He turned around then and got his first good look at Dorland Avery—and felt his scalp prickling. Dorland looked directly at him as he told a story of a man who was driving himself down into a deep pit of despair, a man riddled by self-doubts who was sure that he had been bom to fail and was 136 William Greenleaf CLARION 137
doing everything he could to live out that self-ordained destiny. Paul couldn't remember the details of the story, but he had recognized himself clearly enough. As the character in the story began to see his own self-worth and overcame his doubts and insecurities, Paul felt himself gradually accepting some hope that he might be successful after all, both in love and in his work. He had never been quite the same since.
And he had known without a doubt that he had run into something more than a Fringe storyteller in that little club.
Karyn hadn't interrupted him, but she had a puzzled look on her face when he finished. "You said your back was to the stage when Dorland began the story?"
Paul nodded. She hadn't missed it.
"Then how could Dorland read the visual clues from your face?"
"Good question. I asked him the same thing and I never got a direct answer."
She leaned back against the curved wall and was silent for a moment. Then her eyes came back to him and she said, "What happened next?"
"I knew Dorland could be the greatest player the stream had ever seen. And I wanted to be his manager worse than I'd ever wanted anything in my life. At first he resisted the idea of expanding his show, but I kept at him." Ironically, it was the new self-confidence instilled by Dorland himself that had made Paul approach him and had given Paul the drive to see that Dorland became the most famous psi-player in the Omega Sector.
"Why is he so good?"
"There are a lot of reasons," Paul said. News service reporters often asked the same question.
"Natural taient, for one. His timing and creative technique with the lights and music are perfect. There's never a distracting glitch. And he has a real sense of drama in his facial expressions and body movements. Dorland's show is like a symphony of sight and sound, and all the time he's measuring responses, watching for reactions, molding his performance around what he can see in the audience. He can bring them to whatever mood he wants. He—" Paul stopped suddenly as something struck him: the image of High Elder Brill in the sacred chamber, moving his arms and swaying as he called Lord Tern, and in the background the odd music of the deacons' tubelike instruments. The image had seemed familiar to Paul at the time, but he hadn't fitted it together. Now he realized that in calling Lord Tern, High Elder Brill had gone through much the same sequence of actions that Dorland used during his performance.
Coincidence?
Selmer Ogram had said something, too: It's too bad High Elder Brill couldn 't see your show. Actually, it's not too different from his own Godsday service.
Paul felt a slight chill, looked up and found Karyn's eyes on him. He cleared his throat and went on. "Anyway, I'm convinced Dorland didn't believe that he would become so popular; otherwise he wouldn't have gone along with me. I've had to talk him out of quitting more than once."
"Maybe you should have let him."
He didn't reply to that because it struck too close to doubts that had surfaced in his own mind. Dorland was vulnerable to the needs of others and would do almost anything to avoid hurting someone. Paul often suspected that Dorland had agreed to become a psi-player only because he knew Paul needed it so badly.
"Do you think he'll stay here when this is over?" Karyn asked.
Paul looked at her in surprise. He hadn't even
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considered the possibility. "Why should he? He has a life outside now."
"Is it a life he wants?"
"You'll have to ask him about that." Paul pushed himself to his feet, suddenly weary of the conversation. "Guess I'll try to get some sleep now." The next morning they ate a breakfast of dried poca and water, then bundled the gear back into their packs.
The tube still held the chill of the night, and Paul fastened the jacket tight around him. He felt distanced from his surroundings. Karyn's question kept surfacing in his mind: Do you think he'll stay here when this is over? He had slept little. When he did fall asleep he'd had bad dreams. Some were about Lord Tern. Others were like bittersweet memories of a woman and a young girl he'd never met. They walked the short distance to the access port where Tube Four intersected with Fara's Tube. Jacque got out his rope ladder and they pulled themselves up, one by one, to the platform. When they descended the spiral tube, they found themselves in an area of vegetation that was so heavy it all but obliterated the ruins. The sound of rushing water was close. The air was crisp.
Dorland stood beside Paul, looking around.
"See anything familiar?" Paul asked. Dorland shook his head. "It was a long time ago."
"Let's move down closer to the river," Karyn suggested.
They spent a few minutes looking for an opening in the dense growth, and it took them another half hour to hack their way through to the river. The water ran fast enough to form little frosted crests as it rushed over hidden boulders. Paul looked closer and realized that not all the obstructions under the water were boulders—he could see a large curved section of pink wall, and piles of pink rubble. The river had changed its course after the city was abandoned, and had driven a channel through an area that had once been populated.
"The edge of the city is down that way," Karyn said, pointing to the left. "It's in pretty bad shape."
"There were quite a few domes still standing in the area my father and I explored," Dorland said.
"We had gone into several of them before we found the square building."
"We'll go this way, then," Karyn said, inclining her head to the right. "We'll run into it eventually." Luck was on their side. They had worked their way along the riverbank for barely half an hour when Dorland stopped so abruptly Paul almost bumped into him.
