condition. 'In there.' The dome's entrance was an archway with
eroded edges. When he ducked through, Paul found himself in a large room that was at least ten meters across. Smooth walls curved upward to a rounded ceiling far above him. Slit windows in the high curve admitted shafts of light that splashed brightly across the floor. There were no furnishings.
'It's just a shell with a few walls,' Paul said.
'The Holy Order had everything taken out of the domes a long time ago,' Selmer said. 'Nobody knows why. It's probably all been destroyed by now.'
The floor was littered with a few chunks of stone that had fallen from the ceiling and walls, but otherwise was clear of debris. Several open doorways were spaced around the curved walls. Paul looked through one of them and found 'that it opened into another, smaller room, also bare. Each of the other doorways opened into similar rooms. He didn't have to spend much time exploring before he had the design figured out—a large main room with the smaller rooms opening directly off it
CLARION 95
all around. It was easy enough to imagine this main room as the family gathering place, and the other rooms as the Tal Tahir equivalent of bedrooms. He had no doubt that each dome was designed exactly the same way. There was something oddly familiar about the design—and in a moment Paul realized what it was. The floor plan of the dome was a miniature replica of each of the city's quadrants he'd seen the day before. The realization supported his conclusion that the Tal Tahir had been fanatics for symmetry: each quadrant had a central area surrounded by circular rows of domes, and each dome had a central room surrounded by a circular row of smaller rooms.
He returned to the main room feeling somewhat depressed. There was no way of knowing what furniture the Tal Tahir had, what they used for books, for entertainment. So much of their lives had been wiped clean from this place.
The others had already taken off their packs and found places to squat or sit on the floor.
'Let's go over the plan again,' Karyn said. 'We don't want any problems.' She got down on her knees so she could use her finger to draw a rough sketch in the thick dust. 'This is the wall around the temple, and the temple building itself.' She glanced up to make sure she had Dorland's attention. 'The sacred chamber is just through the entrance, here.' Her finger traced a line. 'Remember, you're only going in to look around. After you've finished in the chamber, come back out through the front. We'll be watching for the sentries from across the road. Jacque will make his pigrim call—' She looked up at Dorland. 'You remember what that's like?'
He nodded.
'Good. Jacque will make the call after the sentries have passed by out of sight. Wait until you hear it, then come right over the wall.' She paused, 96 William Greenleaf CLARION 97
watching him. 'If you can't come through the front for any reason—'
'Why wouldn't he be able to come through the front?' Paul asked sharply.
'He will,' Karyn answered. 'But if somebody spots him going in, or if the sentries come back earlier than we expect, there's another way out.' She turned back to Dorland. 'If you have to, you can take the stairway to the roof. It's here on the right.' Her finger sketched a series of horizontal lines to represent stairsteps. 'There's a door leading out onto the roof. You can go along the roof to the back wall, then down over the wall in this corner.' She jabbed a finger. 'If you don't come through the front, we'll wait for you around there, then go back to the intersection of David and Fourth. Either way, we should be able to get back to camp before dawn.' She looked up at him. 'Can you do that?'
He nodded.
Karyn studied his face a moment longer, then turned to look through the tangled vines at the dome's entrance. 'It's getting dark. Let's go.' Outside, they walked carefully in single file to-ward the spire, which gleamed dully in the moonlight. Paul noticed that Karyn and Jacque had their knives unsheathed and within easy reach.
The sky was a deep cobalt blue by the time they stepped between the crumbled ruins of two domes and saw the temple less than a hundred meters away.
'We'll wait here for the sentries to go past,' Karyn whispered.
They huddled against a rounded pink wall for several minutes. Then Paul heard low voices and saw two dark shapes pass by along the wall. Paul's heart began to thump uneasily inside his chest.
'Okay,' Kapyn whispered after the sentries were out of sight. 'We have only a few minutes.' Keeping low, Karyn and Jacque moved across
the roadway, then Dorland. Paul hung back, reluctant to leave the shelter of the wall. Vegetation would give them at least a thin cover once they'd reached the wall. Paul started to cross the roadway when a low hooting sound from the darkness made him jump. Behind him, Selmer laughed quietly.
