Two wasted lives, and Paul was aware that he had been traveling down the same road when he met Doriand. Becoming Dorland's business manager had been the first major step toward getting Paul's own life straightened out. Then he'd met Trisha, and the rest had fallen into place.
Paul heard a sound and turned his head to find Selmer Ogram standing beside him.
'Sabastian wouldn't ask him to do it if he didn't have to.'
Paul turned back to face the city.
'He's up against a wall,' Selmer went on. 'He knows he has to do something. High Elder Brill and Elder Jacowicz have to be stopped.'
Paul kept thinking about what Doriand had said when he had at last looked at Sabastian and agreed to go into the temple. Paul had tried desperately to talk him out of it, but Doriand had already made up his mind.
I've always known I would go into the sacred chamber and speak to Lord Tern. The certainty in Dorland's voice sent a new chill down Paul's spine now as he remembered the words.
'Who's Jacowicz?' Paul asked.
'He's the elder in charge of obedience. Brill's right-hand man, and maybe even more dangerous. He's the one who set up the Sons of God.' Selmer lowered himself carefully to another benchlike outcropping of rock. 'Jacowicz is determined to get each of us on his God Wall.'
78 William Greenleaf
'You need help,' Paul said. 'That's obvious. But you should ask UNSA for it. I don't see how you can expect Dorland to go into that temple alone.'
'We've got it all worked out. There shouldn't be any problem—'
'Is that what you thought when Cleve Quinton went in?' Paul asked. 'If Dorland has to fight for his life, he won't have a chance. Dorland hates violence. Sabastian should know that.'
'He does,' Selmer said. 'After all, Dorland's his nephew. If everything goes as planned, there won't be any violence.'
'If everything goes as planned,' Paul said bitterly. 'All you're betting is Dorland's life.'
'We're betting all our lives.' Selmer held out a pair of binoculars. 'Here, you can see better with these.'
'I can see all I want to.'
'I'd like to show you something.' Paul grudgingly accepted the binoculars and looked through them at the city. Light slanted across the valley from the setting sun. Although most of the ruins were hidden by vegetation, he could see that the patches of pale pink were the remains of domed structures. Some were still nearly whole, thrusting up through the vegetation like the top halves of pink skulls. He lifted the binoculars and focused them on the village of Fairhope—a rambling collection of small, square buildings and narrow roads, canopied by a blue haze of woodsmoke. The river snaked along one side of it. Small figures moved around. Narrow roads led between the fields toward Chalcharuzzi. He found the zoom control and expanded the
image of one of the buildings. A cabin, he realized, made of cut logs. A thin spiral of smoke rose from the chimney.
'On the far right you can see the temple,' Selmer said. 'That's the building with the white spire.'
CLARION 79
Paul searched until he found it: a squat, reddishbrown building dominated by a single white spire that curved up fifty meters or more to catch the last rays of the sun. A few smaller buildings were scattered behind it. A wall surrounded the entire complex.
'Look there in the back, where the wall has been built up higher.'
Paul found the place Selmer was talking about. The wall was uniformly low around most of the temple complex, certainly no higher than a man's shoulders. But on the far side was a section that was raised above the rest. The heightened section ran only ten meters or so, and from what Paul could see there was no structural reason for it. He adjusted the focus control of the glasses. There was something on the raised section of wall. A dark smudge . . .
Then the smudge jumped into focus, and Paul's blood ran cold. Three bodies hung side by side on the wall, several
