focus, and it wasn’t long before he lost consciousness again.
Finally, after what seemed like a long journey in a dark land, Rebo opened his eyes to discover that another wintry day had dawned. The rector stood before him, back turned, as he led his fl?ock in prayer. Rebo was cold, very cold, and when the runner went to move his arms and legs he discovered that they were bound in place. But his head was free, which meant he could turn it to either side, even though it pained him to do so. And that was when the runner realized that both he and his companions had been strapped to X-shaped crosses. They formed a rough semicircle, with Norr to Rebo’s right, Hoggles to his left, and Phan on the end.
Like him, the others were covered with a rime of crusted snow. All due to his mistake. He hadn’t been conscious to see it, but the runner could easily imagine how the acolytes had fallen upon his companions, searched their belongings, and discovered the guns. Did they know about the vibro blade? Or Logos? There was no way to tell.
“And so we leave them,” the rector continued, his sonorous voice rolling out over the crowd. “To meditate on their sins, during these, the fi?nal hours of their wasted lives.”
So saying the rector turned, and sketched a symbolic
“A” into the air, before hoisting the diviner up onto his shoulders and walking away. If the holy man blamed the little girl for failing to detect the contraband, there was certainly no sign of it.
The Army of God fl?owed out onto the road, and ten minutes later the entire fl?ock had disappeared, leaving the unbelievers to die of exposure. Each off-worlder had a different reaction. Rebo tried to communicate with Norr, but found that his voice wouldn’t carry, and was left to wonder if it was possible to kill someone on the spirit planes. If so, Lysander was in deep trouble.
Norr tried to use her power of telekinesis to undo even one of the more than two dozen knots that held her in place but was soon forced to give up the task as impossible. Logos couldn’t manipulate his environment, but had survived similar situations during the last thousand years and knew what to do. Eventually, after his host’s heart stopped beating, human scavengers would arrive to pick over her remains. At that point he would speak to one of the brutes, promise it a large quantity of gold that didn’t exist, and convince them to carry him to Feda. Then, having found a more capable mount, he would continue his journey. Not to Socket, as everyone supposed, but to Haafa. Because, even though Socket was the AI’s fi?nal destination, there was someone he would have to murder fi?rst.
Hoggles fl?exed his enormous muscles in an attempt to break the bonds that held him, but soon discovered that the acolytes had anticipated such a move, and tripled the number of ropes that held him in place. And, as a punishment for throwing an acolyte into the canyon, one of his fi?ngers had been removed. The wound had been cauterized—but continued to ache.
Phan turned to her martial arts training in an attempt to gather her energy and channel it into a Ku, or death blow, suffi?cient to free her from the X-shaped framework. But, owing to the fact that the assassin had killed three of the fl?ock prior to being subdued, two of her throwing spikes had been used to nail her hands to the thick rough- hewn beams. The pain, plus the cold, made it diffi?cult to concentrate. Hope, such as it was, lay in the fact that Shaz would arrive eventually. But would the operative arrive in time?
No, Phan didn’t think so.
The snow began to fall more heavily then, covered each of the condemned with a shroud of white, and softened the area around them. Eventually, all movement having stopped, silence claimed the land.
SEVEN
The Planet Derius
—Provincial Facilitator, Kas Okanda, in a report to his superiors in New Wimmura
The snow fell from the sky like a lacy curtain and the two dozen riders seemed to materialize out of the hazy whiteness like ghosts from some long-forgotten battle. But Facilitator Kas Okanda and his well-mounted dragoons were quite real, as were the sleek semiautomatic rifl?es the troopers carried and the wraithlike hunting dogs that ranged ahead.
Okanda was a relatively small man, but he exuded an aura of authority as he eyed the area, alert to the possibility of an ambush. But there was nothing for him to see beyond a maze of tracks, the usual detritus left behind by a large group of campers, and the row of X-shaped crosses that sat atop a low rise. Four people had been crucifi?ed, and judging from appearances, all of them were dead. But the administrator prided himself on the veracity of the reports that he sent to New Wimmura every eight days, so a scout was dispatched to examine the bodies, and ordered to report back.
“Make a note,” Okanda instructed, as the youngster next to him prepared to write on a clipboard. “Having patrolled the area north of the citadel, the company came across four individuals all of whom had been crucifi?ed. Since this sort of execution is typical of the antitechnic fanatics, it seems safe to assume that they were responsible for the atrocity.” The facilitator’s secretary scribbled furiously in a desperate attempt to capture each word exactly as it had been spoken.
The scout returned just as the government offi?cial fi?nished his paragraph. “Excuse me, sire,” the dragoon said respectfully, “but the people on the crosses are still alive.”
Okanda had bushy eyebrows. They shot upward in surprise. “What?” he demanded. “Alive you say. . . . Are you sure?”
“Yes, sire,” the scout replied expressionlessly. “Would you like us to cut them down?”
“Of course!” Okanda responded affi?rmatively. “But not until Hobarth here has an opportunity to examine the victims and take notes.”
The scout said, “Yes, sire,” and led the younger man over to where the snow-encrusted crosses stood. Now that he was closer Hobarth could see the wisps of vapor that issued from between blue-tinged lips. The better part of ten minutes elapsed while the secretary took elaborate notes on everything from the manner in which metal spikes had been driven through one woman’s hands, to the clothes that the people wore, and the fact that a lightning bolt had been tattooed onto the inner surface of one man’s left forearm. Once the process was complete, the men and women were taken down and loaded into a pair of sturdy fi?eld ambulances. The heavy went into one,
