Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Seven Altars of Dusarra

The ceremony was over, and the tavern-girl rose and motioned for him to follow her out; he shook his head. She frowned at him, and then shrugged and left. Almost all the worshippers, kneeling or prostrate, were getting to their feet and heading toward the entrance, but Garth remained where he was, to await the dawn.

It was a long, weary wait; he had not realized how tired he was, but the effects of a long day's ride were catching up to him well before the night was over.

When the crowd had departed he was left alone in the middle of the stone floor, but the cowled priests, who moved with quiet rustlings but no words along the wall behind the altar, paid him no heed. Moments after the last of Tema's devoted had departed, new ones began to trickle in; by the time a half hour had passed the chamber was becoming crowded once again with people kneeling with hands clasped before them, or flat on their bellies, all facing the magnificent black stone idol.

The scattered bits of moonlight that found their way through the holes in the dome shifted as the moon crawled across the heavens outside, and an hour or so after the tavern-girl's departure a spot of light appeared on the cloth-covered sphere atop the altar. A priest withdrew the covering, and the chanting began anew.

This time it was not his planning that kept Garth from hearing the words; it was his efforts to stay awake. His knees hurt from kneeling so long without moving on hard stone, his eyes ached from the strain of seeing through the unchanging dark, and his whole body was weary from his long ride. He knew that to close his eyes would be to fall asleep. He had arisen early, before dawn, which meant that when the new day arrived he would have gone better than twenty-four hours without sleep; that was no remarkable feat, ordinarily, but after a day spent riding and now passing long, dull hours crouching in the dark, it began to seem impossible.

The second ceremony ended, the crowd dispersed, and newcomers trickled in; still he knelt there, and still no one paid any attention to him. The priests shuffled about at the goddess' feet; all seemed to have long, pure-white hair, and at least two had the same strange red eyes. All were pale-skinned, unlike the other Dыsarrans Garth had seen; even those whose faces remained completely hidden showed their hands on occasion, and those hands were uniformly white and apparently hairless. There were few other similarities amongst them; some were tall, some short, some fat, some thin. There seemed to be at least one priestess among them, judging by what little could be distinguished through the flowing robes. Garth had once seen a white wolf, a beast with snow-white fur and blood-red eyes; a Kirpan scholar had referred to it as "albino." These priests must be albino humans. He had not known such existed. And why should all the priests be such? It seemed a peculiar requirement, if such it was; why were albinos especially suited to serve the goddess of the night?

Wondering about such trivia managed to keep him awake through a third and final ceremony; this time, when the final simple chant ended and the gem was covered, the crowd moved more slowly, and for the first time Garth heard worshippers speaking amongst themselves. Likewise, the priests ended their apparently aimless wanderings; all but three of the half dozen or more he had seen vanished, though Garth could not see where they had gone. The remaining trio stood motionless behind the altar, the center one with his hands resting one on either side of the shrouded crystal.

Garth estimated it to be two hours before dawn still. Since this new behavior seemed to demonstrate that the temple's services were through for the night, he got to his feet; his knees stung, as circulation returned to the areas where it had been cut off. He gazed up at the idol, as if in adoration, so that no one would question his failing to depart.

His eyes had long since become adjusted to the faint illumination, but now he found himself unable to distinguish details of carving that had been clear before; he blinked, but it made no difference. The scattered moonlight was not evenly distributed; had it merely shifted? No, it was growing uniformly darker. He had a moment of irrational fear that he was going blind before he realized what was happening.

The moon was setting.

That, of course, was why there were to be no more ceremonies, and why everyone was departing; with the moon down, the temple would be far too dark for use. People would run into one another, face the wrong way, and generally be unable to behave appropriately; even night-worshippers recognized that. He wondered what they did on moonless nights; were there no services at all? The starlight was plainly inadequate. Or what of overcast nights? Would torchlight from the streets or the glow of the volcanoes reflected off the clouds be enough? There would be no beam of moonlight falling on the great crystal.

Well, interesting as they might be, such considerations were irrelevant, since this night had been clear and moonlit. The spreading darkness would actually work to his benefit, since no one would be able to see him steal the gem; he studied the altar, measuring the distance between it and himself, so as to reach it quickly in the dark.

The three priests still stood behind it; the last worshippers had drifted out, and Garth realized they were looking at him, noticing this last straggler. That was not what he wanted. He turned and headed for the door, but stopped a foot from it, and turned to look again, hoping that anyone who saw him would not think that unusual.

Apparently the priests didn't, if they were able to see at all in the deepening gloom; Garth doubted they could see him any more, as he could no longer see them. Although he did not know for sure, it seemed unlikely that those squinty little human eyes could be as good as an overman's-though of course the priests' eyes were not quite normal.

A gong sounded somewhere, and the stone door swung slowly shut; whoever worked it thought Garth had left. He stepped away from it and lost himself in the darkness.

There were rustlings and whisperings in the blackness, which was now almost total; the moon was down. Although the dome made it very hard to locate sounds" Garth judged that the three priests were moving away from the altar. In a moment the sounds were cut off" as if a curtain had dropped across a doorway; straining, Garth could hear faint footsteps departing. The priests were gone.

Moving with all the stealth he could contrive, Garth inched across the broad stone expanse that lay between him and the altar; he could not see more than a few inches in front of him, and the quiet shuffling of his boots seemed magnified into a low roar by the echoes.

After what seemed hours, his outstretched hand touched something; he studied it with his fingertips, and decided it was a fold in the idol's cloak; he had missed the altar and hit the wall, off to the left. Cautiously, he felt his way along the fold until it swooped up out of reach, then moved on along the wall until he came to the idol's slippered feet, which he knew to be immediately behind the altar. He turned until he faced directly away from the wall, and peered into the darkness; he thought he could see the dim outline of the altar. He took a step forward and felt in front of him, reaching down to the height he estimated the altar to be; his hand brushed against a polished surface. Using both hands he groped about the altar-top and found the cloth-covered stone. He picked it up, cover and all, and tucked it under his cloak. Now he had only to get out of the temple undetected.

He knew that the concealed door to the antechamber was directly opposite the altar. He considered feeling his way along the wall until he found it, but rejected that idea; he might walk right into priests reentering the chamber, or at the very least be heard through whatever doorways they had departed by. Instead, he aimed himself by dead reckoning and set out across the floor.