photograph and gibbering with excitement.
'I have seen this holy creature! With my very own eyes, I have seen it.'
He was a young boy, barely adolescent.
There were cries of derision and disbelief from the others. One of them
snatched the print from the boy's grasp and waved it out of his reach,
taunting him with it.
'The child is soft in the head, and often possessed by demons and
fits,'Jali Hora explained sorrowfully. 'Take no notice of him, poor
Tamre!'
Tamre's eyes were wild as he ran down the rank of acolytes, trying
desperately to recapture the photograph.
But they passed it back and forth, keeping it just out of his reach,
teasing him and jeering at his antics.
Nicholas rose to his feet to intervene. He found this taunting of a
weak'minded lad offensive, but at that moment something tripped in the
boy's mind, and he fell to the ground as though struck down by a club.
His back arched and his limbs twitched and jerked uncontrollably, his
eyes rolled back into his skull until only the whites showed, and white
froth creamed on his lips that were drawn back in a grinning rictus.
Before Nicholas could go to him, four of his peers picked him up bodily
and carried him away. Their laughter dwindled into the night. The others
acted as though this was nothing out of the ordinary, and Jali Hora
nodded to his debtera to refill his glass.
it was late when at last Jah Hora took his leave and was helped into the
palanquin by his deacons. He took the remains of the brandy with him,
clutching the halfempty bottle in one clawed hand and tossing out
benedictions with the other.
'You made a good impression, Milord English,' Boris told him. 'He liked
your story of John the Baptist, but he liked your money even more.'
When they set out the next morning, the path followed the river for a
while. But within a mile the waters quickened their pace, and then raced
through the narrow opening between high red cliffs and plunged over
another waterfall.
Nicholas left the welltrodden trail and went down to the brink of the
falls. He looked down two hundred feet into a deep cleft in the rock,
only just wide enough to allow the angry river to squeeze through. He
could have thrown a stone across the gap. There was no path nor foothold
in that chasm, and he turned back and rejoined the rest of the caravan
as it detoured away from the river and into another thickly wooded
valley.
'This was probably once the course of the Dandera river, before it cut a
fresh bed for itself through the chasm.' Royan pointed to the high
ground on each side of the path, and then to the water-worn boulders
that littered the trail.
'I think you are right,' Nicholas agreed. These cliffs seem to be an
intrusion of limestone through the basalt and sandstone. The whole area
has been severely faulted and cut up by erosion and the ever-changing
river. You can be certain that those limestone cliffs are riddled with
caves and springs.'
