Prologue
THE MAN HAD BEEN WAITING IN THE SHADOWS OF
the alley for an hour when the first explosion came from the far side of the temple. The two sentries at the courtyard entrance turned instinctively in that direction, and the man stepped quickly across the road to flatten himself against the wall. He waited, hardly breathing. The sentries were only boys, but they were deadly.
The second blast was followed by distant shouts. The sentries drew their side arms and left their post at a run. The man grasped the top of the wall, pulled himself over and dropped lightly to the other side. Still crouching, he scanned the courtyard.
'I'm over the wall,' he whispered. The small communications device was pinned to the neckband of his black fatigues. 'Nobody around. Set off the rest of the caps in thirty seconds, then get out of here.'
The courtyard was long and narrow, paved with stone. In the pale starlight he could see scattered crouching shapes that he took to be benches and William Greenleaf
clumps of low vegetation. Farther back was the great dark form of the temple building. Light flickered at the arched entrance. A single spire curved upward twenty meters, ghostly white
against the night sky.
The man's name was Cleve Quinton. He had
prepared himself as well as he could for this night, but as he crouched there looking up at the spire, he felt the danger of this place settle into his stomach like a hard knot. All his muscles were tensed for him to scramble back over the wall and escape into the darkness.
Stay calm, he told himself. He breathed slowly and forced his muscles to relax, one by one. But he couldn't take his eyes off the slender spire. From behind the temple came a rattling crescendo of explosions. The sound startled him even though he should have expected it. The commotion of voices told him the temple guards were still back there trying to find the source of the explosions. He drew a handgun from an inside pocket of his fatigues, checked the bead cartridge for a full load and made sure the scatter nozzle was in place. Keeping close to the wall, he made his way carefully across the courtyard to the lighted archway that was the temple's entrance. He climbed the shallow steps and ducked through the archway without a backward glance. To his left was the wide doorway that led into the sacred chamber. The flickering light came from there.
For a moment he stared into the chamber,
then turned right and went through another low doorway and along a short passage to a flight of stairs.
'I'm going up,' he said, surprised at the steady sound of his voice. The stomach pains of danger grew more acute now that he was inside the temple. The light over the stairs was dim and he knew he
CLARION
would have to be careful; the steps had been designed for feet smaller than human. A ventilation grille was affixed to the wall just below the secondfloor landing. Quinton moved past it to the landing and checked the door to make sure he could get through it quickly. That would be his escape route: up to the roof, down along the wall on the far side, out into the darkness of the road—with, no doubt, the Sons of God shrieking after him.
He went back to the ventilation grille and returned the scatter gun to his pocket, then unslung his canvas bag and opened it on the landing. It took less than a minute to select the tool he needed and remove the grillwork fastenings. Then he was squirming through the horizontal metal duct. His hands and elbows stirred up choking dust. Ahead of him a dim square of light marked another ventilation outlet. He moved to it carefully and looked through. Below him was a vast circular room.
'I've reached the chamber.' His eyes went to the center of the room. 'I can see the chauka.' Despite the anxiety, he felt a slight disappointment; from here the chauka looked to be nothing more than a shallow metal dish about two meters across. He was unsure of its color in the dim light—grayish, he thought, or dull blue. Its base was hidden from view. Protruding from one side just below the edge of the dish was a single slender rod.
According to High Elder Alban Brill and his cronies in the Holy Order, the chauka was the most sacred of the holy relics of the Tal Tahir.
'Doesn't look like much,' he said softly, thinking of his friends who had died because of. the chauka. He edged forward so he could see the rest of the room. The light came from several flickering globes that were spaced along the far wall. 'There are a lot of. . .' He paused, trying to think of a way William Greenleaf
to describe the strange-looking objects that were scattered across the floor like clumps of stony, slab-sided vegetation. They ranged in height from knee-high to a few that were taller than a man. Oddly shaped notches had been cut into the base of each. After a moment he realized that the objects were arranged in concentric circles that radiated outward from the chauka.
