Like a salmon running against the stream he fought the current of people moving toward the palace. One thought, and one thought only, drummed in his brain: Find Ari. Find her before it's too late.
He dodged here and there among the mobs and at last came upon a dark and quiet side street. He stood for a moment looking down its steep decline. Go, the voice said. Hurry. He went.
When he reached the bottom of the street he found himself on another level of the city, this one somewhat poorer and less well kept than the government section. The streets were narrower and the houses thrust up against one another and towered overhead. They were, for the most part, vacant, their inhabitants having joined the main celebration elsewhere in the city.
Spence listened to the sound of his own footsteps as he ran along, pausing only at intervals to find some new path. Without his knowing he was quickly moving out of Darjeeling proper toward Chaurastha, the city's ancient nucleus.
He did not notice that he crossed several bridges, nor did he hear the swift splash of the icy water below. These bridges marked the boundaries of Darjeeling. When he crossed them he moved into old Chaurastha-City of Dreams.
The streets fell away steeply in terraced flights, and steps flashed darkly beneath his feet; but he continued, driven by the urging he heard within him. He seemed directed toward a place he did not know but believed he would recognize when he found it. He let his legs carry him where they would.
The moon gleamed full overhead. In the city above he could hear the merrymaking of the multitudes, but here in the old city silence remained undisturbed. He could see the orange glow of thousands of torches in the sky, but here it was dark. He stopped to look around him and heard the rasp of his own breathing echoing among the dark walls and passages of the sacred city and the occasional bark of a dog.
He went more slowly, walking among the odd-shaped houses and shops in the deserted town, and came to a narrow old foot. bridge. He crossed it and found himself before a temple. The wide wooden gate was open, so he went in.
He moved like a shadow across the temple yard toward the small stupa in the center. The stupa was hive- shaped like all the others he had seen, but different. He entered the shrine and felt the cool breath of the evening on his face and neck as he slipped into the darkness.
The shrine was lit for the most part by moonlight falling through the hole in the center of the dome, but two torches burned before the deity's stone altar. Spence moved toward the altar.
It was a plain stone slab with words carved in it which he could not read. He stood gazing at it for some time, blinking in the flickering torchlight.
The feeling of having been directed to this place ran strong in him. He looked around and shook his head as one coming out of a dream in which he finds that his dream has come true.
How had he come to he here? Where were Adjani and Gita? Why had he come?
Spence passed a hand before his eves. Had he blacked out again? No, he did remember certain things: running down darkened streets, pushing through crowds, garish idols grinning at him. It was all there, and yet it must have happened to someone else.
Along with the feeling of waking from a dream, overlaying all other sensations, was the unaccountable certainty that he had been here before; he would have sworn his life on it.
The shape of the stupa, its interior, the design of the altar, and the words carved upon it-they all seemed very familiar, and yet very strange. If he had been here before, he told himself, it must have been in another life, or on some other planet.
It had been on another planet: Mars! All at once it came flooding back on him, and Spence staggered under the weight of the memory. The stupa was an exact replica of the krassil he had visited in Tso, the ancient city of the vanished Martians.
He moved toward the idol standing in its niche behind the altar and raised his eyes. The stone gleamed with the oil libations that had been poured out upon it by the priests. But there was no mistaking the figure of the deity: Naag Brasputi, with his oddly elongated limbs and narrow body and huge, staring, all-seeing eyes was the very image of Kyr.
He let his eyes travel down the long arms to the wrist and the folded hands and saw what he knew he would see. Naag Brasputi had but three fingers.
Spence stumbled backwards and fell against something soft that clutched at him. He whirled around to see two eyes in a face floating in the darkness behind him. Spence cringed back and a voice spoke to him.
18
… HAD THE VERY devil of a time following you,' Adjani said.
'Bloodhounds couldn't have tracked you better.'
'Adjani! It's you-what are you doing here?' Spence fell back and raised his hands to his head which had begun to throb like a tambourine in the hands of a firedancer. 'Why did you slug me so hard?'
'I didn't slug you, but I should have. Running out of the governor's party like that… What were you thinking of?' Spence glanced up at his friend with a sickly, scared expression. Adjani saw it and knew what it meant. 'Another blackout?'
'Not a blackout. It was different. It was like someone telling me what to do. I remember everything, but it's all sort of hazy,..'
The details of his flight through the city came swimming back to his pulsing head. Lastly, he remembered his discovery.
'Adjani, look!' He made to turn around but had to grip the sides of the altar; flaming arrows of pain stabbed through his brain. 'Do you see?' Spence pointed to the idol watching them smugly from its niche.
'I see. What is it? Old Naag Brasputi, I gather.'
Spence grabbed Adjani's sleeve and shook it. 'No! Look again!'
Adjani looked at the tall, thin image in gray stone more closely. He turned and said, 'It is unusual, and very old, but-'
'It's Kyr! Or someone very much like him. It's a Martian, I swear it!'
'Are you sure? This isn't the toddy talking, or…'
'I'm positive. It's the very image of a Martian. Don't you see? It's all true. Here's the proof. One of their ships came here. They settled in these mountains.'
Adjani, eyes narrowed and hand cupping his chin, stepped close to the idol and examined it carefully. 'So, this is what 8 Martian looks like. I will admit that it looks remarkably like you' description of Kyr.'
'Complete down to the three-fingered hands. And look how tall he is. It certainly doesn't look like any of the other gods at all.'
'And I know why. This one is very old. Carved long before the idols took on their classical, stylized fore. After a while, the priests started making the gods appear more human.'
'Man made god in his own image, is that it?'
'More or less. But this one is an example of what they must have looked like before that happened.'
'Do you think this is the Dream Thief?'
'It's hard to say. Dream Thief is more a demon spirit. He takes many shapes.' Adjani looked at the carving on the altar and ran his hands over it. 'I can't read the writing here. It's a dialect I don't know.'
'Gita might know it.'
'Yes, he might. We'll bring him here tomorrow. Right now we had better get back to the celebration before we're missed.' …
THEY LEFT THE SHRINE and darted back across the teeple yard. In the moonlight their shapes became those of spirits springing up out of the stones of the shrine and escaping into the night. They hurried back across the footbridge and through the old town. Upon reaching the ancient bazaar Spence stopped.
'Wait!' His voice was a stiff tense whisper. Adjani froze in his tracks. 'Listen!'
Both men trained their senses into the darkness around them. Far away they could hear the sounds of the celebration still reverberating into the stillness; the salutes of fireworks rang like distant gunshots of goondas in
