wouldn’t be able to see them from here anyway.’
‘No?’ said Samlor, sipping a little more of his clabbered milk. ‘There’s a back
entrance?’
‘Not just that,’ said the local man. ‘There’s a network of tunnels beneath the
whole area. They – the worshippers – enter from inns or shops or tenements from
blocks away. In Sanctuary, those who come to Heqt come secretly.’
Samlor’s left hand toyed with his religious medallion. ‘I’d heard that before,’
he said, ‘and I don’t figure it. Heqt brings the Spring rains … she’s the
genetrix, not only in Cirdon but everywhere she’s worshipped at all – except
Sanctuary. What happened here?’
‘You’re devout, I suppose?’ asked the younger man, eyeing the disk with the face
of Heqt.
‘Devout, devout,’ said Samlor with a grimace. ‘I run caravans, I’m not a priest.
Sure, maybe I spill a little drink to Heqt at meals … without her, there’d be
no world but desert, and I see enough desert already.’
The stranger’s skin was so pale that it looked yellow now that most of the light
was from the lamp above. ‘Well, they say there was a shrine to Dyareela here