They resolved to explore the nearest first; that was the temple of Sai, goddess of pain, Aghad's twin sister.
Garth blasted open the spike-steel gate with the Sword of Bheleu and, remembering what had happened to his boots when last he had entered this shrine, he melted smooth the jagged, broken obsidian courtyard. That done, he marched on into the temple, Frima at his heels, Koros waiting outside.
They found no one in the sanctuary. Garth was ready to give up and go, but Frima, recalling her own uncompleted sacrifice, pointed out the secret doorway through which she had been brought up from the vaults below.
Garth agreed that the vaults were worth exploring-a decision he found himself regretting a few hours later, when an extensive search had turned up no Aghadites, but an impressive array of dungeons and torture devices, as well as a handful of half-starved, desperate worshippers of Sai who had taken shelter there when the plague began, three years earlier. Despite a surge of bloodlust, Garth did not kill these people, but instead drove them out into the streets. They promptly headed toward the market, obviously intent on leaving the city.
By the time he and Frima had investigated all the corridors and rooms beneath the temple of Sai and radiating out from it under the surrounding buildings, it was almost dawn, and Garth was tired. He had used up a great deal of the sword's energy in blasting the temple of Aghad, and the expenditure was telling upon him.
Neither Garth nor Frima saw any point in returning to Frima's old home; instead, they broke in the door of a convenient house and made themselves comfortable there. Frima found a store of preserves in the kitchen, and dried salt beef that had not yet spoiled; the wine cupboard included several bottles that had not yet turned to vinegar, though Garth was not impressed with any that he sampled.
At last, when they had both eaten their fill, the girl and the overman found beds and went to sleep.
Garth did not sleep very well; the bed was far too small for him. Around noon he gave up and moved to the floor, which served him better.
He awoke again well after dark to find Frima hacking off strips of beef for their breakfast.
They debated what should be done next. Garth suggested the temple of P'hul as their next target; Frima objected that no Aghadite would venture into that disease-ridden pesthole. That, after all, was where the White Death had come from in the first place.
Garth had to concede the truth of her argument.
He then considered the temple of Bheleu, but dismissed that immediately; it was a ruin, with no roof and an earthen floor. Where could anyone hide in there?
The last temple on the Street of the Temples was the temple of Death. That, Frima insisted, would be the very surest place. Any Dыsarran would consider himself safe from pursuit there, as no one would dare to enter it looking for him.
Garth doubted this hypothesis. Would not the Aghadites, he asked, be at least as frightened by The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken as by their pursuers? After all, the cultists knew that Garth had entered the temple once before and emerged alive, the first person not a devotee of the Final God to do so.
Frima agreed with this reasoning finally. That left the two temples located in other parts of the city-those dedicated to Tema and to Andhur Regvos. Accordingly, the little party headed for the temple of Andhur Regvos, god of darkness.
Here Garth did not waste time in exploring every nook and cranny; instead, he simply used the Sword of Bheleu to blast the domed pyramid into rubble, as he had done to the temple of Aghad.
As with the temple of Aghad, however, he found no trace of any Aghadites in the wreckage. The sanctuary held the desiccated remains of a dozen people, all dead for quite some time; Garth guessed them to be the blind priests of the god, slain by the plague three years before. Nowhere else in the maze of chambers and tunnels did he find anything that might have been alive recently.
That left the temple of Tema. Garth proposed to treat it much as he had the shrines of Aghad and Andhur Regvos, but Frima protested violently. After some argument, the overman gave in. The followers of Tema had not done him any real harm, unlike the Aghadites.
He did not like the delay, which would allow the surviving Aghadites that much more time to devise new schemes and for their emissaries to travel toward Ordunin, but he decided that he could live with it.
It was well after midnight when he and Koros, with Frima on the warbeast's back, reached the steps leading to the temple's entrance. He helped the girl off the beast and then led the way to the door, up between the serpent-carved balustrades.
To his surprise, the door swung open as he approached.
He entered the antechamber and stopped. Frima proceeded on past him toward the concealed inner door, but before she reached it, a voice said, "Please wait, girl."
Startled, Frima stopped.
A blue-robed, white-haired priest emerged from the darkness into the sword's light, blinking in the vivid glare. "Your pardon, but we have grown cautious in these unhappy days. We cannot admit you to the sanctuary until you give an account of yourselves, and swear that you do not carry the White Death."
"We do not carry the plague," Garth said, "and I will swear that however you like. We have come seeking the Aghadites who fled the destruction of their temple."
"There are no Aghadites here," the priest said patiently. "This is the temple of Tema, goddess of night."
"You will forgive me if I insist upon investigating for myself," Garth replied.
The priest hesitated, and the overman held up the glowing sword; it dripped streamers of white flame. "You will, I think, see that I have the means of enforcing my wishes. I intend to search this temple without delay, and if you or anyone else should oppose me, I am afraid that I will feel it necessary not only to kill you, but also to destroy this entire building, lest my enemies escape me."
The priest stepped back and said reluctantly, "As you wish." The inner door swung open, and Garth stepped through it into the great domed sanctuary.
This chamber was the first place he had seen since returning to Dыsarra that could be called crowded; fifty or sixty ragged people had made themselves at home here, sleeping or sitting on beds made of bunched rags, each with a few meager possessions clustered about. Many of them glanced up at the new arrivals, then stared at the strange, fiery sword the overman carried.
Garth looked at the motley collection of humans and demanded, "How long have these people been here? Did any arrive within the last two days?"
The priest at Garth's elbow shook his head. "Oh, no," he said. "You are the first newcomers in half a year."
The overman swung the sword around and held it at the man's throat. "Will you swear to that, by your goddess and all the other gods?"
"Oh, yes, my lord," the man said, not nodding for fear of cutting or burning his throat on the sword's point if he moved his head. "I swear it, by Tema and by all the gods! These people have been here for months."
Garth decided that he could trust the human. He lowered the sword, ignoring Frima's loud protests regarding his treatment of a holy man.
Again he looked over the great hall, noticing that in the sword's light the stone idol was rather less impressive than he recalled. It stood against the far side of the chamber, the goddess' cloak stretching up to cover most of the dome. It was still a fine piece of sculpture, beautiful and comforting, but he could see the marks of the carvers upon it, which he had not seen in the dark; its ethereal quality was gone.
He spotted dark stains on the wall near the door, but did not inquire after their origin. He was afraid that they might be from his own previous visit, when he had killed a priest very near to the spot where he now stood.