"There it is," he said, pointing. Paul could barely discern the building through tangled vines and underbrush. The spire had toppled into the river, and twenty meters of it lay underwater. Even though heavy vines covered the structure, its shape was outlined clearly enough to reveal that it was not a dome. It was a large square building like the temple.
Karyn led the way down the mossy bank and
stopped several meters from the building.
"Let's look around," she said. "No need to rush into this."
She sounded edgy, and Paul couldn't blame her. He felt the tension, too.
As far as Paul could see, the building was designed and constructed exactly like the temple. It looked to be in remarkably good shape except for the side near the river, where the crumbling bank had undermined the building's foundation. The resultant settling had opened a gaping crack in one wall, and the roof sagged. A walking path or narrow roadway had once come up to the building but was now all but obliterated by trees and underbrush William Greenleaf
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that had grown up through the broken surface. Vines covered the open archway, obstructing their view inside.
"Is it safe to go in?" Paul asked. Beside him, Jacque was already using his knife to cut away the heavy, clinging vines. He grinned at Paul and said, "Guess we'll find out." They hacked their way through and stepped
cautiously into a room that smelled of damp stone and fungus. Rubble from a fallen section of the ceiling was strewn across the floor. Vines had crept in through the archway and the crack in the far wall to spread across the floor and up the walls, clinging to broken stones and chunks of debris. One interior wall had collapsed, and the high ceiling sagged.
"In here," Karyn said. She had gone to a low archway and was looking into another room.
Jacque remained in the outer corridor as a sentry while Paul and the others followed Karyn through the archway. If the interior layout of this building was the same as that of the Holy Order's
temple—
and Paul knew it would be—then this room would be equivalent to the sacred chamber in the temple. Inside, they found the same pattern of clustered pedestals that Paul and Dorland had seen in the sacred chamber. Vines had crept over them to create eerie hummocks of vegetation. Light filtered through a jagged crack in the wall.
Paul turned to say something to Dorland, then realized that Borland's attention had gone to something in the center of the room. Following his gaze, Paul saw an outline of something that was nearly buried under crumbled debris, clinging vines and centuries of accumulated dust.
"It's another chauka" Dorland said in a strained voice.
The general shape was right, and the object's position 'would put it in the same place as the chauka's in the sacred chamber.
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Paul began clearing away the vines and debris. Selmer and Karyn came to help, and it took them only a few minutes to get enough cleared away to be sure Dorland was right. The object was another chauka.
Selmer stepped back and used the sleeve of his coveralls to wipe the dust and sweat out of his eyes.
"Looks like it's in fairly good shape." In fact, when the surface of the dish itself became visible, Paul could see no damage at all. He used his pack to brush out the last of the thick dust and dead leaves. Then he saw something gleaming faintly near one edge of the dish.
"What's that?" Selmer reached past him and picked up a round disk. He brought it up closer to catch a ray of light coming through the door. Then he took in a quick, sharp breath. Paul looked closer. The face of the disk in Selmer's hand was engraved with an image of Lord Tern.
Chapter Thirteen
SABASTIAN SQUINTED AT THE RAGGED LINE OF
figures that was making its way up the rocky slope. There was little doubt that he and Olaf Blackburn had been spotted where they crouched behind the rock barrier. The boys were coming directly toward the barrier, their heads down as they picked their way through the vegetation and loose stones. They wore the gold-and-scarlet uniforms of the Sons of God, and even at this distance Sabastian could see the dart guns and other weapons that hung from their belts.
There was little Sabastian and Olaf could do but wait. Sabastian with his wooden leg and Olaf with his lung ailment could not possibly hope to escape over the mountain. The boys would run them down before they'd gone a hundred meters. Retreating into the cave would only trap them, and delay the inevitable.
The line of boys disappeared into a ravine that blocked Sabastian's view. He touched the thick strand of braided ropes that lay coiled beside him on the ground. When the boys reached the rocky 144
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ledge twenty meters downslope, he would pull the ropes and release the first row of boulders. Another set of ropes lay on his left side. That would release the second rock barrier.
Sabastian shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position. The stump of his leg had begun to throb, and now and then blades of pain stabbed up from the knee, where the peg was attached. He didn't have to look to know that his knee was red and swollen.
Three of the boys appeared suddenly on the ledge below the barrier. One of them raised a slender tube and released a dart that fell short by a halfdozen meters. The boy ducked out of sight, then showed himself again as he moved forward to the cover offered by another large boulder. Sabastian felt for the knotted ropes and waited. More boys appeared briefly at the lip of the ledge and moved forward to take cover. Most of the ledge was hidden from the barrier; it offered a perfect opportunity for the Sons to regroup just before their assault directly up the slope.
