Dorland stood beside Paul, looking around.
"See anything familiar?" Paul asked. Dorland shook his head. "It was a long time ago."
"Let's move down closer to the river," Karyn suggested.
They spent a few minutes looking for an opening in the dense growth, and it took them another half hour to hack their way through to the river. The water ran fast enough to form little frosted crests as it rushed over hidden boulders. Paul looked closer and realized that not all the obstructions under the water were boulders—he could see a large curved section of pink wall, and piles of pink rubble. The river had changed its course after the city was abandoned, and had driven a channel through an area that had once been populated.
"The edge of the city is down that way," Karyn said, pointing to the left. "It's in pretty bad shape."
"There were quite a few domes still standing in the area my father and I explored," Dorland said.
"We had gone into several of them before we found the square building."
"We'll go this way, then," Karyn said, inclining her head to the right. "We'll run into it eventually." Luck was on their side. They had worked their way along the riverbank for barely half an hour when Dorland stopped so abruptly Paul almost bumped into him.
"There it is," he said, pointing. Paul could barely discern the building through tangled vines and underbrush. The spire had toppled into the river, and twenty meters of it lay underwater. Even though heavy vines covered the structure, its shape was outlined clearly enough to reveal that it was not a dome. It was a large square building like the temple.
Karyn led the way down the mossy bank and
stopped several meters from the building.
"Let's look around," she said. "No need to rush into this."
She sounded edgy, and Paul couldn't blame her. He felt the tension, too.
As far as Paul could see, the building was designed and constructed exactly like the temple. It looked to be in remarkably good shape except for the side near the river, where the crumbling bank had undermined the building's foundation. The resultant settling had opened a gaping crack in one wall, and the roof sagged. A walking path or narrow roadway had once come up to the building but was now all but obliterated by trees and underbrush William Greenleaf
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that had grown up through the broken surface. Vines covered the open archway, obstructing their view inside.
"Is it safe to go in?" Paul asked. Beside him, Jacque was already using his knife to cut away the heavy, clinging vines. He grinned at Paul and said, "Guess we'll find out." They hacked their way through and stepped
cautiously into a room that smelled of damp stone and fungus. Rubble from a fallen section of the ceiling was strewn across the floor. Vines had crept in through the archway and the crack in the far wall to spread across the floor and up the walls, clinging to broken stones and chunks of debris. One interior wall had collapsed, and the high ceiling sagged.
"In here," Karyn said. She had gone to a low archway and was looking into another room.
Jacque remained in the outer corridor as a sentry while Paul and the others followed Karyn through the archway. If the interior layout of this building was the same as that of the Holy Order's temple—
and Paul knew it would be—then this room would be equivalent to the sacred chamber in the temple. Inside, they found the same pattern of clustered pedestals that Paul and Dorland had seen in the sacred chamber. Vines had crept over them to create eerie hummocks of vegetation. Light filtered through a jagged crack in the wall.
Paul turned to say something to Dorland, then realized that Borland's attention had gone to something in the center of the room. Following his gaze, Paul saw an outline of something that was nearly buried under crumbled debris, clinging vines and centuries of accumulated dust.
"It's another chauka" Dorland said in a strained voice.
The general shape was right, and the object's position 'would put it in the same place as the chauka's in the sacred chamber.
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Paul began clearing away the vines and debris. Selmer and Karyn came to help, and it took them only a few minutes to get enough cleared away to be sure Dorland was right. The object was another chauka.
Selmer stepped back and used the sleeve of his coveralls to wipe the dust and sweat out of his eyes.
"Looks like it's in fairly good shape." In fact, when the surface of the dish itself became visible, Paul could see no damage at all. He used his pack to brush out the last of the thick dust and dead leaves. Then he saw something gleaming faintly near one edge of the dish.
"What's that?" Selmer reached past him and picked up a round disk. He brought it up closer to catch a ray of light coming through the door. Then he took in a quick, sharp breath. Paul looked closer. The face of the disk in Selmer's hand was engraved with an image of Lord Tern.
Chapter Thirteen
SABASTIAN SQUINTED AT THE RAGGED LINE OF
figures that was making its way up the rocky slope. There was little doubt that he and Olaf Blackburn had been spotted where they crouched behind the rock barrier. The boys were coming directly toward the barrier, their heads down as they picked their way through the vegetation and loose stones. They wore the gold-and-scarlet uniforms of the Sons of God, and even at this distance Sabastian could see the dart guns and other weapons that hung from their belts.
There was little Sabastian and Olaf could do but wait. Sabastian with his wooden leg and Olaf with his lung ailment could not possibly hope to escape over the mountain. The boys would run them down before they'd gone a hundred meters. Retreating into the cave would only trap them, and delay the inevitable.
The line of boys disappeared into a ravine that blocked Sabastian's view. He touched the thick strand of braided ropes that lay coiled beside him on the ground. When the boys reached the rocky 144
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ledge twenty meters downslope, he would pull the ropes and release the first row of boulders. Another set of ropes lay on his left side. That would release the second rock barrier.
Sabastian shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position. The stump of his leg had begun to throb, and now and then blades of pain stabbed up from the knee, where the peg was attached. He didn't have to look to know that his knee was red and swollen.
Three of the boys appeared suddenly on the ledge below the barrier. One of them raised a slender tube and released a dart that fell short by a halfdozen meters. The boy ducked out of sight, then showed himself again as he moved forward to the cover offered by another large boulder. Sabastian felt for the knotted ropes and waited. More boys appeared briefly at the lip of the ledge and moved forward to take cover. Most of the ledge was hidden from the barrier; it offered a perfect opportunity for the Sons to regroup just before their assault directly up the slope.
But Sabastian and Jacque had been careful in their design of the rock barrier. When the ropes were pulled and the wooden braces collapsed, the formation of the slope above the ledge would funnel the boulders directly down over the boys who were crouched there. In his mind Sabastian could picture the boulders rumbling downhill, crashing together as they tumbled onto the ledge and the boys in their gold-and-scarlet uniforms. Some of the boys would probably survive, and hopefully they would retreat down the mountain. If not, there was the second set of ropes, and the second barrier of boulders . . .
If only we could have had a few more days,
Sabastian thought bitterly. Maybe Borland could have helped us sort this out.
For a moment he felt hatred well up in him so strong that it nearly paralyzed him—hatred for Brill, for Jacowicz, for the Holy Order that had turned this planet into a battleground with young boys as soldiers.