But Sabastian and Jacque had been careful in their design of the rock barrier. When the ropes were pulled and the wooden braces collapsed, the formation of the slope above the ledge would funnel the boulders directly down over the boys who were crouched there. In his mind Sabastian could picture the boulders rumbling downhill, crashing together as they tumbled onto the ledge and the boys in their gold-and-scarlet uniforms. Some of the boys would probably survive, and hopefully they would retreat down the mountain. If not, there was the second set of ropes, and the second barrier of boulders . . .
If only we could have had a few more days,
Sabastian thought bitterly. Maybe Borland could have helped us sort this out.
For a moment he felt hatred well up in him so strong that it nearly paralyzed him—hatred for Brill, for Jacowicz, for the Holy Order that had turned this planet into a battleground with young boys as soldiers.
His attention snapped back to the ledge as another slender figure rose up into view with his dart gun. For an instant Sabastian stared directly at the boy's face. A deep scar slanted across it from just below the boy's chin to above his left eyebrow. The boy looked to be about sixteen.
Then he lifted the tube quickly and Sabastian saw a tiny object coming at him. He ducked, and the feathered dart sliced through the air inches above his head to rattle against the rocks behind him.
He was sure that all the boys had taken cover on the ledge by now. They would rush the barrier at any moment. He gripped the ropes and looked over at Olaf. His friend offered a shrug and a bleak smile.
Sabastian shook his head and let the ropes fall to the ground. We've been waiting for years to fight Brill and Jacowicz and the devil god. And when the fighting comes, they send young boys to attack us. We cannot kill young boys.
Sabastian heard a sigh from beside him. He
looked over and saw Olaf pull a feathered dart from his arm. A thin trickle of blood ran from it. Olaf looked up and met Sabastian's eyes and gave a slight, weary smile. He opened his mouth to say something, but his strength left him and he fell heavily.
Sabastian started toward his old friend, then heard a shout and spun back around. Something inside his knee pulled loose, and the pain was a bright hot flare that brought a metallic taste to his mouth. He swam back through a red mist of
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consciousness in time to see a group of boys come around the first barrier of stones and run toward him.
Chapter Fourteen
"THE GODSTONE," SELMER SAID IN A HOARSE
whisper.
Paul couldn't take his eyes off the metal disk in Selmer's hand and the engraved image of the insectoid creature.
"There must be dozens of 'em," Selmer said wonderingly. He reached out toward the other disks that were scattered along the edge of the chauka, then drew his hand back without touching them.
"They're Tal Tahir artifacts," Karyn said slowly. Paul knew she was trying hard to keep her voice steady. "That's all they are—just artifacts."
"Not quite," Selmer said. "Paul said High Elder Brill used the Godstone to activate the chauka.'"
"Leave them where they are," Karyn said. "Let's see what else we can find."
Selmer placed the disk back on the chauka.
"Check the roof," Karyn said to Jacque. He nodded and turned to go through the narrow
doorway that led to the stairs.
While the others were poking through the vegeta147
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tion that covered the floor and exploring the outer corridor, Paul decided to take a closer look at the chauka. The large dish wasn't exactly flat, he realized. It rose slightly at the outer edges to form a shallow bowl about two meters across, and was attached to a solid base that was flared at each end to give it a slight hourglass shape. He walked slowly around it. Tiny oval designs were spaced closely together around the perimeter. Protruding from under the lip on one side was a slender rod. Paul stared at the rod, his mind going back to the sacred chamber. High Elder Brill had touched the end of the rod with the Godstone ...
He turned at the sound of boots clumping down the stairs. Jacque appeared in the archway.
"The roof is in pretty good shape," he said.
"Gives a view all the way to the templ
e. There's a road out there." He waved a hand through the archway. "Comes to within about twenty meters. Broke up in places, but passable."
"Can we get to it?" Karyn asked.
"Sure. Brush ain't too thick on that side. Anyway, it'd be easier than going back along the river."
"We'll go out that way, then," she said. "Go back to the roof for now and keep an eye out."
"Sure." Jacque turned and went along the corridor to the stairway.
"Looks like the place is empty," Karyn said. Then her eyes went to the chauka. "Except for that."
Dorland had returned to the chauka to pick up one of the metal disks. Now he spoke for the first time since they had entered the building. The words were soft, barely audible:
"We were always told that only one Godstone existed."
"Obviously not true," Karyn said. "That isn't the first time the Holy Order lied to us."
"High Elder Brill used his Godstone to summon Lord Tern."
She looked thoughtfully at the disk in Dorland's hand; then her eyes returned to the chauka. "You think we should try it?"
Paul's head jerked around to her. "Try what?" Karyn nodded toward the chauka. "We have that, and we have some Godstones. Maybe we
could use them to call Lord Tern." She must have read the expression on Paul's face, because she went on quickly. "We came here to find out as much as we could about the Tal Tahir." Paul found his voice at last. He forced himself to speak calmly and reasonably, and tried to ease the rapid beating of his heart. "You can't leam anything from Lord Tern. He doesn't even speak Basic. There wouldn't be any way to communicate with him."
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